Despite the term's largely pejorative connotation, propaganda is not by definition false or misleading or harmful. Propaganda is anything of a verbal or pictorial nature that is propagated to influence behavior. Propaganda can consist of truths or falsehoods, good advice or bad, exhortation to good behavior or subornation of bad. Anti-smoking and anti-drug messaging are propaganda but the messages are salutary. Leftist propaganda is destructive, as recent events make abundantly clear, while conservative propaganda inspires ameliorative action.
Month: October 2021
Saturday Night at the Oldies: Weather Conditions
Earl Scruggs and Friends, Foggy Mountain Breakdown
Ella Fitzgerald, Misty. Beats the Johnny Mathis version. A standard from the Great American Songbook.
Jimi Hendrix, Purple Haze. Not from the Great American Songbook. And presumably not about weather conditions. 'Scuse me while I kiss the sky? Or: 'Scuse me while I kiss this guy?
Cream, Sunshine of Your Love
Tom Waits, Emotional Weather Report
Art Garfunkel and James Taylor, Crying in the Rain. Written by Carole King and popularized by the Everly Bros.
Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain. Written by Fred Rose and performed by Roy Acuff in the '40s.
Now my hair is turned to silver
All my life I've loved in vain
I can see her star in heaven
Blue eyes cryin' in the rain.Someday when we meet up yonder
We'll stroll hand in hand again
In a land that knows no parting
Blue eyes crying in the rain.
Allman Bros., Blue Sky
Kansas, Dust in the Wind
Eric Clapton, Let It Rain
Dave van Ronk and the Hudson Dusters, Clouds ("Both Sides Now"). This beautiful version by "The Mayor of MacDougal Street" goes out to Oregon luthier Dave Bagwill who I know will appreciate it. Judy Collins made a hit of it. And you still doubt that the '60s was the greatest decade for American popular music? Speaking of the greatest decade, it was when the greatest writer of American popular songs, bar none, Bob Dylan, made his mark. Some generational chauvinism is justified!
Joan Baez, A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall Could Johnny Mercer write a song like this?
Eva Cassidy, Over the Rainbow. Another old standard from the Great American Songbook.
Tom Waits, On a Foggy Night
Rolling Stones, She's a Rainbow
Dan Fogelberg, Rhythm of the Rain
Cascades, Rhythm of the Rain. The original.
Dee Clark, Raindrops. Manny Mora:
"Raindrops" is a 1961 song by the American R&B singer Dee Clark. Released in April of that same year, this ballad peaked at position 2 on the Hot 100 and at position 3 on the R&B chart. [. . .]
Clark's biggest hit was also his last. [. . .]
Clark had a brief revival in 1975 when his song "Ride a Wild Horse" became a surprise Top 30 hit in the UK Singles Chart, becoming his first chart hit in the UK since "Just Keep It Up." Afterwards, Clark performed mostly on the oldies circuit. By the late 1980s, he was in dire straits financially, living in a welfare hotel in Toccoa, Georgia. Despite suffering a stroke in 1987 that left him partially paralyzed and with a mild speech impediment, he continued to perform until his death on December 7th 1990, in Smyrna, Georgia, from a heart attack at the age of 52. His last concert was with the Jimmy Gilstrap Band at the Portman Lounge in Anderson, South Carolina.
Dave Bagwill sends us to a clip in which Dave van Ronk talks a bit about the days of the "Great American Folk Scare" and then sings his signature number, "Green, Green, Rocky Road."
Don’t Surrender to the Left on Language
The Left's destructiveness extends even unto language. The subversion of language is the mother of all subversion. Punch back against the linguistic hijackers. Here's some argumentative ammo from Peter Kreeft's Socratic Logic, 3rd ed., p. 36, n. 1:
The use of the traditional inclusive generic pronoun "he" is a decision of language, not of gender justice. There are only six alternatives. (1) We could use the grammatically misleading and numerically incorrect "they." But when we say "one baby was healthier than the others because they didn't drink that milk," we do not know whether the antecedent of "they" is "one" or "others," so we don't know whether to give or take away the milk. Such language codes could be dangerous to baby's health. (2) Another alternative is the politically intrusive "in-your-face" generic "she," which I would probably use if I were an angry, politically intrusive, in-your-face woman, but I am not any of those things. (3) Changing "he" to "he or she" refutes itself in such comically clumsy and ugly revisions as the following: "What does it profit a man or woman if he or she gains the whole world but loses his or her own soul? Or what shall a man or woman give in exchange for his or her soul?" The answer is: he or she will give up his or her linguistic sanity. (4) We could also be both intrusive and clumsy by saying "she or he." (5) Or we could use the neuter "it," which is both dehumanizing and inaccurate. (6) Or we could combine all the linguistic garbage together and use "she or he or it," which, abbreviated, would sound like "sh . . . it." I believe in the equal intelligence and value of women, but not in the intelligence or value of "political correctness," linguistic ugliness, grammatical inaccuracy, conceptual confusion, or dehumanizing pronouns.
