Boredom and Velocity

The modern terror of (and war against) boredom seems to be fundamentally tied to the speed of life around us. We’re used to things moving so fast around us – cars, images, lights, time, etc. – that once things slow down and we’re alone with ourselves or our families, we simply don’t know what to do. So, is boredom the absence of need to “do something”? We must, then, in those slower, quieter moments of stasis and silence, continue to be – and to be no less fully than we were when our lives were moving faster. Anyone have any thoughts on boredom? When did people start getting bored? Any books/articles you’ve found insightful?

Turning Back the Wheel of Progress

…if we are to produce a society of educated people, fitted to preserve their intellectual freedom amid the complex pressures of our modern society, we must turn back the wheel of progress some four or five hundred years, to the point at which education began to lose sight of its true object, towards the end of the Middle Ages.
- Dorothy Sayers, “The Lost Tools of Learning”

I’ve had my head wrapped in Clive Staples Lewis for the past couple months (as I’ve been teaching this class), and the most notable feature of my study thus far is probably the sort of education he received and delivered. This, by and large, was “Classics” – but it was remarkably thorough in that he studied not just the history and language of Latin or Greek (the definition of “Classics” that I’d learned in school); his course of study applied such a wide range of disciplines to whatever he read. So, of course modern thought was important and fit for study, but the foundation of these modern questions was (and remains to be) found in antiquity. That is, all good and truthful ideas are really just old ideas – found in old books, written by old thinkers, and now (probably at an ever-diminishing rate) only taught by old dinosaurs of teachers (as Lewis might say).

My friend Dan recently recommended Dorothy Sayers’ article “The Lost Tools of Learning” – it’s really her set of suggestions about how to teach young people – from childhood to adolescence. She laments keeping kids in school too long, thus extending that adolescence; she prescribes a Scholastic model, based on Medieval practices (yes, there was a lively educational institution in those “Dark Ages”). You should learn Grammar, Dialectic, and Rhetoric all by 16.

And honestly, the “Scholastic School of Sayers” is something I would have shuddered at as a kid. But now the only shuddering I’m doing is based on the fact that I have read only too little of ancient thought and history. Better late than never, or so they say.

So, how does a 26-year-old catch up? Or a 30 something or older, for that matter? Its tough advice, since the learning curve is so steep – but I think we need to take Lewis’ advice for ourselves and READ OLD BOOKS, and we need to take Sayers’ advice for our children and TURN BACK THE WHEEL.

Aching for the dear reader’s thoughts on this.

Another notch in the single-tasker’s belt

(I realized this morning that many of my own words, on this blog at least, are reactions to the words and thoughts of others. No man is an island.)

From “Ear Plugs to Lasers: The Science of Concentration” was in the NYT today. This was a very interesting article to me, for a few reasons.

1. This is more support for a lifestyle of single-tasking.

2. The problem is clearly defined, and requires little external evidence; everyone feels unproductive in this fast-paced world of progress and production. Everyone. Problem defined: we can’t pay attenti… hmm. I’m hungry. I need to pay some bills too. And get gas. No not that kind of gas, got plenty of that. I need to finish my Lewis lecture, and get immunizations, and… oh, blog.

3. The article comes so close to suggesting what I think is the only solution: clear your life; change your attitude toward things; reevaluate; reset; develop the virtue of contemplation (thinking long and lovingly about X); have a disposition of focus; today’s troubles are enough; the moment’s troubles are enough.

4. But it doesn’t suggest that. It shouts out to “meditation” but other than that, expects that technology (externalities) are able to fix us, without a meaningful change from within. Put in ear plugs; attach “a frikkin’ laserbeam to your head” to neurologically change your brain to pay attention. I wish I was kidding, but this is how twacked we’ve gotten. That’s transhumanism – this device would take us one step closer to merging into an unholy chimera of man and machine. Just wait for the suggestion of an implant.

5. Cool shout outs to William James and Milton, but I’m not sure if the context works to apply their thoughts. (I’ve never read either of those quotes though…)

6. I am (regardless of my blogbashings) supremely guilty of multi-tasking. But when I can sit and focus for a large block of time (the book/article suggests 90 minutes, but I’m thinking more like 2-4 hours) on the top priorities of my professional, vocational life… Oh! The happy state! I feel whole. I feel united.

Theoretical notch or not, this doesn’t change the fact that we are a culture of divided individuals. Say what you will about “connection” or “unity” with others… we need wholeness and unity within ourselves. (And something tells me that the two are more intimately related than I already think.)

