I once knew a highly contrary fellow. But he was intelligent and interesting and I enjoyed talking with him on occasion. If I asserted proposition p, he would more likely than not assert not-p. If I asserted not-p, then I could expect to hear the assertion of p.
One day I said, "You know, John, you are a really contrary fellow!"
He shot back, "No I’m not!"
April Stevens' and Nino Tempo's version of Deep Purple became a number one hit in 1963. I liked it when it first came out, and I've enjoyed it ever since. A while back I happened to hear it via Sirius satellite radio and was drawn into it like never before. But its lyrics, penned by Mitchell Parish, are pure sweet kitsch:
When the deep purple falls over sleepy garden walls
And the stars begin to twinkle in the night
Through the mist of a memory you wander back to me
Breathing my name with a sigh.In the still of the night once again I hold you tight
Though you're gone, your love lives on when moonlight beams
And as long as my heart will beat, sweet lover we'll always meet
Here in my deep purple dreams.
Kitsch is bad art, but what is the essence of kitsch, and why is it bad? Presumably it is sentimentality that makes kitsch kitsch, and it is this sentimentality that makes kitsch aesthetically and perhaps even morally dubious. One self-indulgently 'wallows' in a song like this, giving into its 'cheap' emotions. The emotions are 'false' and 'faked.' The melody and lyrics are formulaic and predictable, 'catchy.' The listener allows himself to be manipulated by the songwriter who is out to 'push the listener's buttons.' The aesthetic experience is not authentic but vicarious. And so on. Adorno would not approve.
There is great art and there is kitsch. I partake of both, enjoy both, and know the difference. What is wrong with a little kitsch in moderation? No, I don't collect Hummel figurines and my stoa is not carpeted with astroturf. What is sentimentality and what is wrong with it? There is a literature on this, but I've read almost none of it. Who has time? No job, no kids, no social entanglements — and still no time.
As another year slips away, a year that saw the passing of John Updike, here is a fine poem of his to celebrate or mourn the waning days of ought-nine:
Perfection Wasted
And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,
which took a whole life to develop and market ——
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,
their tears confused with their diamond earrings,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories packed
in the rapid-access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That's it: no one;
imitators and descendants aren't the same.
Commentary
Viewed from a third-person point of view, death seems entirely natural, not evil or tragic. Deciduous trees give up their leaves in the fall, but new ones arrive in the spring. Where's the evil in that? We too are parts of nature; we hang for a time from des Lebens goldener Baum, and then we drop off. So far there has never been a lack of new specimens to take our places in a universe that can get on quite well without any of us. But "imitators and descendants aren't the same." No indeed, for what dies when we die is not merely an animal, not merely a bit of biology, not merely a specimen of a species, a replaceable token of a type, but a subject of experience, a self, an irreplaceable conscious individual, a being capable of saying and meaning 'I.' "Who will do it again?" No one! I am unique and it took me a lifetime to get to this level of haecceity and ipseity. This interiority wasn't there at first; I had to make it. I became who I am by my loving and striving and willing and knowing: I actualized myself as a self. It was a long apprenticeship that led to this mastery. If I did a good job of it I perfected, completed, mastered, myself: I achieved my own incommunicable perfection, which cannot be understood objectively, but only subjectively by a being who loves. In the first instance that is me: I love myself and as loving myself I know myself. In the second instance, it is you if you love me; loving me you know me as an individual, not as a specimen of a species, a token of a type, an instance of a universal, an object among objects. There were all those outside influences, of course, but they would have been nothing to me had I not appropriated them, making them my own. As a somewhat greater poet once wrote, Was du ererbt von Deinen Vätern hast, erwirb es, um es zu besitzen.
And so therein lies death's sting: not in the passing of a bit of biology, but in the wasting of that unique and incommunicable perfection, the instant evaporation of that ocean of interiority. But is the perfection wasted? Does the magic just cease? The animal ceases no doubt, but the magic of interiority? These questions remain open.
