Autobiographical – Page 2 – Maverick Philosopher

On Mixing Politics with Philosophy

I could of course post my political thoughts to a separate weblog. Now a while back I did effect such a segregation, sending my political rants and ruminations to my Facebook page. But given that philosophy attracts more liberals/leftists than conservatives, it is good for them to be exposed to views that they do not encounter within the enclaves they inhabit. Or are contemporary liberals precisely illiberal in their closemindedness to opposing views? One gets that impression.

Posting the political to a separate weblog would also violate my 'theory' of blogging. My blog is micro to my life's macro. It must accordingly mirror my life in all its facets as a sort of coincidentia oppositorum of this situated thinker's existence.

ChatGPT on Me

William F. Vallicella is a contemporary philosopher known for his work in metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of language. He has written extensively on topics such as existence, identity, time, free will, and the nature of truth. Vallicella is particularly noted for his clear and rigorous analytical style, and he often engages with both classical and contemporary philosophical positions in his writings. He has contributed to numerous academic journals and has authored several books on these subjects.

Not bad! "Several books' is inaccurate. If you count my dissertation I have authored only two books. Two more are in the works. How might I justify my lack of productivity?

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 80:

Der Gruss der Philosophen unter einander sollte sein: "Lass Dir Zeit!"
This is how philosophers should greet each other: "Take your time!"

A similar thought is to be found in Franz Brentano, though I have forgotten where he says this:

Wer eilt, bewegt sich nicht auf dem Boden der Wissenschaft.
One who hurries is not proceeding on a scientific basis.

But now I'd better get moving. The clock is running, the time control is sudden death, and the Grim Reaper is my vis-à-vis, his scythe all aglisten and at the ready.

Antonius Block, depicted below and played by Max von Sydow in Ingmar Bergman's Seventh Seal (1957), resembles Ludwig Wittgenstein.

In Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 film The Seventh Seal, actor Max von Sydow, right, portrays Antonius Block, a knight who challenges Death to a chess match.

A Use for Bullet Chess

Bullet is faster than Blitz. I've been playing over at Lichess: two-minutes with a one second increment, sudden death. I die a lot, but like Phoenix rise from my ashes to play again. The fastest bullet games are one minute per side, no increment.

What's the use of it? I count six uses.

1) It wakes me up. I out-monk the monks when it comes to early arisal from the bed of sloth. This morning I got up at 12:20 AM. (Usually I arise at 1:30) So by 4:30 I needed a second cup of java, but even that didn't turn the trick. So I logged on to Lichess and blasted out two bullet games, winning one, losing the other. And now I'm bangin' on all eight.

2) It gets me over a temporary writing hurdle. I hit a sag. Inspiration fails. How do I push this line of thought further? Stymied, I fire up the chess engine, bang out some games, and Seldom Seen Slim is back in the saddle, inspiration restored. I find my way forward.

3) It is good mental exercise. Exercise yourself every which way every day: mentally, physically, spiritually, morally. Mens sana in corpore sano, et cetera.

4) It is a challenge. The strenuous life is best by test.

5) It's fun. A little fun never hurt anybody.

6) It distracts me from what the filthy Dems and their media enablers are doing to the country. Chess is an oasis of sanity in an insane world. To swap out the metaphor, chess is the perfect drug, especially when enhanced by consumption of those less-than-perfect drugs, caffeine and nicotine.

Twenty Years Into It

Today is my 20th 'blogiversary.' Can you say cacoethes scribendi?

I've missed only a few days in these twenty years so it's a good bet I'll be blogging 'for the duration.' Blogging for me is like reading and thinking and meditating and running and hiking and playing chess and breathing and eating and playing the guitar and drinking coffee. It is not something one gives up until forced to. Some of us are just natural-born scribblers. We were always writing, on loose leaf, in notebooks, on the backs of envelopes, in journals

daily kept. Maintaining a weblog is just an electronic extension of all that.

