From 6 March to 10 March, Errol Morris (documentary film director of Thin Blue Line, Fog of War, and others) published a five part sequence on the New York Times opinionator blog about Thomas Kuhn and many related topics. (Link.) It sucked up my attention for a good couple of hours and got me to thinking about many problems which may not be solvable.
The biggest issue is an ideal which is often termed absolute knowledge, but which most of us amateur philosophers just call: Reality. Kuhn famously wrote in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions that we ought to be skeptical whether any such thing will ever exist. The most relevant quotation:
"Does it really help to imagine that there is some one full, objective, true account of nature and that the proper measure of scientific achievement is the extent to which it brings us closer to that ultimate goal?" (p 170 in the second editition, U. Chicago Press, 1970).
Since I am only an amateur philosopher about 25% of the time, and my day job is as a physicist, it is impossible for me to run counter to the norms of my entire tribe and not say this question is ridiculous. Of course it helps. That is exactly what we do. We have a lot of things wrong; but it is less and less over time. Progress is unequivocal and together we proceed toward an ultimate "one, full, objective true account of nature" like an asymptote approaches its bounding line.
Kuhn is not here to defend himself, so to be honest I will point out here that it is a little abusive to pull a sentence out of its 200 pages of context and mock the author. Kuhn was highly educated in the science subjects which he wrote about, and there is definitely some subtle point in that book which may justify a close reading. I have not yet found it, but then again I have not yet read it very closely. I only read it one time for a class. One of the conclusions I have drawn from scanning the pages over the last few days is that I will put Kuhn's book on my short stack of books to be read closely and urgently. He has much material in there on Newton and Galileo and Dalton and these are very interesting topics, and the little I have read in the last few days looks great. I will be interested to see what I can make of this popular book.
Morris was a (failed) graduate student of Kuhn's, so his opinionator blog sequence was quite personal. He included a number of nuggets which added up to a fabulous stew pot full of stuff. Here are the highlights from my notes:
On the big question, Kuhn's from above on Reality, Morris doesn't tell us much. He replies with the cliche if you don't believe in reality go jump out a tenth floor window.
There are a couple of great personal anecdotes. The "theme" anecdote about Kuhn throwing an ashtray full of cigarette butts at Morris's head is entertaining. A much better one is the story about how he was arrested at a Vietnam protest and climbed out of the fourth-floor holding cell window and never got booked. He went back to the microfiche of the Princeton campus newspaper to find his name listed amongst the arrested students to document the gratifying fact he was on the right side during the war.
He has some fascinating information on the Pythagoreans:
1.) We know virtually nothing factual about the Pythagoreans. Our best single source is Iamblichus, who lived 800 years after. Whether Pythagorus was a scholar or more of a religious cult leader or something in between is not known.
2.) The Pythagorean Theorem was common knowledge to mathematicians in the Sumerian Civilization hundreds of years before Pythagorus.
3.) A (probably) legendary figure is Hippasus of Metapontum. Legend has it that he proved the irrationality of the square root of two and was executed by the Pythagoreans to punish him for this sacrilege.
As good as all this information is, I was puzzled as to how this detracted from Kuhn's thesis.
This is the first instance I have seen where the name Wittgenstein and the term "Gestalt flip" were located in the same paragraph. Wittgenstein wrote about the duck-rabbit in Philosophical Investigations before it was commonly called a Gestalt-flip.
An old and favorite puzzle of mine. Morris makes much of the Kripke argument about naming with the example of the goldfish and he even shows a picture of a goldfish. Now the puzzle is this: goldfish are at the very least orange and often red; they are never yellow and they are certainly never golden. Why do they call them goldfish? I first asked my mom this when I was around seven years old and neither she nor anyone else has ever been able to answer this question for me.
_______________________________________
There is a feature about progress which makes it ambiguous at times, and I cannot put my finger on it, but I can give a real life example of what I am writing about. Perhaps this is related to Kuhn's thesis; if I take anything like this from my careful reading of his book I will be much more sympathetic to his argument. I have a colleague who has an advanced degree in Astrophysics. He is one of the world's leading authorities on the S-P orbital transition spectral line in the sodium atom as it shows up on earth instruments arriving here from all over the universe of space and time. A very bright guy. Based on a number of casual (and admittedly sneaky) conversations I have managed to learn that he can look up in a clear sky and identify the Big Dipper and Orion and just about nothing else.
If you had a time travel machine and could assemble a dozen Sumerian priest-astronomers and put them together with a dozen modern members of the Astronomy faculties of Cambridge and Stanford and MIT, under a clear night sky, who do you think knows more facts they could list out in a ninety minute examination period about what is up there? I would bet a lot of money on those guys from Sumer.
Lastly, I have some data which might be useful to some. Kuhn's book is now $13.00 list price from the University of Chicago Press. My copy which I purchased in 1980 was three dollars. Roughly two price doublings in 30 years; you can put that in your spreadsheet if you are keeping a personal Consumer Price Indicator inflation index rate.
19 March 2011
14 March 2011
Angle of safety
In February 2009 on the 100th anniversary of Wallace Stegner's birthday, Timothy Egan wrote a thoughtful tribute to Stegner on the New York Times Op-Ed page. He did not get any facts wrong, but he did not put his emphasis where I would have, although I have only read five of Stegner's books and only three of these were novels.