Long-time reader Bob Koepp e-mails:
Since, for me, exploring the concepts of 'health' and 'disease' is a minor hobby, I couldn't resist commenting on your recent "How to Lose Weight." While I agree with what I take to be your moral point, I think your argument goes off the rails when you consider the "disease status" of obesity.
For what it's worth, 'obesity' has traditionally been used by the medical community to refer to an overweight condition that is pathological, i.e., that interferes with natural functional processes. I know that colloquially 'disease' is a much narrower category than 'medical pathology,' but it's because diseases are pathological conditions that they contrast with the condition of healthfulness. That obesity (usually) results from voluntary acts and/or omissions isn't relevant to it's status as a pathological condition. And, of course, even if the fact that something is a pathological condition is sufficient to mobilize medical concern (questionable in itself…), it isn't enough to underwrite political action!
Bob makes an excellent point here. Since I am always going on about the importance of using terms precisely, I have to accept his point that 'obesity' used as a (relatively) precise medical term stands for a pathological condition, and is therefore a disease, despite the fact that it results from voluntary acts and omissions. So I should agree, contrary to what I said earlier, that there is an epidemic of obesity. But I stand pat on the point that there is no call for political action, a point on which Bob seems to agree.
It is not unusual for a non-bookman, upon entering the book-lined domicile of a bookman, to crack, "Have you read them all?" The quip smacks of a veiled accusation of hypocrisy, the suggestion being that the bookman is making a false show of an erudition and well-readedness the likes of which he does not possess. I invariably reply, "This is no show library, this is a working library." That tends to shut 'em up.
A nephew gave me a coffee cup inscribed thusly: "A room without books is like a body without a soul." The attribution was to Cicero, but one learns to take such attributions cum grano salis. Whatever the quotation's source, it sums up the matter well.
One mark of intellectual maturity is the ability to tolerate uncertainty, the ability to withhold assent, the ability to withstand contradiction and recognize the merit of opposing views – all of this without lapsing into skepticism or relativism. The intellectually immature, by contrast, bristle when their pieties and subjective certainties are called into question. Their doxastic security needs trump their need to inquire into the truth.
Every institution is either corrupt or will be. Institutions are like the houses where I live: they either have termites or they will get them.
Do not ask whether there is immortality unless you are prepared to ask whether you are worthy of it.
Such thinking is not in the service of self-will or subjective opining, but in the service of submission to a higher authority. We think for ourselves in order to find a truth that is not from ourselves, but from reality. The idea is to become dependent on reality, rather than on institutional and social distortions of reality. Independence subserves a higher dependence.
It is worth noting that thinking for oneself is no guarantee that one will arrive at truth. Far from it. The world is littered with conflicting opinions generated from the febrile heads of people with too much trust in their own powers. But neither is submission to an institution's authority any assurance of safe passage to the harbour of truth. Both the one who questions authority and the one who submits to it can end up on a reef. 'Think for yourself' and 'Submit to authority' are both onesided pieces of advice.
You thought things were easy?
The infernal hike of 28 August 2005 began at 5:20 AM at first light, that phase of dawn at which one can just make out the trail and its hazards. Sunrise was about forty minutes off. If one hopes to survive a desert hike in August, especially in environs as rugged and unforgiving as the Superstition Wilderness, one does well to start at first light and be finished by high noon. I once finished such a hike around two or three in the afternoon with the distinct impression that I had pushed the envelope about as far as possible.
It is a curious sensation to feel oneself being slowly roasted in five different ways.
There is first of all the air temperature. Today's for example was 112 degrees Fahrenheit at its high. At any temperature above 90 the human body starts to absorb heat through the skin.
Then there is conduction. One gains heat by contact with the ground, rocks, ledges, anything one touches while hiking or climbing if the object is hotter than 90 degrees.
In third place comes convection. Hot air blows against the skin and imparts heat to the body. Even a slight breeze at 112 degrees has quite an effect.
Fourth, there is solar radiation. Once up, Old Sol beats down unmercifully, which is why I wear a long-sleeved white shirt and a broad-brimmed hat. My legs remain exposed, though, since hiking in long pants is unbearably confining.
