Wednesday, October 17, 2007
On Logic, Faith, and "Free Thought":
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)
What about the Children? — Is Religion Child Abuse?
Just once I would like to see these sorts of atheists admit that it requires faith in order to reason because it does. Seriously.
The ability to reason is either true or false. Logic itself applied as we would say "properly" is either an assemblage of disconnected non-sequiturs which lead us nowhere or else it can lead us to being able to discern if not with certainty what is true than at the very least isolate what is probably and what is most definitely false. The very laws of logic -be they the law of identity, non-contradiction, excluded middle, etc.- themselves are presumed to be valid because without them, there is no capacity for logic to be operative; no frames of reference or foundation from which we can then utilize reason and logic itself.
Another way of saying it is that logic is not possible without recognizing as valid some rules that are required in order to utilize logic and reasoning to begin with. And since it is not possible to prove these rules as true or false without assuming they exist to begin with, there is no way we can empirically demonstrate in a manner that is not circuitous (and thus logically specious) in its approach that it is possible to utilize logic and reason at all.
For that reason, all this talk about "freethought" is an intrinsic charade. Think about it: the very sort of empirical evidence that people like Dawkins say they will accept is predicated upon accepting without scientific evidence that the basic laws universally accepted for being able to utilize logic and be able to reason do in fact exist and are themselves operative. It is unavoidable therefore that we require faith that those laws are true to enable us to try and explain reality, solve problems, discern what is false, etc. And as it requires faith to even reason at all, there cannot be anything intrinsically "irrational" about having faith in other non-emperically verifiable phenomena unless it is also "irrational" to be rational.
This is why I have no problem with non-militant atheists and agnostics but find those who are militant like Dawkins to be a bunch of hypocrites. Dawkins claims that theists are "being irrational" and "believing in something that you cannot subject to scientific scrutiny" and this is at the core of his critique. He therefore should heed the principle of "physician, heal thyself."
After all, people such as him believe that it is possible to be rational beings and utilize logic but they do not subject those presuppositions themselves to scientific scrutiny. Oh yes, they cannot do so because scientific scrutiny itself presupposes that the laws of reason and logic are both true and operative to begin with!!! If they are not, then scientific inquiry is not possible anyway and their precious "empericism" evaporates like dew in the morning sun.
If we really take it to brass tacks, whatever arguments people have about God, what God is like, whose conceptions of God are true, etc. they are no more "irrational" than arguments that are based on reason and logic -as in neither case can you definitively prove the existence of what you are presupposing. However, to presuppose the laws of reason and logic makes it possible to bring order out of what would otherwise be non-sequiturial chaos and this itself makes sense. The same is true for postulating the existence of a First Cause or Primary Mover - a "God" if you will Whom is Reason and Logic personified apart from whatever particular construction of "God" you happen to believe is most probable.
One last word on the idea of "child abuse" seems appropriate and it is on the abuse to the intellect that people like Dawkins inflict with their flawed and rationally specious positions. If there is anything that can be construed as "child abuse", certainly any weltanschauung which criticizes others for the same thing it engages in would be a good candidate as far as I am concerned. That would after all be abuse of a child's natural faculties and intrinsically retarding their mature intellectual development. But those who take the Dawkins school of thought to a militant degree inexorably by logical extension do exactly that -however much they try to pretend otherwise- and that my friends is its own form of child abuse.
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)
What about the Children? — Is Religion Child Abuse?
Just once I would like to see these sorts of atheists admit that it requires faith in order to reason because it does. Seriously.
The ability to reason is either true or false. Logic itself applied as we would say "properly" is either an assemblage of disconnected non-sequiturs which lead us nowhere or else it can lead us to being able to discern if not with certainty what is true than at the very least isolate what is probably and what is most definitely false. The very laws of logic -be they the law of identity, non-contradiction, excluded middle, etc.- themselves are presumed to be valid because without them, there is no capacity for logic to be operative; no frames of reference or foundation from which we can then utilize reason and logic itself.
Another way of saying it is that logic is not possible without recognizing as valid some rules that are required in order to utilize logic and reasoning to begin with. And since it is not possible to prove these rules as true or false without assuming they exist to begin with, there is no way we can empirically demonstrate in a manner that is not circuitous (and thus logically specious) in its approach that it is possible to utilize logic and reason at all.
For that reason, all this talk about "freethought" is an intrinsic charade. Think about it: the very sort of empirical evidence that people like Dawkins say they will accept is predicated upon accepting without scientific evidence that the basic laws universally accepted for being able to utilize logic and be able to reason do in fact exist and are themselves operative. It is unavoidable therefore that we require faith that those laws are true to enable us to try and explain reality, solve problems, discern what is false, etc. And as it requires faith to even reason at all, there cannot be anything intrinsically "irrational" about having faith in other non-emperically verifiable phenomena unless it is also "irrational" to be rational.
This is why I have no problem with non-militant atheists and agnostics but find those who are militant like Dawkins to be a bunch of hypocrites. Dawkins claims that theists are "being irrational" and "believing in something that you cannot subject to scientific scrutiny" and this is at the core of his critique. He therefore should heed the principle of "physician, heal thyself."
After all, people such as him believe that it is possible to be rational beings and utilize logic but they do not subject those presuppositions themselves to scientific scrutiny. Oh yes, they cannot do so because scientific scrutiny itself presupposes that the laws of reason and logic are both true and operative to begin with!!! If they are not, then scientific inquiry is not possible anyway and their precious "empericism" evaporates like dew in the morning sun.