Stegner's greatest accomplishment was his versatility: first an award winning novelist; second a teacher with award winning novelist pupils (Kesey, McMurtry, &c); third a writer of terrific non-fiction with expertise in history and biography and ecology; and fourth an innovator in environmental politics. My own appreciation for Stegner is centered on two non-fiction books which were essential for my own education:
Beyond the hundredth meridian, and
Where the bluebird sings to the lemonade springs.
Egan complained that Stegner is under-appreciated, that even at his home at Stanford University nobody reads him any longer. This complaint is wrong, and perhaps even meaningless. The man's books are in print and his most-read novels have hundreds of five-star reviews on the Amazon web page. There is one lesson in Stegner's books which is not generally appreciated in my experience. That lesson is the environment in the western United States is very fragile and its organic evolution has left it incapable of supporting the number of people living on it. Many people in the eastern United States who have never spent much time in the west do not appreciate this fairly simple fact, regardless of what they have read or heard. If you have not spent enough time there, you may not be capable of appreciating it.
The hundredth meridian in Stegner's book refers to an approximate boundary across the Great Plains of the United States. To the east of this (curved) boundary rainfall will support agriculture, and to the west agriculture requires irrigation because the rain is too sparse. If you look at the google satellite map of the United States, the east is green and the west is brown; the line of demarcation is approximately 100 degrees west in longitude, the hundredth meridian.
The central character in the book is John Wesley Powell, a legendary giant of a man. Powell lost an arm at the Battle of Shiloh, and in spite of this handicap he commanded the first (white man) expedition to navigate the length of the Colorado River. In the vernacular, the man was a little nuts. He was also the first man to raise the issue of water allocation in the settlement of the western United States.
Near Moab, Utah, at the visitor's center to Canyonlands National Park they show a movie about Powell's expedition, and they have a replica of Powell's boats. The technology of rapid running water vessels has come a long way since the 1860's, and people now do this trip for fun. People also suffer accidental death doing these trips for fun with modern vessels. Some of Powell's men were killed by Indians, which is one hazard the current adventurer (and their life insurance underwriter) probably does not have to account for.
In around 1993 I learned firsthand about the fragility of the land in the west. There is a spectacular overlook of the canyons of Canyonlands at Dead Horse Point, at the confluence of the Green River and the Colorado River. As you look away from the river confluence, you can still observe the tracks of seismic survey lines placed by oil exploration companies. Canyonlands was chartered in 1964, at which time seismic surveys were no longer permitted. Now a seismic survey line is a pretty benign environmental impact, but in Canyonlands you can see the remains of one for at least thirty years. On the gulf coast that is going to be invisible after a single growing season. East of the hundredth meridian, the environment is very forgiving. This is the sense in which living east of the hundredth meridian can blind one to the fragility of the environment, and this is the lesson which Stegner worked so hard to provide in his books.
The other thing about life in the West which Stegner expressed better than any I have seen is the human element of opportunism which is so prevalent. In American History class in high school they told us all about "Go west, young man", but they did not tell us this story with any of the detail and passion with which Stegner tells it. His father moved Stegner's family all over the western United States and Canada pursuing an assortment of half-brained schemes and investment scams. Stegner told the story of his father's life in a brutal New York Times Sunday Magazine story which I can no longer link to. The ending was unforgettable.
"He died friendless and penniless of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a fleabag hotel hundreds of miles from his last permanent address, after a lifetime of creating more environmental damage than he could undo if he had a second lifetime to devote to the task."
I have no doubt mangled that quote a little transcribing it from my memory, but that is the gist. I am saddened a little that such a great writer as Stegner did not more fully absorb Emily Dickinson's lesson to tell it slant.
Stegner's greatest accomplishment was his versatility: first an award winning novelist; second a teacher with award winning novelist pupils (Kesey, McMurtry, &c); third a writer of terrific non-fiction with expertise in history and biography and ecology; and fourth an innovator in environmental politics. My own appreciation for Stegner is centered on two non-fiction books which were essential for my own education:
Beyond the hundredth meridian, and
Where the bluebird sings to the lemonade springs.
Egan complained that Stegner is under-appreciated, that even at his home at Stanford University nobody reads him any longer. This complaint is wrong, and perhaps even meaningless. The man's books are in print and his most-read novels have hundreds of five-star reviews on the Amazon web page. There is one lesson in Stegner's books which is not generally appreciated in my experience. That lesson is the environment in the western United States is very fragile and its organic evolution has left it incapable of supporting the number of people living on it. Many people in the eastern United States who have never spent much time in the west do not appreciate this fairly simple fact, regardless of what they have read or heard. If you have not spent enough time there, you may not be capable of appreciating it.
The hundredth meridian in Stegner's book refers to an approximate boundary across the Great Plains of the United States. To the east of this (curved) boundary rainfall will support agriculture, and to the west agriculture requires irrigation because the rain is too sparse. If you look at the google satellite map of the United States, the east is green and the west is brown; the line of demarcation is approximately 100 degrees west in longitude, the hundredth meridian.
The central character in the book is John Wesley Powell, a legendary giant of a man. Powell lost an arm at the Battle of Shiloh, and in spite of this handicap he commanded the first (white man) expedition to navigate the length of the Colorado River. In the vernacular, the man was a little nuts. He was also the first man to raise the issue of water allocation in the settlement of the western United States.
