Raising the Retirement Age

"Economic growth is a function of the size of the workforce, the amount of capital employed and the rise in productivity. If the workforce shrinks, as demography shows it will, all the growth will have to come from capital investment and productivity improvements. In Japan, where the working population is already getting smaller, economic growth has been minuscule, despite a good productivity record. To counteract a shrinking labour force, the retirement age needs to be raised."

Id and Age

"A happy vicar I might have been
Two hundred years ago
To preach upon eternal doom
And watch my walnuts grow;

But born, alas, in an evil time,
I missed that pleasant haven,
For the hair has grown on my upper lip
And the clergy are all clean-shaven.

And later still the times were good,
We were so easy to please,
We rocked our troubled thoughts to sleep
On the bosoms of the trees.

All ignorant we dared to own
The joys we now dissemble;
The greenfinch on the apple bough
Could make my enemies tremble.

But girl's bellies and apricots,
Roach in a shaded stream,
Horses, ducks in flight at dawn,
All these are a dream.

It is forbidden to dream again;
We maim our joys or hide them:
Horses are made of chromium steel
And little fat men shall ride them.

I am the worm who never turned,
The eunuch without a harem;
Between the priest and the commissar
I walk like Eugene Aram;

And the commissar is telling my fortune
While the radio plays,
But the priest has promised an Austin Seven,
For Duggie always pays.

I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And woke to find it true;
I wasn't born for an age like this;
Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?"

George Orwell

Fire so cold

Aristotle's Ethics

"Justice is used both in a general and in a special sense. In its general sense it is equivalent to the observance of law. As such it is the same thing as virtue, differing only insofar as virtue exercises the disposition simply in the abstract, and justice applies it in dealings with people. Particular justice displays itself in two forms. First, distributive justice hands out honors and rewards according to the merits of the recipients. Second, corrective justice takes no account of the position of the parties concerned, but simply secures equality between the two by taking away from the advantage of the one and adding it to the disadvantage of the other. Strictly speaking, distributive and corrective justice are more than mere retaliation and reciprocity. However, in concrete situations of civil life, retaliation and reciprocity is an adequate formula since such circumstances involve money, depending on a relation between producer and consumer. Since absolute justice is abstract in nature, in the real world it must be supplemented with equity, which corrects and modifies the laws of justice where it falls short. Thus, morality requires a standard which will not only regulate the inadequacies of absolute justice but be also an idea of moral progress.

This idea of morality is given by the faculty of moral insight. The truly good person is at the same time a person of perfect insight, and a person of perfect insight is also perfectly good. Our idea of the ultimate end of moral action is developed through habitual experience, and this gradually frames itself out of particular perceptions. It is the job of reason to apprehend and organize these particular perceptions. However, moral action is never the result of a mere act of the understanding, nor is it the result of a simple desire which views objects merely as things which produce pain or pleasure. We start with a rational conception of what is advantageous, but this conception is in itself powerless without the natural impulse which will give it strength. The will or purpose implied by morality is thus either reason stimulated to act by desire, or desire guided and controlled by understanding. These factors then motivate the willful action. Freedom of the will is a factor with both virtuous choices and vicious choices. Actions are involuntary only when another person forces our action, or if we are ignorant of important details in actions. Actions are voluntary when the originating cause of action (either virtuous or vicious) lies in ourselves.

Moral weakness of the will results in someone does what is wrong, knowing that it is right, and yet follows his desire against reason. For Aristotle, this condition is not a myth, as Socrates supposed it was. The problem is a matter of conflicting moral principles. Moral action may be represented as a syllogism in which a general principle of morality forms the first (i.e. major) premise, while the particular application is the second (i.e. minor) premise. The conclusion, though, which is arrived at through speculation, is not always carried out in practice. The moral syllogism is not simply a matter of logic, but involves psychological drives and desires. Desires can lead to a minor premise being applied to one rather than another of two major premises existing in the agent’s mind. Animals, on the other hand, cannot be called weak willed or incontinent since such a conflict of principles is not possible with them."

IEP

Image-making

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. The alternative to manipulation is chaos."

Edward Bernays

Frank Stella: Harran II (1967)

Frank Stella: The Black Paintings (1959)

Arundel Castle.



Tomlinson Court Park.



Die Fahne Hoch.



Marriage of Reason and Squalor.

ABC, everyday, ABC, everywhere

Andy Warhol

Coyote Flying

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

Charles Darwin

Range of Grief

"He was envious nevertheless, not of the longer life Malkie enjoyed, but of Libor's range of grief. He could not as Libor did, throw his sorrow into the future. He did not miss the Tyler who never got to be, only the Tyler who was."

The Finkler Question

Out and With

'It will only make you more upset. Forget all that'

'Forget all what?'

'Music.'

'So I can't have a cello either?'

'The cello will make you even sadder. Go and play football.'


The Finkler Question

We are Our World; We are Only But Our World

"We are what we are, and live in a given situation which has the characteristics -- physical, psychological, social -- that is has; what we think, feel, do is conditioned by it, including our capacity for conceiving possible alternatives ... Our images and powers of conception are limited by the fact that our world possesses certain characteristics and not others; a world too different is (empirically) not conceivable at all; some minds are more imaginative than others, but all stop somewhere."

The Hedgehog and the Fox

Wisdom?