If we really take it to brass tacks, whatever arguments people have about God, what God is like, whose conceptions of God are true, etc. they are no more "irrational" than arguments that are based on reason and logic -as in neither case can you definitively prove the existence of what you are presupposing. However, to presuppose the laws of reason and logic makes it possible to bring order out of what would otherwise be non-sequiturial chaos and this itself makes sense. The same is true for postulating the existence of a First Cause or Primary Mover - a "God" if you will Whom is Reason and Logic personified apart from whatever particular construction of "God" you happen to believe is most probable.
One last word on the idea of "child abuse" seems appropriate and it is on the abuse to the intellect that people like Dawkins inflict with their flawed and rationally specious positions. If there is anything that can be construed as "child abuse", certainly any weltanschauung which criticizes others for the same thing it engages in would be a good candidate as far as I am concerned. That would after all be abuse of a child's natural faculties and intrinsically retarding their mature intellectual development. But those who take the Dawkins school of thought to a militant degree inexorably by logical extension do exactly that -however much they try to pretend otherwise- and that my friends is its own form of child abuse.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Points to Ponder:
(On the Nobel Peace Prize and Contributions to Knowledge in General)
This posting to some extent coheres well with something I noted in a posting from earlier today and highlights a point I noted earlier that it would when posted. Nonetheless...
Winning the Nobel Prize is generally considered the ultimate achievement in any field, but even a casual look at a list of the people who have won that award should make it obvious that the selection of such winners is based primarily upon political factors rather than upon any actual contributions to knowledge. So-called “peer-review” is an oxymoron: if an idea is actually new, then the existence of peers is obviously impossible, which is why almost all of the truly valuable ideas and inventions have come from people who were totally outside the scientific community, people like Edison, Tesla, the Wright Brothers and a long list of others. [Arthur Jones]
(On the Nobel Peace Prize and Contributions to Knowledge in General)
This posting to some extent coheres well with something I noted in a posting from earlier today and highlights a point I noted earlier that it would when posted. Nonetheless...
Winning the Nobel Prize is generally considered the ultimate achievement in any field, but even a casual look at a list of the people who have won that award should make it obvious that the selection of such winners is based primarily upon political factors rather than upon any actual contributions to knowledge. So-called “peer-review” is an oxymoron: if an idea is actually new, then the existence of peers is obviously impossible, which is why almost all of the truly valuable ideas and inventions have come from people who were totally outside the scientific community, people like Edison, Tesla, the Wright Brothers and a long list of others. [Arthur Jones]
"The Drudgeford Files" Dept.
(A Rerum Novarum Quadruple Subject Thread)
When perusing Drudge back on October 12th (in a coffeeshop while waiting for a repair to the car to be completed), I found through various linkings the following news stories and wrote the following musings on them. Without further ado...
Al Gore and the Mission of the Nobel Prizes (John Berlau)
Though the subject of the Nobel Peace Prize is one that I have generally looked at with some benign "whatever" fashion{1}, there was never a revulsion from me pertaining to the award itself. It stands to reason that any noble intention that the late Alfred Nobel had with this award would not always be realized when there is some secret committee doing the awarding. And whatever problems there are with some of the past recipients of the award, they are to some extent explainable. I will now note my problems with some of the recipients in the 107 year history of this award being given out.
Strangely enough (perhaps), I have no real problem with recipients of the award all the way up to 1987. That is not to say that I would have given the awards as they were given mind you, only that nothing sticks out to me as problematical with the selections up to that point. Beginning in 1988 though, things begin looking dodgy in spots and I will now note the problematical recipients starting at that point in time:
--The United Nations Peacekeeping Forces (1988)
The idea that the UN deserves any awards considering how pathetic their trackrecord of achievement is in this area in recent decades -that explains my reasons for noting the 1988 award as problematical. (This is not the same UN that was around when Dag Hammarsjkold was given the award postumously in 1961.) But I must also confess that I approach this to some extent with the benefit of hindsight; ergo this one could be given less weight than the others I will note which follow it.
--Mikhail Gorbachev (1990)
My only gripe against Mikhail Gorbachev getting the award in 1990 is it is too much like giving the World Series trophy this year to the Chicago Cubs who I remind you all are not currently playing. Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II should have gotten the award that year if it was to be given to those who worked for peace. If Gorbachev was to be included in that grouping then that would be fine as he did play a crucial role in the ending of the Cold War. But to give it to just Gorbachev and not include the other three I mentioned was inexcusable and showed an obvious bias on the part of the nominating committee that year.
--Nelson Mandela (1993)
Nelson Mandala was and is a communist and the atrocities that have taken place during his tenure as head of South Africa -and which the ANC sanctioned prior to his tenure as head of South Africa- made him receiving the award rather dubious at best. However, he also was not the head of South Africa in 1993 so I must confess to approaching this one with some degree of anachronism. Objectively, if the award was going to be given to Frederik DeKlerk who headed South Africa at the time{2}, it is hard to see how someone on the other side of the struggle to end apartheid could not also receive the award and there was no greater symbol of the struggle than Nelson Mandela whose imprisonment for thirty years was to some extent a rallying point of reference for those struggling to achieve basic recognition for their fundamental rights in South Africa. For that reason and also diplomatic ones, the awarding to Mandela could be justified.
