The Nutshell
                   Number 0819

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KEYWORD INDEX TO NUTSHELLS 0001 TO 0204
(a work in progress)

Saturday, September 4, 2010


Note to MFRs: All my formerly @verizon.net e-mail addresses are now @frontier.com  - the Ed


My advice to the President


Majority of Americans are unhappy with President Obama. Many just want him out, to be replaced with a regular white folks type. But many, on both left and right, are willing to offer constructive criticism and advice in hope that the President can and will mend his errant ways and fly right.

The Nutshell definitely falls into the hopeful/helpful category. Besides, it prides itself on its lucid view of what's what and what needs to be done and so feels itself well qualified to offer the President worthwhile advice as  detailed in the letter below.

Dear Mr. President:

First, in the matter of style: Your matter-of-fact, "no-drama-Obama", clear and concise delivery seems to infuriate some people and bore others, but as a body of coherent statements of facts and intentions your speeches and comments will no doubt be appreciated by future historians. In the meantime, consistency is all-important. In time, people will get used to your style and look beyond it to the substance. So my advice is that you continue as you are which I have no doubt is what you intend.

With respect to the said substance: There are 300 million experts out there most of whom have a better overall grasp of the current situation and know better than you what this country really needs. Their views are properly represented by the Senate and the House of Representatives. So it's between you and the Congress to sort things out with the Supreme Court as the referee. However, your own vision for this country's future is what got you elected. It's too early to judge how your vision will work out in reality but my advice is that you keep faith with your vision and your original mandate. Which I know you will.

To sum up, my advice to you, Mr.President, is: steady as she goes and let the results speak for themselves. I am confident that you will do exactly as I advise.

Respectfully,

Paul W.



09/03/10 (#0818)  Scenarios for the end of the world


The universe as we know it is some 14 billion years old. Civilization as we know it, at least on this planet, is some few thousand years old. The Earth has been and is likely to remain habitable for some hundreds of millions of years.

On the one hand, relative to the human life span of several decades, the prospects for the end of the world seem pretty remote. On the other hand, all these numbers are finite and the universe has been winding down ever since the initial impetus of the Big Bang. So should we worry?

Only if we believe we are immortal. According to the Nutshell doctrine, consciousness is eternal and non-existence is impossible so a true Nutshellian might worry a little how a seemingly finite future of the universe squares with the prospects for eternal joy. 

Fortunately, we don't know yet (nor ever will) exactly how and why the universe is what it seems to be. There is hope in not knowing and room for any number of speculative scenarios for the end or, rather, the transformation of the universe.

The most pedestrian scenario is "Back to the Big Bang". If there was one Big Bang (that we know of) there could be another. For that matter there could be any number of Big Bangs each one starting a new cycle of organization of consciousness for the purpose of maximizing enjoyment of being. A Big Bang might be precipitated by the thinning out of the materials needed to sustain high levels of organized consciousness. What I don't like about this scenario is the discontinuity that it introduces - with each Big Bang the process starts anew, from the scratch. It doesn't make use of what was achieved before. On the other hand, that might be just as well - freshness and youth requires destruction of the old and stale. The prime elements of existence (consciousness and desire for joy) are preserved in any case.

Another, far more ambitious scenario is the "Nick of Time". It assumes, optimistically, that as organized consciousness evolves it may achieve levels of understanding which will enable it to take control of the evolution of the universe before it becomes uninhabitable and steer it towards indefinite sustainability of optimum conditions for continuing evolution of consciousness. If this scenario strains your credulity I strongly suggest replacing your credulity with a sturdier model.

And then there is the "Surprise!" scenario wherein what actually happens will be beyond anything we could have possibly imagined. Actually, that's the one that worries me a bit.

So am I loosing any sleep over this? Is Obama a Muslim terrorist?

Until next time,

Paul W.



09/02/10 (#0817)  The will to power, the desire for joy


After the bloody Age of Reason (French Revolution and all that) came the prosperous Age of Romance (supported by the Industrial Revolution). Romance can only exist in midst of prosperity - when times are tough people have no time for it. The Age of Romance (mostly the 19th and the early 20th centuries) brought forth all kinds of fantastical ideas about the noble and glorious human destiny notably the idea of the "will to power" which culminated with the rise and fall of Hitler.

Like the Nutshell, the romantics believed that the universe has a purpose but they were not sure what it might be. Taking the theory of the survival of the fittest as a clue some of them came up with the will to power as the transcendental force driving the evolution of the universe. The idea is the more power we have the more we can achieve and since what we achieve defines us, power is the route to greatness.

There are several problems with this hypothesis. One is economical: there is evidently only a finite and diminishing amount of power available in the universe. Another is logical: it's not power but control of power that is enabling. But the most daunting one is this: assuming we have control of a quantity of power, what do we do with it? We are back to square one: what is the purpose of power?

Wielding power is in itself an emotional high which makes us feel intensely alive in the moment. Unfortunately, like all emotional highs it wears thin and requires ever greater doses of power wielding to re-ignite. Inevitably, it is followed by emotional lows. Ultimately it has no purpose other than to stir the diminishing emotional excitement.  

More fundamental than power is goodness which the Nutshell defines as the optimal dynamic balance between order and chaos, where past, present and future play off each other as an integral symphonic whole. The experience is that of rightness, of meaningfulness, of beauty - not static but a continuing revelation. In the Nutshell doctrine goodness and joy are synonymous and the desire for joy is the transcendental force driving the evolution of the universe.. 

The thing about joy is that it is sustainable and expandable without being addictive. It is not a matter of emotional excitement but of deep appreciation. It is a legitimate "end" in itself requiring no further justification. But, of course, it is not the end, it is a continuing, evolving phenomenon which, however, can come to an end unless consciously maintained. The balance is easily lost through inattention, hesitation or accident. To keep the flame of joy burning we need to keep applying power in a consciously controlled, purposeful way.

Until next time,

Paul W.



09/01/10 (#0816)  Hedgehog dialogs XXVII


I thought MFR Prickles, the hedgehog I live with, had by now gathered from all the Shanghai chronicles published to date in the Nutshell that we were going to China but evidently she didn't.

Me:  "So, Prickles, are you getting ready for our trip?"
Prickles:  "## #### ##??" [There's no intelligible way to transliterate let alone translate Hedgehogese]
Me:  "To Shanghai! You didn't know?"
Prickles:  "##.  #### #### ## ### ######?"
Me:  "We'll be visiting Expo 2010 and sightseeing in Shanghai. Expo will be like a fast trip around the world in seven days but we'll also have another seven days to soak up the local Shanghai scene. Think you're up to that?"
Prickles:  "### ### # #### ## ## #### ##?"
Me:  "Well, you may not realize this but the world is not all alike everywhere, at least not yet. So as you travel around the world you get to see different things you had never seen before, hear different stories, pick up new ideas. It's very educational. And entertaining."
Prickles:  "### ### ## ## #### ##?"
Me:  "Of course they have sunshine in Shanghai. There may also be some rain but we'll definitely have sunshine for you to appreciate."
Prickles:  "### #### ### ###?"
Me:  "Yes, the same kind of sunshine as here."
Prickles:  "#### #### ##### ##?"
Me:  "Well, the sunshine may be the same but there are many other things that are different over there."
Prickles:  "### ###?"
Me:  "Well, food is different, the way people entertain themselves is different, how they decorate their homes, even how they think is different."
Prickles:  "### ### ##### ###?"
Me:  "I don't know - I haven't seen hedgehogs mentioned in anything I have read about China. They may not be native to China. But if we happen to see a Chinese hedgehog we will certainly adopt her or him."
Prickles:  "##! ##! ### ### #### ##?"
Me:   "Whoa, Prickles, we may not even meet any Chinese hedgehogs, too early to be thinking about names! Besides, if we do, she will probably have a name already. But don't set your heart on it."
Prickles:  "##."
Me:  "Don't look so glum. They have other interesting animals in China. Like giant pandas for example."
Prickles:  "## ### ### #### #####."
Me:  "Oh you're just upset about maybe not meeting any hedgehogs in China. But you will have all sorts of interesting experiences in Shanghai, I promise. You'll be glad you had come with me!"
Prickles:  "## ### ## ## #### ## #### ### #."
Me:  "Well, thank you, I do appreciate your keeping track of my Important Stuff. But you'll have fun too!"
Prickles:  "#### #### #####?"
Me:  "No, you don't have to learn Chinese"

Until next time,

Paul W.


 
08/31/10 (#0815)  The Christian ethical bombshell


That Jesus was a radical is common knowledge among thinking Christians and historians generally. Among many radical statements he made, possibly the most radical is: "love your enemies".

That is certainly a very un-Jewish notion (for that matter, a very un-human one). "Love your neighbor" is a perfectly reasonable principle necessary for maintaining peace and order in a society. But "love your enemies"?! That borders on the insane. (Which is probably why so few self-proclaimed Christians actually put this concept into practice). Actually, it is a brilliant military strategy and a key step in the process of angelification of human nature.

The first difficulty with "loving" one's enemies lies in the distorted and often conflicting set of definitions of "love" (at least in the English language). Right off the bat a lot of confusion can be cleared away merely by noting that "love" and "like" are not synonymous. Hence it is possible to dislike someone intensely and still love him or her. As several earlier Nutshells point out, love, in the sense that Jesus used it, is not an emotion - it is a rational and intentional act of good will. (Greeks had a unique word for it - agape - but English conflates all kinds of unrelated and even opposing meanings into one meaningless word). Liking or disliking, on the other hand, are pure emotion.

In practical application, this is what loving our enemy looks like: first, we need to get to know the enemy. (Incidentally, that alone leads, not infrequently, to the Pogoesque epiphany: "We have met the enemy and they are us!"). It doesn't matter whether we like or hate what we find out about the enemy. What is important is that we understand what the enemy needs (as opposed to wants), what is the actual driving force behind their enmity.

If we can understand that, then we are in a position to help the enemy to the extent of our power to do so, to give them what they need so that their enmity is defused and disarmed, preferably without firing a shot. I am not saying this is simple. It requires that we understand ourselves and our own real needs and powers as well as the enemy's. And we must work with the enemy to help them achieve a reciprocal understanding of us and themselves. In some cases this may turn out to be impossible. But in many cases it is doable and where it is, it is worth doing. This applies to individual personal relations as much as to the Middle East negotiations or to the war with the terrorists.

By far the biggest obstacles to loving our enemies (or anyone) are our own irratonal beliefs about ourselves, about the world, and about our enemies. We cannot begin to love our enemies without first knowing, understanding and loving ourselves. Even though this is a very old idea it is still a radical one, even now, even to many Christians.

Until next time,

Paul W.



08/26/10 (#0814)  In praise of the easy


Somebody, I forget (just as well) who, said "If it's easy it's not worth doing". Probably one of those obsessive athletes or some such other overachievers that I allow myself to be bugged by (one of my rare - I jest, of course - self-indulgences).

Boy, is that wrong! Wrong, wrong, wrong. Here is the error: this assertion, which applies only to one specific class of human activity, is being offered as a grand generalization, universally applicable. The one human activity to which it does apply is the acquisition of new skills (physical or mental). Developing a new skill requires stretching our present abilities beyond their limits in order to permanently expand them. Hence doing exercises which have become too easy, in this context, is a waste of time.

Acquiring necessary skills is essential as means to an end but it is not the end. The end is what we actually do with the skills we have. The tasks we are faced with span the whole spectrum from super easy to impossible. Their importance, however, is not necessarily commensurate with their difficulty. Sometimes an easy task is the crucial one which, disregarded as too easy, may lead to a catastrophic failure of the entire enterprise. 

Hubris has always been the most dangerous enemy of the highly skilled, the gifted, and the ambitious. 

Actually, good engineering and resource management call for the easiest, least disruptive and most economical ways of achieving the intended objectives. Following the path of least resistance makes sense as long as it leads to where we want to go.

Woodworkers have a saying: "it's either easy or impossible".  Any struggle with materials or procedures will inevitably show up as inadequacy or imperfection in the finished piece. The same applies to making of Art. The Artistic struggle is confined to acquisition of the necessary skills. The final execution of a work of Art may involve a lot of work but the result cannot be labored - it must simply be right. The work must evolve easily, naturally, gracefuly, with complete assurance of its rightness. This is particularly evident in the performance Arts such as music and dance.

In the end, a truer saying might be: "If it is difficult, don't do it - you don't have the necessary skills". Emergencies excepted. 

Until next time,

Paul W.



08/25/10 (#0813)  Up with sacrifice!


The Nutshell thing to do is to start with definitions. Thus:

   "Sacrifice" - (v.) to make sacred; (n.) the act of sacrificing.
   "Sacred" - (adj.) holy.
   "Holy" - dedicated to or in harmony with the Ultimate Purpose of Life, Universe and Everything. 
   "The Ultimate Purpose of LUaE" - (nominal phrase) according to the Nutshell: joy.

It should be immediately apparent from the above that sacrifice may be awesome but hardly intimidating or depressing. Au contraire, it is clearly glorious.