"It is not scientific knowledge, but a special sensitiveness to the contours of the circumstances in which we happen to be placed; it is a capacity for living without falling foul of some permanent condition or factor which cannot be either altered, or even fully described or calculated; an ability to be guided by rules of thumb -- the 'immemorial wisdom' said to reside in peasants and other 'simple folk' -- where rules of science do not, in principle, apply. This inexpressible sense of cosmic orientation is the 'sense of reality', the 'knowledge' of how to live."

"It is the ever present sense of this framework -- of this movement of events, or changing pattern of characteristics -- as something 'inexorable', universal, pervasive, not alterable by us, not in our power, that is the root of Tolstoy's determinism, and of his realism, his pessimism, and his contempt for the faith placed in reason alike by science and by worldly common sense."

"Tolstoy himself knows that the truth is there, and not 'here' -- not in the regions susceptible to observation, discrimination, constructive imagination, not in the power of microscopic perception and analysis of which he is so much the greatest master of our time."

The Hedgehog and the Fox

Ignorance?

"Men's acts may seem free of the social nexus, but they are not free, they cannot be free, they are part of it. Science cannot destroy the consciousness of freedom, without which there is no morality and no art, but it can refute it. 'Power' and 'accident' are but names for ignorance of the casual chains, but the chains exist whether we feel them or not. Fortunately we do not; for if we felt their weight, we could scarcely act at all; the loss of the illusion would paralyse the life which is lived on the basis of our happy ignorance. But all is well: for we never shall discover all the causal chains that operate: the number of such causes is infinitely great, the causes themselves infinitely small; historians select an absurdly small portion of them and attribute everything to this arbitrarily chosen tiny section."

"Since we are not, in fact, free, but could not live without the conviction that we are what do we do?...it is better to realise that we understand what goes on as we do in fact understand it -- much as spontaneous, normal, simple people, uncorrupted by theories, not blinded by the dust raised by scientific authorities, do, in fact, understand life -- than to seek to subvert such commonsense beliefs, which at least have the merit of having been tested by long experience, in favour of pseudo-sciences, which, being founded on absurdly inadequate data, are only a snare and a delusion."

"Man is at once an atom living its own conscious life 'for itself', and at the same time the unconscious agent of some historical trend, a relatively insignificant element in the vast whole composed of a very large number of such elements."

The Hedgehog and the Fox

Recognising Unimportance and Irrelevance

"There are ordinary human beings who are ignorant and vain enough to accept responsibility for the life of society, individuals who would rather take blame for all the cruelties, injustices, disasters justified in their name than recognise their own insignificance and impotence in the cosmic flow which pursues its course irrespective of their wills and ideals."

The Hedgehog and the Fox

Ole Ordinaire

"And so Tolstoy arrives at one of his celebrated paradoxes: the higher soldiers or statesmen are in the pyramid of authority, the farther they must be from its base, which consists of those ordinary men and women whose lives are the actual stuff of history; and, consequently, the smaller the effect of the words and acts of such remote personages, despite all their theoretical authority, upon that history."

"Those who went about their ordinary business without feeling heroic emotions or thinking that they were actors upon the well-lighted stage of history were the most useful to their country and community, while those who tried to grasp the general course of events and wanted to take part in history, those who performed acts of incredible self-sacrifice or heroism, and participated in great events, were the most useless."

The Hedgehog and the Fox

Tolstoy's History and Anti-history

"History, only history, only the sum of the concrete events in time and space -- the sum of the actual experience of actual men and women in their relation to one another and to an actual three-dimensional, empirically experienced, physical environment -- this alone contained the truth, the material out of which genuine answers -- answers needing for their apprehension no special senses of faculties which normal human beings did not possess -- might be constructed."

"History alone -- the sum of empirically discoverable data -- held the key to the mystery of why what happened happened as it did and not otherwise; and only history, consequently, could throw light on the fundamental ethical problems which obsessed him as they did every Russian thinker in the nineteenth century. What is to be done? How should one live? Why are we here? What must we be and do? The study of historical connections and the demand for empirical answers to these proklyate voprosy became fused into one in Tolstoy's mind, as his early diaries and letters show very vividly."

"But side by side with this there is the beginning of an acute sense of disappointment, a feeling that history, as it is written by historians, makes claims which it cannot satisfy, because like metaphysical philosophy it pretends to be something it is not -- namely, a science capable of arriving at conclusions which are certain."

"History will never reveal to us what connections there are, and at what times, between science, art, and morality, between good and evil, religion and the civic virtues...What it will tell us (and that incorrectly) is where the Huns came from, when they lived, who laid the foundations of their power, etc."

"History is nothing but a collection of fables and useless trifles, cluttered up with a mass of unnecessary figures and proper names. The death of Igor, the snake which bit Oleg -- what is all this but old wives' tales? Who wants to know that Ivan's second marriage, to Temryuk's daughter, occured on 21 August 1562, whereas his fourth, to Anna Alekseevna Koltovskaya, occurred in 1572...?"

"History does not reveal cause; it presents only a blank succession of unexplained events."

"If we allow that human life can be ruled by reason, the possibility of life [i.e as a spontaneous activity involving consciousness of free will] is destroyed."

"No matter how scrupulous the technique of historical research might be, no dependable laws could be discovered of the kind required even by the most undeveloped natural sciences. He further thought that he could not justify himself the apparently arbitrary selection of material, and the no less arbitrary selection of emphasis, to which all historical writing seemed to be doomed."