--Yasser Arafat (1994)
Yasser Arafat was a terrorist who never did one substantial thing in his whole miserable existence to advance the cause of the Palestinian people or seek real peace. This made the 1994 awarding a laugher. However, it would not have been diplomatically wise to have given it to the Israeli Prime Minister and Foreign Minister that year and not to Arafat since all three parties were involved in the project that was the basis for that year's award being given.
--United Nations and Kofi Annan -Joint Recipients (2001)
See my previous comments about 1988's recipients. Add to it (i) further ineptitude and the corruption of the UN which festered under Annan's watch as well as (ii) their lack of cajones in dealing with Saddam Hussein's constant violation of UN sanctions and the terms of the 1991 Gulf War ceasefire and this award can be seen for what it was: an undeserved awarding by any objective standards whatsoever.
--Jimmah Carter (2002)
As strange as it may seem, none of the above awardings (despite the problems noted) gave me reason to loathe the Nobel Peace Prize committee the way the 2002 award did. Even the 2001 award could perhaps be chalked up to not having anyone of note to award it to that year{3} so for that reason some leeway could be granted for the choice made. But not Jimmah Carter in 2002.
Jimmah Carter presided over the explosion of Muslim extremist movements and encouraged them by his ineptitude as president. He made a mess that subsequent presidents had to deal with in a variety of ways and with mixed success thus far. Further still, his negotiating skills with the North Koreans in 1994 could give reasonable people cause to wonder if a trained monkey could not have gotten a better deal than the one he got. And (of course) making a political statement in 2002 with his award was disgraceful and cheapened the award further than anything prior to that time had done.
Having said all of that, Carter did oversee the Camp DavidDiscords in 1978 and both Menachim Begin and Anwar Sadat were given the award that year. All things considered, if Carter had been given the award that year, it is hard to say that such a decision could not be justified in the same fashion awarding Arafat in 1994 and Mandela in 1993 could be. But Carter's star had fallen since 1978 -and any deserved reputation enhancement he received from his work with Habitat for Humanity since leaving the White House in 1981- was reduced by his ineptness as a negotiator in 1994 and his unexcuable public statements attempting to undercut the Commander in Chief in the runup to the war in Iraq.
Basically, I have had a serious lessening of respect for the Nobel Peace Prize particularly since it was used as a political football back in 2002 when Jimmah Carter was given the award. Having noted that however, I also could not see a problem with the recipents of the award since that time so it more or less returned to my status quo "benign whatever" attitude up until the present time. John Berlau sums up what the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Albert Gore Jr. this year really means in this succinct paragraph from the link above:
Al Gore has won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. This choice, more than any other Nobel Committee selection, marks the end of a 105-year era. In direct contradiction of Alfred Nobel's last will and testament, the selection of Gore essentially means the Peace Prize can no longer be said to be an award for improving the condition of humankind. Looking at Gore's writing, it's far from clear that Gore even believes that humanity is his most important priority.
Whatever one wants to say about awarding the UN or its "peacekeeping" forces with the award (1988), or the UN and its General Secretary (2001), at the very least one could make the argument that they meant well despite the mixed record overall where seeking to improve the conditions of humanity are concerned.
Similarly, one could view the end of apartheid in South Africa (the basis for the 1993 awards to deKlerk and Mandela) and the most significant attempt at peace between Israel and the Palestinians (the basis of the 1994 award which Arafat partook of) as grounds for meeting the intentions of the award as envisioned by its founder. And while I personally have lost a lot of respect for Jimmah Carter in the past fifteen odd years{4}, even his ineptitude as a negotiator in North Korea and other such endeavours could (maybe) be chalked up to not deliberate but instead accidental sabotage.{5} But none of these could be brought to bear to attempt to excuse this year's co-recipients. They have instead perpetrated one of the biggest hoaxes since Y2K and what they recommend would be such a striking departure from the stated aims and intentions of the late Alfred Nobel that the award is for all intensive purposes useless now. John Berlau adequately deals with this matter in the above article and comes to the same conclusion on the matter as your humble servant does; namely this:
--If the Nobel Committee goes with the "politically correct" winds, it is incumbent on every Nobel laureate who cares about the legacy of Alfred Nobel to denounce this terrible decision.
Precisely.
The Hamiltonian Ground (David Brooks)
The above article to a macro extent summarizes well your host's view of the Republican candidates at the present time. It also deals to some extent with some of the underlying principles I have been working on for another posting to be completed and blogged soon but that is all I will say for now except to exhort you to give the above article a read.
The genocide vote: Now is not the time (Jane Harman)
I have to admit it: when I heard about the proposed "genocide vote", I was storing away fire for the day of wrath and was preparing to really unload on the craven Democrats for this monument to symbolism over substance and trying to put partisan politics above national security, our military troops overseas, our geopolitical relationship with Turkey during a time of war, etc. But then I was alerted to this article by a former co-sponsor of the resolution who woke up to the very realities I was prepared to outline in detail. I thank her for seeing the delicacy of these matters and how sometimes imprudent zeal can not only fail to achieve anything of significance but can actually make matters significantly worse. (A subject I am covering in more detail in a soon-to-be-finished-and-ready-for-blogging post incidentally enough.)