Except that now I conduct my education in public. This has some disadvantages, but they are vastly outweighed by the advantages. I have met a lot of interesting and stimulating characters via this blog, locally and in far-away places, some in person. You bait your hook and cast it into the vasty deeps of cyberspace and damned if you don't call forth spirits or at least snag some interesting fish. The occasional scum sucker and bottom feeder are no counterargument.

I thank you all for your patronage, sincerely, and I hope my writings are of use not just to me. I have a big fat file of treasured fan mail that more than compensates me for my efforts.

I am proud to have inspired a number of you Internet quill-drivers. Some of you saw my offerings years ago and thought to yourself, "I can do this too, and I can do it better!" And some of you have. I salute you.

I had more to say on an earlier year's anniversary if you care to look.

Blog on!

On Taking Abuse

A re-post from 1 August 2013. Slightly redacted.

……………..

Everyone gets abused verbally in this world and one had better learn how to take it. There are bigots everywhere — leftists and wokesters the most vile, their tendency to project psychologically rendering their bigotry invisible to them — and sooner or later you will encounter your fair share of abusers and bigots. A fellow graduate student called your humble correspondent a 'guinea' in the 1970s. This was in Boston. But I didn't break his nose and do the ground and pound on him. Was it cowardice or good sense? Call it self-control. If Trayvon Martin had control of his emotions on the fateful night of his encounter with George Zimmerman, he would probably be alive today. The downside, of course, is that then we wouldn't be having this delightful 'conversation' about race.

My impression is that there is more anti-Italian prejudice — not that it is any big deal — in the East than in the West where I come from. (And without a doubt, Jim Morrison had it right when he opined that the West is the best, in at least two senses.) I didn't encounter any anti-Italian prejudice until I headed East. I had a Lithuanian girl friend in Boston whose mother used to warn her: "Never bring an Italian home." I never did get to meet Darci's mom. Imagine a Lithuanian feeling superior to an Italian!

But I want to talk about blacks, to add just a bit more to this wonderful 'conversation' about race we are having.

Blacks need to learn from Jews, Italians, the Irish, and others who have faced abuse and discrimination. Don't whine, don't complain, don't seek a government program. Don't try to cash in on your 'victim' status, when the truth is that you are a 'victim' of liberal victimology. Don't waste your energy blaming others for your own failures.

Don't wallow in your real or imagined grievances, especially vicarious grievances. That's the mark of a loser. Winners live and act in the present where alone they can influence the future.

If you want me to judge you as an individual, by the content of your character and not by the color of your skin, then behave like an individual: don't try to secure advantages from membership in a group!

Abandon tribal self-identification. Did you vote for Obama because he is black? Then you have no business in a voting booth.

Bear in mind that the world runs on appearances, and that if you appear to be a thug — from your saggy pants, your 'hoodie,' your sullen and disrespectful attitude — then people will suspect you of being a thug.

Take a leaf out of Condi Rice's book. She's black, she's female, and she became Secretary of State. And her predecessor in the job was a black man, Colin Powell. It sure is a racist society we have here in the USA. And that Justice Thomas on the Supreme Court — isn't he a black dude? And not a mulatto like Obama, but one seriously black man.

Lose the basketball. Get the needle out of your arm, the coke out of your nose, and that soul-killing rap noise out of your ears. Listen to the late Beethoven piano sonatas. May I recommend Opus #s 109, 110, and 111? Mozart is also supposed to be good for improving your mental capacity. We honkies want you to be successful. If you are successful, we won't have to support you. And if you are successful you will be happy. Happy people don't cause trouble.

And we don't give a flying enchilada what color you are. It's not about color anyway. It's about behavior. Work hard, practice the ancient virtues, and be successful. If you can't make it here, you can't make it anywhere. Don't let Brother Jesse or Brother Al tell you otherwise. Those so-called 'reverends' are little more than race-hustlers who make money from the grievance industry. And when they run out of grievances? Then they create 'micro-aggressions.'