Near Moab, Utah, at the visitor's center to Canyonlands National Park they show a movie about Powell's expedition, and they have a replica of Powell's boats. The technology of rapid running water vessels has come a long way since the 1860's, and people now do this trip for fun. People also suffer accidental death doing these trips for fun with modern vessels. Some of Powell's men were killed by Indians, which is one hazard the current adventurer (and their life insurance underwriter) probably does not have to account for.
In around 1993 I learned firsthand about the fragility of the land in the west. There is a spectacular overlook of the canyons of Canyonlands at Dead Horse Point, at the confluence of the Green River and the Colorado River. As you look away from the river confluence, you can still observe the tracks of seismic survey lines placed by oil exploration companies. Canyonlands was chartered in 1964, at which time seismic surveys were no longer permitted. Now a seismic survey line is a pretty benign environmental impact, but in Canyonlands you can see the remains of one for at least thirty years. On the gulf coast that is going to be invisible after a single growing season. East of the hundredth meridian, the environment is very forgiving. This is the sense in which living east of the hundredth meridian can blind one to the fragility of the environment, and this is the lesson which Stegner worked so hard to provide in his books.
The other thing about life in the West which Stegner expressed better than any I have seen is the human element of opportunism which is so prevalent. In American History class in high school they told us all about "Go west, young man", but they did not tell us this story with any of the detail and passion with which Stegner tells it. His father moved Stegner's family all over the western United States and Canada pursuing an assortment of half-brained schemes and investment scams. Stegner told the story of his father's life in a brutal New York Times Sunday Magazine story which I can no longer link to. The ending was unforgettable.
"He died friendless and penniless of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a fleabag hotel hundreds of miles from his last permanent address, after a lifetime of creating more environmental damage than he could undo if he had a second lifetime to devote to the task."
I have no doubt mangled that quote a little transcribing it from my memory, but that is the gist. I am saddened a little that such a great writer as Stegner did not more fully absorb Emily Dickinson's lesson to tell it slant.
09 March 2011
Kundalini rising
The physiological process involved in the rising of the Kundalini (natural nervous or even supernatural psychic energy) in devoted and persevering yogis has never been explained any place where I could understand it; it is a mystery. If you have the patience to examine any of the citations on that wikipedia page, perhaps it will make more sense to you. To me the single best resource is The Serpent Power by Arthur Avalon. This book was first published in 1919 when neurology was still a comparatively primitive science. Although it is the single best resource, it is not a good resource. One might describe it as the least terrible resource.
I have used this analogy on my blog once before, but it is so central to my current investigations that I am going to repeat it here. My amateur opinion is that the human nervous system remains an undiscovered country. I believe that our current maps of the human nervous system are little better than the 16th century maps of North America which had major rivers running from Lake Michigan to San Francisco Bay. Perhaps the Kundalini has no more factual basis than the Seven Cities of Gold which a few of the Spanish Conquistadors died searching for. Bernard De Voto has a delightful passage in one of his books describing Coronodo's disappointment at finding nothing but adobe huts when arriving at his furthest destination in what is now New Mexico.
Instead of data, I offer anecdotes. My basic daily meditation regimen (described here) is a series of relaxation auto-suggestions focused upon my own anatomy. One of the most interesting effects of this meditation is seemingly spontaneous activation of reflex movements, such as the extensor digitorum reflex. Some hypnosis manuals consider the extensor digitorum refllex as the sine qua non of the state of hypnosis--a subject is considered hypnotized if and only if such an ideo motor response can be observed.
Many years ago I suffered a back injury playing tennis and was treated by doctors. It was confusing to me, and they were all more confident in the success of my treatment outcome than I was. I expressed some skepticism regarding the diagnosis and one of them said to me:
"Look. I have just given you a complete basic neurological examination. Your function is perfectly fine; in fact, considering your age, it is most excellent. There is absolutely nothing wrong with your spine. Do you want some Prozac?"
In this complete basic neurological examination he did test my extensor digitorum reflex. My experience in doing years of my self-hypnosis meditation leads me to believe that their catalog of reflexes is woefully incomplete. In my neurology textbook the word hypnosis is missing from the index. My psychology textbook is little better. (I have the 5th edition from 2000 so maybe this has improved.) There are five or six references to hypnosis. Gleitman says it is not understood, and he (they) speculates that perhaps the brain is secreting endorphins or similar poorly understood neurotransmitters and this is responsible for the phenomena that we observe in hypnotized subjects. There are also a couple of vague references to the placebo effect. Placebo is another word which is missing from the index in the neurology textbook.
This probably sounds critical of Kandel et al, but I do not intend that. The book is 1414 pages long and endlessly rewarding. When medical students study neurology, that is one of the books that they use. The subject is so large that they have to leave things out. Evidence-based medicine leaves out hypnosis because it seems impossible to collect reliable evidence. I once had a neurologist tell me, "I know nothing about hypnosis". Perhaps that was a dishonest conversation stopper to avoid a conversation he wanted to avoid, but if his teachers followed the Kandel book they left hypnosis out. This also is a mystery.
I own Gray's Anatomy, and the Anatomy Coloring Book in addition to Kandel; they contain more accessible information on the human nervous system. The best single document for me is done by an artist, however, not a doctor. It is Sacred Mirrors by Alex Gray. His representation of the human nervous system seems to be at exactly the right level of detail for my purposes, and the beauty of his presentation permits me to really appreciate the wonders of human anatomy. Some of his pictures are physically inaccurate. He has a beautiful picture of the psychic energy centers in the body. There is no scientific evidence for any such thing.