The Hedgehog and the Fox

The Hedgehog and the Fox

"For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system, less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel -- a single, universal, organising principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance -- and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related by no moral or aesthetic principle. These last lead lives, perform acts and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal; their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without, consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision."

Hedgehogs - Dante, Plato, Lucretius, Pascal, Hegel, Dostoevsky, Nietzache, Ibsen, Proust.
Foxes - Shakespere, Herodotus, Aristotle, Montaigne, Erasmus, Moliere, Goethe, Pushkin, Balzac, Joyce.

"Of course, like all over-simple classifications of this type, the dichotomy becomes, if pressed, artificial, scholastic and ultimately absurd. But if it is not an aid to serious criticism, neither should it be rejected as being merely superficial or frivolous; like all distinctions which embody any degree of truth, it offers a point of view from which to look and compare, a starting-point for genuine investigation."

Isaiah Berlin

Her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood

"Her name sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires."

Araby, Dubliners

Zoom

"Indeed, the condition of becoming generic is that of being specific...All generic patterns are impositions upon a reality that is always in excess of their embrace and that the very idea of order and meaning is itself a delusion from which we must escape or to which we have to give a reluctant and disillusioned consent. It may be a delusion, but it is all we have got."

Seamus Deane

Look at the stars, look how they shine for you

"The futility of triumph or protest or vindication: the inanity of extolled virtue: the lethargy of nescient matter: the apathy of the stars"

Ithaca, Ulysses

Change, without fire or lightning

"It's all very fine to boast of mutual superiority but what about mutual equality. I resent violence and intolerance in any shape or form. It never reaches anything or stops anything. A revolution must come on the due instalments plan. It's a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate people because they live round the corner and speak another vernacular, in the next house so to speak."

Eumaeus, Ulysses

Non Serviam

"I understand your point of view though I have no king myself for the moment. This is the age patent medicines. A discussion is difficult down here. But this is the point. You die for your country. Suppose. Not that I wish that for you. But I say: Let my country die for me. Up to the present it has done so. I didn't want it to die. Damn death. Long live life!"

Circe, Ulysses

Come on, you drink!

"Come on you winefizzling, ginsizzling, booseguzzling existences! Come on, you dog-gone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed fourflushes, false alarms and excess baggage! Come on, you triple extract of infamy!"

Oxen of the Sun, Ulysses

Motivation

Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose.

On Positive Thinking: Willful Ignorance and Delusion

"It's cruel to take people who are having great difficulties in their lives and tell them that it is all in their heads and they only have to change their attitude."

"Biggest evidence is the financial meltdown...people who tried to raise problems in the last decade were shut up or fired...people who said 'I'm worried about our sub-prime mortgage exposure' or to point out that the housing prices could not rise forever, were fired."

Barbara Ehrenreich

Advertisement in the Mirror

"Plain and loved, loved for ever, they say. Ugly: no woman thinks she is. Love, lie and be handsome for tomorrow we die."

Nausicaa, Ulysses

One-eye Nations

"But it's no use. Force, hatred, history, all that. That's not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it's the very opposite of that that is really life.

What?

Love. I mean the opposite of hatred."

Cyclops, Ulysses

Hersexysounds

"It is a kind of music I often thought when she. Acoustics that is. Tinkling. Empty vessels make the most noise. Because the acoustics, the resonance changes according as the weight of the water is equal to the law of falling water. Like those rhapsodies of Liszt's, Hungarian, gipsyeyed. Pearls. Drops. Rain. Diddleiddle addleaddle ooddleooddle. Hissss."

Sirens, Ulysses

Q, not Q

" 'The men where you live,' said the little prince, 'grow five thousand roses in the same garden and they do not find what they are looking for ... and yet, what they are looking for could be found in a single rose or in a little water.'

'Yes, indeed,' I replied.

And the little prince added: 'But the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart.' "

The Little Prince

In routine, there is difference, without which days are randomly everything and nothing.

" 'It is something which is all too often forgotten'. said the fox. 'It is what makes one day different from other days, one hour different from other hours. For example, there is a rite among hunters. On Thursdays they go dancing with the village girls. So Thursday is a marvellous day for me. I can take a walk as far as the vineyards. But if the hunters were to go dancing just any day, every day would be like any other day for me and I would never have a holiday.' "

The Little Prince

Every life is many days

"If Socrates leave his house today he will find the sage seated on his doorstop. If Judas go forth tonight it is to Judas his steps will tend. Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves."

Scylla and Charybdis, Ulysses

Plato vs. Aristotle

http://www.philosophos.com/knowledge_base/archives_9/philosophy_questions_961.html

Opiate

"It's that sort of bread: unleavened shewbread. Look at them. Now I bet it makes them feel happy. Lollipop. It does. Yes, bread of angels it's called. There's a big idea behind it, kind of kingdom of God is within you feel. First communicants. Hokypoky penny a lump. Then feel all like one family party, same in the theatre, all in the same swim. They do. I'm sure of that. Not so lonely. In our confraternity. Then come out a bit spreeish. Let off steam. Thing is if you really believe in it. Lourdes cure, waters of oblivion, and the Knock apparition, statues bleeding. Old fellow asleep near that confessionbox. Hence those snores. Blind faith. Safe in the arms of kingdom come. Lulls all pain. Wake this time next year."