Alas! Modernity! Part 2 of 2 (The Poem)

Aye! Modernity! Realize what no machine could do: feel the rebuke, know the shame! How does mythopoeia translate to zeros and ones?

And the Guide sang:

Iron will eat the world’s old beauty up.
Girder and grid and gantry will arise,
Iron forest of engines will arise,
Criss-cross of iron crotchet. For your eyes
No green or growth. Over all, the skies
Scribbled from end to end with boasts and lies.
(When Adam ate the irrevocable apple, Thou
Saw’st beyond death the resurrection of the dead.)

Clamour shall clean put out the voice of wisdom,
The printing-presses with their clapping wings,
Fouling your nourishment. Harpy wings,
Filling your minds all day with foolish things,
Will tame the eagle Thought: till she sings
Parrot-like in her cage to please dark kings.
(When Israel descended into Egypt, Thou
Dist purpose both the bondage and the coming out._

Tis new age, the new art, the new ethic and thought,
And fools crying, Because it has begun
It will continue as it has begun!
The wheel runs fast, therefore the wheel will run
Faster for ever. The old age is done,
We have new lights and see without the sun.
(Though they lay flat the mountains and dry up the sea,
Wilt thou yet change, as though God were a god?)

C.S. Lewis, The Pilgrim’s Regress, Book X, Chapter vi; On the denaturalization of the earth, the dethroning of wisdom, and the love of uninhibited progress – with an eye to redeeming purpose beyond the toil

Alas! Modernity! Part 1 of 2 (The Prose)

Oh, blessed and damned Machine Age! Hearken! You’ve heard of your futility before. I merely – pray not vainly – repeat:

‘There must be a good side somewhere to this revolution,’ said Vertue. ‘It is too solid – it looks to lasting – to be a mere evil…”

The Guide laughed. ‘You are falling into their own error,’ he said. ‘The change is not radical, nor will it be permanent. That idea depends on a curious disease which they have all caught – an inability to disbelieve advertisements. To be sure, if the machines did what they promised, the change would be very deep indeed. There next war, for example, would change the state of their country from disease to death. They are afraid of this themselves – though most of them are old enough to know by experience that a gun is no more likely than a toothpaste or a cosmetic to do the things its makers say it will do.

‘It is the same with all their machines. Their labor-saving devices multiply drudgery; their aphrodisiacs make them impotent: their amusements bore them: their rapid production of food leaves half of them starving, and their devices for saving them have banished leisure from their country. There will be no radical change.

‘And as for permanence – consider how quickly all machines are broken and obliterated. The black solitudes will some day be green again, and of all cities that I have seen these iron cities will break most suddenly.’

C.S. Lewis, The Pilgrim’s Regress, Book X, Chapter vi; On the futile shift from classical to scientific education

Tasty, iddn’t it? Part 2 coming soon.

Collapse…

I expect that this article will blow up in the coming days… It’s already getting play.

I’m still thinking about it, but either way, it’s a timely piece. Wondering if other people are convinced. Also wondering if this is less of a prediction and more of a description. Either way, he said it – and I’m glad the conversation is happening.

The original posts appear here, at InternetMonk.com.

I’ll put some thoughts down soon. At first pass, I’m thinking a little more broadly than the life-span of “Evangelicalism” – and I’m compelled to look at things in the context of 2000 years of Christianity rather than 200, or however long the movement in question has been around…

All too Familiar: That Hideous Strength and the Abolition of Man

How nice a literary connection to all this political talk.

The N.I.C.E. is Great Britain’s National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments, from the mind of C.S. Lewis in the conclusion of his Space Trilogy, That Hideous Strength (THS).

“The N.I.C.E. was the first-fruits of that constructive fusion between the state and the laboratory, on which so many thoughtful people base there hopes of a better world. It was to be free from almost all the tiresome restraints – “red tape” was the word its supporters used – which have hitherto hampered research in this country.” – THS, p. 23

As the drama unfolds, the N.I.C.E. proves to be the furthest thing from its acronym’s meaning, marked by media deception, violence and ulterior motives – bent on progress and control – and all nicely stated in the euphemism of “benefit to humankind.” This is starting to sound kinda familiar.