Sacrifice became perversely associated with suffering very early in humankind's history because of the primitive idea that angry gods have to be appeased lest they wreak their wrath upon the people. Sacrifice became confounded with atonement, penance and divine bribery. It came to mean having to give up something of one's own, to be diminished, to be obliged to suffer in order to avoid worse suffering. This false meaning haunts us to this day.

In fact, sacrifice is the very opposite of being diminished. It is a conscious choice to become more holy, more aligned with the purpose of the universe and more effective in carrying it out. The result is life enhancing not life diminishing. Rather than cause, sacrifice reduces and alleviates suffering. Ultimately it brings about greater joy for everyone. At least that's the theory.

In practice there's the niggly problem of determining what exactly is the Purpose (if any) of Life, Universe and Everything. We have the collective human  history so far, our present experience of the universe, our reason, our heart's desire and our faith to guide our understanding. But with most of us having little if any knowledge of history, short attention span, confused desires and irrational beliefs, misunderstanding rules. While truth may be one, falsehoods are legion. Not surprisingly, our attempts at sacrifice become exercises in chaotic self-hatred instead of spiritual growth. Which only reinforces the false impression of sacrifice as essentially suffering.

But I believe we are making progress. The painful and messy process of angelification creeps on. There is a possibility of a breakthrough, a quantum leap. As I have often noted before, I'm an optimist.

Until next time,

Paul W.



08/24/10 (#0812)  How to live practically forever


There's this guy (an actual person) who was told by his doctor that he had four years max to live. Well, that really motivated him (this is a true story). He decided he was going to do something worthwhile with his last remaining years. He threw himself into a project to clean up a polluted lake in his neighborhood. This involved not just a lot of hard physical work but also a mighty battle with several levels of bureaucracy, informing and engaging the public, major legal maneuvers, the whole shmear. He worked like a dog, well, doggedly, anyway, fought like a lion, did not spare himself (for what?) and would not give up till he got his project completed.

That was twenty years ago. The man is not only alive and well but fully engaged in environment rehabilitation and going strong. The doctor who gave him four years to live said that having a cause for which to live had probably extended his life.

Nor is this case unique. This is a general tendency - people live as long as they have something to live for. My own grandmother's life is an example (see the Wyszkowski Chronicles in the Nutshell archives). A friend of mine, suffering from muscular distrophy was expected to die in her twenties. Instead she married, bore two children, adopted one more and, though very weak, is still going at sixty. A hale and hearty 115 year old woman in France answered the inevitable question thus: "I just do what needs to be done and don't worry about how old I am". On the other hand, people who no longer have anything to live for simply die (if they are young they commit suicide).

Of course there are accidents, disasters and diseases which unexpectedly cut our lives short. But, barring such acts of God (or just plain carelessness and inattention) the secret of longevity is having a good reason to live. There are lots of options not the least of which is simple enjoyment of life. But there are also commitments which may extend the need to live after life ceases to be enjoyable. In such a case, that commitment had better be to a good cause.

Some people require a lot from life for them to be able to enjoy it - they're the high maintenance people. Some require very little. The latter tend to live longer and enjoy it more. In any case, when life is no longer enjoyable and one is no longer able to contribute anything worthwhile, it is definitely time to check out. Yet there are people who desperately try to hang onto their consciousness come hell or high water simply because they (or their family) see death as an insult to their persona. They are determined to stay alive (at least technically) merely for sake of staying alive. But they're already dead whether they admit it or not.

Until next time,

Paul W.



08/23/10 (#0811)  Blame it on the DNA


It is well known by now that our personalitites are formed by the interaction between our inherited traits and the environmental conditions in which we find ourselves. Contrary to the U.S. Constitution (or is it the Declaration of Independence?) all men are not created equal (nor are all women). We bring various potentials into the world and then encounter various circumstances which is why we are all different. However we do share certain similarities, something that did not escape the notice of the ancients who broadly classified people according to the balance of their "humours" of which there were four: choleric, sanguine, flegmatic and melancholic.

What has not been reported, though undoubtedly true, is that we come into the world with a predisposition toward conservatism or liberalism. This, of course, is not a guarantee that we will end up one or the other, it is merely a predisposition (stronger in some than in others) which is subject to considerable modification by our life experiences.

Nevertheless, it is startling to contemplate the potential effect of genetics on politics. Consider that some people may actually be born to be Republicans and others to be Democrats. We may now even have an inkling what specific brain chemistry is responsible for liberal or conservative tendencies and what chromosomes are involved.

Brave new world! We may be on the treshold of genetically breeding liberals and conservatives to order. Politics in a test tube! We may even look forward to the day when gene therapy may be used to cure excessive or extreme conservalism or liberalism. I certainly hope Big Pharma are working on this...

Until next time,

Paul W.



08/21/10 (#0810)  Reason in America


This is not the Age of Reason in America. Yet, in direct contradiction of this fact, we have a rational President. I take that as a hopeful sign that inside every irrational American there may be a rational one trying to get out.

This is, however, the Age of Information (and mis-information) and not just here but globally. Not to be mistaken for Age of Enlightment, it is more akin to the Deluge. We find ourselves in possession of an enormously powerful tool (useable also, like all tools, as a weapon) but lacking the mastery of its use or a clear purpose for it. Nevertheless, mere possession of this tool is transforming us. We are being forced to transcend ourselves in order to master it. It's a matter of survival. To master the flood of information which has been loosed upon the world we have no choice but to learn to discriminate - or drown. This can only be a good thing. If we survive we'll be stronger for it.

We do have in America our share of reasonable, discriminating people. Some of them combine reason with courage and commitment to become leaders, mentors, teachers and guides. In a democracy education and enlightment of the people are fundamental to success. Information technology has given us new powerful (and potentially dangerous) educational tools. What we need is people who can use them rationally and effectively. As long as there are enough of them to keep the country from crashing and burning (and I believe there are) we have a future.

Until next time,

Paul W.



08/20/10 (#0809)  Rage in America


Being myself rational to a fault, I find rage an almost incomprehensible phenomenon. A frightening one, too. Distressingly, there seems to be growing incidence of it in this country.   

People are raging in America because:

     a)  they believe they have absolute rights which somebody (notably the government) is trampling on,
     b)  they believe they are entitled to and deprived of things and conditions beyond of their reach,
     c)  they don't know or don't understand what is going on but imagine the worst and believe it,
     d)  they believe themselves insulted, disregarded, disrespected and helpless,
     e)  raging makes them feel powerful and provides an illusion of action.

It is inherently human to be dissatisfied - it is our heritage, destiny and the source of our greatness. But our dissatisfaction is normally tempered with an appreciation of our present situation. There is a dynamic region of optimum balance between striving for more and appreciating the present moment that defines the joy of being human. Leave out the striving and what remains is slothful dissolution, decay and apathy. Leave out the appreciation and what remains is rage.

Appreciation requires active attention to what is actually happening. Attention, in turn, requires suspension of belief since our perceptions are shaped by our beliefs - normally we see what we believe we see not what we are looking at. Suspension of belief is a supremely rational act - it is the willingness to allow the possibility that our emotional convictions are at variance with what may actually be the case.

We cannot avoid believing in ideas and concepts for which there is no supporting evidence other than our heart's desire. Without such faith we would be paralysed, unable to act not knowing what is right or wrong. However, our faith cannot contradict what is actually the case - attention is the guiding light that keeps us on the reality track and prevents us from straying catastrophically into pure fantasy. It is the American people's present general attention deficit and the consequent loss of contact with reality that is feeding their rage.

Is it something in the air? Is it the diet? Is it lack of education? Are Americans loosing their minds? Or is it just the recession psychosis combined with the inability to digest the fact that the President is black and rational? After all, that's so un-American...

Until next time,

Paul W.



08/19/10 (#0808)  On being bicameral


It is said that a man (OK, or a woman) who has one watch knows what time it is, but the person with two watches does not. Some things we need only one of. We can't drive more than one car at a time, or wear more than one pair of sandals at a time. And unless the two watches are exactly synchronized, they leave us uncertain.

Such is not the case with cameras. Professional photographers routinely use multiple cameras in response to rapidly changing circumstances. Nevertheless, using more than one does create certain problems as well as offer certain surprising serendipities.

As MFRs know, I carry two cameras, a Leica D-LUX 4 and Canon G11. Each is at the top of its class. Both are miniature 10 MP cameras with non-interchangeable zoom lenses, but there the resemblance ends. Leica is particularly suitable for close range available light photojournalism. The Canon aims to be a versatile all purpose  camera. A major difference is in the Leica'a greater dynamic range and Canon's better rendition of colors with less noise at high sensitivity settings.

You don't get to fully appreciate the qualities of a camera until you have two of them. With two, various special conveniences or annoyances in the way each of them handles are brought into sharp relief by constant comparison with the other. Suddenly, the brand glamor and advertising hype fall away and you see clearly how each camera could be better. At the same time you develop a special appreciation for the details where the manufacturer got it right.

Working with two camera's involves mechanical problems which I have yet to solve satisfactorily. Ideally I should be able to clip one camera to my body while using the other camera. Letting a camera simply hang on its strap allows it to swing and bounce dangerously. There are special camera harnesses for larger cameras but nothing for the minis. I may be able to rig something that will allow me to immobilize the camera not in use by attaching it to my carry-all bag which is quite stable.

I'm taking both cameras with me to Shanghai but if I had to take only one it would be the G11. I find I tend to favor it resorting to the Leica only when I need the extra wide angle or the large aperture or that little extra dynamic range to hold the highlights.

Until next time,

Paul W.



08/18/10 (#0807)  The instant and the eternity


To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour. 

                          William Blake (1757-1827)

We must pay as much attention to our perceptions as to our dreams because (and only because) they are necessary to making our dreams come true.

                           S. W. P. Wyszkowski (1934 - 20--)


The camera - now to a large extent an integral part of the indispensable portable personal vade mecum and communications package - has become one of the most (if not the most) ubiquitous gadgets on earth. Its principal use these days, along with the rest of the package, is to share with others the sensual experience of the moment. It seems we humans need to feel plugged into and actively a part of a group - we are distinctly social animals.

In the old days we would relate our experiences to the group gathered round the hearth, or write about them in letters to friends and family. Nowadays we post them instantly on their Facebook walls with a click of a button or tweet them for all the world to follow as they happen, accompanying our notes with the images of the moment. We have eliminated the time lag from interhuman relationships. We're all wired together in "real time". But there are consequences.

One consequence is that we are deluged and distracted by the incoming reports of the experiences of others. Unless we ignore them, which kind of defeats the purpose of being wired together, or at least heavily filter them. Another consequence is that all those "real time" reports and images are essentially things of the moment, quickly passing into insignificance along with the moment. There is no time to dwell upon them or stop to savor or to analyse them. New messages and new images are demanding our attention and we ignore them at the risk of being left behind, not being with it, loosing our connection with the group.

Be that as it may, there are still around a few photographers for whom still photography is exactly that: capturing the moment and keeping it still so that it can be timelessly appreciated, now, tomorrow, as long as the image lasts. The moment becomes the eternity, or rather, the eternity in the moment is revealed. There are timeless patterns in nature (that includes humans) that interact with our imagination to create new visions of what might be possible, shaped by our heart's desire. To capture these patterns in ways that express our visions, whether with a camera or a paint brush, is to come to know ourselves and the world more deeply. And that, of course, makes it possible for us to enjoy ourselves and the world more deeply.

All of the above being by way of an excuse for not posting immediately the many images I have collected on various occasions spent with famly and friends. Once it was rumored that I never put film in my camera, but that doesn't hold water any more. Actually, it's because eternity is a long time...

Until next time,

Paul W.

 

08/17/10 (#0806)  The Chinese conundrum


My Concise Chinese Dictionary is so concise there is not even room for "Hedgehog" in it. Yet it lists nine different words pronounced "bi" (admittedly using four different tones). "Bo", "chi", and "chu" also have nine entries each, "liang" and "lu" have ten each, "jie", "jin" and "xiang" have eleven each, "jing" twelve, "wu"  and "xi" thirteen each, "li" sixteen, "shu" seventeen, "qi" eighteen, "shi" 31 and "ji" 32. And these are just some randomly selected examples.

There being 32 different meanings of "ji" even if we distinguish among them using the four different tones that still leaves four sets of eight identical "ji"s each to cover the 32 meanings. (Actually the four tones are not so evenly distributed so there may be more then eight homophones all with different meanings).

The problem arises only in spoken Chinese. Each of these homophones is written as a different character so there is no confusion in the written Chinese. But in spoken Chinese the same sounds are frequently used to convey multiple meanings.

Here's how the Chinese cope with the potential confusion.

First of all they rely on the context to deduce which particular meaning of "ji" is intended. This works much of the time but not always. To assure the right meaning is conveyed, the Chinese frequently resort to the trick of duplicating the meaning with a second word meaning essentially the same.  For example, take "yi" (of which there are twenty seven listed): one of the many meanings of "yi" is "art" so to make that clear the Chinese will pair "yi" together with "shu" one meaning of which is "craft". Rather than just saying "yi" when they mean "art" Chinese will say "yi shu" even though "shu" is, strictly speaking, redundant. And when they want to say "craft" rather than "shu" they will say "ji shu", one of the meanings of "ji" being "a skill". And so on. Most of the colloquial Chinese nouns consist of such semantically duplicative pairings.