I have used this analogy on my blog once before, but it is so central to my current investigations that I am going to repeat it here. My amateur opinion is that the human nervous system remains an undiscovered country. I believe that our current maps of the human nervous system are little better than the 16th century maps of North America which had major rivers running from Lake Michigan to San Francisco Bay. Perhaps the Kundalini has no more factual basis than the Seven Cities of Gold which a few of the Spanish Conquistadors died searching for. Bernard De Voto has a delightful passage in one of his books describing Coronodo's disappointment at finding nothing but adobe huts when arriving at his furthest destination in what is now New Mexico.
Instead of data, I offer anecdotes. My basic daily meditation regimen (described here) is a series of relaxation auto-suggestions focused upon my own anatomy. One of the most interesting effects of this meditation is seemingly spontaneous activation of reflex movements, such as the extensor digitorum reflex. Some hypnosis manuals consider the extensor digitorum refllex as the sine qua non of the state of hypnosis--a subject is considered hypnotized if and only if such an ideo motor response can be observed.
Many years ago I suffered a back injury playing tennis and was treated by doctors. It was confusing to me, and they were all more confident in the success of my treatment outcome than I was. I expressed some skepticism regarding the diagnosis and one of them said to me:
"Look. I have just given you a complete basic neurological examination. Your function is perfectly fine; in fact, considering your age, it is most excellent. There is absolutely nothing wrong with your spine. Do you want some Prozac?"
In this complete basic neurological examination he did test my extensor digitorum reflex. My experience in doing years of my self-hypnosis meditation leads me to believe that their catalog of reflexes is woefully incomplete. In my neurology textbook the word hypnosis is missing from the index. My psychology textbook is little better. (I have the 5th edition from 2000 so maybe this has improved.) There are five or six references to hypnosis. Gleitman says it is not understood, and he (they) speculates that perhaps the brain is secreting endorphins or similar poorly understood neurotransmitters and this is responsible for the phenomena that we observe in hypnotized subjects. There are also a couple of vague references to the placebo effect. Placebo is another word which is missing from the index in the neurology textbook.
This probably sounds critical of Kandel et al, but I do not intend that. The book is 1414 pages long and endlessly rewarding. When medical students study neurology, that is one of the books that they use. The subject is so large that they have to leave things out. Evidence-based medicine leaves out hypnosis because it seems impossible to collect reliable evidence. I once had a neurologist tell me, "I know nothing about hypnosis". Perhaps that was a dishonest conversation stopper to avoid a conversation he wanted to avoid, but if his teachers followed the Kandel book they left hypnosis out. This also is a mystery.
I own Gray's Anatomy, and the Anatomy Coloring Book in addition to Kandel; they contain more accessible information on the human nervous system. The best single document for me is done by an artist, however, not a doctor. It is Sacred Mirrors by Alex Gray. His representation of the human nervous system seems to be at exactly the right level of detail for my purposes, and the beauty of his presentation permits me to really appreciate the wonders of human anatomy. Some of his pictures are physically inaccurate. He has a beautiful picture of the psychic energy centers in the body. There is no scientific evidence for any such thing.
04 March 2011
The Kitchen Table
The kitchen table is an exercise which I learned from a woman who is the most skilled hypnotist I have ever seen close up. It is simple and takes very little time, but it does require a dedicated group of people. It is from the Gestalt Psychotherapy field, and very similar in dynamics to the Two Chair Exercise, which I previously went over. The working premise for its effect is that stress and neurosis are often sourced in things which happened long ago when we were less resourceful, and that exploring these event origins with the full array of resources which we now possess will permit us to process them in a healthier manner.
In the kitchen table the subject of the exercise revisits a typical meal in the home of their youth. It is one variant of a role playing exercise, and the role the subject plays is their self, at home, when young. The exercise also requires other players to play the roles of the significant others in the youthful home of the subject--his parents, siblings, &c. The subject specifies the cast in the preparation for the exercise. The subject also specifies a line or two or three for each of the other characters. They can be mundane, but they need to be appropriate to the characters. For example:
"That dress looks pretty".
"I wanted that piece of chicken."
"Do we really have to go to Uncle Drew's?"
The lines do not need to be memorized or professionally acted or voiced. You can even fit a guy in for mom in a pinch. All that is required is that the various characters speak only their lines, and it hardly matters if they speak them especially well. Then the characters sit around a table, just like it is time for a meal long ago and far away in the subject's past. They start speaking slow, distinct, and one at a time. Gradually they speak louder, faster, and overlapping one another. The physiology of what happens can be very strange, but I believe there is an avalanche in the subject's audio processing system; there is just far too much information entering their ears for them to keep up with. Although as the exercise begins they are consciously attempting to follow it all, soon they are overwhelmed by the sound stimulus. The result is (almost invariably) a profound hypnotic trance state.
I once took a poetry workshop with my poet-mentor Dave Brinks in New Orleans, where we did something quite similar as a writing experiment. He had two portable stereos set up on opposite ends of the room. On one he had Coltraine jazz, and on the other he had Bach Brandenberg Concerto. The poets sat in the middle and wrote poetry. Gradually as we wrote, he cranked up the volume on both the Coltraine box and on the Bach box. After about forty minutes, we took turns reading our stuff and giving feedback to one another. That was a worthy writing exercise similar in process. The results could hardly be compared to the kitchen table in the Gestalt psychotherapy room, which are more like abracadabra, presto, and SHAZAM!
