Talk of 'cultural appropriation,' as knuckleheaded leftists use this phrase, is bullshit. But bullshit is the stock-in-trade of the divisive and destructive Left.
Finally, with all due respect and gratitude, give a listen to Robert Johnson.
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London Ed responds:
No problem with ‘cultural appropriation’, which is the way all culture has been transmitted for millennia. Note Robert Johnson wore a pin stripe suit. And played an instrument that originated in Spain.
Re Clapton:
(1) Guitar. Page captures nicely the quarter tones of the Delta Blues, see e.g. the opening bars of this. Clapton follows more closely the Western diatonic classical scale so it’s not authentic sounding blues for me.
(2) Voice. Johnson sings from the dark depths of the soul e.g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd60nI4sa9A 0.55 onwards ‘standin at the crossroads, tryin to flag a ride .. aint nobody seem to know me, everybody pass me by’. Compare Crapton https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtLhPeLB9bA on the same verse around 1.10. Elevator music. Particularly ‘everybody pass me by’ which somewhat lacks the despairing alienated spirit of Johnson’s version, no?
BV: Ed touches on an interesting set of questions that I don't have time to tackle at the moment. But just to add to the data set: Charles Adnopoz, Robert Zimmerman, Michael Bloomfield. Three Jews from comfortable backgrounds who sought authenticity in the music of the down and out and dispossessed.
Admittedly, Clapton is not singing from the dark depths of a tormented soul. And if you saw Clapton at a crossroads flagging a ride, you'd pick him up for sure; if you saw someone who looked like Robert Johnson, though, you'd probably pass him by.
Bob Dylan finally gave his Nobel Prize for Literature lecture. I'm impressed. Besides his musical he mentions his literary influences. He cites many of the books I read as assigned readings in high school, books he claims to have read as assigned readings in grammar school! I'm talking about some serious tomes: Moby Dick, Ivanhoe, A Tale of Two Cities, Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and others.
Audio here. Dylan's comments on Moby Dick are from 6:27-12:30.
A BBC article with some of the text. Full text at first link above.
They perceive ours as a candle-and-teddy-bear society . . . We kill, you light candles.
And so acts of terrorism are not expressions of nihilism or desperation, but reasonable, methodical steps to topple a society that has become too weak and decadent to have the will to defend itself even though it has the means to defend itself.
Next stop: dhimmitude.
Am I wrong? I hope so!
And I hope we Amis learn something from the feckless Brits.
Had enough yet? If not, here is Heather Mac's latest.
Paul Brunton, Notebooks, vol. 15, Part II, p. 76, #316:
He will maintain a proper equilibrium between being aware of what is happening in the world, remaining in touch with it, and being imperturbable towards it, inwardly unaffected and inwardly detached from it.
Small is the number of those who can appreciate this as an ideal, and smaller still those capable of attaining it. Smallest of all is the number of those who attain it.
The Brits may want to rethink their gun laws in the light of recent events.
Katie Hopkins lays into Sadiq Khan, mayor of London.
Keep calm and carry on? Keep calm, and carry one!
By the way, are there any cities or towns in Muslim countries that have Christian or non-Muslim mayors or other government officials? Just asking!
Should we tolerate the intolerant? Should we, in the words of Leszek Kolakowski,
. . . tolerate political or religious movements which are hostile to tolerance and seek to destroy all the mechanisms which protect it, totalitarian movements which aim to impose their own despotic regime? Such movements may not be dangerous as long as they are small; then they can be tolerated. But when they expand and increase in strength, they must be tolerated, for by then they are invincible, and in the end an entire society can fall victim to the worst sort of tyranny. Thus it is that unlimited tolerance turns against itself and destroys the conditions of its own existence. (Freedom, Fame, Lying, and Betrayal, p. 39.)
Read that final sentence again, and again. And apply it to current events.
Kolakowski concludes that "movements which aim to destroy freedom should not be tolerated or granted the protection of law . . . " (Ibid.) and surely he is right about this. Toleration has limits. It does not enjoin suicide.