But even this does not always fully resolve the confusion, and when there is some doubt about what is meant the Chinese will resort to drawing the character for the intended meaning with a finger on the palm of their hand. That resolves all doubts, even transcending the the differences in the various Chinese dialects..

Such are some of the peculiar joys of Chinese. There are others...

Until next time,

Paul W.



08/16/10 (#0805)  Art disposal


We are not here to discuss who is an Artist or what is Art. (The Nutshell has had much to say about that over the years, no need to rehash it here). We are here to discuss how to get rid of surplus Art.

The world is overflowing with surplus Art. Supply far exceeds demand. People have only so much wall space and only so much money to spend on Art. This includes galleries, museums and the rich Art collectors. The fact is, most of the Art being created daily in profusion never finds its way to a display space and ends up on the trash heap of history not merely unappreciated and unremembered, but never even having registered in anyone's consciousness (other than the Artist's and maybe a small circle of closest friends). That being the case, what is the actual, physical path that leads from the Artist's easel to the garbage dump? That is the question before us.

Much as I hate being judgemental when it comes to Art, I must acknowledge that there is a good deal of Art that is unequivocally bad. I should know, I have produced some of it myself. It's the stuff that is either badly executed by Artists of no appreciable talent and little intelligence, or it may be something that seemed like a good idea but didn't work out. This sort of trash Art need not concern us. It is trash, plain and simple, and it only needs to be properly disposed in accordance with local regulations.

Then there is the usual gray area. The stuff you can't make up your mind about. It has perhaps a certain je ne sais quoi but it just doesn't captivate you. Whatever. The fact is nobody wants it. There's better stuff to be had. Well, OK. Let's trash that too. Perhaps some garbage man (are there garbage women?) will take a fancy to it - that would be a saving grace for what is otherwise a piece of Art junk (not to be confused with junk Art).

Now we come to the problem area: Art of genuine merit (by some non-trivial critical standards, even if only those of the Artist). This is Art the Artist cares about, perhaps even deeply, but no one else cares enough to want to own it. Perhaps they don't quite understand it and can't fully appreciate it. Something there is, some impediment to the value of the work being recognized. It may be something as simple as the Artist being an unknown or as complicated as the Artist being a genius. Mostly it's a matter of there being so much Art to choose from that artistic merit is not enough. To be noticed and appreciated and selected for display Art must be not only of exceptional quality but it also needs salesmanship, connections, patronage and luck. Be that as it may, the bottom line is there is a large heap of unwanted art of merit. Our problem: how to dipose of it.

Trashing seems inappropriate. Giving it away is not an option - it's not wanted, at any price. Destroying it seems like vandalism. Perhaps the simplest way is to stash it away in an attic and let time solve the problem either through natural decay or through somebody accidentally discovering the stash one day and judging it to be of value. But what if you don't have an attic?

Until next time,

Paul W.

P.S. Mondays are trash pick up days. I just put out a dozen or so pieces of Art junk along with the rest of the trash. I'm slightly curious whether it will get thrown into the compactor or whether somebody adopts it.  Frankly, I don't give a damn. It's a relief to have it out of my life.



08/13/10 (#0804)  Shanghai chronicles VII: Beyond Expo

 
Actually, the plan A is to spend half my time exploring Expo and half sightseeing in Shanghai. Plan B, acknowledging that seven days is not nearly enough to fully experience the Expo, calls for shifting the ratio to include more days at the Expo. Then there is Plan C. Plan C foresees that Shanghai may turn out to be a more captivating and transforming experience than the Expo, worth extra days.

If Frommer is to be believed, Shanghai (the name means "above sea") is the world's most exciting city. (Of course, these days I don't get easily excited and usually not by what most consider exciting). Some call Shanghai the Paris of China, some the New York of China, but Shanghai is galloping towards becoming a unique benchmark city in its own right. Galloping is the right term - the city is growing in all respects at warp speed expecting to reach population of 25 million by 2015. This could make it the largest city in the world. 20% of all China trade moves through the port of Shanghai which is aiming and likely to become the world's largest. (Right now it's only the second largest).

In the 19th century Shanghai was dominated by the British and the French who established there their own "concessions" where Chinese laws did not apply. As a consequence, on first sight, Shanghai looks like an old European city, with sumptuous Empire, Victorian and Art-Deco architecture. However, one only need to turn around to look on the other shore of the Huangpu River where mushrooming skyscrapers vie for height to realize one is not in Europe anymore. Somewhere, buried among the 21st century architectural wonders is the Old City which still preserves some of the original Chinese architecture.

Westernized as it is, Shanghai is thoroughly Chinese in its soul. Shanghainese, to be specific. The preferred dialect is Shanghainese, not Mandarin, the standard official language of China. There is no love lost between Shanghai and the rest of China and especially its rival cities Beijing and Hong Kong. Shanghai enjoys the highest per capita income in China and unmatched material prosperity and has the reputation of having sold out to the West. It hasn't though - it has merely adapted Western ways to its own very Chinese purposes.

Under the British and the French, Shanghai was a playground of the wealthy, catering to every vice. The puritan Communists cleaned up the city and left it all but dead for decades. After the return of capitalism in 1980s Shanghai blossomed again as a thoroughly modern city driven by greed, ambition and unquenchable optimism. People flock to Shanghai, the city of opportunity and grand dreams. Expo 2010, the world's largest World's Fair ever (it cost in the vicinity of 50 billion dollars) is only typical of the scale of Shanghai's dreams.

Until next time,

Paul W.

P.S. (Re: TN #802)  I am about to yank the A/C from in front of the fireplace and offer it to anyone willing to pay something for it. Or take it to the Goodwill store for a tax deductible receipt. I figure I have about ten times the cubic feet of air in the chalet with its open archtecture and truly cathedral (25') ceilings than this thing can handle. I suppose in an emergency one could stand directly in front of it to cool off. Of course, one could also do that by standing in front of an open refrigerator...



08/12/10 (#0803)  Out of step, way behind, and enjoying it


I have, at my fingertips, immense powers which I can deploy with a few clicks on my magic wand, the Keyboard. At will, I can address myself to billions, and I can listen to billions. I control resources by means of which I can educate myself in any field of human knowledge to a level far beyond mere post-doctoral studies. I have unlimited access to a library of virtually the entire literary, scientific, artistic and philosophical output of the human race since the invention of writing. I can send or receive text, sound and images instantly to and from anywhere in the world. Indeed, the entire world of humanity is my marketplace, my university and my entertainment, ever ready at my pleasure and whim 24/7/365.

I take great pleasure in living as if I had none of these astonishing powers. Both by choice and out of necessity I make an extremely limited use of my vast powers, usually for some mundane purposes like travel arangements or paying bills, or to satisfy some passing idle curiosity. Occasionally, to buy a pair of sandals or a camera or a piano.

I am a gentleman of leisure and dedicated to it. I appreciate and treasure my leisure. After friends and family it is my most precious gift and grace. My ginormous cyberpowers are like nothing compared to my freedom not to use them. I am out of the race to produce and achieve to the max. And there is nothing in cyberspace remotely so entertaining as the theatre of my own mind. Nor remotely so real as the present moment which I like to savor, enjoy and contemplate at leisure, uncompelled by any necessity nor rushed by any schedule.

The world, no doubt, needs saving from human folly. There are high energy, high ability, high ambition, passionate people who are prepared to destroy the world in the process of seeking for themselves the ultimate satisfaction (usually looking for it in admiration by others or in exertion of power and control). Then there are equally high energy, high ability, high ambition, passionate people who are trying to protect the world because they believe it's worth saving and enjoying as is. While these two armies are engaged in their Armageddon, I save myself by staying out of it and concentrating on enjoyment of the here-now. Which, I readily admit, is made possible by all those countless people toiling under the pressure of necessity and the tyranny of schedule.

Now these people, the working classes, fall somewhere on the spectrum stretching between work-as-joy and work-as-curse. Ideally we should all be so lucky as to love what we do but somebody's got to shovel the shit. Yet even that can be a joy with proper attitude. Necessity and schedule need not be our enemies. Necessity is a source of motivation which arises from our faith in our own values and a schedule is a tool we use for our own convenience and benefit. Work is a curse only to those who resent it and only do what they're told, unwillingly and minimally. (Note that slavery and forced labor do not fall under the rubric of work, but that's another story). Actually, we, gentlemen and ladies of leisure, we also work but we call it play because we are free to choose what we occupy ourselves with.

And we refuse to be rushed even though the world seems madly bent on doing everything instantaneously (and, for better or worse, nearly succeeding).

Until next time,

Paul W.



08/11/10 (#0802)  Air conditioning 101


After the hottest June on record, July certainly did not provide any relief and the last week and the next temperatures are stuck in the 90s, with the highs approaching triple digits. I have never felt I needed air conditioning at the Possum Hollow chalet (I'm in the middle of a forest, surrounded by shade trees, and it always cools down at night) until now. Unfortunately, there is no suitable place here for installing a window air conditioner. It would have to be a through the wall job which is more trouble and expense then I am prepared to go to.

Comes now HHH, MFR in DC, who has recently decided she has no use for a practically brand new portable room air conditioner on wheels. Visions of cool breezes wafting through the chalet in my head I lugged the thing home. Air conditioning made easy - just roll the unit to a convenient place, plug it in and voila! Cool air at the press of a button, anywhere you want it.

Except that there's this tube that has to be placed outside to pump the heat out. There's no place in the chalet where this can be done without letting the outside hot air back in. I thought of building special adapters for the various widows and doors but got overheated just thinking about it. Then I had a brilliant idea: the fireplace! Of course! Stick the tube up the fireplace chimney - the hot air will go up the chimney!

Except that I never use the fireplace (too much trouble) so it's blocked with knick-knacks, objets d'art, decorative miscellanea and souvenirs of years gone by, including a large smoking pipe collection leaning against the mantelpiece. A low bookshelf and speakers block the approach to the fireplace.

After about an hour of moving (where? there's no room!), rearranging, piling up and generally chaoticizing the chalet, I was able to wiggle the aircoditioner up onto the apron in front of the fireplace. Of course, after all these years, the flue was permanently stuck shut. It took two different hammers to force it open - more or less.  Getting the pipe up the flue was a major gymnastic exercise which got me all covered with soot. The pipe is just barely hanging there and no way to fix it in place. I dare not breathe on it.

Finally, time to plug in and turn on that cool air! Except the only available plug is blocked by the fancy stone work around the fireplace. It can accomodate a lightweight appliance with a skinny cord and a mini-plug but not the industrial strength extra large air conditioner plug. I spend the next hour hunting for a creative solution. I come up with a couple of converter plugs that convert two prong outlets into three prong outlets (they have to be  wired in) which allows me to plug in a surge protector into which I can finally plug in the AC. This involves taking the cover off the wall outlet and blindly maneuvring an extremely awkward screw into the tab that grounds the converter plug. I fail to electrocute myself.

By now half a day is gone but the AC is in front of the fireplace with the pipe up the chimney and plugged in. I turn it on. The room temperature is 82 (it was 80 when I started on this project). I set the AC on full blast, maxed out. After about half an hour of this the temperature drops to 81. Then half an hour later it is back up to 82. Another half hour later it goes to 83. I shut the AC off. It feels immediately warmer with it off. So half an hour later I turn it back on. Room temperature is back to 82 and, so far, holding. I am optimistically guessing that the AC may be keeping the room temperature from rising as the day warms up (it's 94 out there). Perhaps. But is it worth the juice, the noise and the chaos? Stay tuned.

In the meantime, off to the cool gym.

Until next time,

Paul W.



08/10/10 (#0801)

Item 1: My error. I meant "ratio-nal" numbers. (Irrational numbers are something else again). Item 2: Any number represented by a boundless sequence of digits is notionally equivalent to an infinitesimal which has a boundless number of zeros after the decimal point without actually being zero. In any case, such numbers are absolutely unobservable which puts them in the category of ideals. Item 3: I stand properly awed. - the Ed


The Shanghai chronicles VI: Expo update


The Shanghai Expo 2010 clocked its 100th day last week, with 340,000 visitors despite the current oppressive heat wave. (Free mineral water has been made available to the visitors). At its midpoint (92nd day) Expo has had, by the official count, over 35 million visitors which puts it right on target for the predicted 70 million total. The rumors that the attendance is being padded by school children and government employees who are given free tickets with orders to go have been vehemently denied by the Organizer.

The tornado season is approaching with possible 100 km/h (60 mph) winds. Some Pavillions are being retested to make sure they can withstand such gales.