Lotus Eaters, Ulysses

Subjective Science

"What was the chap I saw in that picture somewhere? Ah yes, in the dead sea floating on his back, reading a book with a parasol open. Couldn't sink if you tried: so thick with salt. Because the weight of the water, no the weight of the body in the water is equal to the weight of the what? Or is it the volume is equal to the weight? It's a law something like that. Vance in High school cracking his fingerjoints, teaching. The college curriculum. Cracking curriculum. What is the weight really when you say the weight? Thirtytwo feet per second per second. Law of falling bodies: per second per second. They all fall to the ground. The earth. It's the force of gravity of the earth is the weight."

Lotus Eaters, Ulysses

A Shout in the Street

"- History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to wake.
From the playfield the boys raised a shout. A whirring whistle: a goal.
What if that nightmare gave you a back kick?
- The ways of the Creator are not our ways, Mr Deasy said. All human history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God.
Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying:
- That is God.
Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!
- What? Mr Deasy asked.
- A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders. "

Nestor, Ulysses

Smashing Pumpkins

"I couldn't forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

I shook hands with him; it seemed silly not to, for I felt suddenly as though I were talking to a child. Then he went into the jewellery store to buy a pearl necklace - or perhaps only a pair of cuff buttons - rid of my provincial squemishness forever."

The Great Gatsby

One up on down

" 'Oh, and do you remember' - she added - 'a conversation we had once about driving a car?'

'Why - not exactly.'

'You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn't I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride.'

'I'm thirty,' I said. 'I'm five years too old to lie to myself and call it honour.' "

The Great Gatsby

Medusa's Odds

"My father always says, choosing a wife is like putting your hand into a bag full of writhing creatures, with one eel to six snakes. What are the chances you will pull out the eel?"

Wolf Hall

Anti-gravity

Walking. Writing. Talking. Thinking. Laughing.

Change

" 'The multitude,' Cavendish says. 'is always desirous of a change. They never see a great man set up but they must pull him down - for the novelty of the thing.'

...'I think it's just people. They always hope there may be something better.'

'But what do they get by the change?'

Wolf Hall

Helpful emendations

"And all outcomes are likely, all outcomes can be managed, even massaged into desirability: prayer and pressure, pressure and prayer, everything that comes to pass will pass by God's design, a design re-envisaged and redrawn, with helpful emendations, by the cardinal. He used to say, 'The king will do such-and-such.' Then he began to say, 'We will do such-and-such.' Now he says, 'This is what I will do.' "

Wolf Hall

Lockean Practicality

"Since the world is what it is, it is clear that valid reasoning from sound principles cannot lead to error; but a principle may be so nearly true at to deserve theoretical respect, and yet may lead to practical consequences which we feel to be absurd."

"Locke aimed at credibility, and achieved it at the expense of consistency. Most of the great philosophers have done the opposite. A philosophy which is not self-consistent can very well be wholly false. The most fruitful philosophies have contained glaring inconsistencies, but for that very reason have been partially true."

Bertrand Russell/John Locke

Box' of Shaded Memories #15

I watched too many days pass me by. What is the focus?

Leviathan: Fear of Anarchy and the Duty of Submission

"Hobbes holds that all men are naturally equal. In a state of nature, before there is any government, every man desires to preserve his own liberty, but to acquire dominion over others; both these desires are dictated by the impulse to self-preservation. From their conflict arises a war of all against all, which makes life 'nasty, brutish and short.' In a state of nature, there is no property, no justice or injustice; there is only war, and 'force and fraud are, in war, the two cardinal virtues."

"Hobbes considers the question why men cannot cooperate like ants and bees. Bees in the same hive, he says, do not compete; they have no desire for honour; and they do not use reason to criticize the government. Their agreement is natural, but that of men can only be artificial, by covenant. The covenant must confer power on one man or one assembly, since otherwise it cannot be enforced. 'Covenants, without the sword, are but words'. The covenant is not, as afterwards in Locke and Rousseau, between citizens and the ruling power; it is a covenant made by the citizens with each other to obey such ruling power as the majority shall choose. When they have chosen, their political power is at an end. The minority is as much bound as the majority, since the covenant was to obey the government chosen by the majority. When the government has been chosen, the citizens lose all rights except such as the government may find it expedient to grant. There is no right of rebellion, beause the ruler is not bound by any contract, whereas the subjects are. A multitude so united is called a commonwealth. This 'Leviathan' is a mortal God."

But Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others

"... Then they saw what Clover had seen.
It was a pig walking on his hind legs.
Yes, it was Squealer. A little awkwardly, as though not quite used to supporting his considerable bulk in that position, but with perfect balance, he was strolling across the yard ... And finally there was a tremendous baying of dogs and a shrill crowing from the black cockerel, and out came Napolean himself, majestically upright, casting haughty glances from side to side, and with his dogs gambolling round him.
He carried a whip in his trotter.
...Then came a moment when the first shock has worn off and when, in spite of everything - in spite of their terror of dogs, and of the habit, developed through long years, of never complaining, never criticizing, no matter what happened - they might have uttered some word of protest. But just at that moment, as though at a signal, all the sheep burst out into a tremendous bleating of --
'Four legs good, two legs better! Four legs good, two legs better! Four legs good, two legs better!'"

Father Authority

"Every organization needs strong leadership. At home my word is law. Whatever I say goes. For instance, recently my son wanted a laptop computer for his birthday. I said, "Go ask your mother." And he did. That's respect."