"This website publishes the latest contents from philosophy journals around the world."
Anecdote. When I taught at Boston College in the '70s I had a nursing student in one of my classes. One day I made mention of a philosophy journal. Sweet Darci said, "You mean they have journals of this stuff?"
The prime minister is right that ". . . our values – pluralistic British values – are superior to anything offered by the preachers and supporters of hate."
But her Enough is Enough statement shows that she and her countrymen lack the will to take the steps necessary to deal adequately with the Islamist scourge and defend their values.
She did not mention the necessity of a moratorium on Muslim immigration.
Nor did she mention the necessity of reinstating the death penalty.
So I predict that the 'new normal' will continue. After enough blood is shed and disruption caused, you will see the moratorium and the reinstatement.
Let's just hope that it doesn't take a nuclear event to rouse the Brits from their suicidal tolerance.
Here are some of my arguments in defense of capital punishment.
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London Ed responds,
I think significant progress has been made in that May specifically refers to ‘Islamist’ extremism, which she never has before. She also mentions some specific measures that will be taken. Only two days before that, Paul Nuttall (UKIP leader) in the BBC General Election debate said ‘Politicians need to have the courage to name [the problem]: it’s Islamist extremism’ and was jeered at by the other panelists. This article discusses.
BV: Progress, yes; but significant progress? The good lady shed a tiny bit of her political correctness and finally admitted publicly what everyone knew all along. Big deal! She now grants that 2 + 2 = 4.
Of course that is not as strong as saying that Islam (rather than a ‘perversion of Islam’ or suchlike) is the problem, but it is progress. She is a politician, and politicians speak in code, and are mindful of relationships with Islamic countries, of the reaction of sillier members of the public, and so on.
BV: Good point. Politicians, with the exception of Trump the the anti-politician, have to be politic, diplomatic, mindful of the foibles and fatuities of members of their audience. The trouble with this civility is that it typically goes too far and ends up in the precincts of the effete and the epicene. Western liberal politicians then become easy marks for thugs whether Nazi, Commie, Islamist, you name it. I might cite your own Neville Chamberlain as an example. Herr Hitler played him like a fiddle. The restoration of manly virtue among the tribe of politicians must then come in the form of boorish individuals like Donald J. Trump. Think of him as an unpleasant but necessary corrective.
I don’t see how the death penalty would deter suicide bombers.
BV: My dear Ed, you are making a nit-picking defeatist lefty move of which I cannot approve. There are people over here who say things like, "A wall along the Southern border won't stop illegals coming from the north." What a penetrating insight! As a logician, you like fallacies, or rather the avoidance thereof. The present fallacy is to think that if a policy won't solve every problem, then it won't solve any problem. The Great Wall of Trump won't solve every problem re: illegal aliens, but it will solve some of them.
Similarly, the swift and sure execution of jihadis won't deter suicide bombers, but it would deter those of the London Bridge stabber ilk, and many others besides.
But of course the restoration of the death penalty and its serious implementation won't happen until much more blood is shed if it happens at all. If PM May is only now coming to call the threat by a properly descriptive name, then there is little hope that she and others in power will come to their senses.
Here we go again. The third terrorist attack in the U. K. since March of this year. And so time to re-run the following entry from 5 December 2015. Please think it through for your own good and that of your descendants.
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And now San Bernardino. It is surely 'interesting' that in supposedly conservative media venues such as Fox News there has been no discussion, in the wake of this latest instance of Islamic terrorism, of the obvious question whether immigration from Muslim lands should be put on hold. Instead, time is wasted refuting silly liberal calls for more gun control. 'Interesting' but not surprising. Political correctness is so pervasive that even conservatives are infected with it. It is very hard for most of us, including conservatives, to believe that it is Islam itself and not the zealots of some hijacked version thereof that is the problem. But slowly, and very painfully, people are waking up. But I am not sanguine that only a few more such bloody events will jolt us into alertness. It will take many more.
So is it not eminently reasonable to call for a moratorium on immigration from Muslim lands? Here are some relevant points. I would say that they add up to a strong cumulative case argument for a moratorium.