What a sexist Neanderthaler this Kreeft fellow is! Send him to a re-education camp!
Faith Animated by Doubt
A living faith is animated by doubt. Faith dies when it hardens into a subjective certainty and a moribund complacency. I have had this thought for years. Each time I re-enact it, it strikes me as true. I was pleased to discover recently that T. S. Eliot holds the same or a very similar view:
'For people of intellect I think that doubt is inevitable,' Eliot once told an interviewer. The doubter is a man who takes the problem of his faith seriously.'
The quotation is from the outstanding 712 pp. biography by Lyndall Gordon, T. S. Eliot: An Imperfect Life, W. W. Norton & Co, 1998, p. 112.
Doubt, the engine of inquiry, is the purifier of the quest for contact with that which lies beyond inquiry.
Not All Academic Philosophers are Leftists!
Dissident Philosophers
Voices Against the Political Current of the Academy
The book consists of sixteen essays (and an introduction) from prominent philosophers who are at odds with the predominant political trend(s) of academic philosophy, political trend(s) primarily associated with leftism. Some of these philosophers identify explicitly with the political right – an admittedly broad term which ranges from American conservative to British Tory, from religious right to non-religious right, from libertarian to authoritarian. Yet other dissident philosophers eschew the left/right dichotomy altogether while maintaining a firm political distance from the majority of their (left-leaning) colleagues. The primary goal of the volume is to represent a broad constituency of political philosophies and perspectives at variance with the prevailing political sentiments of the academy. Each essay is partly autobiographical in nature, detailing personal experiences that have influenced these philosophers throughout their lives, and partly philosophical, putting forth reflections on the intellectual viability of a right-leaning (or decidedly non-left leaning) political philosophy or some segment of it. The contemporary university is supposed to be the locus of viewpoint diversity, and yet as is evident to professors, students, and virtually anyone else who sets foot within its halls, it most certainly is not – particularly in matters political. Nevertheless, these essays are not instances of special-pleading or grievance incitement. Instead, each article provides a glimpse into the life of an academic philosopher whose views have largely been at odds with peers and colleagues. Furthermore, all of the essays were consciously constructed with the aim of being philosophically rigorous while eschewing technical language and verbose prose. In short, the essays will be enjoyable to a wide audience.
………………………………
My Facebook comments:
Your humble correspondent's contribution is entitled "From Democrat to Dissident." Click on the link to see the Table of Contents and a review. I was planning on buying a number of copies for my friends. But the $120 price tag is somewhat disuassive.
I have carefully read the introductory chapter by Allan Hillman and Tully Borland. Well written, exciting, rigorous, with a delightful soupçon of snark.
The Left gets its collective and collectivist @ss royally kicked by a formidable crew of philosophers. Formidable or not, I am honored to be among them.
Food: Medicine, Drug, or Fuel?
In an excess of the ascetic, the author of The Confessions in Book Ten, Chapter 31 recommends taking food as medicine. At the opposite extreme we find those for whom it is a soporific, a sedative, an escape from reality, a drug. The wise tread the middle path: food is fuel.
Eat in quantity and quality precisely that alone which optimally fuels fratre asino so that he may bear up well in this vale where his services are indispensable. Properly fortified, he will carry your load over many a pons asinorum.
Liberals Need to Preach What They Practice
Substack latest.
Against the racism of reduced expectations.
Two Worries about Meditation
One Christian friend worries that his meditation practice might lead him in a Buddhist direction, in particular toward an acceptance of the three marks of phenomenal existence: anicca, anatta, dukkha. He shouldn't worry. Those doctrines in their full-strength Pali form are dubious if not demonstrably untenable. As such, they cannot be veridical deliverances of any meditation practice.
For example, the doctrine of anicca, impermanence, is not a mere recording of the Moorean fact that there is change; it is a radical theory of change along Heraclitean lines. As a theory it is dialectically driven and not a summary of phenomenology. One could read it into the phenomenology of meditational experience, but one cannot derive it from the phenomenology. The claim I just made is highly contentious; I will leave it to the first friend to see if he can verify it to his own satisfaction.