Big Brother is Watching You (Whittaker Chambers)
Fifty years ago, Atlas Shrugged was published and fifty years ago, Whittaker Chambers wrote this biting critique of the work and some of the foundational presuppositions of its author. Despite some of my early intellectual influences being Objectivists, I find problems with some of the inexorable conclusions that one often draws from an Objectivist approach to reality. Chambers covers some of them in this review and also raises a few other ones that while I would not have been aware of them myself{6} would nonetheless not sit well with me including the caricature approach to different views in general. To quote a snippet of his review where this is touched on:
Since a great many of us dislike much that Miss Rand dislikes, quite as heartily as she does, many incline to take her at her word. It is the more persuasive, in some quarters, because the author deals wholly in the blackest blacks and the whitest whites. In this fiction everything, everybody, is either all good or all bad, without any of those intermediate shades which, in life, complicate reality and perplex the eye that seeks to probe it truly. This kind of simplifying pattern, of course, gives charm to most primitive storyknown as: The War between the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. In modern dress, it is a class war. Both sides to it are caricatures.
Whatever problems I have with people of certain outlooks, I do not buy into the notion that anyone on earth is all white or all black; ergo such an outlook is not one that resonates well with me.
Systems of philosophic materialism, so long as they merely circle outside this world’s atmosphere, matter little to most of us. The trouble is that they keep coming down to earth. It is when a system of materialist ideas presumes to give positive answers to real problems of our real life that mischief starts. In an age like ours, in which a highly complex technological society is everywhere in a high state of instability, such answers, however philosophic, translate quickly into political realities. And in the degree to which problems of complexity and instability are most bewildering to masses of men, a temptation sets in to let some species of Big Brother solve and supervise them.
I concur fully with the above assessment. Any system or application of a system which does not take ethics and morality into account -which includes a recognition and support of the fundamental rights of people properly understood{7}- will inexorably become totalitarianist. And while more could be noted on this matter (and in the future may well be), that is all I have time for now.
Notes:
{1} This view started with the 1990 awarding to Mikhail Gorbachev if I recall correctly.
{2} Rationally, I can see giving the award to the head of an apartheid-supporting nation who dismantled the system of apartheid in his nation; ergo my view of DeKlerk receiving the award in 1993 lest anyone wonder.
{3} I am trying to give a charitable interpretation here lest anyone wonder.
{4} His work with Habitat for Humanity had rehabilitated his reputation in my eyes for some time subsequent to his leaving office though (admittedly) my assessment of him and his time in office was not formed until after he had departed for various reasons -including that I was too focused on playing "Star Wars" and other such games around that time chronologically ;-)
{5} See footnote three and multiply by three.
{6} I say this as I have not read Atlas Shrugged in its totality but only select passages from it here and there over the years. Trusting for a moment the veracity of Chambers' review, he notes several elements to this book which I had only noticed faintly in the parts of it I had read. The overall tone he claims the book possesses is one which (if true) would have probably turned me off from finishing the book had I attempted to read it from start to finish.
{7} Emphasis on the words "properly understood" of course -a distinctionwith a difference and one that not many people try to make nowadays.
(A Rerum Novarum Quadruple Subject Thread)
When perusing Drudge back on October 12th (in a coffeeshop while waiting for a repair to the car to be completed), I found through various linkings the following news stories and wrote the following musings on them. Without further ado...
Al Gore and the Mission of the Nobel Prizes (John Berlau)
Though the subject of the Nobel Peace Prize is one that I have generally looked at with some benign "whatever" fashion{1}, there was never a revulsion from me pertaining to the award itself. It stands to reason that any noble intention that the late Alfred Nobel had with this award would not always be realized when there is some secret committee doing the awarding. And whatever problems there are with some of the past recipients of the award, they are to some extent explainable. I will now note my problems with some of the recipients in the 107 year history of this award being given out.
Strangely enough (perhaps), I have no real problem with recipients of the award all the way up to 1987. That is not to say that I would have given the awards as they were given mind you, only that nothing sticks out to me as problematical with the selections up to that point. Beginning in 1988 though, things begin looking dodgy in spots and I will now note the problematical recipients starting at that point in time:
--The United Nations Peacekeeping Forces (1988)
The idea that the UN deserves any awards considering how pathetic their trackrecord of achievement is in this area in recent decades -that explains my reasons for noting the 1988 award as problematical. (This is not the same UN that was around when Dag Hammarsjkold was given the award postumously in 1961.) But I must also confess that I approach this to some extent with the benefit of hindsight; ergo this one could be given less weight than the others I will note which follow it.
--Mikhail Gorbachev (1990)
My only gripe against Mikhail Gorbachev getting the award in 1990 is it is too much like giving the World Series trophy this year to the Chicago Cubs who I remind you all are not currently playing. Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II should have gotten the award that year if it was to be given to those who worked for peace. If Gorbachev was to be included in that grouping then that would be fine as he did play a crucial role in the ending of the Cold War. But to give it to just Gorbachev and not include the other three I mentioned was inexcusable and showed an obvious bias on the part of the nominating committee that year.
--Nelson Mandela (1993)
Nelson Mandala was and is a communist and the atrocities that have taken place during his tenure as head of South Africa -and which the ANC sanctioned prior to his tenure as head of South Africa- made him receiving the award rather dubious at best. However, he also was not the head of South Africa in 1993 so I must confess to approaching this one with some degree of anachronism. Objectively, if the award was going to be given to Frederik DeKlerk who headed South Africa at the time{2}, it is hard to see how someone on the other side of the struggle to end apartheid could not also receive the award and there was no greater symbol of the struggle than Nelson Mandela whose imprisonment for thirty years was to some extent a rallying point of reference for those struggling to achieve basic recognition for their fundamental rights in South Africa. For that reason and also diplomatic ones, the awarding to Mandela could be justified.