1. There is no right to immigrate. See here for some arguments contra the supposed right by Steven A. Camarota. Here is my refutation of an argument pro. My astute commenters add further considerations. Since there is no right to immigrate, immigrants are to be allowed in only if they meet certain criteria. Surely we are under no obligation to allow in those who would destroy our way of life.
2. We philosophers will debate until doomsday about rights and duties and everything else. But in the meantime, shouldn't we in our capacity as citizens exercise prudence and advocate that our government exercise prudence? So even if in the end there is a right to immigrate, the prudent course would be to suspend this supposed right for the time being until we get a better fix on what is going on. Let's see if ISIS is contained or spreads. Let's observe events in Europe and in Britain. Let's see if Muslim leaders condemn terrorism. Let's measure the extent of Muslim assimilation.
3. "Overwhelming percentages of Muslims in many countries want Islamic law (sharia) to be the official law of the land, according to a worldwide survey by the Pew Research Center." Here. Now immigrants bring their culture and their values with them. Most Muslims will bring a commitment to sharia with them. But sharia is incompatible with our American values and the U. S. Constitution. Right here we have a very powerful reason to disallow immigration from Muslim lands.
4. You will tell me that not all Muslims subscribe to sharia, and you will be right. But how separate the sheep from the goats? Do you trust government officials to do the vetting? Are you not aware that people lie and that the Muslim doctrine of taqiyya justifies lying?
5. You will insist that not all Muslims are terrorists, and again you will be right. But almost all the terrorism in the world at the present time comes from Muslims acting upon Muslim beliefs.
Pay attention to the italicized phrase.
There are two important related distinctions we need to make.
There is first of all a distinction between committing murder because one's ideology, whether religious or non-religious, enjoins or justifies murder, and committing murder for non-ideological reasons or from non-ideological motives. For example, in the Charlie Hebdo attack, the murders were committed to avenge the blasphemy against Muhammad, the man Muslims call 'The Prophet' and consider Allah's messenger. And that is according to the terrorists themselves. Clearly, the terrorist acts were rooted in Muslim religious ideology in the same way that Communist and Nazi atrocities were rooted in Communist and Nazi political ideology, respectively. Compare that to a mafioso killing an innocent person who happens to have witnessed a crime the mafioso has committed. The latter's a mere criminal whose motives are crass and non-ideological: he just wanted to score some swag and wasn't about to be inconvenienced by a witness to his crime. "Dead men tell no tales."
The other distinction is between sociological and doctrinal uses of terms such as 'Mormon,' 'Catholic,' Buddhist,' and 'Muslim.' I know a man who is a Mormon in the sense that he was born and raised in a practicing Mormon family, was himself a practicing Mormon in his early youth, hails from a Mormon state, but then 'got philosophy,' went atheist, and now rejects all of the metaphysics of Mormonism. Is he now a Mormon or not? I say he is a Mormon sociologically but not doctrinally. He is a Mormon by upbringing but not by current belief and practice. This is a distinction that absolutely must be made, though I won't hold it against you if you think my terminology less than felicitous. Perhaps you can do better. Couch the distinction in any terms you like, but couch it.
Examples abound. An acquaintance of mine rejoices under the surname 'Anastasio.' He is Roman Catholic by upbringing, but currently a committed Buddhist by belief and practice. Or consider the notorious gangster 'Whitey' Bulger who is fortunately not an acquaintance of mine. Biographies of this criminal refer to him as Irish-Catholic, which is not wrong. But surely none of his unspeakably evil deeds sprang from Catholic moral teaching. Nor did they spring from Bulger's 'hijacking' of Catholicism. You could call him, with some justification, a Catholic criminal. But a Catholic who firebombs an abortion clinic to protest the evil of abortion is a Catholic criminal in an entirely different sense. The difference is between the sociological and the doctrinal.
6. Perhaps you will say to me that the percentage of Muslims who are terrorists is tiny. True. But all it takes is a handful, properly positioned, with the right devices, to bring the country to a screeching halt. And those who radicalize and inspire the terrorists need not be terrorists themselves. They could be imams in mosques operating in quiet and in secret.
