[Philip K.] Dick was a consummate autodidact. He survived for less than one semester at college, at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1949, taking and quitting Philosophy 10A in the space of a few weeks. Dick left the class in disgust at the ignorance and intolerance of his instructor when he asked his professor about the plausibility of Plato’s metaphysical theory of the forms — the truth of which was later proven for Dick by the experience of 2-3-74. Dick was evidently not trained as a philosopher or theologian — although I abhor that verb “trained,” which makes academics sound like domestic pets. Dick was an amateur philosopher or, to borrow a phrase from one of the editors of “Exegesis,” Erik Davis, he was that most splendid of things: a garage philosopher.

What Dick lacks in academic and scholarly rigor, he more than makes up for in powers of imagination and rich lateral, cumulative association. If he had known more, it might have led him to produce less interesting chains of ideas. In a later remark in “Exegesis,” Dick writes, “I am a fictionalizing philosopher, not a novelist.” He interestingly goes on to add, “The core of my writing is not art but truth.” We seem to be facing an apparent paradox, where the concern with truth, the classical goal of the philosopher, is not judged to be in opposition to fiction, but itself a work a fiction. Dick saw his fiction writing as the creative attempt to describe what he discerned as the true reality. He adds, “I am basically analytical, not creative; my writing is simply a creative way of handling analysis.”

- Simon Critchley

on the limits of empathy

[empathy] has become a way to experience the illusion of moral progress without having to do the nasty work of making moral judgments. In a culture that is inarticulate about moral categories and touchy about giving offense, teaching empathy is a safe way for schools and other institutions to seem virtuous without risking controversy or hurting anybody’s feelings.

People who actually perform pro-social action don’t only feel for those who are suffering, they feel compelled to act by a sense of duty. Their lives are structured by sacred codes.

Think of anybody you admire. They probably have some talent for fellow-feeling, but it is overshadowed by their sense of obligation to some religious, military, social or philosophic code. They would feel a sense of shame or guilt if they didn’t live up to the code. The code tells them when they deserve public admiration or dishonor. The code helps them evaluate other people’s feelings, not just share them. The code tells them that an adulterer or a drug dealer may feel ecstatic, but the proper response is still contempt.

The code isn’t just a set of rules. It’s a source of identity. It’s pursued with joy. It arouses the strongest emotions and attachments. Empathy is a sideshow. If you want to make the world a better place, help people debate, understand, reform, revere and enact their codes. Accept that codes conflict.

- David Brooks

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

-Alexander Solzhenitsyn, novelist, Nobel laureate (1918-2008)

‘authenticity’ is for us what sex was for the Victorians

“The Robotic Moment” from Alone Together by Sherry Turkle

… Rebecca inspected the visible tortoise thoughtfully for a while and then said matter-of-factly, “They could have used a robot.” I was taken aback and asked what she meant. She said she thought it was a shame to bring the turtle all this way from its island home in the Pacific, when it was just going to sit there in the museum, motionless, doing nothing. Rebecca was both concerned for the imprisoned turtle and unmoved by its authenticity. …

I believe that in our culture of simulation, the notion of authenticity is for us what sex was for the Victorians — threat and obsession, taboo and fascination. I have lived with this idea for many years; yet, at the museum, I found the children’s position strangely unsettling. For them, in this context, aliveness seemed to have no intrinsic value. Rather, it is useful only if needed for a specific purpose. Darwin’s endless forms so beautiful were no longer sufficient unto themselves. I asked the children a further question: “If you put a robot instead of a living turtle in the exhibit, do you think people should be told that the turtle is not alive?” Not really, said many children. Data on aliveness can be shared on a “need-to-know basis” —for a purpose. But what are the purposes of living things?

kinds of meaning to make (or, how to think about the relationship b/t self and world)

In most times and in most places, the group was seen to be the essential moral unit. A shared religion defined rules and practices. Cultures structured people’s imaginations and imposed moral disciplines. But now more people are led to assume that the free-floating individual is the essential moral unit. Morality was once revealed, inherited and shared, but now it’s thought of as something that emerges in the privacy of your own heart.

– If it feels right, by David Brooks

* * * * * * * *

A promising and more inclusive approach  is offered by Susan Wolf in her recent and compelling book, “Meaning in Life and Why it Matters.”   A meaningful life, she claims, is distinct from a happy life or a morally good one. In her view, “meaning arises when subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness.” A meaningful life must, in some sense then, feel worthwhile.  The person living the life must be engaged by it.  A life of commitment to causes that are generally defined as worthy — like feeding and clothing the poor or ministering to the ill — but that do not move the person participating in them will lack meaningfulness in this sense. However, for a life to be meaningful, it must also be worthwhile. Engagement in a life of tiddlywinks does not rise to the level of a meaningful life, no matter how gripped one might be by the game.

- Todd May 

* * * * * * * *

… reflecting on his friendships, John Berger wrote, “We were not somewhere between success and failure; we were elsewhere.”

* * * * * * * *

He who is rebuffed becomes human. 

—Adorno, Minima Moralia

* * * * * * * *

(speaking of artistic process, and the fear of starting a new piece…) Curiosity is the greatest antidote to fear.

- meredith monk

* * * * * * * *

“More than anything else, cinema consists of the eye for magic—that which perceives and reveals the marvelous in whatsoever it looks upon.”