Stephen Colbert

On Politicians

"Nations which select the men who are to govern them might have been expected to choose men commanding universal admiration and affection; it might have been thought that those who were deemed wisest and best would be selected for the delicate and responsible job of managing other people's affairs. This, however, is not the case. In most democratic countries to call a politician is to say something derisive about him ... This is a paradox which was not foreseen by the pioneers of democracy. Indeed, it was not true in their day. When democracy is new it usually brings great men to the fore but it loses this merit as it becomes well established. Why is this?... Meanwhile, let us remember that in a democracy, criticism of our politicians is criticism of ourselves - we have the politicians we deserve."

Bertrand Russell

It sure is ironic that you should not let democracy fully develop for the sake of the nation. When democratic processes are fully established, it becomes a playing field favourable for the popular politician (in the negative sense) and not for a 'governor' - where qualities closer to a good manager, with a good sense of international and ground issues, would be more suitable. The unfortunate limitation of human capacity is such that the people who can 'get there' or usually very different from the people who can 'do it'. When the electorate choose options that will benefit themselves (as people tend to do on promises) and not those 'fit to rule' (which may not benefit the voter), the democratic machine blindsides itself. There is little point in criticizing the democratic system because there isn't anything hitherto better than this bad machine. But all these points toward a view that being more democratic is not necessarily a good thing ... and that we may have arrived at something good, perhaps unintentionally.

The Stillness on the Road

My workplace is considerably far. I spend about two hours on the road, on a public bus, every weekday. During this time, I do a couple of things - read the papers, take a catnap, use the phone, think, fantasize - but most often I listen to music, body and mind still and idle, and gaze at the moving scenery. Contrary to the preference of most people, I don't really dread the locomotion because it gives time to float the weight off my psyche, fill the fissures in my temperament and raise the sensitivities of my intuition. This I believe, is close to what some spirituality-inclined folks regard as the benefits of meditation - a purported enrichment and healing of the soul. It is also close to what some 'people' (for the lack of a better description) like to call 'personal space' - an escape from the unnecessary drama and futile bustle of modern life. I convulse at the use of either terms, meditation or personal space, because one is so 'urgh' (fuddy-duddy? uncool? what!?) and the other is so 'bahh' (emo? corny? what!?). In any case, words are just words and terms terms. The point is that such a still-locomotive 'therapy' (boy, I am on a roll for word loss) is really 'good' (vocab hemorrhage). I refer back to the title, which captures all I really want to say.

There is a line on the left you must not cross

"Modern ideas of liberalism, egalitarian ideals, welfare state concepts ... all these are appropriate in an affluent society, but are largely irrelevant to a nation struggling to escape age-old poverty ... These concepts encourage a propensity to laziness and inaction, inculcate a belief that society owes every man a comfortable living and proliferate trade unions whose main purpose is to get more pay for less work."

Goh Keng Swee

The Dangers of Communism: Marxism, Envy and the Hobbesian Man

As a restless, impressionable teenager who was frequently dissatisfied by my own material well-being, I was easily swayed by Marxist ideas. Throughout the years, I have many times been bought over by it, only to have it fizzled out by the irrelevancy to my day-to-day life. As fortune would have it, and I am fortunate, I never lived in a political milieu where I had a chance for Marxist ideas to germinate. In University, the Marxist scholars that I came to know were mostly hopping on the 'hip', radical bandwagon and severely lacking in any rigorous thought or realistic convictions. On many occasions, admittedly, I identified myself with this ilk of people, if for nothing, just to appear 'smart' or 'critical'.

As I started to think, Marxism began to seem like a frightening joke. Besides not making any economic sense (you don't really need any more evidence than to look at the economic fiascoes in North Korea, Russia, East Germany and the likes); its pitch though seemingly a morally right one, is a dangerously wrong one.

Marxism thrives on a very base and powerful emotion - envy. It borders on the genious of emotive language how Marxism cloaks envy with a cape of justice - that everybody should be equal. Instances where real exploitation takes place are given maximum exposure and unfounded generality. Overwhelmed, envy warps the reader's rationality into a lopsided train of thought that makes an imagined sense of justice so distortedly real. For the intellectually unperceptive, it gives highly-charged motive and erroneous justification for unreasonable action. Marxist material fail to mention one thing: as much as inequality is a very sad fact, it is also a very inevitable, natural phenomenon in any society, a Communist one included.

Communism has a very flawed premise. It conceives of Man in the romantic, as a Rousseau-sort benign nobility. Granted Man having such a capacity, it is closer to the exception rather than the norm. I am of the view, as History and experience has shown me, that Man is of the Hobbesian type. In a Communist society, once the high-falutin ideals start to wear off its charm, he will eventually partake in activities that will benefit himself rather than the greater good. And seeing the Hobbesian man benefit, other men including the romantics because of envy or a sense of justice (familiar?) react. If they are opportunistic, they will do like the Hobbesian man did. If they are not, they will find ways to stop and punish the Hobbesian man. Eventually, they resort to a legal social contract to deter and prevent people from such undesirable behavior. When sanctions originally moralistic turn legalistic to keep order, people's actions originally based on altruism turn into fear of punishment. Consequently, Communism loses its meaning and appeal in the hearts and minds of people; and people soon realise they are hopelessly trapped by rules and sanctions (not to mention physical boundaries and violence witnessed in Eastern Europe and North Korea) with little or no freedom. It befuddles me how Communism can work when its assessment of man is so naive, and throws me into despair how people can still believe it with so much evidence of its repercussions.