Since he is a Christian I recommend to him an approach to meditation more in consonance with Christianity, an approach as inner listening. In one sentence: Quiet the mind, then listen and wait. Open yourself to intimations and vouchsafings from the Unseen Order. Psalm 46:10: "Be still and know that I am God . . . ." But be aware that the requisite receptivity exposes one to attack from demonic agents whose power exceeds our own. So discernment is needed.
This brings me to a second Christian friend who asks, "Do you think the mind clearing function of meditation might be akin to the person Jesus taught us of, the person with a clean and emptied soul that was attractive to the demons as a place to occupy?"
Yes, there is that danger. A mind cluttered and distracted by petty thoughts and concerns is, from the point of view of the demons, safe against any irruption of divine light. This is why demons are more likely to be encountered in monasteries than in fleshpots. But once the mind is cleared of mundane detritus, once it returns from the diaspora of the sense world and rests quietly in it itself in its quest for the Unchanging Light, the demons have an opening. But these facts of the spiritual life are no argument against meditation; they are an argument for caution. One would be well-advised to preface every meditation session with a discursive prayer along these lines: "Lord, I confess my spiritual infirmity and humbly ask to be protected from any and all demonic agents. Lord help me, guardians guard me." Sancti Angeli, custodes nostri, defendite nos in proelio, ut non pereamus in tremendo iudicio.
My second friend is a Protestant, and among other faults, they fail to appreciate the mystical element in Christianity.
Finally:
The East no more owns meditation than the Left owns dissent. Here is a quick little bloggity-blog schema.
Buddhist Nihilism: the ultimate goal is nibbana, cessation, and the final defeat of the 'self' illusion.
Hindu Monism: the ultimate goal is for the little self (jivatman) to merge with the Big Self, Atman = Brahman.
Christian Dualism: the ultimate goal is neither extinction nor merger but a participation in the divine life in which the participant, transfigured and transformed as he undoubtedly would have to be, nevertheless maintains his identity as a unique self. Dualism is retained in a sublimated form.
I warned you that my schema would be quick. But I think it is worth ruminating on and filling in. The true philosopher tacks between close analysis and overview, analytic squinting and syn-opsis and pan-opsis.
You say you want details?
Related
Is Belief Voluntary?
Why would it matter? Here is one reason.
If the experts are evenly divided on some question, many will urge that that the rational thing to do is to suspend belief. To satisfy the dictates of reason, then, one ought to suspend or withhold belief in some cases. But 'ought' implies 'can.' So, if one ought to suspend belief, then one has the ability to suspend belief, which implies that at least some beliefs or rather believings are under a person's voluntary control. I say that some are. That makes me a limited doxastic voluntarist. Catherine Elgin says that none are:
Belief is not voluntary. Belief aims at truth in the sense that a belief is defective if its content is not true. If believing were something we could do or refrain from doing at will, the connection to truth would be severed. If Jack could believe that Neanderthals were an evolutionary dead end just because he wanted to, then his believing that Neanderthals were a evolutionary dead end would not amount to his thinking that 'Neanderthals were an evolutionary dead end' is true. For nothing about the fate of the Neanderthals is affected by what he wants. ("Persistent Disagreement" in Disagreement, eds. Feldman and Warfield, Oxford UP 2013, p. 60)
This argument leaks like a sieve. Either that, or I don't understand it.
It is true that belief is connected to truth. But what exactly is the connection? If I believe that p, then I believe it to be true that p. That is the connection. I cannot believe that p without believing that it is true that p. But of course my believing that it is true that p is consistent with p's being false.
Now suppose that the evidence available to me for and against the existence of God is equal, and I choose to believe for prudential reasons, say, or for no reason at all, that God exists. This choosing to believe would not sever the connection between believing and truth. For again, the connection is just this: my believing that p entails my believing that p is true. That connection remain in place whether or not believing is voluntary. My believing that God exists does not make it true that God exists. Believing entails believing to be true; it does not entail being true!
The same holds if I choose to disbelieve that God exists or if I choose to suspend belief. My disbeleiving that p does not make p false. And my suspending that p does not make p indeterminate in truth value.
Elgin tells us that "a belief is defective if its content is not true." But surely an occurrent mental state is a believing whether or not its content is true. A false belief is just as much a belief as a true belief. Surely Elgin is not telling us that only true beliefs are beliefs! But then what is she saying?
Elgin writes, "If Jack could believe that Neanderthals were an evolutionary dead end just because he wanted to, then his believing that Neanderthals were an evolutionary dead end would not amount to his thinking that 'Neanderthals were an evolutionary dead end' is true."