Liberals are not your friends either. They want you to stay on the plantation. They think you are too stupid to take care of yourselves.

If you learn to control your emotions, defer gratification, study hard and practice the old-time virtues, will you be 'acting white'? Yes, in a sense. High culture is universal and available to all who want to assimilate it. What makes our culture superior to yours is not that it is white but that it is superior. You have already 'appropriated' our technology. (Or did it come from sub-Saharan Africa?) Why balk at 'appropriating' our virtues? We want you to! For your benefit and ours. 'Cultural appropriation' is a good thing. Here is a fine example of 'cultural appropriation.'

Don't get mad, be like Rudy Giuliani. Can you imagine him making a big deal about being called a greaseball, dago, goombah, wop, guinea . . . ? Do you see him protesting Soprano-style depictions of Italian-Americans as mafiosi?

Why Do We Front Our Ideas?

"Preaching to the choir is unnecessary, and if you were to attain the age of a Methuselah you would still not be near converting your opponents. So what's the use of your arguing and asserting?"

This is a text-book example of a False Alternative. For there is a third reason to argue and assert, namely, to sway the fence-sitters whose number is legion, and to bring them over to our side.

What's more, it is false that preaching to the choir is unnecessary. We do so to reinforce them in their 'faith' and prevent their backsliding. It is also false that it is pointless to engage our opponents. We 'preach' to them for several reasons: (a) to change the minds of some; (b) to get our opponents to appreciate that we have a position that is rationally defensible even if not ultimately acceptable to them; (c) to oppose and demoralize them; (d) to make their arguments look bad to others so that their influence wanes.

Finally, some of us just naturally incline to the life of the mind. Its pleasures are intense and reliable. They extend deep into old age. We love to study and we love to write. We athletes of the mind thrive on the agon of intellectual exertion and struggle. For me to go even one day without studying and writing is 'unthinkable,' as 'unthinkable' as going a day without coffee, meditation, and physical exercise.

Theistic Belief and What Inclines Me to It

Substack post du jour.

Rise and Shine

I quit the bed of sloth at two this morning. I slept in a bit. But I understand that not everyone prefers the monkish life. Kant arose at five. It's now 5:30 or so. Rise and shine with Manny! Or at least with Boston. If this '70s tune doesn't get you bangin' on all eight, you need a brain re-wire.

And if this first post of the day is not yet meaty enough for you, there's more:

"The bed is a nest for a whole flock of illnesses." (Immanuel Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties, tr. Gregor, p. 183)

I read Kant and about Kant at an impressionable age, and it really is a pleasure plowing through his texts again as I have been doing recently. I suspect my early rising goes back to my having read, at age 20, that Kant was wont to retire at 10 pm and arise at 5 am.

Soon enough, however, I was out-Kanting Kant with a 4 am arisal from the nocturnal nest. And when I moved out here to the Zone, 4 became 2:30. (A Zone Man must make an early start especially on outdoor activities in the summer before Old Sol gets too uppity.)

2:30 became 2:00, the time the Trappist monks of Tom Merton's day got up. I don't know whether the Trappist regimen is as rigorous today as it was in the '40s and '50s, and I'm not sure I want to know given the ubiquity of decadence these days. But then 2:00 became 1:30 which is now my preferred time of arisal.

I don't use an alarm clock. I have an alarm cat. Max, a husky tuxie, jumps over me as he did this morning, more for his benefit than for mine: he wants his treats. He used to jump on my chest, but I cured him of that with a slap or two.

Bill Keezer Passes On

Word came last night from Bill's wife Jennifer:

Sadly Bill passed away November 29th. His heart just finally wore out. He spoke of you often and considered you a valued friend.