There has been an epidemic of counterfeit reserved admission tickets to the China Pavillion (only 30,000 are given out each day at the gates). The tickets, which used to be paper with different colors for each day have now been upgraded to counterfeit-proof plastic cards with embedded chips. They have to be swiped through a card reader at the entrance to the Pavillion. Public is warned not to buy tickets from scalpers - they are most likely counterfeit and will not work in the reader.

Some other popular pavillions are considering following the suit despite the high cost. Hong Kong pavillion is now also handing out tickets at the entrances in an effort to cut down waiting times to 90 minutes.

On the bright side, the Organizer has decided that two classes of people will have priority access to pavillions: first, those 75 years of age or older (proof of age required), and second, the disabled.

Every day honors a different Pavillion with special celebratory activities. On the average over 70 artistic performances are presented at various venues every day. Another statistic, for what it's worth: about 400 people are treated daily in the on-site medical clinics. 

More than 8000 volunteers from various China universities serve to help the visitors on site. They change every two weeks before they burn out. Each new batch learns from their predecessors' experience before being loosed on the grounds. According to the official reports, the Expo is running smoothly. Nevertheless, the Organizer is promising that improvements will continue to be made until the very last day, October 31.

On another note, it appears a Chinese breakfast typically consists of either noodles or thin rice gruel or deep-fried dough. Also, there's no good bread to be had in China. Looks like I will have to get creative and make my own breakfasts. I'm sure I can find suitable ingredients - they do have grocery stores in China that sell more than just noodles. And, of course, there is always McDonalds...

Until next time,

Paul W.



08/08/10 (#0800) Continuity and change


Continuity and change are logically antithetical. Yet the idea of "continuous change" is deeply ingrained in our psyche. This is an illusion.

There are two kinds of "continuous change" in our experience: one is a perceptual illusion created by our inability to perceive very small differences; the other is a mathematical illusion created by postulating that differences may be arbitrarily small (though never zero).

By amplifying our perceptual powers by means of ingenious leveraging tools we can now observe events at extremely small scales. Perhaps the most important observation we have made so far is that differences cannot be arbitrarily small - there is a limit to how small a difference can be and still be observable. (Note that an "unobservable difference" is an oxymoron).

Had we thought about it logically (as the ancient Greeks indeed did) we could have predicted what we can now observe directly. Change occurs only by means of tiny but finite and discrete ("atomic") differences, a.k.a. quanta. Although on human scale it appears to be an "analog" mechanism, the universe is, in fact, a "digital" one. The events (changes) that make it up are discrete, individual "bits".

This, however, is not the end of the story. On the observational side there still remains the intrinsic indeterminacy of the magnitudes of the observed differences. This indeterminacy creates an apparently continuous cloud of uncertainty about the exact location of the boundaries between individual events. In fact, the boundaries between events remain fuzzy no matter how fine an instrument we use to try to determine their exact location.
 
On the mathematical side, certain algebraic operations (such as ratios) generate "irrational" numbers which can never be written down because they continue indefinitely as the precision of calculation is increased without limit. Such numbers only exist as "ideals" - they are the equivalents of the postulated arbitrarily small differences and have no observational reality. But this does not stop mathematicians from performing logical operations on these ideals. Curiously, the results of such mathematical operations involving algebraically created continuous spaces are often predictive (with uncanny accuracy) of actually observed events. Go figure.

We are forced to conclude that, despite the logical necessity for change to be discontinuous, somewhere in the cracks between changes (events) there persists some kind of relational continuum that may be ultimately responsible for the universe hanging together as a whole. The evidence for such continuum lies in the theoretical "exact" predictability of the statistical probabilities of all the possible next events. (Actually, this exactitude of prediction applies only to the totality of past, present and future - at any particular instant of time it's anybody's guess). 

The most fascinating aspect of this is that our intentionality is evidently able to distort this mysterious fuzzy continuum between events and momentarily influence the probabilities of the next possible events. Thus we can, even if only approximately, consciously shape the future of the universe closer to our heart's desire. In theory, the distortion in the statistical accounting caused by the intervention of our intentionality will be compensated for in the end, but, of course, the end never comes...

Until next time,

Paul W.



08/07/10 (#0799)


(Re: TN #797) Dear Nutshell, Thank you for the timely advice concerning Hedgehog Funds. Many of us have faced sticky situations as a direct result of overinvesting in the ice cream market. Melt downs do occur. Will follow your recommendation and put several pennies into Global Mattress. Looking forward to more wit and wisdom. - TABS

I have myself a few pennies in the Mattress Fund but, I have to admit, I like to skate on thin ice. So I put a few more into a "Focused Credit Fund" which, according to its prospectus, invests, without limitation, "in credit instruments rated below investment grade, distressed securities or other debt that is in default or the issues of which are in bankruptcy". I love it. So far it's doing well. But it's not for Prickles.  - the Ed


(Re: TN #792 - review of "White People")  It sounds good, something I'd like to see. - Robin

It was the world premiere. I predict the play will go further - it's an important play. Watch for it. - the Ed


All about stories


What is a story?  The word derives from "history" which is a factual record of past events. But that's history, A story is something else. It is a telling or re-telling of what has allegedly happened. A story need not be factual - it may be wholly or partially invented.

There is room for improvisation and interpretation in history because the record is never absolutely accurate and complete. The holes in the record need to be filled out with credible fiction that is consistent with the whole. But, in general, history is inevitably what it is - refinable, but in its essentials unalterable. Not so a story.

We study history to learn about the world of experience beyond our own. But why do we listen to stories, especially the invented ones? Because the experience related in a story is that of someone we empathize with and care about. Someone like us, in whom we recognize some aspects of ourselves. A human or human-like character is essential in a story. A story is an account of how we see ourselves. Or how we would like to be.

So a good story must have, above all, believably human characters, however fantastical they may be.

Of course if the characters in the story are happy, prosperous and carefree, we may be interested but hardly captivated. To invite our emotional investment in them the characters must have a credible and seriously threatening problem which they do not know how to solve (or may not even see as a problem). A problem that we can imagine having to deal with ourselves. The story, then, is the account of how they solve (or fail to solve) their problem. A good story points to the potentials within ourselves for good or evil, potentials we may not have fully recognized, if at all.

And that is why we tell and listen to stories. Not so much to learn about the world as to learn about ourselves. Which is often an occasion for a good laugh, but sadness, too.

Then there are the explanatory stories invented to account for and make sense of history, but that's another story.

Until next time,

Paul W.



08/01/10 (#0798)  Facing what we don't know we don't know


Once upon a time, on a little planet called Earth, it was possible to live happily knowing only what one needed to know. Sure, there was stuff people needed to know that they did not know but they knew in general what it was they needed to know and if they could not find out they could at least make a reasonable guess based on what they did know. If they guessed wrong, well, that's how you learn. Next time their guess would be better.

People of Earth did not worry much about what they did not know they needed to know. They did not need to. They were making satisfactory progress at a comfortable rate, assimilating any new knowledge as it came up.

Then things changed. On the one hand, life became much more complex, more rapid and more fragile. What people did not know they did not know became potentially dangerous, possibly even. lethal. On the other hand, exponential progress in information technology made a torrent of information universally available at virtually no cost. This made people suddenly acutely aware of the existence of information they did not know they did not know and how infinitely greater what they did not know was compared to what they did. Suddenly people saw what puny, infinitesimal creatures they were, lost in the vast ocean of information. The big change was that up to now they did not have clear awareness of this and now they do.

This is, of course, only the next stage of the Coppernican-Gutenbergian revolution launched centuries earlier. Undoubtedly, it's not the last. There are further revelations ahead. Our consciousness having been raised, we will find new ways to tame the unknown, as we have always done. There will be paradigm shifts and techniques as yet unimagined will be invented to deal with the bogeyman of the unknown. Still, as ever before, our knowledge will remain incomplete, including our knowledge of what we do and don't know. We will never run out of dangerious challenges. Ultimately we will succumb to one we cannot meet. But  for the foreseeable future we can be hopeful that we will continue rising to the occasion. Appearances to the contrary, we have done remarkably well, so far.

Until next time,

Paul W.



07/31/10 (#0797)  Hedgehog dialogs XXVI


Inspired perhaps by yesterday's Nutshell (which, as usual, she insisted I read to her) Prickles, the hedgehog I live with, approached me earlier today (12:18 AM to be specific) with a request for some financial advice.

Prickles: "### ## # #### ### ####?" [The semantic structure of Hedgehogese defeats attempts at direct translation]
Me:  "Prickles, what are you doing still up? Do we really need to talk now or is this something that can keep till tomorrow?"
Prickles:  "## ### ### ## #### ##."
Me:  "That urgent, huh? Well, OK. You probably won't be able to sleep if you don't get it off your chest. Shoot."
Prickles:  "#### #### ### # ## ### # ### ## ##?"
Me:  "That, Prickles, is a question many great minds have pondered. The only reasonably sure thing about investing is that in an expanding economy your investment will tend to grow and in a contracting economy it will tend to shrink. Beyond that it's a complicated game of minimizing risks and maximizing returns. Does that help?"
Prickles:  "### ### ## ### ### ### ### ####?"
Me:  "OK, here's what you need to be a successful investor: experience, tons of information, an analytical mind and infinite patience. And you have to put in the hours. It's not for casual amateurs. You think you're up to it?"
Prickles:  "### #### ### ## ####?"
Me:  "Well, you could hire a professional to handle your investments for a fee. There are all kinds of them out there. Just how much were you thinking of investing?"
Prickles:  "### ####."
Me:  "Three pennies?!!"
Prickles: "### ### # ####."
Me:  "Yes, of course, you can only count to three. I should have known."
Prickles:  "### ### # #### ###."
Me:  "Prickles, even if you think there may be more than three pennies in your stash, my advice to you is just tuck them under your mattress and forget about investing."
Prickles:  "###?"
Me:  "Let's just say the cost benefit ratio is not in your favor. It is my considered opinion that a more effective use of your savings would be to dedicate them towards purchase of ice cream."
Prickles:  "### ### ###?"
Me:  "Yes, I really think so."
Prickles:  "## ##!"
Me:  "I'm glad we had this talk."

Until next time,

Paul W.

P.S. I always wind up subsidizing Prickles' ice cream purchases, but that's life. I guess.



07/30/10 (#0796)  The economic forecast (the Nutshell version)

Everybody's freaked out about the economy and wildly thrashing to stay afloat. Me, I'm calmly floating on my back, just trying to stay clear of the spray. Yes, I am sort of concerned about the long term prospects but purely on philosophical grounds. Practically, I couldn't care less. I have no long term prospects. I'd be happy to see some recovery before I die (and I expect I will) but that's about it. I have no dog in this fight. 

For the near term, I don't think things will get worse before they get better. There is no physical reason for it and the global community is showing some signs of creeping rationalism thanks, no doubt, to the transparentizing and informing effects of the Internet. The fact that the economic recovery is very slow is good.  A slow, sustained recovery is more likely to be solid and lasting than a balooning re-inflation based on irrational exhuberance.

Besides, the economy needs time to find its new equilibrium point. It's not going to be the same as before the recession. I think the world is in for an era of more modest economic expectations and it will probably be happier for it. Or, at least, not any less happy than it had been. We'll learn to live within our means and find it no hardship at all. That's the optimistic scenario but I'm an optimist.

Long term prospects are not so bright. For one, I don't believe we will be able to turn back the global warming. At best we may succeed in slowing it down. Or not. This will cause major economic dislocations the repercussions of which will last for generations until we find the next stable equilibrium point. Another game changer will be the culmination of economic globalization. An inevitable normalization of the global economy will eliminate the current huge and unsustainable geographical and social disparities in wages and quality of life. However, this will involve a few more wars and recessions before the dust settles. Hopefully we'll get there before we're extinct. All this bodes turbulent and interesting times for the next century or so. I kind of regret I'll never know how it all comes out. But perhaps just as well...

Should we be threatened in the foreseeable future by an errant asteroid on a collision course with the Earth (a not as unlikely scenario as one might think) that might be a good thing economically. It could significantly speed up the progress of global economic (and very likely political) integration. But a landing by an alien starship would not be helpful. That, fortunately, is unlikely.

Until next time,

Paul W.



07/29/10 (#0795)  Dept. of theatrical reviews: alt-"Inana", the play I saw but did not hear


The last play I saw of the CATF series, "Inana", I did not actually hear. Well, yes, I heard all the sounds but the  dialogues were largely unintelligible to me. I have a problem with dialects or strongly accented speech - I believe my hearing loss is such that I can only recognize familiar sounding speech patterns. The characters in "Inana" are almost all Iraqis with realistic Iraqi accents which made their speech inaccessible to me. Here and there a word or a phrase would come through, enough to tantalize but not enough to understand.

So this is a review of alt-"Inana", the play as I imagine it based on the clues I picked up from the sets, the actions and the occasional bit of dialogue that I actually managed to follow. 

This is the most sumptuously produced play of the series, with a gorgeous (and, as it turned out, tricky) set that takes full advantage of the spacious stage - the stage takes up fully half the theatre. The action takes place in a hotel room in London in February 2005, with many flashbacks, most of them taking place in Baghdad, played out in the wings of the set. The actors capture convincingly the modes of speech, behavior and bodily gestures characteristic of the Middle Eastern cultures. 

