Master Desire and Aversion

It is a curious fact that a man who has no time for his own wife easily finds time for the wife of another. Not valuing what he has, he desires what he does not have, even though at some level he understands that, were he to take possession of what he now merely desires, the pattern would repeat itself: he would again desire that which he does not possess over that which he does possess. He should learn to appreciate what he has.

The Buddhists have a saying, "Conquer desire and aversion." But this goes too far: desire and aversion are not to be conquered or extirpated so much as chastened and channeled. They are to be mastered. Without self-mastery, the highest mastery, there can be no true happiness.

On Reverence

In The Weblog Handbook (Perseus Publishing 2002), Rebecca Blood writes:

If you asked me what the weblog community needs, I would answer, stronger ties among webloggers from various clusters, more independent thinkers, and more irreverence. Much, much more irreverence. Everyone seems to take themselves so seriously. (p. 164)

This passage demonstrates a pretty thorough misunderstanding of the concept of reverence. Blood appears to be confusing reverence with self-importance. Reverence, however, is more like the opposite of self-importance. Reverence is an attitude of honor, respect, devotion, deference toward a sufficiently lofty object distinct from one’s surface self. What Kant calls the moral law is an appropriate object of reverence. Like the starry skies above me, the moral law within me stands apart from, and superordinate to, my lower self. The divine, and anything or anyone sufficiently close to the divine, are also appropriate objects of reverence.

The truth is an appropriate object of reverence. A necessary condition of being a good journalist, for example, is reverence for the truth. A good journalist aims to establish the facts. Facts, by definition, are what they are regardless of what anyone believes them to be or desires them to be. The reverence appropriate to the competent and honest journalist has nothing to do with self-importance.

Crude Conservatives and Harsh Language

It is no surprise to find crude liberals. After all, liberals are big on toleration, including toleration of every manner of bad behavior. Indeed, some of them are so tolerant that they tolerate those with no respect for the principle of toleration. This is part of the explanation of why they tend to be soft on terrorism. And, since their toleration extends to the toleration of illogical thinking, they cannot see that to tolerate everything is to tolerate the rejection of the principle of toleration.

It is more of a surprise to find crude conservatives. Tucker Carlson on C-Span a while back used the ‘F’ word. Using it, he detracted from an otherwise excellent presentation, cheapening it, but also removing some of the force from a word that ought to be reserved for very special occasions. One occasionally meets people who need to be blasted with the strongest language one can muster, just as there are some folks who need shootin’ — as a Clint Eastwood character might put it. But just as you should never shoot a man who doesn’t absolutely need shootin’, you should never verbally blast a man who doesn’t absolutely need blastin’. And just as you can’t properly shoot a man without the right caliber of ammo, you can’t properly deliver a proper verbal blast if formerly strong words have been weakened by overuse.

So there are two reasons to avoid the overuse of harsh language. One is that it demeans its users, cheapens debate, and makes the world uglier than it already is. The second reason is that the overuse of harsh language, while coarsening its users and polluting the social atmosphere, drains these words of the punch they need to do their job on the occasions when it is appropriate to use them.

Notes on Mark Anderson, Pure: Modernity, Philosophy, and the One

Professor Mark Anderson kindly sent me a copy of the above-captioned book the other day.  I am about a third of the way through its 108 pages.  To write a proper review is hard work, something I will not attempt in the humid heat of the Arizona monsoon.  But I will offer a few somewhat random comments over one or more posts.

PURE is a stimulating collection of aphorisms, observations, and obiter dicta which document "one man's struggle against the intellectual and existential disorder called Modernity." (1)  It is written in a partially aphoristic Nietzschean style against Nietzsche who for Anderson is the anti-Plato.  So while the packaging is Nietzschean, the content is Platonic. Indeed, the author sees "the intellectual history of the West as a prolonged struggle between Platonism and Nietzscheanism." (3)

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Political Correctness Watch

Yale University Press bans images of Muhammad in academic book.  What wimps these liberals be! And there is no wimp like an academic wimp.

Cynthia Tucker: 45-65% Of Townhall Protesters Are Racists.    'Racist' is the all-purpose semantic bludgeon of choice among liberals.  Disagree with a liberal on practically anything and you are a racist!

Is 'Socialist' Code for 'Nigger'?  One of the most despicable characteristics of present-day liberals and leftists is their refusal to take anything a conservative says at face value.  Warped by the hermeneutics of suspicion, the liberal/leftist cannot credit the plainest and sincerest asseverations of the conservative.  So if the conservative points out the obvious fact that Obama's health care proposals are socialist in nature, then he must really be doing something else, namely, expressing his hatred of Obama.  You see, libs and lefties do not want to discuss the issues, they want to win by intimidation, by slandering the people who disagree with them and calling them racists.  This is why there can be no discussion with these people.  You cannot have a discussion with someone who interprets your opposition to radical Islam as a phobia, or your opposition to socialism as racist.