--Yasser Arafat (1994)
Yasser Arafat was a terrorist who never did one substantial thing in his whole miserable existence to advance the cause of the Palestinian people or seek real peace. This made the 1994 awarding a laugher. However, it would not have been diplomatically wise to have given it to the Israeli Prime Minister and Foreign Minister that year and not to Arafat since all three parties were involved in the project that was the basis for that year's award being given.
--United Nations and Kofi Annan -Joint Recipients (2001)
See my previous comments about 1988's recipients. Add to it (i) further ineptitude and the corruption of the UN which festered under Annan's watch as well as (ii) their lack of cajones in dealing with Saddam Hussein's constant violation of UN sanctions and the terms of the 1991 Gulf War ceasefire and this award can be seen for what it was: an undeserved awarding by any objective standards whatsoever.
--Jimmah Carter (2002)
As strange as it may seem, none of the above awardings (despite the problems noted) gave me reason to loathe the Nobel Peace Prize committee the way the 2002 award did. Even the 2001 award could perhaps be chalked up to not having anyone of note to award it to that year{3} so for that reason some leeway could be granted for the choice made. But not Jimmah Carter in 2002.
Jimmah Carter presided over the explosion of Muslim extremist movements and encouraged them by his ineptitude as president. He made a mess that subsequent presidents had to deal with in a variety of ways and with mixed success thus far. Further still, his negotiating skills with the North Koreans in 1994 could give reasonable people cause to wonder if a trained monkey could not have gotten a better deal than the one he got. And (of course) making a political statement in 2002 with his award was disgraceful and cheapened the award further than anything prior to that time had done.
Having said all of that, Carter did oversee the Camp David
Basically, I have had a serious lessening of respect for the Nobel Peace Prize particularly since it was used as a political football back in 2002 when Jimmah Carter was given the award. Having noted that however, I also could not see a problem with the recipents of the award since that time so it more or less returned to my status quo "benign whatever" attitude up until the present time. John Berlau sums up what the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Albert Gore Jr. this year really means in this succinct paragraph from the link above:
Al Gore has won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. This choice, more than any other Nobel Committee selection, marks the end of a 105-year era. In direct contradiction of Alfred Nobel's last will and testament, the selection of Gore essentially means the Peace Prize can no longer be said to be an award for improving the condition of humankind. Looking at Gore's writing, it's far from clear that Gore even believes that humanity is his most important priority.
Whatever one wants to say about awarding the UN or its "peacekeeping" forces with the award (1988), or the UN and its General Secretary (2001), at the very least one could make the argument that they meant well despite the mixed record overall where seeking to improve the conditions of humanity are concerned.
Similarly, one could view the end of apartheid in South Africa (the basis for the 1993 awards to deKlerk and Mandela) and the most significant attempt at peace between Israel and the Palestinians (the basis of the 1994 award which Arafat partook of) as grounds for meeting the intentions of the award as envisioned by its founder. And while I personally have lost a lot of respect for Jimmah Carter in the past fifteen odd years{4}, even his ineptitude as a negotiator in North Korea and other such endeavours could (maybe) be chalked up to not deliberate but instead accidental sabotage.{5} But none of these could be brought to bear to attempt to excuse this year's co-recipients. They have instead perpetrated one of the biggest hoaxes since Y2K and what they recommend would be such a striking departure from the stated aims and intentions of the late Alfred Nobel that the award is for all intensive purposes useless now. John Berlau adequately deals with this matter in the above article and comes to the same conclusion on the matter as your humble servant does; namely this:
--If the Nobel Committee goes with the "politically correct" winds, it is incumbent on every Nobel laureate who cares about the legacy of Alfred Nobel to denounce this terrible decision.
Precisely.
The Hamiltonian Ground (David Brooks)
The above article to a macro extent summarizes well your host's view of the Republican candidates at the present time. It also deals to some extent with some of the underlying principles I have been working on for another posting to be completed and blogged soon but that is all I will say for now except to exhort you to give the above article a read.
The genocide vote: Now is not the time (Jane Harman)
I have to admit it: when I heard about the proposed "genocide vote", I was storing away fire for the day of wrath and was preparing to really unload on the craven Democrats for this monument to symbolism over substance and trying to put partisan politics above national security, our military troops overseas, our geopolitical relationship with Turkey during a time of war, etc. But then I was alerted to this article by a former co-sponsor of the resolution who woke up to the very realities I was prepared to outline in detail. I thank her for seeing the delicacy of these matters and how sometimes imprudent zeal can not only fail to achieve anything of significance but can actually make matters significantly worse. (A subject I am covering in more detail in a soon-to-be-finished-and-ready-for-blogging post incidentally enough.)
Big Brother is Watching You (Whittaker Chambers)
Fifty years ago, Atlas Shrugged was published and fifty years ago, Whittaker Chambers wrote this biting critique of the work and some of the foundational presuppositions of its author. Despite some of my early intellectual influences being Objectivists, I find problems with some of the inexorable conclusions that one often draws from an Objectivist approach to reality. Chambers covers some of them in this review and also raises a few other ones that while I would not have been aware of them myself{6} would nonetheless not sit well with me including the caricature approach to different views in general. To quote a snippet of his review where this is touched on:
Since a great many of us dislike much that Miss Rand dislikes, quite as heartily as she does, many incline to take her at her word. It is the more persuasive, in some quarters, because the author deals wholly in the blackest blacks and the whitest whites. In this fiction everything, everybody, is either all good or all bad, without any of those intermediate shades which, in life, complicate reality and perplex the eye that seeks to probe it truly. This kind of simplifying pattern, of course, gives charm to most primitive storyknown as: The War between the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. In modern dress, it is a class war. Both sides to it are caricatures.