In the kitchen table the subject of the exercise revisits a typical meal in the home of their youth. It is one variant of a role playing exercise, and the role the subject plays is their self, at home, when young. The exercise also requires other players to play the roles of the significant others in the youthful home of the subject--his parents, siblings, &c. The subject specifies the cast in the preparation for the exercise. The subject also specifies a line or two or three for each of the other characters. They can be mundane, but they need to be appropriate to the characters. For example:
"That dress looks pretty".
"I wanted that piece of chicken."
"Do we really have to go to Uncle Drew's?"
The lines do not need to be memorized or professionally acted or voiced. You can even fit a guy in for mom in a pinch. All that is required is that the various characters speak only their lines, and it hardly matters if they speak them especially well. Then the characters sit around a table, just like it is time for a meal long ago and far away in the subject's past. They start speaking slow, distinct, and one at a time. Gradually they speak louder, faster, and overlapping one another. The physiology of what happens can be very strange, but I believe there is an avalanche in the subject's audio processing system; there is just far too much information entering their ears for them to keep up with. Although as the exercise begins they are consciously attempting to follow it all, soon they are overwhelmed by the sound stimulus. The result is (almost invariably) a profound hypnotic trance state.
I once took a poetry workshop with my poet-mentor Dave Brinks in New Orleans, where we did something quite similar as a writing experiment. He had two portable stereos set up on opposite ends of the room. On one he had Coltraine jazz, and on the other he had Bach Brandenberg Concerto. The poets sat in the middle and wrote poetry. Gradually as we wrote, he cranked up the volume on both the Coltraine box and on the Bach box. After about forty minutes, we took turns reading our stuff and giving feedback to one another. That was a worthy writing exercise similar in process. The results could hardly be compared to the kitchen table in the Gestalt psychotherapy room, which are more like abracadabra, presto, and SHAZAM!
27 February 2011
Six degrees of crispy bacon
On the wikipedia page for Social Network Theory they have Stanley Milgram and his six degrees separation (apparently he did not use that term) story. He did use the term small world. There are a couple entries for Milgram in my Social Network Analysis textbook, but nothing like the amount of emphasis they use there.
The current larger size of the world may be swamping the small world thing into irrelevance. The last couple times I experienced it ("oh, so you know . . ."), it got me absolutely nowhere. When I go to my professional society annual meeting there are 25 000 people there and I am at absolute maximum two degrees of separation from any one of them and the response I get from 99% of the people there is interstate highway etiquette. OK that is an exaggeration but it is not by much. I know one guy who is known by all 25 000 as he wrote the canonical textbook in the field. I wonder what he experiences when he walks through that meeting hall. Does he feel like Elvis? The last time I saw him at one of those meetings he looked bored.
The Social Network Analysis textbook is an outlier in my library. I have forgotten why I bought it. The other day I searched my Amazon purchase history and found what I bought it with and on what day. Then I went digging through my journals to figure out what I was spending my time on when I decided I wanted to own a Social Network textbook. This was twenty minutes of digging and I was still clueless when I finished. When you catch a clear view of something you do not understand, that is where you dig for gold, even though usually you find nothing. Most gold prospecters are poor. I was reminded by this of the day when I declared myself a victor in the quest to become an educated person.
When I was younger I poured myself into an avalanche of materials, feeling that some day I would know enough to not feel perpetually ignorant, and after that day my life would be fine even though then it was a mostly soulless grind. The object of my feelings that day was one Walter Benjamin, a literary critic of some note who died in World War II. I had seen his name as some sort of keystone in a number of different contexts and his book Illuminations was in that ever growing stack of books which I had to finish in order to view myself as an educated person.
One day I finally got to that book and perhaps it was my mood, but around page fifty I decided the book was crap. But not just that. There was also a reverse avalanche of cynicism as I had seen at least a dozen respectable scholars (and no way to tell at that point who they were) whose judgment I had to question for speaking so highly of the crap. So I decided there, then, I had read all that I required of myself to read to consider myself as educated. I remember the room, the sunlight coming in the window, what was in refrigerator; it was summer; Clinton was president; I was listening to lots of folk music; the woman I was dating and I seemed to have a great thing going for a while.
It was a sensation of freedom. I can remember nothing about college graduation, except I was looking forward to what I thought was a great job offer across the country.
I tossed Illuminations in the dumpster, but I may go back to it again some day. I have since learned that Benjamin was close friends with Gershem Scholem, whose books I have come to adore. What would be strange is, if I pick the book back up with a fresh brain and a generous attitude and find it is still crap to me. Maybe the fellow had some nervous tic in his writing style which is annoying to me personally.
22 February 2011
Memory Relentless
I have a memory of an interview on National Public Radio from a few years back with Maurice Sendak. In the interview he expressed a depressing view of his own life and his memories of it. The gist of this (my own memory is fuzzy enough that this is not verbatim) was that he found his memories to be relentless; that he would associate from one thing to another and it was inevitable that he would eventually arrive at something painful, too painful to escape from to a next painless association.That is not exactly what he said, but I can clearly recall his use of the word "relentless".
One of the stories which he told of his early life was unforgettable. His family was first or second generation in the United States; they were Jews who had immigrated from Poland. All of their family that stayed behind were wiped out by the Germans in the war. This was a horrible experience to be related to, but it contaminated their American life. He said his mother would not allow him to forget it for a day. If he was late to the dinner table, his mother would tell him, "your cousin Benjamin would love to be able to come to the dinner table on time, but he can't because the Nazis killed him."