- Maya Deren

* * * * * * * *

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”

- Mahatma Gandhi

* * * * * * * *

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”

- Albert Camus

On Hunger and Shame

Among all art experiences I’ve had in the past several years, few have affected me like Steve McQueen’s movies HUNGER and SHAME. Although topically these movies are quite different, they share a cinematographic language that is intimate and sensual, which immerses us in a story that – in each case – largely revolves around the protagonist’s body. They likewise also share an emphasis on the fundamental embodiedness of human experience (of compulsion, a pathological addiction to sex in SHAME; of political power manifested, ultimately, in the bodies of imprisoned activists once the state has robbed them of any other political voice in HUNGER). These films are extraordinary because they so thoroughly employ the sensual possibilities of cinema to relate stories that are terrifically human… That is, as human spectators we are so close to the physical sensations of these physical stories told sensually, physically, that the stories are immediately comprehensible, enjoyable, and – I’d venture – philosophical without being alienating.

In both films we alternate between identifying with the protagonist as a character, and voyeuristically observing his body, the universe around it, and its effects on other people in this world. In SHAME said body is pathological: a virile and magnetic sex-addict who is emotionally impotent due to unspoken childhood trauma. HUNGER gives us Bobby Sands, the IRA Volunteer, during the course of a hunger strike which led to his death: herein is articulated a political fact – once robbed of all political status, one still has one’s body: the most potent medium for political communication bar none. 

being vulnerable can help us see a world 

on its own terms rather than through the conceptual

and linguistic categories we’ve inherited.

a vulnerable observer is part of the world she reports from. she does what she can to see it clearly, but does not conceive of it fundamentally as self / other – whether thinking about religion, culture, language, nationality, race, or whatever other category. she may even embrace parts of herself that rhyme with the subject in question as a way into a culture, as a point of departure for exploring people’s experience and what’s unfolding right now.

i’m thinking in particular about Graham Greene – about how all through The Lawless Roads he writes as a Catholic, relates to people on the ground and in interviews as a Catholic… of course his openness about frustrations and discomforts of his journey are other ways in which he’s vulnerable, through which his sensitivity tells us as much about the English (and mister Greene) as it does about Mexico. 

I’m also thinking about The Quiet American, and how tremendous the book is exactly because this reporter, who insists throughout on his neutrality –– “I prefer the term ‘reporter’ ” … because it connotes neutrality in a way “journalists” never do –– but at the end he is caught up in the violence, he is no longer just a neutral ‘reporter’ and, despite himself, he has benefitted / profited from the violence of the conflict, from the war itself. This, ideally, is how I hope to come into my subjects as filmmaker, as narrator… as someone who has ideals and ideas and yet, despite them, despite my best efforts, I’m changed in ways that I don’t anticipate… in ways that perhaps I don’t like or am not proud of. Or maybe it’s just sharing my complex relationship to male intimacy in bjj itself… and to the kind of violence that unfolds in mma… and perhaps even relating yoga and quakerism… who knows. i don’t yet. 

the Quaker readings I’ve been moved by recently has been on the section on Quaker Testimonies in The Spirit of the Quakers, esp. pages 138-140.  —— “An understanding of identity that is based on difference[…] produces fearfulness and disrespect, and overrides compassion.”

Thomas Hirschhorn on Disaster, Loving the world.

Abraham Cruzvillegas (BOMB): Is disaster –– famine flooding, earthquake, forced migration, genocide, holocaust –– a source of energy, creation, love? 

Thomas Hirschhorn: Yes, because disaster is part of the world, our one and unique world! I agree with the world I am living in. It is only if I agree with it that I can have the power to change something. To agree does not mean to approve of everything or to support or to endure everything. To agree means to love –– to love the world –– beyond “respect,” “empathy,” “tolerance,” “compassion,” and “kitsch.” Love is passion, desire, ecstasy, infinitude, and cruelty. As an artist, who is part of the world, I have to confront disaster, my own disaster first, but also all disasters. I have to love this world if I want to change its conditions, I have to love the fact that disaster and “the negative” are also part of it. The world is not the world without the negative. Even within the negative, I have love for art and for artists, love for philosophy and philosophers, love for poetry and poets. This love gives me the energy and the will to create despite all the negative and despite all the past, present, and future disasters. Love is stronger than disaster.

“Rest in peace, Amos. We owe you everything.”

Wrote critic Michael Sicinski of The Academic Hack:

“The eventual split between [Amos] Vogel and Jonas Mekas was regrettable, and the experimental film world pretty much uniformly rallying behind Mekas, while understandable, meant that the value of Vogel’s programming and distribution model was lost and misunderstood for a generation. The divergence of these philosophies has been as significant as the Kael / Sarris divide, although it’s seldom seen as such. Mekas believed, and still believes, in filmmakers and auteurship, whereas Vogel would both champion anonymous films and bypass works by major figures if he felt they weren’t up to snuff. In the long run, history has been kinder to  Vogel’s approach than it ever was to Cinema 16. Just as there needs to be Mekas’ inclusiveness, there’s also a need for the ‘strong programmer’ vision, of blending experimental film with narrative, documentary and other forms, and also serving as an arbiter of taste. Programmers are authorized to do this when they establish trust with their audiences, and that very idea owes a great deal to Amos Vogel.”

- from Indiewire