Yet, Communism did its part in History; not as it intended but laughingly collateral. It galvanised the poor man's sentiment into an actionable voice; the content of it though erroneous, its form powerful. Governments of the world were reminded not to neglect and pay lip service to the poor, for if they don't protect the interest of the poor man, Communism and its attendant emotive garbage would. That is Communism's greatest legacy - a caveat to governments the Pyhrric victory of the neglected, impressionable poor - its own failure.

The Lessons of Experience

"Most people learn nothing from experience, except the confirmation of their prejudices. To learn anything genuinely from experience requires a kind of open-mindedness which is the essence of the scientific temper, though many men of science are somewhat lacking in it."

Bertrand Russell

Not Everything, No

"There are some roads which we must not follow, some enemy troops we must not fight, some cities we must not attack, some grounds we must not contest, even some orders from the ruler which we must not obey."

Sun Tzu

Look Out

"Think of the different things that may be noticed in the course of a country walk. One man may be interested in the birds, another in vegetation, another in geology, yet another in the agriculture, and so on. Any one of these things is interesting if it interests you, and, other things being equal, the man who is interested in any one of them is a man better adapted to the world than the man who is not interested."

Bertrand Russell

History is a Pendulum

"Cynicism such as one finds very frequently among the highly educated young men and women of [x] results from the combination of comfort with powerlessness. Powerlessness makes people feel that nothing is worth doing, and comfort makes the painfulness of this feeling just endurable. Throughout [y] the university student can hope for more influence upon public opinion than he can have in [x], but he has much less opportunity than in [x] of securing a substantial income. Being neither powerless nor comfortable, he comes a reformer or a revolutionary, not a cynic. The happiness of the reformer or revolutionary depends upon the course of public affairs, but probably even while he is being executed he enjoys more real happiness than is possible for the comfortable cynic."

Bertrand Russell

The above was written in 1930 comparing educated youths of the West and East - sociopolitically, the malaise of the West and purposefulness of the East. Almost 80 years on, this paragraph has struck me as somewhat the reverse, at least to the world that I understand now. Interesting, isn't it.

Social Amnesia

Sun - God - dies solis - Sunday.

Moon - Goddess of Moon - monandaeg - Monday.

Mars - Tyr - dies Martis - Tuesday.

Mercury - wodan (Odin) - Wednesday.

Jupiter - Thor - jove's day - Thursday.

Venus - Frigg - dies veneris - Friday.

Saturn - sater daeg - Saturday.

How did we forget all the Galaxies and Gods and History and Culture and Rituals and Imagination and Fantasy behind our days?

Box' of Shaded Memories #14

Words escape me.

Moral Sentiments

"How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it."

Adam Smith

Box' of Shaded of Memories #13

[Suicide Flower]

All that vast anguish of space,
so much time taken to tread.
Compounded to such an ironic end,
like a yellow flash,
a turn of head,
and a careless shrug.
A suicide flower,
didn't fall from the sky.
In impossible anti-climax,
it laid there lazy,
trying to die,
while basking in the sun.

The only story of the world

What is more limited is more desired, and what is more desired is more valuable, and what is more valuable, by virtue in and of itself, will invite increased acquisition. With increased acquisition, it becomes less limited and then less desired, and then less valuable.

Repeat. For (almost) everything.

Working Class Inspiration

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24labor-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Political Ideologies

Conservatism (reproduces inequality, for govt intervention):

- inequality as natural aspect of society. Preferable that those from the superior groups should be in positions of power in society and government.

- traditional values provide guidelines for group cooperation and individual behavior. And it is the role of institutions such as the family, the church, the government to communicate and enforce these values.

Classical Liberalism (reproduces inequality, against govt intervention):

- while equality before the law (equality of opportunity) is important, government should not attempt to create material equality (equality of outcomes). People pursue their interests in different ways and with different levels of success. Even in situations of hardship, government action is undesirable because it can undermine individual initiative and independence. Thus government should have no significant role in addressing inequalities.

- role of the government should be limited. Each person should be allowed to act with minimal constraints and free to pursue as much property and wealth as possible. Laissez-faire economy; unconstrained by government regulations.

Socialism (levels inequality, for govt intervention): a vision through which economic and political power could be directed to benefit all groups in society.

Marxist-Leninist Socialism (levels inequality, for govt intervention, use of force)

Democratic Socialism (levels inequality, for govt intervention, use of democratic means)

- emphasize the substantial reduction of inequalities in material conditions, power and status, but they do not attempt to achieve complete equality of material conditions. The approach to change is gradual, placing continued importance on the protection of individual rights and freedoms, even as it transforms the socio-economic order. The government might own some of the major economic resources in the society and it strongly regulates much of the economic system, but it does not attempt to plan and control all aspects of the economic system.

Parameters

Key Concern:
The allocation of things that are valued, whether via determination or competition or a compromise of both.

Narrative Methods:
(1) Describing the 'what'; characterization.
(2) Explaining 'how' and 'why'; causes or consequences.
(3) Prescribing the 'should'; recommendations.

A man's character is his fate.

Heraclitus (540 BC - 480 BC)

From fact-finding to negotiation

"There is no substitute for the hard work of preparation."