Bill Keezer was a biologist with lively philosophical, theological, and political interests. We met in the early days of the blogosphere circa 2003 and stayed in touch ever since. And then we met twice in person when he came to visit me in Arizona. A stalwart supporter of MavPhil, he kept me supplied with links and memes. Our last serious topic of conversation was theological fatalism.

I received his last e-mail on 17 October:

Bill,

Just wanted to tell you that one of the more rewarding things I have done recently is sign up for your Substack. The articles are just about right for my level of understanding and reduced attention span. (My mind is slowing down)

Peace,

Bill

A third and much younger blogger buddy of both of us, Kevin Kim, said the following about Bill back in aught-nine in a piece entitled, The Wisdom of Bill Keezer:

I don't want to embarrass Bill Keezer by making a habit of slapping his emails up here on the blog, but I do want to hold up a recent email of his.

Bill has been sending emails regularly since this crisis began, and was already a correspondent even before that. He maintains an excellent blog called Bill's Comments (with lengthier thoughts posted at Bill's Big Stuff). He and I probably fall on different parts of the political spectrum (Bill leans more rightward while I'd call myself a centrist), but we share a non-traditional view of Christianity and a great love of scientific thought. The major difference here is that, while I'm a scientific skeptic by temperament, Bill is more: he's an actual scientist. Along with that, and despite (or because of?) his non-traditional stance toward Christianity, Bill is highly active in his own church. I don't want to reveal too much about his personal project, but he's putting together a book that I'm very eager to read.

I often feel I don't deserve the wisdom that Bill dispenses so freely. But he's an excellent, thoughtful writer, and he seems fine with directing so much of that excellence and thoughtfulness toward my family, despite the fact that we've never met face-to-face. Bill generally sends his emails to my address, but I often share them, when they arrive, with Dad. As I said earlier, I don't want to embarrass Bill by making a habit of slapping his emails up on this blog (would you write private emails to someone who consistently made them public?), but I thought you might appreciate his latest. [You can read the rest here.]

Another blogger friend of ours from the early days is Keith Burgess-Jackson who recently called a halt to a 20-year blogging run, in which he never missed a day. In his final post, dated 5 November 2023, exactly 20 years to the day from said blog's inception, he too has good things to say about Bill Keezer:

Fortunately, I've also met many good and decent people through this blog, from Peg Kaplan to Bill Vallicella to Bill Keezer to Steve Burri to Kevin Stroup to Reed Anderson. At least one of them (John Sullivan) is a friend to whom I speak (usually by texting) on a near-daily basis. Despite having to deal with creeps and crazies such as [Brian] Leiter, including, in 2017, a mob of malicious students who tried (spectacularly unsuccessfully) to get me "canceled" (for committing the unpardonable sin of being a conservative professor!), I have enjoyed every minute of my blogging experience.

All this is by way of saying that . . . I'm calling a permanent halt to posting. I haven't posted much in recent years anyway, but that will stop. I have other and better things to do in my retirement. Looking back, I'm honored to have been present in the heyday of blogging. Alas, in 2023, it is no longer (or not much of) a "thing." Other forms of social media have supplanted it. I can say, proudly, that I never missed a day of blogging. Counting leap years (in 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020), I posted at least one item for 7,306 consecutive days. On some days, I posted well over a dozen items, many of them philosophical (i.e., analytic) in nature. On other days, especially recently, I posted only one item, such as the daily feature "Ten Years Ago Today in This Blog." (Speaking of which, here is my post from 10 years ago today, about this blog.)

My blog was never about philosophy only. It was about whatever interested me at the time, and, frankly, almost everything interests me. I wrote about history, law, economics, politics, world affairs, baseball, cycling, running, technology, journalism, academia, language, religion, music, and many other topics.

For those of you who frequented this blog, thank you. I hope I entertained and edified. I'm 66 and a half years old now and in great health. (I ride my bike at least 20 miles per day. I rode 349 of 365 days in 2022, racking up 7,500 miles. I'm riding almost as much this year.) I have a Twitter (oops! X) presence and an account on Donald Trump's Truth Social, but I rarely post anything on those sites. I use them to see what others are saying. I also have a Substack account, but haven't posted anything there in several months. That may change.

