'For all men make the mistake of distinguishing too sharply.'
(from Heller, The Disinherited Mind).
Youtube is still down in the land of the pure so this will have to do: dreams
The Aussies have been so good at opening their doors to, er, what shall we call them again?
~
The Romans kept an image of Terminus [the god of boundaries] in the temple of Jupiter...and the interesting thing is that the roof above the place where the image sat was open to the sky, as if to say that a god of the boundaries and borders of the earth needed to have access to the boundless, the whole unlimited height and width and depth of the heavens themselves. As if to say that all boundaries are necessary evils and that the truly desirable condition is the feeling of being unbounded, of being king of infinite space. And it is this double capacity that we possess as human beings-the capacity to be attracted at one and the same time to the security of what is intimately known and the challenge and entrancements of what is beyond us-it is this double capacity [that is truly human].
--Seamus Heaney.
To go too far in either direction leads to a kind of extremism: the terrible parochialism and narrow-mindedness of the conservatives; or the false progressiveness of the moderns who wants to tear up any sense of tradition or continuity in the name of a formal, abstract freedom and of a future that redeems us (Badiou).
I think Heaney oversteps the mark here because it is not clear to me that boundaries are 'necessary evils'. Can one truly be a human without boundaries, constraints or some kind of limits? From the perspective of negative liberty and the markets (or a particular understanding of liberalism) boundaries will always be something to be cast off, an 'evil' that impairs our autonomy, creativity and, ultimately, human flourishing. (Of course, no-one wants to mention that much of the great art over the course of human history has been produced by men and women living constrained lives!).
Hell is other people!
--Sartre.
Bruni has another way of looking at other people (already to use the term 'otherness' is to distance oneself) and it is this: the wound and the blessing. Modernity stresses the wound more than the blessing.
In the beginning is a 'war of all against all.' Conflict is the starting point of modern thought: me against you; me against the world; me against nature (See Marshall Salins). This negative approach is carried over into economics (rational self-interest dictates that if it's in your interest to cheat then you should) and politics (everyone's a knave). There's more..it's me against my mother, or me against my father. The social can never be our starting point and love and kindness count for little. What a charming picture of what it is to be a human being!
~~
It greatly amuses you when people fall over backwards trying to convince
other people that they are really liberal when in fact they have profoundly reactionary views."Actually, some of my friends are black people". Or: I think those poor refugees should be helped (as long as they don't come over here ruining our standard of living, and as long as they ain't, y'know, Muslims).
So, here's the troubling part for the neo-liberals: if you believe in free markets then you should also believe in the free movement of capital and labour (Er.."capital is okay, I hear you say). The movement of factors of production will lead to efficiency and convergence, all other things being given. It's a win-win, no?
The refugees must be "processed" (I actually read that somewhere). Fill in the forms in triplicate and attach two passport sized photographs...If you are Muslim perhaps we can give you a number?
'He is Null Achtzehn. He is not called anything except that, Zero Eighteen, the last three figures of his entry number; as if everyone was aware that only a man is worthy of a name, and the Null Achtzehn is no longer a man.'
---Primo Levi.
He has crossed the boundary and found a wilderness. Gagarin, deep in outer space said: "There is no God here". He crossed the boundary and found very few human beings in Europe.
It is tempting to blame everything on Khomeni (and he was certainly part of the problem) but has anyone noticed the lurch to the right all across Europe? That UKIP could get 3.8 million votes speaks volumes about the quality of public debate and the fragility of democracy there. If I was American I would be profoundly embarrassed by the Republican candidates. To think that people like Walker Bush, hockey mom Palin, the brainless Ben Carson and Trump actually have a platform in the land of the brave and the free makes you wonder just how brave and free the place really is. Larkin may have been closer to the mark: apart from the coasts it's a desert of bigots.
~
And this poem, via Tom:
(from Heller, The Disinherited Mind).
Youtube is still down in the land of the pure so this will have to do: dreams
The Aussies have been so good at opening their doors to, er, what shall we call them again?
~
The Romans kept an image of Terminus [the god of boundaries] in the temple of Jupiter...and the interesting thing is that the roof above the place where the image sat was open to the sky, as if to say that a god of the boundaries and borders of the earth needed to have access to the boundless, the whole unlimited height and width and depth of the heavens themselves. As if to say that all boundaries are necessary evils and that the truly desirable condition is the feeling of being unbounded, of being king of infinite space. And it is this double capacity that we possess as human beings-the capacity to be attracted at one and the same time to the security of what is intimately known and the challenge and entrancements of what is beyond us-it is this double capacity [that is truly human].
--Seamus Heaney.
To go too far in either direction leads to a kind of extremism: the terrible parochialism and narrow-mindedness of the conservatives; or the false progressiveness of the moderns who wants to tear up any sense of tradition or continuity in the name of a formal, abstract freedom and of a future that redeems us (Badiou).