Whatever problems I have with people of certain outlooks, I do not buy into the notion that anyone on earth is all white or all black; ergo such an outlook is not one that resonates well with me.
Systems of philosophic materialism, so long as they merely circle outside this world’s atmosphere, matter little to most of us. The trouble is that they keep coming down to earth. It is when a system of materialist ideas presumes to give positive answers to real problems of our real life that mischief starts. In an age like ours, in which a highly complex technological society is everywhere in a high state of instability, such answers, however philosophic, translate quickly into political realities. And in the degree to which problems of complexity and instability are most bewildering to masses of men, a temptation sets in to let some species of Big Brother solve and supervise them.
I concur fully with the above assessment. Any system or application of a system which does not take ethics and morality into account -which includes a recognition and support of the fundamental rights of people properly understood{7}- will inexorably become totalitarianist. And while more could be noted on this matter (and in the future may well be), that is all I have time for now.
Notes:
{1} This view started with the 1990 awarding to Mikhail Gorbachev if I recall correctly.
{2} Rationally, I can see giving the award to the head of an apartheid-supporting nation who dismantled the system of apartheid in his nation; ergo my view of DeKlerk receiving the award in 1993 lest anyone wonder.
{3} I am trying to give a charitable interpretation here lest anyone wonder.
{4} His work with Habitat for Humanity had rehabilitated his reputation in my eyes for some time subsequent to his leaving office though (admittedly) my assessment of him and his time in office was not formed until after he had departed for various reasons -including that I was too focused on playing "Star Wars" and other such games around that time chronologically ;-)
{5} See footnote three and multiply by three.
{6} I say this as I have not read Atlas Shrugged in its totality but only select passages from it here and there over the years. Trusting for a moment the veracity of Chambers' review, he notes several elements to this book which I had only noticed faintly in the parts of it I had read. The overall tone he claims the book possesses is one which (if true) would have probably turned me off from finishing the book had I attempted to read it from start to finish.
{7} Emphasis on the words "properly understood" of course -a distinctionwith a difference and one that not many people try to make nowadays.
As I consider one of the threads to be posted to this weblog shortly upon its completion, it is interesting to have discovered through some web surfing a similar view of ours on the subject of the Nobel Prize as enunciated by the late renaissance man Arthur Jones (RIP). He was one of the notable influences of your host at Rerum Novarum as we have noted on occasion at sundry times and divers manners over the years (most recently here). Anyway, that posting (to be blogged soon) can serve as a bit of a foretaste to something we will be blogging on soon as well as an encapsulation of another principle which we have often enunciated over the years at this humble weblog. But that is all I want to say on the matter at the moment as it is late and I need to get some rest.
In light of summer which has faded, before we start getting really bad weather up here in Seattle, and as another birthday for your weblog host is imminent, it seems appropriate to denote in sonnet form the changes in more ways than one. Without further ado...
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
[William Shakespeare: Sonnet XVIII]
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
[William Shakespeare: Sonnet XVIII]
Sunday, October 14, 2007
On Blogging in General, My Approaches To It, Remembering Two Musical Legends and Three Major Influences, Etc:
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)
[This thread was predominantly drafted back in early September but due to time constraints was not able to be finished until now. -ISM]
I would be remiss in not mentioning at the start of these musings that September 3rd was the birthday of blues legend Freddy King. I wrote in some length on him last year and encourage readers to review that thread to learn more{1} about the late great "Texas Cannonball" (may he rest in peace).
On the subject of blogging, there are many ways of going about writing on a blog or in other online mediums. I have gone over this a few times in the past and probably will in the future the approaches I use to draw ideas for blogging. One of them is that I am by nature a bit of a contrarian and always have been. That in and of itself is a departure from most people but frankly if you are not to some extent unique -either in your views, your approach to explaining your views, how you go about discussing the subjects you want to discuss, etc.- then it is difficult to be perceived apart from the general mass of those with similarities in their outlooks as yours.
The blogging medium itself is one that I consciously recognized early on{2} had a number of ways to do it and I did not want to approach the way many others do. Or as was noted in a weblog posting within the first year of blogging and when the weblog was still in an early part of its growth:
[Blogging a bunch of links] is not something that interests me for many reasons - though I do have my days on occasion when I am in the mood to mostly post links without much commentary.
...
I can track stuff down with the best of them but my problem is that I cannot simply post a lot of links and not comment on them. And my reason for this is [due to] the tendencies of the media to try and paint people [of a generally conservative disposition] as either criminal or weird. And if I can do my part to make "a dent in public discourse" then I will do that. But one way I cannot do that is to simply be a vending machine of links.
For if I did do that too regularly, why would I provide any incentive to actually read Rerum Novarum and not Instapundit??? And why read Instapundit and not the two columns on the front page of Investors Business Daily??? I could deconstruct this into near-infinity so I will stop at this time as I am sure you get the idea. My goal is simply to muse on whatever strikes my fancy. In short, there is a reason that you will seldom see breaking stories at this humble weblog.[...]
I tend to prefer to let others bring up breaking issues and then I respond to them. There are tactical reasons for this as well as practical ones. Part of the reason is that I am too critical of journalism in general of rushing to print anything they think can make a story and then if they err on A1 - which happens more frequently than most people would believe, they correct themselves on Q14 where no one sees it.[...]