The hotel room is occupied by a pair of newlyweds, technically on the first night of their honeymoon, but the man is in London on business, and he and his wife are total strangers. He doesn't even know how old she really is (he was told eighteen by her father - a bit of a stretch as it turns out, she admits to being twenty three, then confesses she is actually thirty). She is wearing a floor length white dress with a long white coat over it, long white gloves and a white hijab covering her hair. She is clearly not about to divest herself of any part of her outfit any time soon. It is evident she is surprisingly literate for an Iraqi female - she has taught herself to read and has some awareness of the world affairs.

She is properly though reluctantly resigned to submit to her husband's wishes. He, on the other hand, is trying to be kind and even romantic (he had a poem written by a professional for the occasion) but his heart isn't in it. In fact, he eventually makes it very clear that he did not and does not want a wife. He had been happily married but his former wife, the story goes (untrue) had died of cancer. Now he's totally involved with his business.

His business is mysterious - at least to me. He is an ex-curator of a Baghdad museum of antiquities and he is in London to see an important art collector who has offered him a job as a curator of his collection. But this is not the only reason he is in London with his brand new wife who, incidentally, asks "Why am I here?" and demands to go back to Baghdad, with or without her husband. He tells her this is their home now, they cannot go back. Still, at one point he actually gives her money for a plane ticket home ("Just say I was beating you, or I died" he advises her) and she rushes out but fails to make it to the airport and returns to hear the rest of the story he'd been trying to tell her. There is a goddess involved. And some priceless antique books.

A 600 BCE statue of Inana, a goddess in the Iraqi pantheon, missing an arm and apparently carrying a curse, had been entrusted to Yasin Halid (that is our hero's name) to save it from the looters and crooked art dealers. As I understand it, he had arranged for the statue to be crated and stashed away in deep underground vaults of the museum, but when the time came for the move, the crate was found empty. Somebody made off with Inana. (The story reaches this point before Shali, the wife, rushes out).

While she is gone, there is a flashback. Yasin visits the foremost art forger in Baghdad with a comission: a perfect copy of Inana. He needs it in eight weeks. The forger is not interested and has no time. Asked what price would persuade him to take on the project he names a ridiculous sum. Yasin is undeterred. Perhaps there is some other kind of arrangement that could be made? The forger has an idea. Yes, he says, there is. He will make the forgery of Inana, in eight weeks, and he will not take a cent for it. No charge. All Yasin has to do is marry his daughter who is smart and beautiful, too smart for him, he says. And one other thing, Yasin is to take her out of the country and never come back.

Actually, as another flashback shows, the forger and his eldest daughter Shali are best of friends. She is a problem but he wants the best solution for her and he judges that marriage to Yasin and leaving Iraq may be the best way for her to find a life she deserves. Besides it's dangerous in Iraq for an independent, assertive woman like her. (We find out that Yasin's former wife, a progressive, modern woman, did not die of cancer but disappeared and was found years later, dead) 

Inana's statue had been found and recovered, Yasin tells Shali when she returns. Eight weeks after it had disappeared. This makes Shali happy. She evidently cares a lot for Iraq's historical treasures. Inana is now stashed safely in the vault where looters cannot get at her.

What has actually happened? My theory is that Yasin did not trust the director of the museum and hid Inana where she would be really safe (the collector in London?). That fits with his character. He has also rescued some unique ancient illuminated manuscripts of poetry which were in possession of a private collector in Baghdad and under threat of confiscation by the untrustworthy government (my interpretation) or maybe by art looting thugs.

In any case, as Yasin unburdens himself of his concerns for the potential loss of Iraq's cultural treasures, and Shali opens up to him with her problems - her unappreciated intelligence, her advanced age, and, in a startling revelation, as she takes off her coat and glove, her missing left arm (apparently chopped off as punishment for some misdemeanor and replaced with a prosthesis) they come to realize they are perfectly suited for each other. The hotel room silently disappears into the wings to reveal a huge romantic moon. Off comes the hijab and Shali offers herself wholeheartedly to Yasin. Inana looks on from the wings.

By the way, I was dumbfounded by the artificial arm hanging uselessly by Shali's side - I would have wondered how did they ever manage to find a one armed actress for the part if I had not seen the same actress in another play ("Lidless") in a T-shirt with a pair of perfectly normal arms. The prosthetic arm was incredibly realistic (i.e. artificial looking).

None of the above is to be taken as the true account of the play "Inana" by Michele Lowe, a renowned and respected playwright, winner of many awards. But it's an account of what I thought I saw.

Until next time,

Paul W.



07/28/10 (#0794)  Thou shall not lie, Part II


Lie (as defined by the ninth commandment) is a deliberate deception with intent to harm. Contrary to the belief of the U.S. Judiciary Branch, we can never tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But even though anything we say is inevitably more or less misleading unintended deception without a malicious motive does not a lie make. Call it a good faith best guess at what the truth may be.

Actually, in our practical daily life, such honest guesses probably account for a small part of our discourse. Most of the time our intention is very much to deceive though usually not to harm. We have two primary reasons for practicing deliberate deception: maintaining our persona and manipulating others. Our persona is how we would like others to perceive us, our public image. It may or may not reflect what we believe to be our "true" nature, actually yet another layer of deception, self-deception in this case. (There are, as noted in an earlier Nutshell, people who are blessed with the grace of being able to be themselves wihout any pretense. They are rare, admirable and disconcerting.)

Our interactions with others consist largely of spin, that is, distorting to greater or lesser extent what we perceive to be actually the case to make it appear closer to what we (and others) wish it were. Some degree of spinning may be necessary to get a group of disparate individuals motivated to cooperate on a task at hand. Spin will work where rigorous reasoning from facts may fail because facts are not truth and may be legitimately distrusted. Call it faith building.

Even though such practical and necessary deceptions that serve to hold together the fabric of a society are not technically lies, they have unintended consequences. All deceptions do some harm to the capacity for enjoyment of life. Even though it may seem negligible it adds up. There is a price to pay for deception when the reality finally bites as it will sooner or later. The price may be worth it though. To get anything done we must believe it is worth doing regardless of facts. Otherwise we shall be prisoners of rational analysis which in face of incomplete facts and unknowable truth can paralyse us.

"Thou shall not lie" does not mean "thou shall tell the truth". Neither does it mean "thou shall not deceive".

Until next time,

Paul W.



07/27/10 (#0793)  Thou shall not lie


It has already been noted in past Nutshells, but worth recalling, that the ninth commandment is not  "thou shall tell the truth". Actually it is "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor" (NRSV). It is an injunction against deliberate deception with the intent of harming another.

But what about deliberate truth-telling with intent to harm?

The fact is that no one knows the truth so no one can tell it. But this is cold comfort. It only means that whatever we say with intent to harm is a transgression of the ninth commandment. It also means that whatever we say is to some degree a deception, whether intentional or not, and as such it is bound to do some harm which may or may not be significant.

What about a deliberate deception with intent to do good? This is often done on the dubious principle that "what you don't know won't hurt you" (a.k.a. "ignorance is bliss"). The intent is to spare another some psychological stress. Especially if it is expected that such psychological stress might lead to undesirable outcomes like irrational and destructive reaction or physical harm (e.g., heart attack().

How about deliberate deception by governments to keep public peace and economic or political stability? That is known as propaganda or the "official version" and is practiced by all regimes, including democratic ones even though such intentional deception is logically and philosophically incompatible with the ideal of democracy. In practice, however, such deception may be necessary, at least temporarily, to allow the subtle art of diplomacy to do its work of alleviating economic or military threats. Since deception is inevitable (no one can tell the truth) one can argue that it might as well be shaped towards desired ends. In the case of a democracy that would be the ends desired by the public. Yet the means to these ends might include temporary intentional deception of the public because of the fear that the public reaction to the facts might be destructive to the diplomatic process.

And then there are the military secrets based on the tenet that surprise is the major component of victory and also on the fact that the fear of the unknown is a useful military deterrent.

But what if deliberate deception of the public and keeping military secrets were rendered impossible by new communications and information technologies? We are about to find out.

Until next time,

Paul W.



07/26/10 (#0792)  Dept. of theatrical reviews: "White People"


Three very different white people examine their feelings about "people of color" in three parallel, separate but interweaving monologues.

The fourth play I have attended in the CATF series, written by J. T. Rogers, is particularly noteworthy. It lays bare the spectrum and the roots of racial attitudes of the "white" (i.e. of European descent) population of the U.S.A. I have not seen, read or or heard anything comparable on this subject, not with this degree of candor, honesty and insight.

The white culture and work ethic in the United States stands on the foundations laid by Peter Stuyvesant (1778-1847), a Dutch businessman and the richest man in America of his time. He set the cultural and ethical standards which made it possible for New Amsterdam, now New York, to become the great, prosperous city it is and America the great capitalist society it has been until recently. It was Stuyvesant's hardnosed, realistic approach to business that launched America on its path towards becoming the wealthiest nation in the world. He was a man of indomitable will, a demanding tyrant, a Christian fundamentalist and a racist.

One of the three characters in the play is a professor of history in New York whose most brilliant, and the only truly interesting student is a young black woman. She is throughly black culturally. She comes from a different universe, speaking a different language, full of fresh questions and new perspectives which she brings to his lectures on history of the United States. Recently, as he was walking with his pregnant wife in the Stuyvesant Square, they were attacked by a gang of black thugs and brutally beaten, their unborn daughter possibly permanently damaged. He now urgently needs to talk with his prize black student.

Another character is a spiritual and temperamental heir to Peter Stuyvesant. He is a successful executive of a company in St. Louis, MO. where he moved his family because of the security and the stability of the midwestern society. He is not an emotional racist like Stuyvesant. He is a pragmatic realist who sees black people as, in general, inferior performers by his standards. He is perfectly willing to give equal opportunity to all who meet his standards of performance regardless of color. Fact: most blacks do not. He has a seventeen year old son who "hates his life" with whom he is unable to communicate and whom he does not understand. This morning he was wakened at three AM by the police. His son had been arrested for gang rape and brutal assault of a young black woman into whose mouth he had stuffed a note: "Kill all nigers" (misspelled, his father notes). He is now on his way to see his son, determined to listen for as long as it takes.

The third character is a white trash housewife in Fayetteville, NC whose husband is a drunkard and a philanderer and whose son is dangerously epileptic. Once a cheerleader and the prom queen at her highschool, she carries on with remarkable courage and self-respect in face of disrespect and disregard by bank clerks and medical personnel many of whom are colored immigrants.  She feels bitterly wronged by these latecomers who do not hear her and look right through her because she is poor. Yet she depends on the Indian doctor who is going to operate on her son to save him from a life of constant danger of death, and she is prepared to be grateful.

The three characters were nailed by the actors with Oscar-worthy authenticity and precision. Another standing ovation.

Until next time,

Paul W.



07/24/10 (#0791)  Dept. of theatrical reviews: "Breadcrumbs"


Think of Gretel, without Hansel, with squirrels instead of birds, scattering stick-on notes that quickly and irretrievably disappear into the debris of time. That's Alida, an established writer in her later years losing words, her tools, to Alzheimers. She knows who she is, at least when the play starts, through her lifelong exploration of her own nature. Self-sufficient, intensely private and mistrustful, she has only contempt for the dependencies of love. 

At a clinic, during a diagnostic examination Alida collides with Beth, the young clinical examiner (a job she does not hold for long). Beth flits from boyfriend to boyfriend and from job to job (including one as a stripper in a peep show) seeking to find herself in how others perceive her. She is the exact opposite of Alida, wholly dependent on love and approval of others, without a shape of her own. To obtain approval she lies and cheats, and yet her first instinct is to trust.

Such is the set up for "Breadcrumbs" by Jennifer Haley, the third play I saw of the CATF series. It is a two character drama, spare and tight, and evidently, one of the most popular. The house was packed, people were sitting on the stairs of the aisles. 

Opposites attract. Beth discovers Alida the writer through a notebook she inadvertently leaves behind at the clinic (Beth is also a snoop). She is excited by a prospect of maybe working for Alida as helper and caretaker, knowing she will be needing one. Well, of course, Alida outright rejects Beth's proposal, especially since Beth gets into her apartment by sneaky means under pretext of returning the notebook. But then words fail her and she is sharply reminded she must have help if she is to finish writing her story. Beth finds herself resentfully employed as writer's assistant.

The two women shatter each other's expectations. Beth finds herself structured in the role of a mother to a dependent child as Alida, raging, sinks helplessly into the role of that child. The play ends with sticky-notes falling like autumn leaves as Beth and Alida, one the responsible, caring adult and the other a child dependent on the other's love find their lives bittersweetly enriched. 

As usual, acting was top caliber. There was a standing ovation.

Until next time,

Paul W.