Now Sendak was born in 1928. Unless they had some special inside information (possible but not likely) Maurice was 17 years old in 1945 when the full horror of what happened in Poland during the war finally became common knowledge. When I heard this story on the radio, I thought "my God what a horrible thing to say to a child." This was the tone in which he presented it. I was surprised when I looked at the dates because, although that is a horrible thing to say to a child, a seventeen-year-old is not a child; and I wonder if he was not exaggerating for effect and even perhaps he might have made the whole thing up.
The other strange thing in the interview was he said he was in psychoanalysis for 25 years and he had never been happy until just recently. It was a rather sad presentation for such an apparently successful writer and man. Perhaps those of us with less relentless memories are very fortunate.
One of the stories which he told of his early life was unforgettable. His family was first or second generation in the United States; they were Jews who had immigrated from Poland. All of their family that stayed behind were wiped out by the Germans in the war. This was a horrible experience to be related to, but it contaminated their American life. He said his mother would not allow him to forget it for a day. If he was late to the dinner table, his mother would tell him, "your cousin Benjamin would love to be able to come to the dinner table on time, but he can't because the Nazis killed him."
Now Sendak was born in 1928. Unless they had some special inside information (possible but not likely) Maurice was 17 years old in 1945 when the full horror of what happened in Poland during the war finally became common knowledge. When I heard this story on the radio, I thought "my God what a horrible thing to say to a child." This was the tone in which he presented it. I was surprised when I looked at the dates because, although that is a horrible thing to say to a child, a seventeen-year-old is not a child; and I wonder if he was not exaggerating for effect and even perhaps he might have made the whole thing up.
The other strange thing in the interview was he said he was in psychoanalysis for 25 years and he had never been happy until just recently. It was a rather sad presentation for such an apparently successful writer and man. Perhaps those of us with less relentless memories are very fortunate.
17 February 2011
The Walden Pond Isolation Maneuver
Last August 28 I had the opportunity to attend a conference at the University of Saint Thomas, "Religion, Mental Health, and the Search for Meaning: Bridging the Gaps" (previously described here and here). There was one sentence in the conference which has stuck with me for over five months. The speaker was a Catholic priest and he was describing a typical metaphysics problem for one of his church members. This typical church member is exhausted by the never-ending hypocrisy of the faithful and withdraws. The priest encounters the exhaustion when he calls upon people who have been missing and wants to call them back, just like the shepherd fetching his lost sheep in the parable in the bible. The priest maintains that everybody in the church, without exception, is also exhausted by the never-ending hypocrisy; they resolve to endure it, as the least unacceptable alternative. I remember this part verbatim:
"Withdrawing yourself to Walden Pond is not an option."
I almost agree with him. Since I am currently quite withdrawn to my equivalent of Walden Pond I cannot totally agree with him. Perhaps I would insert the word sustainable in between an and option.
The first time I read Walden was in school for a class and I did not enjoy it at all. I did the boy scouts camping and wilderness thing intermittently, but going to the woods to sit was not really one of my ambitions. Perhaps climbing to the top of Mount Everest or surfing the Banzai Pipeline would be worth doing, but the idea of enjoying a transcendent moment listening to the rain falling on the roof of my cabin in the woods was not something I could yet understand.
Thoreu's book is now one of my all-time favorites, and it is an inspiration to one of my major current projects. Here is an excerpt from his book which I am in the process of reproducing for my own situation at this very moment:
(modified only so very very very slightly.)
This is Thoreau's expense record for construction of his cabin in the woods. I am living in an urban apartment and everything I require for shelter is accounted for in my monthly rent check, but with this small modification I am going through the exact same thing, restricting my expenses mostly to necessities and accounting for every single penny.
The benefit (as Thoreau so eloquently described) is the creation of a clearing in time and space to observe and think about the universe. Here is one small example. Last November when the first cold front blew in from the north the oak trees by my apartment started dropping acorns. This had a strong effect on the neighborhood squirrels. These rare precious tidbits were there for them in a windfall. Their behavior was energized as if they had sprouted wings and they began to fly around like cartoon squirrels, as if they had never once seen an acorn before in their life. The thing which really struck me though, is that surely this happens every November. And even though this surely happens every November, I had not seen it the three previous Novembers (when I was off to my office job every morning) that I lived here. It was only in my new reclusive mode that my mind had the time and space for me to see it and appreciate it.
Now I understand where the priest was coming from. Since he is evaluated by his superiors by how many people are in his pews and how much cash comes into his collection plates, he could hardly advise anything different. If you look in his textbook though, you see that Jesus went out to the desert and you find that Moses went up on the mountain and Elijah went out to the desert. Escaping from the routine of life's cares is an essential part of the tradition, which includes that those men all eventually returned. If the universe zaps me like that I will definitely return. I just might return anyway.
"Withdrawing yourself to Walden Pond is not an option."
I almost agree with him. Since I am currently quite withdrawn to my equivalent of Walden Pond I cannot totally agree with him. Perhaps I would insert the word sustainable in between an and option.
The first time I read Walden was in school for a class and I did not enjoy it at all. I did the boy scouts camping and wilderness thing intermittently, but going to the woods to sit was not really one of my ambitions. Perhaps climbing to the top of Mount Everest or surfing the Banzai Pipeline would be worth doing, but the idea of enjoying a transcendent moment listening to the rain falling on the roof of my cabin in the woods was not something I could yet understand.