7. You will tell me that a moratorium would keep out many good, decent Muslims who are willing to assimilate, who will not try to impose sharia, who will not work to undermine our system of government, and who do not condone terrorism. And you will be right. But again, there is no right to immigrate. So no wrong is done to good Muslims by preventing them from immigrating.
8. Think of it in terms of cost and benefit. Is there any net benefit from Muslim immigration? No. The cost outweighs the benefit. This is consistent with the frank admission that there are many fine Muslims who would add value to our society.
9. Perhaps you will call me a racist. I will return the compliment by calling you stupid for thinking that Islam is a race. Islam is a religious-political ideology.
It is Saturday night and I'm 'Islamed out.' I could say more but I've had enough for now. So I hand off to Patrick J. Buchanan, Time for a Moratorium on Immigration?
Mattie Earp was the first common-law wife of Wyatt Earp. She is buried in the Pinal Pioneer Cemetery a little east of where I live. I located her gravesite a few days ago and took the picture to the left. 'A. T.' abbreviates 'Arizona Territory.' More photos and commentary later, perhaps.
Rosalie (Rosie) Hamlin of Rosie and the Originals died at age 71 on March 30th. A one-hit wonder, she will be remembered for her Angel Baby from 1961. John Lennon loved this song and recorded a version of it. But of course nothing touches the original.
TRIGGER WARNING! The following may induce snowflake melt-down. The p.c.-whipped are strongly advised to don their pussy hats and proceed to their safe spaces.
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Is acting white cultural appropriation? No doubt, but what's wrong with that? What's wrong with cultural appropriation?
I culturally appropriate every day from the Greeks and the Romans and the Jews. Why shouldn't blacks borrow from and make use of the products of white culture?
I also appropriate culturally from the Jews who play the blues, who themselves 'culturally appropriated' the blues from black bluesmen. Mike Bloomfield, for example, not only appropriates, respectfully and gratefully, from the likes of B. B. King, but improves and outplays many of the originators as in Carmelita's Skiffle and Albert's Shuffle. Call me a racist! Call me a Jew lover!
I appropriated 'p.c.-whipped' from Ed Feser. Where did he get it? No idea: maybe he coined it. Maybe he 'appropriated' it. Heavens!
My Italian mother culturally appropriated the English language when she was ten years old. Later, she taught it to me. So I am a language appropriator at one remove. How dare an Italian learn the English language? Doesn't it belong to the English? Don't they own it?
The early Christians culturally appropriated Greek philosophy in order to articulate and defend their worldview. And it's a good thing they did; else we wouldn't be talking about it.
And what is our entire philosophical tradition if not a series of cultural appropriations from the Greeks, and Plato in particular?
The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them. [. . .] Thus in one sense by stating my belief that the train of thought in these lectures is Platonic, I am doing no more than expressing the hope that it falls within the European tradition. (Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, Corrected Edition, The Free Press, 1978, p. 39)
I could go on. But you get the point unless you are either stupid or a liberal. Is there any content to the latter disjunction? Or is it like 'firefly or glow bug'?
Most of us prefer nice people to surly pricks. And no doubt we should all try to be nicer to our world-mates. But there is such a thing as inappropriate niceness. Here are two automotive examples for your consideration.
I am following at a safe distance the motorist in front of me. Then said motorist brakes for a jaywalker, not to avoid hitting him, but to allow him to cross. The jaywalker is violating the law; why aid and abet his lawbreaking? Why be nice to someone who shows no respect for the rules of the road? Why risk causing an accident? These are among the questions the inappropriately nice should ask themselves.
I am waiting to make a left turn. A man in an oncoming vehicle, wanting to be nice and neighborly, gestures for me to make the turn despite his having the right-of-way. I make the turn but shake my head in disgust at the man's presumably unwitting and admittedly minor undermining of the rule of law.
The man was probably a liberal. Liberals are good at feeling, but not so good at thinking.
A good conservative maxim: Truth and right count for more than human feelings.