07/23/10 (#0790)  Dept. of theatrical reviews: "Eelwax Jesus 3-D Pop" 


I didn't win the toaster. And I don't know why there was no six foot penis to dance with the five foot six dancing vagina. Maybe there's a bigger picture here, as one character suggests, but I doubt it. If you're wondering about the meaning of all this (including the title) the best I can do is to quote the abovementioned character: "Why do you have to understand? Why not just enjoy the show?"

OK, this second CATF play I attended is a musical, so there are songs (17 of them) to enjoy, if you like very loud pop-rock (there are  a couple of lower key ballads). And then there's all the stuff to wonder at (like the dancing vagina but lots more besides).

The show starts even before the doors open. A man in a tuxedo, a man with a plastic halibut and a bride mix in with the waiting crowd. As the audience files in some of the charaters are already on stage. They pretty much stay in their places for the whole show chatting about this and that and acting like a Greek chorus commenting on the actions taking place. They become the audience for the show-within-the-show.

Stage left, on a platform, a young woman in a fifties dress is ironing (for real). On the floor there's a large basket of what appear to be hand towels or maybe linen napkins. The woman goes through this graceful courtsey-like motion, very fifties, to pick up one napkin at a time, take it to the ironing board where she sprays it with water, carefully irons it, folds it and stacks it on a bureau which also holds a fifties vintage radio. No one pays any attention to her. She might as well be invisible.

From before the doors open until after the audience leaves the ironer continues her apparently endless task. Occasionally she changes the station on the radio. She keeps an expectant eye on a dial telephone nearby which actually rings twice during the show. First time there is no one on the other end. The second time, towards the end of the show, she has a conversation with the person at the other end the gist of which is that no, she hasn't been out and yes, she will be in. Then she goes back to ironing. She is like a pedal note sustained throughout the show, like an insistent memory of an earlier era.

The era of the show itelf is the twenty first century. The locale is a group home the residents of which, a bored young woman, a young man preoccupied with his toy robot, and the elderly but optimistic proprietess with a pampered poodle by name of Sarah Palin, comprise the commenting chorus. Stage right there is a tiny dingy hovel occupied by a bag man who from time to time vainly tries to make contact with and score some change from his neighbors, the residents, much to their horror and revulsion.

A brassy TV show, complete with commercials, glamour girls and actual givaways (the toaster) breaks in at intervals taking over the stage. There are singers and dancers (including the aforementioned tap dancing vagina). The host of the show is an all fun! fun! Mr. Personality, one Ignatz McGillicudy, who also dances with the vagina (I guess he's the stand in for the penis).

The play ends with the bag man shuffling downstage center where he casts off his chrysalis of rags and bags to reveal bouncy McGillicudy who then enthusiastically proceeds to bring both shows to a rousing close. 

In addition, there are assorted other characters, notably a man in a gas mask with a communications problem who delivers a bucketful of Moonpies which he distributes to the residents obtaining form each a signed receipt (he tosses the rest of the Moonpies to the audience). There is a maintenance worker and a bug exterminator but they just go about their business oblivious to whatever is going on onstage. And then there is the Typist who is typing away as the audience enters (the script of the play?). She departs shortly after everybody is seated never to appear again. Two large screens, characters in themselves, show a variety of images (slides, film clips) throughout the show commenting on or amplifying the action, often inscrutably. During the intermission they advertise hot dogs, chips, drinks and inform the audience of the remaining time just like in the fifties' drive-in movie theaters.. 

So what does it all mean? Why do you need to know?

Until next time,

Paul W.



07/22/10 (#0789)  My friend, Emily Dickinson


Emily Dickinson I dig. Had I been her contemporary and compatriot and had known her we would probably have been friends though her brilliance would be intimidating. But, of course, if I had lived then and there I wouldn't have been me.

Be that as it may, I am pleased to friend E.D. now, posthumously. The best part is, she is in no position to refuse. The worst is, I can't write on her wall. Or maybe that's the best. I think she would forgive my foolishness but I'd rather she did not know how foolish I can be.

What appeals to me is her blend of high civilization (I love the way she delighted in using polysyllabic words - I do too) and freely running wildness. Her wildness was not of the predatory, beastly kind though - it was a soaring angelic wildness of the kind I find, in my best moments, in myself. Hers was greatly amplified by her genius.

The main difference between me and Emily is that she worked primarily out of her heart (feelings, perceptions) and I work primarily out of my head (ideas, concepts). But what we both appreciate most is freedom - not the unmoored, meaningless absolute freedom but the freedom to break through illusory boundaries and blaze paths to greater glory, starting always from here-now, from our immediate reality.

For MFR's delectation here is one of Emily's poems that caught my eye recently. You may know it already - it's widely cited.

   There is no frigate like a book
      To take us lands away,
   Nor any coursers like a page
      Of prancing poetry.

   This traverse may the poorest take
      Without oppress of toll;
   How frugal is the chariot
      That bears a human soul!

Until next time,

Paul W.



07/21/10 (#0788)  The rhetorics of rhyme


Shakespeare wrote some 150 of perfectly regular sonnets some of which stand as supreme examples of marriage of form and content in the service of rhetoric. By supreme I mean unsurpassed in the effectiveness with which they take hold of the reader's mind and indelibly imprint their content therein.

Homer masterfully captured our imagination in relentless heroic hexameter, Dante journeyed through Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise without missing a beat of his terza rima, and Emily Dickinson hardly ever varied from her conventional four-and-three foot iambic meter with no sign of any limitaton on her range of imagery and expressiveness. Quite the contrary, the rhyme lubricates her verbal barbs as they insinuate themselves into our beating hearts. So also with e. e. cummings.

My point being that the modern (and to a lesser extent post-modern) general disdain for regular verse form in poetry as allegedly limiting expression is bunkum baloney.

A poem is an artificial construct, a work of synthetic Art, thoughtfully crafted for maximum impact (even when this is achieved by deliberate understatement). So forget the argument that forced rhythm and rhyme distorts naturalness - poetry is not a "natural" language to begin with. What a regularity of form brings to the poem, besides certain linguistic discipline that serves to concentrate the poet's mind, is a persuasive, entrancing heart-beat, and a reference framework providing perspective and a sense of proportion. Not to mention its contribution to the musicality of the piece.

I am not arguing that all poetry should be versified. My thesis is that verse form offers a real poetical advantage without the alleged drawbacks. There is, no doubt, a place in the universe for all kinds of unorthodox forms of poetry but there is no justification for wholesale rejection of the persuasiveness of rhythm and rhyme. That is an unnecessary and foolish renunciation of a powerful rhetorical tool. 

I say, let the poem sing.

Until next time,

Paul W.



07/20/10 (#0787)  Joy vs. entropy


Let us begin by unconfusing things as best we can. This may not be good enough but that's life. Certainly it is not good enough to define "joy" as "feeling good". That may or may not be true depending on how you define "good". And "feeling"? It's where chemistry and consciousness meet. We understand little enough of the one and practically nothing of the other.

How am I doing so far? Are you getting unconfused? Didn't think so.

Let's try again from the other end. "Entropy". The informal definition of entropy is "the degree of disorder in the system", "system" being some defined chunk of the universe. "Disorder" is probably best defined as "lack of predictability" regarding what happens next. (These days one has to be careful to distinguish "disorder" from "chaos" which has come to mean a special kind of order where very small differences have very large effects).

Does this help? No? That's OK. Actually, it's not entropy we're concerned with here, it's the second law of thermodynamics. It states that "on the average, the net entropy of a closed system keeps increasing". This can actually be translated pretty accurately into vernacular English as "everything  gets old". So, alas, "feeling good", however defined, also gets old.

But that's not the end of the story. The second law of thermodynamics is merely a statistical fact based on observation of the evolution of the universe from the Big Bang to the present. However, the observations on which the second law is based are incomplete. In fact, all observatons are inherently incomplete, but in this case, the incompleteness is rather glaring because there is a deliberate disregard of the apparent tendency in nature to reverse and limit entropy increase in certain regions of the universe in a meaningful way.

The second law does allow for local decrease in entropy in open systems, that is, systems which are fed energy from an outside source (e.g., earth being fed energy by the sun). But it does not account for what seems to be a purposeful  drive to optimize entropy for the greatest possible capacity for enjoyment of being. (The official, and correct, scientific position is that joy and consciousness are not - at present - scientifically defined phenomena and cannot be taken into account).

The evidence for such a drive to maximize the experience of joy lies in the constant renewal and continuing refinement of the state of optimum entropy in living things. The second law still takes its toll, everything does get old, but the old is constantly being replaced by the new, fresh and young, capable of learning from the errors of the old. As for the old, when it is no longer capable of experiencing joy, it is discarded and recycled.

Of course, not everybody gets to grow old (used to be very few did) but for those who do the trick is to maintain the capacity for joy to the end and to die before it disintegrates completely. (Conscious intentionality plays a role here, but that's another story). This had been a rather neglected aspect of human life but as the world's population is becoming increasingly older, the problem of optimizing the end game is beginning to get some serious attention.

Until next time,

Paul W.



07/17/10 (#0786)  Dept. of theatrical reviews: "Lidless"


Lidless, as in: unable to shut one's eyes.  That is the title of a play by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig (a name to conjure with), one of the five plays presented this month by the Contemporary American Theatre Festival at Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, WV. This year is the twentieth anniversary of the CATF and I have finally carried out my long-standing intention to attend.

"Lidless" starts in Guantanamo, 15 years ago. Alice is an army interrogator. Her specialty is "invasion of space by a female". Just two weeks before her discharge from Gitmo she agrees to "interrogate" a prisoner, a scene acted out by Alice alone, the prisoner, stripped and tied up, being left to the audience's imagination.

Now in Minnesota, with a husband (an ex-junkie into Tai Chi, struggling to stay clean) and a fifteen year old daughter Rhiannon, Alice is herself desperately struggling to live a normal life, a day at a time. She has blocked much of her Guantanamo experience from her memory but nightmares persistently recur. Her daughter's intense curiosity about her past does not help. Then a stranger shows up who identifies himself as her last interrogatee now released from Gitmo, his innocence finally established, his life ruined.

That is the premise of this harrowing play which ends with the death of Rhiannon after she is faced with the truth of her origin, and with the interrogator and the interrogatee facing each other, lidless.

The play is exquisitely crafted for high drama. Both the mounting of the play and the acting are top notch. But I had problems with it. I am not wired for empathy with people who are traumatized by a violation of their beliefs, who then allow themselves to become imprisoned and paralysed by their traumas. Bashir, the Muslim Gitmo survivor does not come across as a sympathetic character unable, as he evidently is, to transcend his victimhood. "You killed my soul" he accuses Alice at one point. Come on! Souls are known for being immortal! Alice is tougher and more sympathetic but she, too, is unable to deal with her past incarnated, as it is, in the present reality of her daughter. Rhiannon, by far the most sympathetic character of the three, lively, inquisitive and full of promise, is destroyed by her parents' unresolved, festering traumas. That leaves little room for compassion for them, even though both are victims of a yet greater evil - the war.

"Lidless" is undoubtedly a work of art, but one which left me admiring it primarily for its craftsmanship.

Until next time,

Paul W.



07/16/10 (#0785)  Laity vs. expertise


It has often been noted that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. How much more dangerous then is a lot of it?

Actually, it is not the quantity or even quality of knowledge that is of concern here. It's how it is applied. It is true that large quantities of knowledge tend to breed overconfidence and arrogance. Worse yet, formidable bodies of specialist knowledge can become self-validating, self-contained worlds of their own unmoored from the rest of reality.

The problem with the experts is that they are invested in their knowledge - it's what they depend on so they tend to be closed to the possibility that their knowledge may be incomplete, inappropriate or plain wrong. Of course, their expertise is valued because it has produced desired results in the past and is believed likely, under similar circumstances, to produce such in the foreseeable future. But, as we know, future is only imperfectly predictable. No matter what the past record, taking expert advice involves a risk. The best of the experts will not only point this out but actually quantify the risk. The greatest risk, of course, is that they won't or, perhaps quite unconsciously, gloss over or minimize that risk.

An expert's greatest asset has to be humility, a rather rare virtue, especially among experts. Hence the importance of having an input from a lay person. Somebody has to ask the stupid questions that the experts would never think of asking themselves. And the experts need to give these questions serious consideration even though their first instinct may be to brush them off as ignorant, irrelevant or silly. The main object of the interaction between the experts and the lay people is  not  to educate and enlighten the lay people - it is to bring the experts down to the lay person's point of view. The experts need to ask themselves anew questions they have dismissed as having been answered once and for all.

The most fruitful approach an expert can bring to a problem is to assume he/she knows nothing. Only by looking at it humbly through a lay person's eyes, an expert  may find the wisdom needed for an appropriate application of his/her knowledge.

And that's my expert opinion, take it or leave it.

Until next time,

Paul W.



07/15/10 (#0784)  The illusion (?) of continuity


The movies are an excellent example of the illusion of continuity. What appears to us as perfectly smooth continuous motion is actually made up of discontinuous still images hitting our retinas at the rate of thirty or more per second. Well, as it turns out, every instance of apparent continuity is an illusion. What we perceive as continuity is only a statistical trend of a large number of discrete events which are too brief or too minute to perceive individually. It is an artifact of our gigantitude relative to the magnitude of the elementary events.