As I re-read this description today, I realize how visionary Lewis actually was. Inasmuch as That Hideous Strength is a literary allusion to his Abolition of Man (TAoM), his story is all too prophetic. As the Italian scientist Filostrato remarks to the misguided Mark Studdock regarding the philosophical underpinnings of the N.I.C.E. and the modern scientific community,

“All that talk about the power of Man over Nature-Man in the abstract-is only for the canaglia [Italian for "scoundrel"]. You know as well as I do that Man’s power over Nature means the power of some men over other men with Nature as the instrument.” – THS, p. 178

And from The Abolition of Man:

“‘Man’s conquest of Nature’ is an expression often used to describe the progress of applied science (p. 53)… In what sense is Man the possessor of increasing power over Nature?… From this point of view, what we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument (p. 54-55)… Man’s conquest of Nature, if the dreams of some scientific planners are realized, mean the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men (p. 58)… For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please (p. 59).”

And:

“But the man-moulders of the new age will be armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique: we shall get at last a race of conditioners who really can cut out all posterity in what shape they please (p. 60)… Man’s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man (p. 64).”

And are the conditioners – the omnicompetent and scientific, the powerful and political – exempt from this abolition? No:

“Nature, untrammeled by values, rules the Conditioners and, through them, all humanity. Man’s conquest of Nature turns out… to be Nature’s conquest of Man (p. 68)… As soon as we take the final step of reducing our species to the level of mere Nature, the whole process is stultified, for this time the being who stood to gain and the being who has been sacrificed are one and the same (p. 71)… It is in Man’s power to treat himself as a mere ‘natural object’ and his own judgements of value as raw material for scientific manipulation to alter at will (p. 72)… Man’s conquest of himself means simply the rule of the Conditioners over the conditioned human material, the world of post-humanity which, some knowingly and some unknowingly, nearly all men in all nations are at present labouring to produce (p. 75).”

He wrote TAoM in 1944, during the writing of THS. And it applies today, March 9, 2009, in a worrisome way.

Have we a situation in which Nature is untrammeled by values? One in which ethics and the best of virtuous philosophy and theology no longer have any guiding hand or sway or influence over science? One in which we’ve reduced ourselves to mere Nature and raw material? I hope not. For I value the truly human.

But what would a “truly human” situation look like? One in which we acknowledge the personhood of the other, and rightly distinguish them from material to be manipulated. One in which we speak as “I” to “Thou” and not merely as “I” to “It” (nod to Martin Buber).

“The regenerate science which I have in mind would not do even to minerals and vegetables what modern science threatens to do to man himself. When it explained it would not explain away. When if spoke of the parts it would remember the whole. While studying the It it would not lose… the Thou-situation (p. 79).”

I fear in all this talk of the parts (stem cells), we have, in fact, forgotten the whole (the human… the embryo).

Performative Speech Acts and Do-Overs and Bibles and Such

How to Do Things With Words

Guys, I’m sorry. I just can’t help it. It’s too interesting to a philosophy and linguistics double major. The following is a speech act – specifically, a “performative utterance.” That is, upon complete and accurate speaking of these words, in the appropriate context (as defined by the Constitution and American democratic tradition, in this case), the speaker not only has said something, but some act has been performed. Like me making a bet, “$10 on Timely Rider,” or me and Lani saying “I do” on March 31, 2007; or like God saying “Let there be light.”; or like…

Performing on Tuesday... or maybe not...

“I, [name], do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

J.L. Austin (PIPE!)

J.L. Austin was the first to take up performative utterances as a topic in philosophy of language. His student John Searle followed him. I took Searle’s class on Philosophy of Language when I was in school. A performative is an illocutionary act that bears to “truth value” – that is, it can’t be true or false. Rather, Austin and Searle offer that the sentence is either “felicitous” or “infelicitous” (“happy” or “unhappy”). A performative is only happy when it’s fulfilled.

John R. Searle

There are plenty of articles about the transposition of “faithfully.” Here are the articles (well, just a few of them).

AJC
NYT
Guardian
Steven Pinker

Pinker’s is the most interesting since he’s a cognitive scientist and linguist, and he explains the syntax of the problem (Roberts initially administered what is commonly thought to be more grammatically correct, that is, he did it without “splitting the verb” “will execute” with “faithfully”; but the Constitution does commit that grammatical error of splitting the verb…).

I’m not all that bothered about an inaugural do-over. I think it’s good that they “made sure.” And I think we go too far to say (as some have in fact said) that the oath doesn’t even matter, and that, regardless of the oath (or accuracy thereof), the prez-elect is officially prez at 12:00 p.m. during the inauguration. But then why even bother with the words? Well, because the oath and promise means something, and that’s one of the necessary conditions for being president (I don’t think it’s a sufficient condition, since it depends on other things as well).