I think Heaney oversteps the mark here because it is not clear to me that boundaries are 'necessary evils'. Can one truly be a human without boundaries, constraints or some kind of limits? From the perspective of negative liberty and the markets (or a particular understanding of liberalism) boundaries will always be something to be cast off, an 'evil' that impairs our autonomy, creativity and, ultimately, human flourishing. (Of course, no-one wants to mention that much of the great art over the course of human history has been produced by men and women living constrained lives!).
Hell is other people!
--Sartre.
Bruni has another way of looking at other people (already to use the term 'otherness' is to distance oneself) and it is this: the wound and the blessing. Modernity stresses the wound more than the blessing.
In the beginning is a 'war of all against all.' Conflict is the starting point of modern thought: me against you; me against the world; me against nature (See Marshall Salins). This negative approach is carried over into economics (rational self-interest dictates that if it's in your interest to cheat then you should) and politics (everyone's a knave). There's more..it's me against my mother, or me against my father. The social can never be our starting point and love and kindness count for little. What a charming picture of what it is to be a human being!
~~
It greatly amuses you when people fall over backwards trying to convince
other people that they are really liberal when in fact they have profoundly reactionary views."Actually, some of my friends are black people". Or: I think those poor refugees should be helped (as long as they don't come over here ruining our standard of living, and as long as they ain't, y'know, Muslims).
So, here's the troubling part for the neo-liberals: if you believe in free markets then you should also believe in the free movement of capital and labour (Er.."capital is okay, I hear you say). The movement of factors of production will lead to efficiency and convergence, all other things being given. It's a win-win, no?
The refugees must be "processed" (I actually read that somewhere). Fill in the forms in triplicate and attach two passport sized photographs...If you are Muslim perhaps we can give you a number?
'He is Null Achtzehn. He is not called anything except that, Zero Eighteen, the last three figures of his entry number; as if everyone was aware that only a man is worthy of a name, and the Null Achtzehn is no longer a man.'
---Primo Levi.
He has crossed the boundary and found a wilderness. Gagarin, deep in outer space said: "There is no God here". He crossed the boundary and found very few human beings in Europe.
It is tempting to blame everything on Khomeni (and he was certainly part of the problem) but has anyone noticed the lurch to the right all across Europe? That UKIP could get 3.8 million votes speaks volumes about the quality of public debate and the fragility of democracy there. If I was American I would be profoundly embarrassed by the Republican candidates. To think that people like Walker Bush, hockey mom Palin, the brainless Ben Carson and Trump actually have a platform in the land of the brave and the free makes you wonder just how brave and free the place really is. Larkin may have been closer to the mark: apart from the coasts it's a desert of bigots.
~
And this poem, via Tom:
Conversation with a Stone, By Wislawa Szymborska
I knock at the stone's front door
"It's only me, let me come in.
I want to enter your insides,
have a look around,
breathe my fill of you."
"Go away," says the stone.
"I'm shut tight.
Even if you break me to pieces,
we'll all still be closed.
You can grind us to sand,
we still won't let you in."
I knock at the stone's front door.
"It's only me, let me come in.
I've come out of pure curiosity.
Only life can quench it.
I mean to stroll through your palace,
then go calling on a leaf, a drop of water.
I don't have much time.
My mortality should touch you."
"I'm made of stone," says the stone.
"And must therefore keep a straight face.
Go away.
I don't have the muscles to laugh."
I knock at the stone's front door.
"It's only me, let me come in.
I hear you have great empty halls inside you,
unseen, their beauty in vain,
soundless, not echoing anyone's steps.
Admit you don't know them well yourself.
"Great and empty, true enough," says the stone,
"but there isn't any room.
Beautiful, perhaps, but not to the taste
of your poor senses.
You may get to know me but you'll never know me through.
My whole surface is turned toward you,
all my insides turned away."
I knock at the stone's front door.
"It's only me, let me come in.
I don't seek refuge for eternity.
I'm not unhappy.
I'm not homeless.
My world is worth returning to.
I'll enter and exit empty-handed.
And my proof I was there
will be only words,
which no one will believe."
"You shall not enter," says the stone.
"You lack the sense of taking part.
No other sense can make up for your missing sense of taking part.
Even sight heightened to become all-seeing
will do you no good without a sense of taking part.
You shall not enter, you have only a sense of what that sense should be,
only its seed, imagination."
I knock at the stone's front door.
"It's only me, let me come in.
I haven't got two thousand centuries,
so let me come under your roof."
"If you don't believe me," says the stone,
"just ask the leaf, it will tell you the same.
Ask a drop of water, it will say what the leaf has said.
And, finally, ask a hair from your own head.
I am bursting from laughter, yes, laughter, vast laughter,
although I don't know how to laugh."
I knock at the stone's front door.
"It's only me, let me come in.
"I don't have a door," says the stone.
From "Poems New and Collected: 1957-1997" by Wislawa Szymborska, translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh (Harcourt Brace: 274 pp., $27)
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