Here is an interesting fact: What finally convinced us (i.e., those among us who think about these things) of the essential discreteness of reality was the observation that the future is indeterminate, that we cannot predict precisely what happens next (although we can determine the probability of what might happen next and for very large numbers of events that probability may approach certainty). If continuity were real and absolute it would make the universe perfectly predictable because of the orderly continuous transition from cause to the effect. To put it into the lingo of thermodynamics (possibly the most fundamental of all branches of physics) the entropy (degree of randomness and disorder) of a truly continuous universe would be zero. The probability of a zero entropy universe is exactly zero (i.e., it ain't gonna happen).

However, the discreteness of events is not absolute. Events are not absolutely unrelated to each other. For one, they are related by the observed differences between them . Also, each event contributes to a seemingly continuous probability "field" that  narrows down the possibilities for what happens next. When the possibilities are narrowed down to just  one we have the equivalent of continuity.

There is a common phenomenon in nature that is perfectly predictable. It is vibration. Vibration is simply a chain or network of elementary events made up of indefinitely repeating identical patterns of events (cycles). Vibration can occur when the number of possible next events is relatively small and fixed (i.e., the sequence of the events in the cycle cannot create a probability that the next event may break the cycle). Existence of vibrations is evidence that groups of events can have a joint influence as a group on the probability "field". The cycles of events in a vibration exert mutual influence on each other corresponding to the natural harmonies and resonances that can occur among them. There is evidently a continuity of "memory" as patterns of events replicate themselves exactly again and again, until some external event disrupts the process.(Note that all enduring objects of experience owe their relative permanence of form to being a complex set of vibrations). 

So the discrete events making up a vibration seem to be somehow continuously connected. The restriction on the number of possible next events leading to this "continuity" of vibration is in essence the same as the restrictions that delimit individual discrete elementary events (which, being indivisible, can be viewed as "internally" continuous). It's a subtle universe that has produced us.

Until next time,

Paul W.



07/14/10 (#0783)  You gotta have fun


So the world is going to hell in a handbasket, people are dying like flies or doing horrible things to one another, everywhere you look disasters, calamities and catastrophies, and what are you going to do about it?

I don't know about you but I'm going to enjoy myself as best I can on the theory that if everybody did that this would be a happier world. In any case, one can't operate at one's peak unless one enjoys what one does. There's just one problem that keeps us from achieving that state of grace: hardly anybody knows how to enjoy themselves.

Enjoyment of life requires cooperation between mind and matter. It's not one over the other, it's both together in a creative dialog. As in the YMCA's triangular logo, equal exercise of "mind, body and spirit" is called for, the "spirit" being the transcendental Desire for Joy which, according to the Nutshell, is the foundation of existence and the driving force behind the evolution of the universe.

Deep down inside we know all that. It's the essential part of our humanity (which the Nutshell identifies with our aspiration to angelhood). But we have become thoroughly confused - or have not yet achieved adequate understanding - with respect to what constitutes joy. We insist on identifying joy with accumulated tangibles: power, possessions. But joy is action, change, and can no more be accumulated and stored than manna. It is in the moment, it depends on what we do with what we have.

Because joy is a vitamin necessary to good mental (and bodily) health, this misunderstanding can lead to serious depression, feelings of insecurity and dissatisfaction which in turn lead to defensiveness, anger, hostility and greed culminating in the mess that we live in. All for lack of authentic  joie de vivre for which we substitute frantic consumerism, escapist fantasy or control over others.

Until next time,

Paul W.



07/13/10 (#0782)


(Re: TN #781)  You did not include in your list life's greatest threat: dehumanization as a result of irreversible brain damage, however caused. - the Squirrel

You're right. Loosing one's human faculties (which goes beyond dementia and destroys the persona) beats anything else that life can throw at one. That is the literal living death and, as far as I am concerned, should not be allowed to continue because it dishonors the memory of the person who is now destroyed, and also as an act of mercy for the remaining beast. - the Ed


Dr. Who


As MFRs know, I receive four digital and one analog channel via the home antenna here in Possum Hollow. Usually, that is. The reception of the analog channel, which happens to be PBS, is never better than marginal at best. The sound is OK but the snowy, grainy picture is unwatchable. Naturally, PBS is the only channel I'm interested in.  Occasionally I will "watch" the Charlie Rose Show which is all talk so the picture is superfluous. But anything that is primarily visual is way too frustrating.

Nevertheless, the other day I made an exception for an episode of Dr. Who. Of course you know who Dr. Who is. In the unlikely event that somebody reading this does not, Dr. Who is a sci-fi time opera produced since forever by the BBC. Dr. Who's life consists exclusively of travelling in time from one period of trouble to another, fixing the problem and thus yet again forestalling the end of the world (though not for long).

He used to do that (travel in time, that is) by means of a London phone booth, but I guess these things are getting scarce so now he has a humongous gadget in form of a while glowing pillar with complicated controls at the base which seem to be very stiff and hard to operate judging by the effort Dr. Who and his team put into making the thing hop through time.

Yes, Dr. Who has a team of sidekicks, the principal being a woman whose relatonship to Dr. Who is ambiguous. Others vary from episode to episode. As for his time traveling attire, Dr. Who always, no matter what the climate or circumstance, ALWAYS wears a long open coat flapping behind him, a costume widely adopted by heroes and heroines of numerous recent sci-fi flicks. But Dr. Who was first.

Dr. Who's origin and identity are mysteriously unclear. He seems to be a regular chap, young middle age, but he seems to know a lot of stuff nobody else does. When he arrives at a scene he grasps what is going on and what needs to be done almost instantly. He carries no weapons but always wins his battles, essentially with words. He always comes within a nick of time of getting wasted by various monstrosities, but, naturally, something always saves his ass. By incredible luck he always manages to accidentally find the way to turn things around and save the world from yet another cosmic disaster.

Every episode is based on some fantastic plot gimmick designed purely for the amazement of the twits who fanatically follow all Dr. Who's adventures. This time, a cute young woman with a futuristic machine gun popped more or less out of nowhere to greet Dr. Who with "Hello, father!". (The episode was titled "The Doctor's Daughter"). Turns out she is some kind of a temporal anomaly and a warior involved in a permanent war between humans and human-descended monsters. Whatever. Anyway, after having been enlightened by Dr. Who as to what's what she comes to his aid in settling the war and gets herself shot dead in the process (which settles the war). Except that something happens later that causes her to come back to life and she immediately takes off in a huge spaceship, solo, for the stars. I'm not sure what happened because reception was really lousy. Perhaps just as well...

Until next time,

Paul W.



07/12/10 (#0781)  Funerary thoughts


"Memento mori" was the ubiquitous refrain in the death obsessed European Middle Ages. "Remember that you will die". Between the anti-life Church and the killer plagues, keeping that in mind was all too easy. For some it was, no doubt, a source of spiritual comfort.

Those morbid times are, thank God, over, at least for most of us. Nevertheless, death, as ever, remains our best friend, both personally and globally. On the global scale, our best hope for a renewed world lies with our children and death kindly makes room for them to grow and prosper by removing the used up trash. On the personal side, there is nothing more effective than imminent death to concentrate and clarify one's mind. Sometimes the best part of our life turns out to be the last few months, weeks, days or minutes of it.

Of those who die miserably, I believe by far the greatest part are authors of their own misery and as such die the death they deserve. In any case, we shouldn't be distracted by the outer appearances of death's ravages. What appears to be a desperate situation may well be seen in an entirely different light by the dying person whose values are very different from those who are facing many more years of life.

As the remaining time grows shorter and passes faster, it's not the approaching death but the waning life that becomes the critical object of concern. There are some pathetic souls who fear death so much they can't enjoy life. But, of course, death is nothing to fear. It's life that holds all the potential terrors, most of them of our own making.

The worst terror that life holds is emptiness and insignificance. Following that, rage. Trailing at the end of the list are poverty and disease. Those last two are hardly worth giving a thought to. Death is sure to relieve them.

So that leaves the challenge of filling the rest of one's time with stuff of significance. That is basically what our life to date has been a preparation for. I think we can consider our life to have been a success if we enter the last years of it with a full agenda.

Until next time,

Paul W.



07/11/10 (#0780) Marks, redux


The last time we discussed marks in the Nutshell was in an essay about how numbers are created. (In case you forgot: by counting distinct marks in any number of mutually orthogonal directions). This time we shall discuss how Art is created by placing distinct marks in any number of mutually orthogonal directions. In practice, most Art is created in two to five dimensions. For simplicity, we shall stick to two dimensional Art.

When the so called "modern Art" was invented by Picasso and Matisse, two completely new ideas were brought into the Art-critiical language:

     1) Art is a physical object in its own right and its physicality is an integral part of it, and

     2) Art is a presentation, in a form accessible to the senses, of new, deeper, more significant ways of seeing and thinking about the subject than a merely literal representation allows (literalism tends to reinforce habitual modes of perception rather than challenge them).

Before Picasso and Matisse, these two fundamental ideas (especially the first) were hardly considered at all by Art critics in their analyses of Art. Art critics kept their faith in Illusionistic realism as the most effective bridge between the artist's concept and the public. Artists themselves, however, throughout the history have shown, to various degrees, some awareness of these ideas. We have now learned to recognize the conceptuality and physicality of Art. Picasso shocked us with the first and Matisse radically called our attention to the latter as the most effective user ever of Art's physicality for expressive purposes.

At first, critics of Matisse's radical paintings would talk about "paint itself being the subject". They were close but they were, so to speak, missing the mark. Or, rather, the marks. It's not the paint, it's the marks made with it. Modern Art is all about the marks made by the artist, whether with paint and brush, or with a pencil, or a knife, or a computer, or any other conceivable means of making perceptible marks, including, incidentally, not making any marks at all but letting the substrate be its own mark (or a set of marks) by virtue of its native form, color and texture. The marks may be as large or as small, as complex or as simple as the artist's concept requires. They may overlap or be widely spread out or they may form recognizable patterns and images. When it comes to making marks there are no rules and no limits other than the artist's imagination and the physical capabilities of the media.

There are two things to be noted about the artist's marks: a) they are individual and distinct, and b) they are related to one another, forming patterns. A set of marks may create many different perceptible patterns. There are patterns of patterns and there may be an overall master pattern imposed on the marks and their sub-patterns. The patterns are not necessarily abstract - the marks may well be placed to form "figurative" or "representational" or even "realistic" patterns. "Modern" Art does not exclude realistic representation but it makes it serve the central concept and gives new importance and significance to the physicality of the marks that make up the image. The images (which may themselves be marks) are not primarily intended to be accurate representations of "reality" but they may be if that suits the artist's concept. The marks and images are to modern Art what the elementary particles, atoms and molecules are to physics, the works themselves being the equivalents of elegant theories about the structure of the universe.

In the "post-modern" era (someday "modern Art" may have to be renamed), we have enlarged further the big tent of Art to include all forms of visual expression from the most ancient of historical styles to the most avant guarde experimental ones. In other words, anything goes. But, of course, we can never look at art again with innocent pre-modern eyes. Modernism is in our genes now. We cannot help but see the marks.

Until next time,

Paul W.



07/09/10 (#0779)  Truth: variations on a theme


     I     "What is actually the case". A cop out since the next obvious question is "how do we know what is actually the case?" That takes us into a whole nother field of inquiry re what we can know and how.

    II     "Logical self-consistency".  So called mathematical truth. It is unarguably true, in the mathematical sense, that if A = B and C = B then A = C. Yawn. Nevertheless, mathematical truths have real life importance because so much of what we experience in real life can be described very accurately in mathematical terms.

   III     "Fact: what has been observed". Note the past tense. Facts are records of past observations. The record is not identical with what was actually observed. There is always some distortion due to the nature of the recording process, the recording medium and the reading process.

   IV    "The here-now experience". The unevaluated, unedited act of observation, the raw incoming sensory data. This is our subjective reality but undeniably real for all that. This variation equates truth with reality keeping in mind, of course, that what we experience is not the whole of reality but merely a partial view of it from a particular point of view. Truth-as-reality is not useable as is - it has to be first interpreted in terms of our understanding of the world of our experience.

    V    "Beauty" or "What feels right/good". This is akin to the previous variation but slipperier. It's the here-now experience spontaneusly evaluated as representing the right balance between chaos and order. Such evaluation is complicated by memories of past experiences and current beliefs.

   VI     "That which does not change".  Based on the belief that truth is absolute and eternal.  The closest thing to it in our experience are the most elementary components of the universe which are presumed to be unchanging. According to the Nutshell doctrine that would be "the transcendental desire for joy". For a society it would be tradition.

   VII    "That which can be trusted to yield predictable results". Unfortunately, nothing can. However, if we are content with only approximate predictability, we can home in on many approximate truths that we can make practical use of. 

Until next time,

Paul W.