Thoreu's book is now one of my all-time favorites, and it is an inspiration to one of my major current projects. Here is an excerpt from his book which I am in the process of reproducing for my own situation at this very moment:
Boards.......................... $ 8.03+, mostly shanty boards.
Refuse shingles for roof sides... 4.00
Laths............................ 1.25
Two second-hand windows
with glass.................... 2.43
One thousand old brick........... 4.00
Two casks of lime................ 2.40 That was high.
Hair............................. 0.31 More than I needed.
Mantle-tree iron................. 0.15
Nails............................ 3.90
Hinges and screws................ 0.14
Latch............................ 0.10
Chalk............................ 0.01
Transportation................... 1.40 I carried a good part
on my back.
In all............... $28.12+
(modified only so very very very slightly.)
This is Thoreau's expense record for construction of his cabin in the woods. I am living in an urban apartment and everything I require for shelter is accounted for in my monthly rent check, but with this small modification I am going through the exact same thing, restricting my expenses mostly to necessities and accounting for every single penny.
The benefit (as Thoreau so eloquently described) is the creation of a clearing in time and space to observe and think about the universe. Here is one small example. Last November when the first cold front blew in from the north the oak trees by my apartment started dropping acorns. This had a strong effect on the neighborhood squirrels. These rare precious tidbits were there for them in a windfall. Their behavior was energized as if they had sprouted wings and they began to fly around like cartoon squirrels, as if they had never once seen an acorn before in their life. The thing which really struck me though, is that surely this happens every November. And even though this surely happens every November, I had not seen it the three previous Novembers (when I was off to my office job every morning) that I lived here. It was only in my new reclusive mode that my mind had the time and space for me to see it and appreciate it.
Now I understand where the priest was coming from. Since he is evaluated by his superiors by how many people are in his pews and how much cash comes into his collection plates, he could hardly advise anything different. If you look in his textbook though, you see that Jesus went out to the desert and you find that Moses went up on the mountain and Elijah went out to the desert. Escaping from the routine of life's cares is an essential part of the tradition, which includes that those men all eventually returned. If the universe zaps me like that I will definitely return. I just might return anyway.
12 February 2011
Mismeasures of psychometry
My title is modified from Stephen Jay Gould's. My post is going to be a lot shorter than his book. He wrote it to debunk the intelligence test industry, and then he revised it a few years later and re-published into the midst of the Bell Curve controversy. My topic is only remotely related: I am going to write about personality tests, not intelligence tests.
It appears to me that the gold standard on the world wide web is Myers-Briggs. It has been awhile since I have read that wikipedia article on Myers-Briggs and it has grown enormously since the last time. It now is roughly one-fifth as long as the most popular book on the topic, Please Understand Me by David Keirsey. My two biggest criticisms of the test are covered in the article as it currently stands: 1.) some of the measures are unrepeatable, in that subjects will score as different particular personality types on subsequent tests; and 2.) it is completely self-reporting, with the inevitable distortion that causes. In the words of the current wikipedia article, "If respondents fear they have something to lose, they may answer as they assume they should." I have taken a number of versions of the test, variously scoring as INTP, INTJ, ISTP, ISTJ. I will give them the "I" and the "T", but my own opinion is the N-S and P-J axes are not universal, and personally meaningless.
My freshman psychology textbook is Gleitman. I have the fifth edition from 2000. Myers-Briggs is not in it. They have 75 pages devoted to the topic of personality, and several pages devoted to the topic of personality testing. The preferred instrument is the five factor scale, pioneered by W. T. Norman (Toward an adequate taxonomy of personality attributes, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, V. 66, pp 574-583). Since three of their factors are explicitly social--agreeableness, conscientiousness, and (absence of) neuroticism--this test is even more subject to the distortions of incentives to erroneous or deceptive answers in the test subject's self-report. One of the most profound mysteries may be how Myers-Briggs seems to rule the web and Gleitman, et al. do not see fit to even mention it.
The issue there may be that Myers-Briggs originates in Jungian psychology, and the great doctor Carl Jung is conspicuously and totally absent from the Gleitman textbook. Carl Jung was not exactly a real scientist you see, having been seduced by the Black Tide of Occultism.
The oddest personality test I ever experienced was in a company training class on "Creative Problem Solving". This was a one-week class where I and twenty of my peers were exposed to such company-sanctioned activities as "brainstorming". Part of the class was a personality assessment test. The testers claimed they could sort for: right-brain versus left-brain, and top-brain (cortex) versus bottom-brain (limbic). They had a composite display of the whole class on one plot. I suffered the ghastly embarrassment of the teacher telling all my classmates that I was the only right-brained person in the room. The other thing I remember from that test is my perfect career match was supposedly physician or metal sculptor. There is absolutely no way that a statistically significant number of well-adjusted metal sculptors have ever taken their test.
My favorite personality tests are the ones on the OKCupid web site. My results indicated such arcane features of my testing self as:
I am an INTP (d'oh!)
I am an Enneagram type 5.
I am partial to Cognitive Behavior Therapy.
My philosophy is akin to William James.
The Looney Tune character I most resemble is Wile E. Coyote.
The Romantic poet I most resemble is William Blake.
The major arcana I most resemble is the Hermit.
The Shakespeare character I most resemble is Richard III.