I find if I let others break the story, I can benefit from their efforts and also circumvent the problems that can come with seeking to "break" a story before anyone else. And of course letting others hash out the main points provides an opportunity to approach the subjects in a way that is to some degree different than anyone else.
...
Criticism is sometimes justified but usually those who make a habit of it are incapable of separating legitimate criticism from childlike rantings. I believe we do a reasonable job of that separation here; however that does not mean there is no room for improvement of course. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa June 11, 2003)]
I should probably note that even early on I was not predisposed to post a lot of links without commentary but I did it to a greater extent early on than I subsequently have. There are a few reasons for this but rather than go into that now, there are many strengths to the approach I take. One is that it makes it easier to focus on the real underlying issues of a subject and not so much of the trivial surface stuff that most people focus on. However, one of the problems with imposing on oneself a degree of contemporary ignorance of media overexposure is that stuff one would be interested in if they heard of it gets lost as well. The strengths I could list for my overall approach to these matters are legion. The weaknesses while few are nonetheless worth noting and I will give three such examples at this time of news stories I did not hear of until weeks after the fact.
The first example is this thread from the New York Times froma couple of weeks two months ago:
Max Roach, a Founder of Modern Jazz, Dies at 83
Now the only reason I know of this link is that I saw on the cover of a jazz periodical at the library an article about the late great Max Roach, God rest his soul. That got me to do a google search and the above article was found on him. I am a music connoisseur of many styles but one style I like where my overall knowledge is not that good is jazz. Having said that though, one cannot be even minimally familiar with jazz and not know about Max Roach. He was unquestionably the greatest jazz drummer ever. Indeed, his influence went beyond jazz with some of the greatest rock and roll drummers of the '60s and '70s being unquestionably influenced by Roach either directly (i.e Ginger Baker and Neil Peart) or indirectly (i.e. John Bonham, Keith Moon).
Within the last couple ofdays weeks we saw pass on also the greatest tenor since Enrico Caruso, Luciano Pavarotti. As he is much better known than Max Roach, I will not say much on him that has not been said by others far more competent to discuss that genre of music than myself. I refer of course to fellow musicians including his opera peers and fellow Three Tenors performer Jose Carraras and Placido Domingo who were involved in a musical memorial and who (along with numerous others) spoke fondly of him here. And it seems fitting to include a clip of the great Pavarotti (RIP) so here is one of him singing Nessun Dorma. In three words: he was phenomenal.
Also a missed news story in that time span was the death of Michael Jackson (may he rest in peace). Those familiar with your host's love of beer, wine, and other spirits may well know whom I speak of -suffice to say it is not the same fella who owns Neverland Ranch. Lovers of fine beer will hopefully join me in lifting a glass to his memory -if not for Michael Jackson and the world of fine imports he either exposed me to or encouraged me to seek out and try, my knowledge of beer would be so much less than it is to say nothing of my appreciation for the truly good stuff which is most assuredly not made in America.{3}
Finally, there is the passing of Arthur Jones -founder of Nautilus and a certified renaissance man in many respects. The influence he had on my intellectual formation -both directly and particularly by the influence he had on one of my major intellectual mentors- cannot be emphasized enough. He was one of those who taught me and others who fell under the sway of his influence to not passively accept "conventional wisdom" on anything and indeed that lesson (learned at a young age thankfully) has served me well lo these many years later.
It is my hope that these great men (both the recently as well as not-so-recently deceased) will rest peacefully with the souls of the faithfully departed in the bosom of God for their utilization of the tremendous gifts they gave to others. Perhaps if I had been a little less media ignorant than I had been in the past couple of months{4} I would have caught these events sooner. But even if I had been, the possibility of missing them was still a significant one and considering how much garbage one has to sift through to find the wheat amongst the chaff. (Due to the overstressing nature of 24/7 news cycles.)
Notes:
{1} For those interested in more about Freddy King, here and here are a couple links of him playing live.
{2} After I adjusted to it and the degree of freedom here which as I admitted back in May did not happen automatically or without a degree of "growing pains":
[L]ife itself is a process of growth and development across a broad continuum. This includes weblog writing and interests.
We have no problem admitting that it took a bit of time before this weblog really started to take a discernable shape and some of the features and/or principles which have become standard or typical over time were in the "finding their feet" stage early on. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa May 15, 2007)]
{3} This is not to deprecate some of the microbrews that are made in various locales mind you; only that my operative presupposition with beer is that foreign brews are to be preferred whenever possible except for Japanese beer which has the singular distinction of being the only nation where the mass-produced beers are worse than those made in America.
{4} I have been gradually imposing a greater media ignorance on myself than I normally have and deliberately for reasonsI may touch on at some point later on. I have actually explained recently.
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)
[This thread was predominantly drafted back in early September but due to time constraints was not able to be finished until now. -ISM]
I would be remiss in not mentioning at the start of these musings that September 3rd was the birthday of blues legend Freddy King. I wrote in some length on him last year and encourage readers to review that thread to learn more{1} about the late great "Texas Cannonball" (may he rest in peace).
On the subject of blogging, there are many ways of going about writing on a blog or in other online mediums. I have gone over this a few times in the past and probably will in the future the approaches I use to draw ideas for blogging. One of them is that I am by nature a bit of a contrarian and always have been. That in and of itself is a departure from most people but frankly if you are not to some extent unique -either in your views, your approach to explaining your views, how you go about discussing the subjects you want to discuss, etc.- then it is difficult to be perceived apart from the general mass of those with similarities in their outlooks as yours.