Finally, let me express my gratitude to a benefactor (and friend). The person most responsible (and therefore most to blame) for getting me into blogging back in 2003 is John J. Ray of Brisbane, Australia, whose main blog is Dissecting Leftism. I learned much from John over the years, including, significantly, the importance of respecting religion and religious people even though one is not oneself religious. John was always ready and willing to help me with the technical aspects of my blog. Thank you, John. You are an inspiration. I wish you and yours the very best.

Onward!

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Varia

Lonnie Mack and Co.

Mack has been around a long time. I first picked up a guitar around the time this tune climbed the charts. "If I could only play like that!" Never got close. But I played in bands that got paid. If you get paid for doing something, then someone must think it's worth paying for. That's not saying much, but it's saying something.

Jackson Browne, The Pretender. This great song goes out to Darci M who introduced me to Jackson Browne. Darci was Lithuanian. Her mother told her, "Never bring an Italian home." So I never did meet the old lady. I never met any anti-Italian prejudice on the West coast whence I hail; the East is a different story.

Abba, Fernando. I first heard this in Ben's Gasthaus, Zaehringen, Freiburg im Breisgau,' 76-'77. This one goes out to Rudolf, Helmut, Martin, Hans, und Herrmann, working class Germans who loved to drink the Ami under the table.

Electric Flag, Groovin' is Easy

A contender for the greatest, tightest band of the '60s, featuring Mike Bloomfield on guitar, my second guitar hero. I saw him play at the Monterey Pop Festival in '67. The Jewish kid from an affluent Chicago suburb exemplifies cultural appropriation at its finest. His riffs derive from B. B. King but he outplays the King of the Blues. Is that a racist thing to say? It can't be racist if it's true.

Commander Cody, Truck Drivin' Man. This one goes out to Sally and Jean and Mary in memory of our California road trip nine years ago. "Pour me another cup of coffee/For it is the best in the land/I'll put a nickel in the jukebox/And play that 'Truck Drivin' Man.'"

Joan Baez, A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall. The voice of an angel, the words of a poet, and Langhorne's guitar. The incredible mood of this version, especially the intro, is made by Langhorne and the bass of Russ Savakus, another well-known session player from those days. I've been listening to this song since '65 and it gives me chills every time.

And now the fifteen-year-old is an old man of 73, and tears stream from his eyes for the nth time as he listens to this and we are once again on the brink of nuclear war as we were back in October of '62. It'll be a hard rain indeed, should it fall.

I once asked a guy what he wanted in a woman. He replied, "A whore in bed, Simone de Beauvoir in the parlor, and the Virgin Mary on a pedestal." An impossible trinity. Some just want the girl next door.

Bobby Darin, Dream Lover. With pix of Sandra Dee.

Audrey Hepburn, Moon River

Gogi Grant, The Wayward Wind, 1956. I'll take Lady Gogi over Lady Gaga any day.

Doris Day, Que Sera, Sera, 1956. What did she mean? The tautological, Necessarily, what will be, will be? Or the non-tautologically fatalistic, What will be, necessarily will be? Either way, she died in May.

Halloween: 15th Typepad Anniversary

The Typepad incarnation of MavPhil is now 15 years old. It has racked up 6,637,776 page views, which averages out to 1211 page views per day. It boasts 11,838 posts and 14,342 comments. And this despite shadow banning.

I thank you for your patronage. Double your money back if not completely satisfied.

"If you like to think, you'll like my blog; if you don't like to think, you need my blog."