07/08/10 (#0778)  Shanghai chronicles V: Expo logistics


Tuesday "a few less people" (exact quote from the Expo website) attended on account of heavy downpour and thunderstorms. Namely, about 350,000 vs. recent average of 520,000 daily. Nevertheless, the Expo website reports operations continued "smoothly and normally". To date, 24 million visitors have attended.

On the other hand, the Organizer (as the Expo's Powers-that-be are officially referred to) has admitted that bus transportation to the site is maxed out and still has not met the demand. Buses now are spaced an average of 13.4 seconds (!) apart yet people still have to wait up to 30 minutes because most buses go right by having been packed to capacity at earlier stops. Ripping out the seats to increase bus capacity turned out to be impractical because the batteries that power the buses are located under the seats. 

No info on the state of the subway access. There is one special express line that terminates at the site but I expect to be taking a regular metro line to a stop nearest an entrance gate and walk the rest of the way. That seems to be the best bet. 

According to the China Pavllion Q&A, to have any hope of scoring a ticket to the China Pavillion you have to be among the first four hundred or so through any one of about a dozen entry gates when they open at 9 am. I don't know when people start lining up at the gates - probably hours ahead of the opening time. Whether my status as senior will actually help me get through the gate faster remains to be seen. 

Anyway, I'm beginning to get some idea of the flavor of the Expo but, of course, the actual territory is never quite as we visualize it. Also, things conceivably could change radically between now and September 15th. However, the most likely change is that the crowds will increase as the weather becomes more pleasant. Currently it's hot and humid in Shanghai. Like here.

No luck with the official guide yet.

Until next time,

Paul W.



07/07/10 (#0777)  The hedgehog dialogs XXV


These days, with the temperature and humidity both heading for triple digits, appreciating the sunshine properly has become a bit of a chore for Prickles, the hedgehog I live with. I tried to distract her a little as she damply but determinedly carried on with her duty.

Me:  "Hey,Prickles! Do you know what day this is?"
Prickles:  "#####?" [There are no adequate English equivalents for Hedgehogese "##"s]
Me:  "No, I mean today is really special - do you know why?"
Prickles:  "## ## ###?"
Me: "Besides the record heat. No idea?"
Prickles: "##."
Me:  "Well for one this is the seventh day of the seventh month. But not only that, this is the seven hundred seventy seventh Nutshell!  How about that?"
Prickles:  "### #### ## ###?"
Me:  "How often do you get so many sevens lined up in a row?"
Prickles:  "## #### ### ###."
Me:  "But even if you can only count to three, surely you can appreciate the symbolic significance of all these sevens?"
Prickles:  "##."
Me:  "Prickles, you're hopeless! Being mathematically challenged is no excuse - this isn't mathematics, this is a genuine numerological mystical mystery, a wonder to contemplate, a portent of better things to come! You know, of course, that sevens are considered to be lucky?"
Prickles:  "## ### ### ###."
Me:   "Well, maybe threes are lucky too, but nothing like sevens. Thirteen is even luckier but apparently I'm the only one who thinks so. There's just one thing that bothers me."
Prickles:  "###?"
Me:   "We only have five sevens lined up. Ideally it should be seven sevens. The coming luck will be imperfect, I'm afraid."
Prickles:  "### ### ####?"
Me:   "Sigh... You're right, of course. It always is."

Until next time,

Paul W.



07/06/10 (#0776)  The fragile faith in ourselves


While there is no way to beat the devil, neither is there any compulsion to deal with the devil. So why do we insist on it? For the same reason we buy lottery tickets (a highly lucrative way of taxing the poor). We believe we need a miracle to become a "success".  We lack faith in being able to do it on our own, without miracles. 

Cynics suggest that such lack of faith in ourselves is amply justified but, of course, they have it exactly backwards. Without faith we are bound to fail. Faith, as pointed out in the Nutshell on numerous past occasions, is the absolutely necessary prerequisite to being able to accomplish anything. The question is whether we place our faith in miracles or in ourselves, such as we are. The record shows that God invariably helps those who help themselves and waiting for a miracle is notoriously unproductive. Not only that but the rare winners of the lottery often come to regret it.

Some theists also assert that faith in ourselves is misplaced, that we are helpless on our own and can only trust God to make it possible for us to succeed. If by "God" we mean the ability to discriminate between "right" and "wrong", the distinction between that aspect of "God" and "ourselves" becomes academic. Language shapes our particular beliefs but the essential necessity for faith in our capacity for doing what is right is the invariant underlying reality.

What keeps undermining our faith in ourselves is economics, the perceived balance - or imbalance - between what we need (and/or want) and what we have. To a large extent this balance is a matter of perception but at least part of it is real unavoidably affecting our capacity to live well and prosper. This is a consequence of the (necessarily) probabilistic nature of the universe and its imperfectly predictable future.

This fact of life creates a spectrum of human response from those who despair of being able to make their way in an apparently relentlessly hostile world, to those who see the diffculties ahead as a challenge and an opportunity to shape the future and to prove themselves. And everything in between. Interestingly, one's place on this spectrum is independent of the degree of difficulty one is facing.

It is the despairing ones, and those whose wants far exceed their needs, that go looking for miracles and deals with the devil. Those who keep the faith and stay focused on their actual needs are content with doing what is possible to make life on this planet enjoyable for all.

Untl next time,
 
Paul W. 



07/05/10 (#0775)  The undying faith in a free lunch


P. T. Barnum once hawked an astonishing fact of nature: "Step right up and see for yourself! You will be shocked and amazed! It will blow your mind! You owe it to yourself to witness this unbelievable phenomenon!  There's one born every minute! Guaranteed, or your money back!"

The phenomenon goes on, as it has since times immemorial and apparently for ever more. The greedy and  the unscrupulous (usually synonymous terms) who are gifted with a modicum of perceptiveness and intelligence continue to exploit it for a handsome profit. It's not a free lunch, however. They still have to work for their ill-gotten gains and suffer the consequences (such as alienation and disenchantment and, occasionally, punishment by law).

Evidently, virtually no one is immune from expectation of something for nothing, of obtaining an effortless effect without any negative consequences (P. T. Barnum underestimated the birth rate). The current sorry state of the global economy is the evidence of the billions of daily contracts with the devil based on the unswerving, universal faith that there is always a way to beat the devil. (It is also the evidence of the tendency for the deals with the devil to escalate without limit). 

Even though, statistically, in any given transaction one might get lucky, in the long run, there is absolutely no way to beat the devil. Fanciful legends notwithstanding, the devil will ultimately get his due. Guaranteed. It's the way the universe is made. It's the only way it could be made. But almost no one believes it. Like P.T. said, this is amazing, astonishing and absolutely incredible! But true.

Can wisdom and commonsense be legislated? (Is there a free lunch?) Whatever legal controls may be imposed on individuals, corporations, industries, even nations, the faith in a free lunch remains unshaken, and it will continue to motivate all these entities to find a way around the regulation. And where there is a will there is a way. The best we can hope for is a temporary curtailment of the traffic with the devil until new ways are found.

Until next time,

Paul W.



07/03/10 (#0774)  Bridge


My parents played contract bridge with their friends regularly. So did my grandparents. Thus a significant part of my early childhood was spent kibitzing, and I must say, it wasn't the worst part. The way bridge was played at my home it was great fun, with lots of laughter, trash talking and humorous commentary. It was not a serious game. The object was not winning but rather an occasion for delightful social interaction with some intellectual exercise as a side benefit.

Having grown up with bridge, I have retained a permanent interest in the game. I and my two brothers, with my daughter for the fourth, have kept up for years the tradition of bridge as family comedy. Only one of us (Charlie, the mathematician) brought a higher level of skill and strategy to the game and he didn't mind using it with murderous intent. He had no compunction whatever about winning. His confidence in his mastery of the game led to outrageous displays of bravado. For example, one time, when he and I were partnering, we needed to bid and make four of a minor suit to win the rubber. So even before the cards were dealt Charlie announced we would bid and play four diamonds. Cards were dealt, Charlie bid four diamonds. And nailed it. Of course.

Such stuff is galling. It has driven me, again and again, to actually study the game. Bridge requires highly efficiently coded communication between partners in the process of bidding. There are innumerable so called "conventions", clever systems of efficiently coding informaton about one's hand while staying within the formal rules of bidding. The codes, like buttons on an electronic gadget, vary in their functionality depending on circumstances. A mastery of the conventions allows one to determine quite precisely what the partership's combined resources are and how best to play out the hand. The actual play becomes merely a matter of minor strategy adjustments and not makng slly mistakes. Learning the conventions and how and when to use them is extremely tedious. There's a great deal of fine detail to be mastered until it becomes second nature because during an actual game there's no time for extended deliberation. Correct choices have to be made on the fly.

It's just too much like work. This is only a frigging game. Trouble is, it's an addictive game. The deeper you get into it the harder it is to stop and pull out. The other day I downloaded a simple freeware version of computer bridge ("Quick Bridge" - it's lightning quick, as labeled) so I could play an occasional game or two for a diversion. The next thing I knew, four hours disappeared from my life.

Untl next time,

Paul W.



07/02/10 (#0773A)  The joy of conforming


MFRs are familiar by now with the Nutshell's contention that good life is a dynamic balance between chaos and order and the art of life is to find the right balance. Joyful as transgression can be, the joy wanes and disappears in a life that is wholly or compulsively transgressive. We need a degree of order in our lives and order requires conformity. Ironically, even to be able to transgress successfully against the established order, we need order and discipline.

The fact is nothing gets done without an orderly plan and execution. And anything that involves more than one person requires a harmonization of purpose and method or it will fail. Anything that involves an entire nation requires a constitution and a body of law.

But there is more than just a practical reason for conforming. Working together for a common purpose is actually a joy! Nowhere is the joy of coordinated effort more evident than in a musical ensemble as it becomes a single entity, an integral whole far greater than the sum of its parts. (For even more fun, the ensemble as a whole can proceed to transgress against the established order. An ensemble can do this more safely and more effectively than an individual alone. On the other hand, without the need to conform to a group, an individual alone potentially can go further and faster.)

Not all groups work together as well and as joyfully as a musical ensemble at the moment of performance (what happens at the rehearsals is another story). Not all groups are as well chosen, or as well matched. More frequently than not groups are made up by accident and may include people with incompatible beliefs, purposes and capabilities. A typical marriage is a case in point. Even though nature does her best to assure that sexual mates are as well matched as possible, humans screw up the process royally by bringing to the mating game all kinds of irrelevant and even purposefully deceptive (often self-deceptive) baggage. As a consequence, well matched marriages are a minority. And as a consequence of that we have all kinds of damaged humans dragging down the society.

On the other hand, some marriages indeed seem to be made in heaven. However, in at least some if not most of these cases it is not because they are a particularly good match but because both partners have made a conscious decision and commitment to conform to rules of behaviour that compensate for or perhaps even take advantage of the differences between them. Why? Because living together in harmony is a joy and one that increases with time as the partners in life become more and more adapted to each other.

Until next time,

Paul W.



07/01/10 (#0773)  The joy of transgressing


There is a difference between sin and transgression although, technically, a sin is a transgression and a transgression may or may not be a sin. Sins are a matter of inattention, negligence or weakness, often accompanied and always followed by guilt and remorse. Transgression may be motivated by a desire to break through the conventionally established boundaries into the unknown and the completely new, to stretch to the limit, and beyond, the possibilities for experiencing and understanding. In other words, the desire to live to the fullest.

Adam and Eve both transgressed and sinned. Since then, countless humans deliberately, eagerly and joyfully have transgressed laws, taboos, customs and accepted wisdom not only without guilt or remorse but with a sense of wonder and fulfillment. Yet also with a sense of dread and awe and fear for their lives. Indeed, many have lost their lives, others their possessions, their health or their minds. This, however, has not deterred the succeeding generations of transgressors. They continue to strive against all apparently artificial limits, whatever the cost or danger, knowing there can be no growth, no discovery of anything truly new without going through them.

There is a thrill in the very idea of transgressing. Whatever may be forbidden, off limits, locked up or hidden is by this very fact alluring to our imagination and curiosity. We do not willingly accept limits, we are challenged by them and driven to exceed them. We enjoy transgressing. God who created us knows that. God obviously fully expected Adam and Eve to go for the forbidden fruit. That had to be part of the Plan for launching humanity on its destined journey. Notably, even though God evicted A&E from Eden - an inevitable consequence of their choice to transgress the Edenic laws but also their liberation from the prison/cradle of a life of carefree comfort and contentment - God did not disown them. 

Yes, there are real limits to what we can become at any particular time but they are not those which we succeed in transgressing. A successful transgression brings a sense of newly added power and freedom and some of us transgress purely for the thrill of it. But power and freedom are in themselves empty values which have no substance and the thrill does not last. According to the Nutshell doctrine, consciousness and reason provide us with the means (and the necessity) for creating meaning. This makes it possible for us to enjoy our power and freedom by applying them to accomplishment of meaningful tasks.

It turns out the subtle serpent is not our enemy, after all - he is us. Of course, we are often our own worst enemies but that's another story. 

Until next time,

Paul W.

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