The blogging medium itself is one that I consciously recognized early on{2} had a number of ways to do it and I did not want to approach the way many others do. Or as was noted in a weblog posting within the first year of blogging and when the weblog was still in an early part of its growth:
[Blogging a bunch of links] is not something that interests me for many reasons - though I do have my days on occasion when I am in the mood to mostly post links without much commentary.
...
I can track stuff down with the best of them but my problem is that I cannot simply post a lot of links and not comment on them. And my reason for this is [due to] the tendencies of the media to try and paint people [of a generally conservative disposition] as either criminal or weird. And if I can do my part to make "a dent in public discourse" then I will do that. But one way I cannot do that is to simply be a vending machine of links.
For if I did do that too regularly, why would I provide any incentive to actually read Rerum Novarum and not Instapundit??? And why read Instapundit and not the two columns on the front page of Investors Business Daily??? I could deconstruct this into near-infinity so I will stop at this time as I am sure you get the idea. My goal is simply to muse on whatever strikes my fancy. In short, there is a reason that you will seldom see breaking stories at this humble weblog.[...]
I tend to prefer to let others bring up breaking issues and then I respond to them. There are tactical reasons for this as well as practical ones. Part of the reason is that I am too critical of journalism in general of rushing to print anything they think can make a story and then if they err on A1 - which happens more frequently than most people would believe, they correct themselves on Q14 where no one sees it.[...]
I find if I let others break the story, I can benefit from their efforts and also circumvent the problems that can come with seeking to "break" a story before anyone else. And of course letting others hash out the main points provides an opportunity to approach the subjects in a way that is to some degree different than anyone else.
...
Criticism is sometimes justified but usually those who make a habit of it are incapable of separating legitimate criticism from childlike rantings. I believe we do a reasonable job of that separation here; however that does not mean there is no room for improvement of course. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa June 11, 2003)]
I should probably note that even early on I was not predisposed to post a lot of links without commentary but I did it to a greater extent early on than I subsequently have. There are a few reasons for this but rather than go into that now, there are many strengths to the approach I take. One is that it makes it easier to focus on the real underlying issues of a subject and not so much of the trivial surface stuff that most people focus on. However, one of the problems with imposing on oneself a degree of contemporary ignorance of media overexposure is that stuff one would be interested in if they heard of it gets lost as well. The strengths I could list for my overall approach to these matters are legion. The weaknesses while few are nonetheless worth noting and I will give three such examples at this time of news stories I did not hear of until weeks after the fact.
The first example is this thread from the New York Times from
Max Roach, a Founder of Modern Jazz, Dies at 83
Now the only reason I know of this link is that I saw on the cover of a jazz periodical at the library an article about the late great Max Roach, God rest his soul. That got me to do a google search and the above article was found on him. I am a music connoisseur of many styles but one style I like where my overall knowledge is not that good is jazz. Having said that though, one cannot be even minimally familiar with jazz and not know about Max Roach. He was unquestionably the greatest jazz drummer ever. Indeed, his influence went beyond jazz with some of the greatest rock and roll drummers of the '60s and '70s being unquestionably influenced by Roach either directly (i.e Ginger Baker and Neil Peart) or indirectly (i.e. John Bonham, Keith Moon).
Within the last couple of
Also a missed news story in that time span was the death of Michael Jackson (may he rest in peace). Those familiar with your host's love of beer, wine, and other spirits may well know whom I speak of -suffice to say it is not the same fella who owns Neverland Ranch. Lovers of fine beer will hopefully join me in lifting a glass to his memory -if not for Michael Jackson and the world of fine imports he either exposed me to or encouraged me to seek out and try, my knowledge of beer would be so much less than it is to say nothing of my appreciation for the truly good stuff which is most assuredly not made in America.{3}
Finally, there is the passing of Arthur Jones -founder of Nautilus and a certified renaissance man in many respects. The influence he had on my intellectual formation -both directly and particularly by the influence he had on one of my major intellectual mentors- cannot be emphasized enough. He was one of those who taught me and others who fell under the sway of his influence to not passively accept "conventional wisdom" on anything and indeed that lesson (learned at a young age thankfully) has served me well lo these many years later.
It is my hope that these great men (both the recently as well as not-so-recently deceased) will rest peacefully with the souls of the faithfully departed in the bosom of God for their utilization of the tremendous gifts they gave to others. Perhaps if I had been a little less media ignorant than I had been in the past couple of months{4} I would have caught these events sooner. But even if I had been, the possibility of missing them was still a significant one and considering how much garbage one has to sift through to find the wheat amongst the chaff. (Due to the overstressing nature of 24/7 news cycles.)
Notes:
{1} For those interested in more about Freddy King, here and here are a couple links of him playing live.
{2} After I adjusted to it and the degree of freedom here which as I admitted back in May did not happen automatically or without a degree of "growing pains":
[L]ife itself is a process of growth and development across a broad continuum. This includes weblog writing and interests.
We have no problem admitting that it took a bit of time before this weblog really started to take a discernable shape and some of the features and/or principles which have become standard or typical over time were in the "finding their feet" stage early on. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa May 15, 2007)]
{3} This is not to deprecate some of the microbrews that are made in various locales mind you; only that my operative presupposition with beer is that foreign brews are to be preferred whenever possible except for Japanese beer which has the singular distinction of being the only nation where the mass-produced beers are worse than those made in America.
{4} I have been gradually imposing a greater media ignorance on myself than I normally have and deliberately for reasons
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