Allow Comments or Not?

This U. K. reader prefers no comments:

I 'm pleased that your blog no longer publishes readers' comments. Since this has been the case, I read it more assiduously. I usually find something in your daily observations and ruminations from which I can profit. When you used to allow even very well informed people to comment on what you had to say, my concentration withered and I was "turned off" by esoteric discussions of technical problems that interest professional philosophers. 

I think all serious bloggers should follow your example and exclude not only the vacuous and insolent wreckers who infest blogs, but also the erudite correspondents who can transform such as Maverick Philosopher into a kind of country club for intellectuals. 

 This U. S. reader prefers comments:

First of all, your blog is much more instructive than most of my formal education. Thank you for that.
 
However, recently you linked to your post on use and mention, and I followed the link and read the discussion.  Here is what I notice.  The educational value of any of your posts is exponentially compounded when there is a dialectic that follows.  The reason this is so is that when I can see someone who disagrees with you I can then see what positions they are forced to take in the dialectic.  Also because it highlights the distinction between good reasons and bad reasons for holding a position based on your responses. 

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The Conservative Disadvantage

We conservatives are at a certain disadvantage as compared to our leftist brethren. We don’t seek the meaning of our lives in the political sphere but in the private arena: in hobbies, sports, our jobs and professions, in ourselves, our families, friends, neighborhoods, communities, clubs and churches; in foot races and chess tournaments; in the particular pleasures of the quotidian round in all of their scandalous particularity.

We don't look to politics for meaning. Above all, we conservatives do not seek any transcendent meaning in the political sphere. We either deny that there is such a thing, or we seek it in religion, or in philosophy, or in meditation, or in such sorry substitutes as occultism. A conservative who denies that there is ‘pie in the sky’ will certainly not seek ‘pie in the future.’ He will not, like the leftist, look to a human future for redemption.  He understands human nature, its real possibilities, and its real limits.  He is impervious to utopian illusions.  He will accept no ersatz soteriology.

Augustine, Husserl, and Certainty

In his magisterial Augustine of Hippo, Peter Brown writes of Augustine, "He wanted complete certainty on ultimate questions." (1st ed., p. 88) If you don't thrill to that line, you are no philosopher. Compare Edmund Husserl: "Ohne Gewissheit kann ich eben nicht leben." "I just can't live without certainty." Yet he managed to live for years after penning that line, and presumably without certainty.

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Some Things I Look For in a Movie: A Rant

1. No mindless 'action.' No race and chase, crash and burn. I am not a robot, so I don't want to watch a movie made by  robots about robots for robots.

2.  No gratuitous sex, violence, and offensive language. I have no objection to sex, violence, and bad language as such. There is a time and place for each.  I would have no problem, for example, with blowing a home invader to Kingdom Come where he is more likely to receive justice than here below from a criminal justice system lousy with tolerate-anything liberals.  But sex, violence and bad language  ought not be thrown in for no reason or just to titillate or offend in the manner of the adolescent (whatever his age) who thinks it cool to append the F-ing qualifier to every F-ing word.   Example: the opening scenes of Titanic.

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Harry and Tonto

I saw the movie Harry and Tonto (1974) a while back. Starring Art Carney as Harry, it is the story of an elderly man who travels across the USA with his cat Tonto. Tonto’s aversion to riding in buses prompts Harry to buy a clunker in which they continue their journey. Various adventures ensue until they arrive at land’s end in Venice, California. There Tonto dies and Harry begins a new life.

It is a movie of real humanity unlike so much of the robotic crap cranked out by Hollywood. No race and chase, no explosions, no gratuitous sex and violence, no special effects.

Whenever I hear a movie praised for its special effects, I suspect the praiser to be a lunkhead capable of being roused from his stupor only by rude assaults upon his senses. What were the special effects in Fellini’s classic La Strada (1954), or in that other cinematic immortal, Zorba the Greek (1964) based on the great Kazantzakis novel of the same name? How about a story? How about some human meaning? How about some decent dialogue?

Study Everything, Join Nothing

Do I live up to this admonition? Or am I posturing? Is my posture perhaps a slouch towards hypocrisy?

Well, it depends on how broadly one takes 'join.' A while back, I joined a neighbor and some of his friends in helping him move furniture. Reasonably construed, the motto does not rule out that sort of thing. And being a fair and balanced guy, as everybody knows, I recently joined the Conservative Book Club to balance out my long-standing membership in the left-leaning and sex-saturated Quality Paperback Book Club. (It would be interesting to compare these two 'clubs' in respect of their target memberships — but that's another post.)

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