October 2009
Overheard today during lunch – “those [insert your favorite “leaders”] are out of touch”. Made me think, the leaders are very much in touch with reality, the reality of people being gullible and stupid, the reality of people who find contradictions and complexity unbearable, the reality of plebeians who yearn a direction. The leaders also know that once in a while they should give an order that defies any logic. This inevitably starts chatter and indignation, the “out of touch” accusations, but it only saturates conversation with the “leadership brand”. It’s like the White House saying “Fox TV is not news”, instantly tripling the rating. If I am a leader my only goal is that people constantly speak about me, not about their friends and family and not about the needs of their immediate neighbors. In fact in an unlikely eventuality that I am a leader, I would do something “out of all touch” on purpose for this very reason.
So what about the followers? They are really “out of touch” big time for investing hopes and supernatural expectation and ceding control of their lives and vital decisions to a calculating mortal.
Photo via flickr/rozet
I have been looking at the illustrations by Adrian Tomine. This one is available as a poster from his blog, was also a New Yorker cover in 2004.
The unplanned intersection. When Bolt Bus parachutes you at the corner, full force of New York energy swirls around. You can’t design it, you can’t predict it, you can’t understand it. It’s a stage or a theater where everyone is looking at your next step, a dance of an unrehearsed unison [click to enlarge].
Here is New York, E. B. White, 1949:
“There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter—the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these three trembling cities the greatest is the last—the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high-strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from Italy to set up a small grocery store in a slum, or a young girl arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh eyes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company.”
Photo via flickr/paul-g, the quote via Cdixon Tumblog
On the subject of Calcified Patterns and on the subject of the Facebook “likes” and general approval votes. “Like” is a very inaccurate name, a more descriptive is “I recognize a familiar and preapproved pattern” People seek patterns that confirm concepts, ideas, visual or musical formulas they already decided to accept. So the act of liking something is really an act of recognizing a preapproved pattern. It’s like saying thank you very much for filtering and highlighting what I agreed to like. And hence is the problem with the “likes” and votes in general. Notice how political campaigns gravitate to oversimplified formulas that everyone already “likes”. The wider is a campaign the narrower is the pool of formulas till it completely dissolves into a visceral jingle – “change” or “hope” anyone? Me likes, but I digress.
The search for approval or the search for being liked or popular is the strongest gravitational force towards the bottom of the proverbial barrel. It also means that a new idea is by definition disapproved because it doesn’t fall into a preapproved pattern and it doesn’t give people the affirmative structural pleasure of recognizing the familiar, something they already agreed to agree about.
Beware of your work being liked or approved. It could only mean that you hopelessly fallen into a passé pattern. If you do patterns for living than have some sense of humor about it, the only way you can survive the routine of waking up at 4am on a farm full of sheep, apes, parrots and donkeys.
Photo via flickr/yushimoto_02
Silent footage of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, and others in New York, Summer 1959. The location is in and around the Harmony Bar & Restaurant at E 9th St. and 3rd Ave. Others seen are Mary Frank (wife of film-maker Robert Frank) and children Pablo and Andrea, as well as Lucien’s wife Francesca Carr and their three sons, Simon, Caleb and Ethan. ►click to continue
Prof Gordon Marino correctly highlights the blurred difference in his NYT post – Kierkegaard on the Couch:
“These days, confide to someone that you are in despair and he or she will likely suggest that you seek out professional help for your depression. While despair used to be classified as one of the seven deadly sins, it has now been medicalized and folded into the concept of clinical depression. If Kierkegaard were on Facebook or could post a You Tube video, he would certainly complain that we, who have listened to Prozac, have become deaf to the ancient distinction between psychological and spiritual disorders, between depression and despair.”
Kierkegaard claims that despair is a natural state of humans. But unfortunately the distinction has been lost in the contemporary culture.
A short clip of Milton Friedman speaking c. 1977. A free marketer to the core here to propose a bottom up vision for the government free from ideology. The triumphant self interest is a delightful oversimplification. ►click to continue
There is a surprising toxicity to everything that has “Jewish” attached to it. It’s like everything “Jewish” is a set up for a disappointment, be it Jewish politics, Jewish singles or Jewish community, etc. But why!? Let’s say you have an insecure friend. More this person is insecure more he or she becomes obsessed with what other people think about him/her. It comes to the point when this person’s identity completely depends on reactions from the outside. The person becomes obsessed about what someone said and even what someone thinks.
Perhaps the fate of a minority. On one hand the ongoing struggle against the dominant ideas, the vigilance to preserve distinctiveness on the other hand total dependence on the majority for the sense of self-worth. This all comes at a price. You need an unwavering confidence to develop the core of a culture or a personality [the early Zionists experienced this imbalance first hand coined the term Galut mentality]. Contrary to the popular Jewish ethos that ascribes antisemitism to the supernatural forces, it’s rather much more mundane, a matter of a mechanical friction between vastly different parts in the direct proximity. Yet there is still a significant number of global Jews who define their identity through antisemitism. In the multicultural mixture of multitudes today this is no longer a definitive factor (never mind the lucrative niche fundraising market). The real frictional hate and tension burning bright for the Jews today is the animosity between adjacent Jewish tribes and ideologies.
Yet there is still a persistent habit among Jews to think outwardly. Thousands of years of this insecurity come at the price of a culture hollowed to the core. Compare engaging with a person immersed in a game of it, oblivious to the world around to engaging a self-conscious aristocrat obsessed with utopian memories of the past glory and fixated on social perceptions. You are in for a tedious and unpleasant evening. Am I making myself clear?
And as we all know the logical progression for people obsessed with what others think is paranoia. I have friends like that. I sometimes tap them on the shoulder and say: “Dude, I don’t know how to bring this to you, but the sad reality is that nobody is thinking about you, no a soul in the world!” Alas, it never helps.
Photo by Dan Zollmann – Zwart rood (Black and red) via flickr/Canvas_TV
The Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands published some of it’s vast collection on Flickr. I would like to curate poignant and interesting World War I photos, the ultimate “black swan” event. How about this crazy photo, the contrast of armor and a white pigeon, the expectation of a far away contact.
British Tank, Western Front in France. Tanks kept in touch with the Infantry by carrier pigeons which were released and carried messages back.
This is Speed Levitch episode from the animation “Waking life”, really a remix of his dialogues. Really, really good. ►click to continue