I Ain't Superstitious, leastways no more than Howlin' Wolf, but two twin black tuxedo cats just crossed my path. All dressed up with nowhere to go. Nine lives and dressed to the nines. Stevie Ray Vaughan, Superstition. Guitar solo starts at 3:03. And of course you've heard the story about Niels Bohr and the horseshoe over the door:

A friend was visiting in the home of Nobel Prize winner Niels Bohr, the famous atom scientist.

As they were talking, the friend kept glancing at a horseshoe hanging over the door. Finally, unable to contain his curiosity any longer, he demanded:

“Niels, it can’t possibly be that you, a brilliant scientist, believe that foolish horseshoe superstition! ? !”

“Of course not,” replied the scientist. “But I understand it’s lucky whether you believe in it or not.”

Purr-honian Cat:

Why Mix Politics with Philosophy?

I have been asked why I intersperse political entries with narrowly philosophical ones. But in every case the question was put to me by someone who tilts leftward. If my politics were leftist, would anyone complain? Probably not. Academe and academic philosophy are dominated by leftists, and to these types it seems entirely natural that one should be a bien-pensant lefty. Well, I'm here to prove otherwise. Shocking as it will seem to some, leftist views are entirely optional, and a bad option at that. The hard left in its now-dominant 'woke' incarnation is inimical to just about everything worth preserving. There is of course a broad spectrum of leftist position, not all equally anti-civilizational, and some not at all anti-civilizational. Some good things can be said about some leftists of yesteryear.

I could of course post my political thoughts to a separate site. Now a while back I did effect such a segregation, sending my political rants and ruminations to my Facebook page. But given that philosophy attracts more leftists than conservatives, it is good for them to be exposed to views that they do not encounter within the enclaves they inhabit. Or are contemporary liberals precisely illiberal in their close-minded-ness to opposing views? One gets that impression. We conservatives are the 'new liberals.' We conservatives are classically liberal in that we support free speech and open inquiry. You say you want an example? Consider Newsmax. It is a conservative outlet that regularly allows leftists such as Ellis Henican and Barney Frank to have their say. No so with the leftist outlets: they do not allow political adversaries to have their say.

Posting the political to a separate weblog would also violate my 'theory' of blogging. My blog is micro to my life's macro. It mirrors my life in all its facets as a sort of coincidentia oppositorum of this situated thinker's existence.

Why did I leave Facebook? The mendacious FB admins went on a phishing expedition: they wanted me to reveal my smartphone number. I refused. In any case FB is not a serious venue in the main and the comments I received on carefully crafted posts were mostly crap. My most valued interlocutors refused to follow me over there. FB is a place for narcissists to post selfies and pictures of what they had for lunch. Am I being fair? Fair enough.

Sweet Nineteen

Today is my 19th 'blogiversary.'

Can you say cacoethes scribendi?

I've missed only a few days in these nineteen years so it's a good bet I'll be blogging 'for the duration.' Blogging for me is like reading and thinking and meditating and running and hiking and playing chess and breathing and eating and playing the guitar and drinking coffee. It is not something one gives up until forced to. Some of us are just natural-born scribblers. We were always writing, on loose leaf, in notebooks, on the backs of envelopes, in journals daily maintained. Maintaining a weblog is just an electronic extension of all of that.

Except that now I conduct my education in public. This has some disadvantages, but they are vastly outweighed by the advantages. I have met a lot of interesting and stimulating characters via this blog, some in the flesh. You bait your hook and cast it into the vasty deeps of cyberspace and damned if you don't call forth spirits or at least snag some interesting fish. The occasional scum sucker and bottom feeder are no counterargument.

I thank you all for your patronage, sincerely, and I hope my writings are of use not just to me. I have a big fat file of treasured fan mail that more than compensates me for my efforts.

I am proud to have inspired a number of you Internet quill-drivers. Some of you saw my offerings and thought to yourself, "I can do this too, and I can do it better!" And some of you have. I salute you.

I had more to say on on an earlier year's anniversary if you care to look.

Why Am I So Happy?

Top o' the Stack.