Winston Churchill

The croak of a clogged voice

And because you cannot hear silence, it makes faint the hollowness that resides in the heart, and uncertain the judgment of the hasty.

Box' of Shaded Memories #12

Gowns in the Sun

An Opening Inquiry on Contentment

I have concluded - through literature, observation and experience - that choice and recognition are the strongest determinants to contentment or discontentment. The first, choice, has two not necessarily related categorical aspects - the having of choices and making good choices. To take money for example, having money gives you choices and even if you don't do anything with the money, the psychological cushion of being able to make choices is significant. Making good choices with your finances, be it an opportune investment or shopping for a good deal, also contributes to contentment. On the contrary, having the lack of choices or making bad choices bring much discontentment - in part due to real consequences, in part psychological - to the actor. Of course, this is not restricted to money and can be applied in many cases where there are decisions to be made.

The second, recognition, is more complex. Being recognised extensively and positively, for whatever reason, lends itself to contentment. The value of the positive here happens in a context. A drug lord scoring a major business is recognised positively by a certain group of people, but recognised negatively by another. As such, it depends very much on how the actor's thought system is aligned and to which 'milieu'. The extent and quality of recognition are obvious augmenters of its contribution to contentment.

What do you believe in?

Ideologies present limited versions of reality and expanded prophesies of what the future holds.

Marvel Universe

Systemic Causation v. Greed

"While causation can sometimes be explained by intentional actions and sometimes by systemic interactions, too often the results of systemic interactions are falsely explained by individual intentions. Just as primitive peoples tended to attribute such things as the swaying of trees in the wind to some intentional action by an invisible spirit, rather than to such systemic causes as variations in atmospheric pressure, so there is a tendency toward intentional explanations of systemic events in the economy, when people are unaware of basic economic principles. For example, while rising prices are likely to reflect changes in supply and demand, people ignorant of economics may attribute the rises to 'greed'...To say that prices are due to greed is to imply that sellers can set prices by an act of will. If so, no company would ever go bankrupt, since it could simply raise its prices to cover whatever its costs happened to be. But the systemic interactions of the marketplace through supply and demand force the high-cost company to keep its prices down to where their competitors' prices are, thereby leading to losses and bankruptcy. Charging higher prices would simply mean more losses of sales and faster bankruptcy."

emphasis mine, Thomas Sowell.

Something obviously went wrong. Prices were raised, companies did go bankrupt, greed is part of the explanation of the financial crisis. Yet, I am of the opinion that the general thrust of the free-market system is effective. The free-market system failed, not because the principles of economics are unsound, but because it left out the law. Regulation is needed to ensure people do not 'cheat' when they are greedy.

New York Times backs Obama

"After two years of a gruelling campaign, senator Barack Obama has proven that he is the right choice for president. Mr Obama has met challenge after challenge, growing as a leader and putting real flesh on his promises of hope and change. He has shown a cool head and sound judgment. We believe he has the will and the ability to forge the broad political consensus needed to solve this nation's problems. At the same time, senator John McCain has retreated even farther to the fringe of politics, running a campaign on partisan division, class warfare and even hints of racism. His policies and worldview are mired in the past. His choice of a running mate so clearly unfit for office was a final act of opportunism and bad judgment that eclipsed his 26 years in congress."

Pork and Beans

"Im'ma do the things that I wanna do
I ain't got a thing to prove to you
I'll eat my candy with the pork and beans
Excuse my manners if I make a scene
I ain't gonna wear the clothes that you like
I'm fine and dandy with the me inside
One look in the mirror and i'm tickled pink
I don't give a hoot about what you think."

Weezer

Why markets are left to run on their own

"While markets coordinated by price movements – “capitalism” as it is called – may seem like a simple thing, markets are misunderstood more often than some other things that are considered more complex. Although a free market economic system is sometimes called a profit system, it is in reality a profit-and-loss system – and the losses are equally important for the efficiency of the economy, because losses tell producers what to stop producing. Without really knowing why consumers like one set of features rather than another, producers automatically produce more of what earns a profit and less of what is losing money. That amounts to producing what the consumers want and stopping the production of what they don’t want. Although the producers are only looking out for themselves and their companies’ bottom line, nevertheless from the standpoint of the economy as a whole the society is using its scarce resources more efficiently because decisions are guided by prices."

Thomas Sowell

Choice is Tiresome

"Most of the work that most people have to do is not in itself interesting, but even such work has certain great advantages. To begin with, it fills a good many hours of the day without the need of deciding what one shall do. Most people, when they are left free to fill their own time according to their own choice are at a loss to think of anything sufficiently pleasant to be worth doing. And whatever they decide on, they are troubled by the feeling that something else would have been pleasanter. To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilisation, and at present very few people have reached this level."

Bertrand Russell

The part that never made it to print

A hasty definition of class, by citing Marx, Weber, or prominent class theorists, give an impression of ipse dixit, which in Latin means ‘he himself said it’. It can be argued that this is a logical fallacy because the truth-value of an assertion stems from an appeal to authority. It is, however, not in the interest of this researcher to make such an argument. I want to highlight the fact that the infallibility of theoretical authority cannot be taken-for-granted for and ‘class’ should, in the element of sociology, be problematized and contextualized.