Finally, there is metabolism. The internal organs and the muscles at work generate body heat.
I finished at 11:10 with the day's high of 112 degrees Fahrnheit fast approaching. I was well-roasted and dehydrated, but very satisfied with the five hours and fifty minutes I spent hiking over washed-out, overgrown, ankle-busting trails.
I concur with Colin Fletcher: Hiking is "a delectable madness, very good for sanity, and I recommend it with passion." (The Complete Walker III, p. 3)
I don’t doubt that Americans are the fattest people in the world. Some years back I landed at New York’s JFK airport after a year in Turkey. Walking from the plane into the terminal, and without having given any thought to the matter, the first thing that struck me was how obese Americans are.
Many are now speaking of an ‘epidemic’ of obesity in the USA as if obesity were a disease. This is liberal nonsense, of course, and needs to be exposed as such. It is nonsense raised to the second power when calls are issued for Federal programs to combat the problem. First of all, obesity is not a disease, but a condition caused and maintained by the voluntary act of overeating. No doubt, some people have more of a propensity to put on weight than others: basal metabolic rates and other factors vary from person to person. But this does nothing to change the fact that one’s weight depends on the quality and quantity of what one freely shovels into one’s mouth. Second, obesity is a personal problem to be solved at the personal level. The last thing we need are more Federal programs.
I’m here to give you the straight skinny, in four monosyllables, and with my famous double your money back if not entirely satisfied guarantee. Eat less, move more.
CORRECTION (12/28): Here.
John Blofeld, Beyond the Gods: Buddhist and Taoist Mysticism (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1974), p. 153:
For the sake of wealth, people already well above the poverty line slave all their lives, not realising that withdrawal from the rat-race would immediately increase rather than diminish their wealth. Obviously anyone who finds the full satisfaction of all his material desires well within his means can be said to be wealthy; it follows that, except by the truly poor, wealth can be achieved overnight by a change of mental attitude that will set bounds to desires. As Laotzu put it, "He who is contented always has enough."
C. S. Lewis, "The Seeing Eye" in Christian Reflections (Eeerdmans, 1967), pp. 168-167:
Avoid silence, avoid solitude, avoid any train of thought that leads off the beaten track. Concentrate on money, sex, status, health and (above all) on your own grievances. Keep the radio on. Live in a crowd. Use plenty of sedation. If you must read books, select them very carefully. But you'd be safer to stick to the papers. You'll find the advertisements helpful; especially those with a sexy or a snobbish appeal.
A wise saying about chess, often attributed to Goethe, but apocryphal for all I know, goes like this. "For a game it is too serious, and for seriousness too much of a game."
Something similar is true of the world. The world is is too real, too much with us, for us to detach ourselves from it easily; but it is too deficient in being to satisfy us. One cannot take it with utmost seriousness, and one cannot dismiss it as a mere game either. "For a game it is too serious, and for seriousness too much of a game."
David Horowitz, Left Illusions: An Intellectual Odyssey (Spence, 2003), p. 273:
The image of the right that the left has concocted — authoritarian, reactionary, bigoted, mean-spirited — is an absurd caricature that has no relation to modern conservatism or to the reality of the people I have come to know in my decade-long movement along the political spectrum — or to the way I see myself. Except for a lunatic fringe, American conservatism is not about "blood and soil" nostalgia or conspiracy paranoia, which figure so largely in imaginations that call themselves "liberal," but are anything but. Modern American conservatism is a reform movement that seeks to reinvent free markets and limited government and to restore somewhat traditional values. Philosophically, conservatism is more accurately seen as a species of liberalism itself — and would be more often described in this way were it not for the hegemony the left exerts in the political culture and its appropriation of the term "liberal" to obscure its radical agenda.
I've bolded the crucial thought. Note the qualifier 'modern American.' One of the reasons the original neocons (Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, et al.) called themselves such was to differentiate their classically liberal position from the leftism into which liberalism was transmogrifying. Of course, there is much to discuss here. There is a paleocon element in contemporary American conservatism to which Horowitz is perhaps not sufficiently attending. But this is a huge topic . . . .