Elgin seems to have a 'straw man' conception of doxastic voluntarism. After all, no one holds that the fate of the Neanderthals depends on what anyone thinks or believes. If the paleontologists are evenly divided on the question and Jack chooses to believe that the Neanderthals were an evolutionary dead end, he is not thereby committing himself to the absurd notion that his so believing makes it true that the Neanderthals were an evolutionary dead end.
With respect to a purely theoretical question like this, one the answer to which has no practical consequences for the believer, the doxastically (as opposed to practically) rational thing to do would be to suspend judgment/belief. If so, then some believings/disbelievings/suspensions come under the control of the will.
A Lit-Crit Fest
At My Facebook page. I posed the question whether JOHN BARTH is worth reading. 29 comments and counting.
A is A: Monism Refuted
This from The Collected Poems and Epigrams of J. V. Cunningham, Swallow Press, 1971, p. 118, epigram #47:
This Monist who reduced the swarm
Of being to a single form,
Emptying the universe for fun,
Required two A's to think them one.
Notes
1. The title is Cunningham's own.
2. Poetic license extends to use-mention confusion.
3. It was over at Patrick Kurp's place that I first made the acquaintance of Mr. Cunningham.
4. Note the poetically pleasing addition by the author of his name to the title of his collection.
5. My copy of Cunningham's collection, a well-made hard bound, acquired via Amazon, is a Mount Mary College (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) library discard. There is no evidence that it is a second copy. How naïve of me to think that libraries ought to be permanent repositories of high culture. But the folly of reliably liberal librarians redounds to the benefit of the bookman.
6. Philosophically, the trick is to uphold the supreme truth that all is indeed One while accommodating the manifest and non-illusory plurality of things and persons.
Visions of Tom: Jack Kerouac’s Monastic Elder Brother
Thomas Merton's "spontaneous prose" is to be found in the seven volumes of his journals. That's where you will find the real Merton in all his depth and complexity, his faith, his doubts, his inner (and outer) conflicts, and his endless self-examination. I never tire of re-reading them.
This essay by Angus Stuart delineates some Kerouac-Merton parallels.
"Even the timing of their own deaths is remarkably close: Merton on December 10, 1968 and Kerouac less than a year later on October 21, 1969." Kerouac died of drink at age 47, Merton of electrocution at age 53.
The Conservative Mind
Innovations are presumed guilty until proven innocent. There is a defeasible presumption in favor of traditional beliefs, usages, institutions, arrangements, techniques, and whatnot, provided they work. By all means allow the defeat of the outworn and no-longer-workable: in with the new if the novel is better. But the burden of proof is on the would-be innovator: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Conservatives are not opposed to change. We are opposed to non-ameliorative change, and change for the sake of change.
And once again, how can anyone who loves his country desire its fundamental transformation? How can anyone love anything who desires its fundamental transformation?
You love a girl and want to marry her. But you propose that she must first undergo a total makeover: butt lift, tummy tuck, nose job, breast implants, psychological re-wire, complete doxastic overhaul, sensus divinitatis tune-up, Weltanschauung change-out, memory upgrade, and so on. Do you love her, or is she merely the raw material for the implementation of your idea of what a girl should be?
The extension to love of country is straightforward. If you love your country, then you do not desire its fundamental transformation. Contrapositively, if you do desire its fundamental transformation, then you do not love it.
Kerouac No Role Model
Lest I lead astray any young and impressionable readers, I am duty-bound to point out that my annual October focus on Kerouac is by no means to be taken as an endorsement of him as someone to be imitated. Far from it! He failed utterly to live up to the Christian precepts that he learned as a child and the Buddhist precepts he assiduously studied in the mid-1950s. Not that he was a hypocrite; he was just a deeply flawed human being.
I just now recall a critique of Kerouac by Douglas Groothuis from some years ago. (Old Memory Babe ain't got nothing on me.) Ah yes, here it is. I am in basic agreement with it.
Kerouac’s Beat(ific) Visions and the Cross
A good essay by Joshua Hren at First Things.
What Hren says is complemented by this entry of mine from 31 October 2010:
The despairing section X of Book Thirteen of Vanity of Duluoz which I quoted yesterday is followed immediately by this:
Yet I saw the cross just then when I closed my eyes after writing all this. I cant escape its mysterious penetration into all this brutality. I just simply SEE it all the time, even the Greek cross sometimes. I hope it will all turn out true.
It is fitting to conclude Kerouac month with the last section of Jack's last book, a section in which, while alluding to the Catholic mass, he raises his glass to his own piecemeal suicide:
Forget it wifey. Go to sleep. Tomorrow's another day. Hic calix! Look that up in Latin, it means "Here's the chalice," and be sure there's wine in it.