Class is usually understood vis-à-vis stratification. Social stratification is an institutionalized system of social relationships that determines who gets what and why (Kerbo 2006:10). Class is often defined as a grouping of individuals with similar positions and economic interests within the stratification system. Definitions of class focus on the characteristics of a group of individuals. Yet, class is not merely a category, class is a term that carries with it the philosophical baggage of inequality whether intended or not. In essence, when one uses the term class, it implies there is inequality - there is a group of individuals that have more or less access to resources, services and positions. The question of ‘what is class’ is tacitly and necessarily informed by the question of ‘what causes class’. To answer ‘what is class’ without answering the ‘what causes class’ is to assume class is axiomatic; and consequently imply that inequality exists ipso facto. Yet, we cannot know ‘what causes class’ unless we first know ‘what is class’. Any class-based study has to have a working conception of class before knowing what can cause it. This as much is inevitable. Therefore, to understand class, it is important to answer both questions.

The Ant, the Spider and the Bee

"Those who have handled sciences have been either men of experiment or men of dogmas. The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business of philosophy; for it neither relies solely or chiefly on the powers of the mind, nor does it take the matter which it gathers from natural history and mechanical experiments and lay it up in the memory whole, as it finds it, but lays it up in the understanding altered and digested. Therefore from a closer and purer league between the two faculties, the experimental and the rational, much may be hoped."

Francis Bacon

Plato versus Thrasymachus

'Plato thinks he can prove that his ideal Republic is good; a democrat who accepts the objectivity of ethics may think that he can prove the Republic bad; but any one who agrees with Thrasymachus [that justice is nothing else than the interest of the stronger] will say: "There is no question of proving or disproving; the only question is whether you like the kind of State that Plato desires. If you do, it is good for you; if you do not, it is bad for you. If many do and many do not, the decision cannot be made by reason, but only by force, actual or concealed."'

Bertrand Russell

Insouciance

"A dog will bark more loudly and bite more readily when people are afraid of him than when they treat him with contempt, and the human herd has something of this same characteristic."

Bertrand Russell

Escape I

"Our doings are not so important as we naturally suppose; our successes and failures do not after all matter very much. Even great sorrows can be survived; troubles which seem as if they must put an end to happiness for life fade with the lapse of time until it becomes almost impossible to remember their poignancy. But over and above these self-centred considerations is the fact that one's ego is no very large part of the world. The man who can centre his thoughts and hopes upon something transcending self can find a certain peace in the ordinary troubles of life which is impossible to the pure egoist."

Bertrand Russell

If rivers were wise, they'd stay still

"The habit of looking to the future and thinking that the whole meaning of the present lies in what it will bring forth is a pernicious one. There can be no value in the whole unless there is value in the parts. Life is not to be conceived on the analogy of a melodrama in which the hero and heroine go through incredible misfortunes for which they are compensated by a happy ending."

Bertrand Russell

Hyper-imagination

What's worse than having the difficulty to sleep is the torture of having to be conscious.

Box' of shaded memories #11

When nothing mattered.

Box' of shaded memories #10

Time is a lie,
Words and so are many other things.

People die,
And die again and again.

So what,
People survive on whatever and ever.

Heaven will shake a little,
Then the world will move on like it always has.

Thereafter memories hold,
Very unnecessarily.

The truth is that pain is nothing,
That’s when the converse is also true.

We return to the same start and end,
All the time.

But time is a lie,
Words and so are many other things.

Box' of Shaded Memories #9

Box' of Shaded Memories #8

Reflections are overrated.

Box' of Shaded Memories #7

Jurong West and Bamboo Poles.

Poker 1 Sociology 0

I am only blogging because

1) I cannot log into facebook poker.
2) My disc-drive is throwing tantrums and I cannot watch stuff my friends burned for me.
3) My downloads are far from complete.
4) I can't sleep, again.

The combination of reasons has compelled me to comment on the own goal sociology scored with its bureaucratic arpasia (no, it is not a real word). You want a thesis proposal, here's some potential thesis topics:

1) Gambling Hub: A hypothetical perspective on the hypothetical effects of the Integrated Resort that is not there yet.

2) Social life in Singapore: so-so food and so-so shopping and so-so life.

3) The Singaporean Identity: Uniquely similar to everybody else.

4) More than just a comma: A sociological perspective on the use of colons.

5) Methodology in Sociology: to what end and through what means, whatever that means.

6) Sociology: whatever that means.

Box' of Shaded Memories #6

When I feel threathened, I try to transform into an underwater mangosteen - for disguise.

The man who sold the world

I laughed and shook his hand
And made my way back home
I searched for form and land
For years and years I roamed
I gazed a gazeless stare
At all the millions here
I must have died along
A long, long time ago.

-David Bowie

Box' of Shaded Memories #5

Vietnam-Cambodia-Thailand backpacking trip in 2005 with Sam and Fish. As it turned out, we were the animals in the zoo - not them. And we danced, day after day, like caged circus monkeys for bananas - for them. So who's laughing now?

What can I say ... you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both.

A Poem

Colfax point.
Pimps and hoes,
And tricks in rows.
Women walk the streets,
With corns on their feets.
Broken dreams,
And no ice-cream.

Southpark, season 09, episode 07.

Box' of Shaded Memories #4

Box' of Shaded Memories #3

That damn elephant sure was heavy.

Box' of Shaded Memories #2

black sand. so much like you. whose reflection was it? dark clouds. so much like me. whose fortune were we talking about?