But now, regarding the absence of a Bible…

It’s a little weird that he would flub while performing his oath WITH the Bible, but then arrange for an official do-over WITHOUT the Bible. Not to mention that the flub had to do with the word “faithfully.”

This explanation, cited in the Guardian, from US Constitution Online, isn’t sufficient I don’t think. In fact it kinda bothers me:

“There is no constitutional requirement that the oath be sworn on a Bible. There is also no prohibition. So, a Bible can be used, but so could anything, including the Koran, the Talmud, or a copy of Sports Illustrated. The point is not where the president’s hand rests when he or she takes the oath, but that the oath be recited, and then carried out.”

On the one hand, I agree that the important thing is the oath is taken and witnessed, but surely the physical presence and physical contact with the Holy (read: authoritative standard) Bible provides a reference for holding the person making the oath accountable. Does it bother anyone else? Do tell. I’m starting to sound like a Fundie conspiracy theorist. There are two questions here though: what ARE the necessary conditions? (touching a Bible doesn’t seem to be regarded as a necessary condition) and what SHOULD the necessary conditions be? And more specifically, do those necessary conditions for becoming president include inaugural traditions like using a Bible or having a Federal Justice administer?

Maybe boring to most. Interesting to me. But it could be historically and culturally important (and potentially indicative of a growing secularism) – if for no other reason that this would be the first time in our history that a president took an OFFICIAL oath of office without the Bible. A precedent, if you will. And maybe this has a lot to do with vocation, or literally, “vocare” – calling. No doubt, Obama’s vocation is tied to this oath. And given the traditional (albeit religious) sense of vocation – something that is God-given, spoken by the Divine, Personal Logos – what might that mean for the official version of the oath? Hmm.

Nevertheless, here’s to a felicitous presidency. Lord help him.

On the Picking Up and Dusting Off of America…

First of all, I know I’ve been extremely critical of Obama, and that the criticism has been quite focused. I don’t apologize for that. But yesterday, his Inauguration meant something great to our country, and to be honest, I did experience a strong sentiment of hope. The sort of hope an abolitionist would have had in the midst of an America dedicated to slavery: that at some point in the future, all American human persons would be free and considered equally worthy. Well, if not entirely or perfectly, we’ve seen major progress and change (toward virtuous and loving ends) since that time. And I’m really stoked that we peacefully transitioned our executive leadership to a black president. That’s pretty freaking wonderful.

And at some point down the line, I hope that every human person in our country reveres the intrinsic value and worth of every human life in our human community. I intend to continue yelling about this issue.

To that end…

Might I suggest a revision that might help foster a more communal mindset? One that turns the modern American mind outward, out of ourselves, and connects us with others?

“Starting today, we must pick ourselves [nope, EACH OTHER] up, dust ourselves [nope, EACH OTHER] off, and begin again the work of remaking America.”

More on Humanities, the University and Classical Education

I was only recently introduced to the work and thought of Victor Davis Hanson. But from what I’ve heard and read, I’m looking forward to more.

In this article, he points out the value and benefit of a classical education (i.e., the study of classical history, literature, philosophy, philology, architecture, etc… the ancient stuff!). The benefits are: (1) Acquisition of generic methods of inquiry (what we’d call “critical thinking” or “how to think about life”), (2) Conveyance of “an older, tragic view of man’s physical and mental limitations at odds with the modern notion of life without limits” (I’m into that), and (3) Framing the “window of the West” (he argues that all subsequent trends of the Western culture/intellect, such as the medieval or modern eras, are really just tributes to or turnings from Antiquity and Classical tradition).

And he laments the loss of this classical education and study, which has led to, he argues, the degradation and shallowing of the American university. I’m still only learning about this; and being a product of the American university myself, I’m a little embarrassed for how I’ve served as an example of the shallowing Davis worries about.

But I worry about it too, and thankfully, my time in the university is not yet over (nor will it ever be over, if I could have it my way). I’m glad to be introduced to this at 26 years old, rather than 36, 46, or never… if there is life after 46… c’mon, just jokin’ ya! All to say, I’m intrigued, and wondering how I’m going to:

Learn Latin, Greek and Hebrew

Read primary accounts of classical history

Read Homer, Virgil, Marcus Aurelius, Plato, Aristotle (not to mention their critics)

Work my way through all the other important thinkers and writers and historians of the West

And still have time to walk Margaux.

Aye. God help me. I sense the looming, foreboding, impending temptation to multitask or take a speed-reading course.
Here’s to a patient and finite life of exploring the history of humanity, the plight of the fragile human condition, and the limits of my own existence!