OK I am going to stop with that one because it is way off. Prospero, maybe; no way Richard III. Murdering my two young nephews to legitimize my kingly succession is just not me. As much fun as the OKCupid tests were, I only took about twenty of them. I know one woman (she is a World of Warcraft player) who has taken like three hundred OKCupid tests. Alright, one last one:
The Arthurian character I most resemble is the Lady of the Lake. This dear readers is scientific proof that there are worse personality testing instruments than Myers-Briggs.
It appears to me that the gold standard on the world wide web is Myers-Briggs. It has been awhile since I have read that wikipedia article on Myers-Briggs and it has grown enormously since the last time. It now is roughly one-fifth as long as the most popular book on the topic, Please Understand Me by David Keirsey. My two biggest criticisms of the test are covered in the article as it currently stands: 1.) some of the measures are unrepeatable, in that subjects will score as different particular personality types on subsequent tests; and 2.) it is completely self-reporting, with the inevitable distortion that causes. In the words of the current wikipedia article, "If respondents fear they have something to lose, they may answer as they assume they should." I have taken a number of versions of the test, variously scoring as INTP, INTJ, ISTP, ISTJ. I will give them the "I" and the "T", but my own opinion is the N-S and P-J axes are not universal, and personally meaningless.
My freshman psychology textbook is Gleitman. I have the fifth edition from 2000. Myers-Briggs is not in it. They have 75 pages devoted to the topic of personality, and several pages devoted to the topic of personality testing. The preferred instrument is the five factor scale, pioneered by W. T. Norman (Toward an adequate taxonomy of personality attributes, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, V. 66, pp 574-583). Since three of their factors are explicitly social--agreeableness, conscientiousness, and (absence of) neuroticism--this test is even more subject to the distortions of incentives to erroneous or deceptive answers in the test subject's self-report. One of the most profound mysteries may be how Myers-Briggs seems to rule the web and Gleitman, et al. do not see fit to even mention it.
The issue there may be that Myers-Briggs originates in Jungian psychology, and the great doctor Carl Jung is conspicuously and totally absent from the Gleitman textbook. Carl Jung was not exactly a real scientist you see, having been seduced by the Black Tide of Occultism.
The oddest personality test I ever experienced was in a company training class on "Creative Problem Solving". This was a one-week class where I and twenty of my peers were exposed to such company-sanctioned activities as "brainstorming". Part of the class was a personality assessment test. The testers claimed they could sort for: right-brain versus left-brain, and top-brain (cortex) versus bottom-brain (limbic). They had a composite display of the whole class on one plot. I suffered the ghastly embarrassment of the teacher telling all my classmates that I was the only right-brained person in the room. The other thing I remember from that test is my perfect career match was supposedly physician or metal sculptor. There is absolutely no way that a statistically significant number of well-adjusted metal sculptors have ever taken their test.
My favorite personality tests are the ones on the OKCupid web site. My results indicated such arcane features of my testing self as:
I am an INTP (d'oh!)
I am an Enneagram type 5.
I am partial to Cognitive Behavior Therapy.
My philosophy is akin to William James.
The Looney Tune character I most resemble is Wile E. Coyote.
The Romantic poet I most resemble is William Blake.
The major arcana I most resemble is the Hermit.
The Shakespeare character I most resemble is Richard III.
OK I am going to stop with that one because it is way off. Prospero, maybe; no way Richard III. Murdering my two young nephews to legitimize my kingly succession is just not me. As much fun as the OKCupid tests were, I only took about twenty of them. I know one woman (she is a World of Warcraft player) who has taken like three hundred OKCupid tests. Alright, one last one:
The Arthurian character I most resemble is the Lady of the Lake. This dear readers is scientific proof that there are worse personality testing instruments than Myers-Briggs.
07 February 2011
Jerry Kramer on Vince Lombardi on Aristotle
Attending to the annual Super Bowl spectacle can be a tough workout for the attention span. The highlight this week was listening to the sports talk radio show and they were interviewing Jerry Kramer and the dude quotes Vince Lombardi quoting Aristotle!
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
Which is great stuff, except Aristotle never said that. It is a misattribution as they describe it on the wikiquote page. That was not Aristotle, but Will Durant paraphrasing Aristotle. The other sound bit which Kramer enjoyed telling us was that "we can achieve excellence by pursuing perfection." This was sourced as a Lombardi original. Looking up the Aristotle quotation I was reminded of that great Yogi Berra title: I Really Didn't Say Everything I said. We have a bunch of crosstalk in the library between proverbs and thinkers and I have a few of my own; somehow they got stashed into my memory and I cannot document them, but I have this conviction that certain great truths derived from certain other great thinkers. I have one I am sure belongs to Faulkner but I cannot place it, and another that I would bet came from Gandhi but I cannot tie that one down either.
The word for one of those is agrapha (or singular agraphon), Greek, not written. It makes a lot more sense for Gandi than it does for Faulkner. Faulkner was paid to write things down--you would think every memorable thing he ever came up with got written down someplace. The word for the Faulkner thing might be unindexed or not-hashed--it is there in the 70 000 or so pages of his complete works but nobody else ever took note of it, and if I want to find it again I will have to sit down and go through the 70 000 pages one by one with my fingers crossed and hoping.
The other thing which Kramer botched was his date of Aristotle. He said it came from 5000 years ago. His intentions were OK. Except that he spent most of the interview talking about how he isn't in the Hall of Fame. And this was THE HIGHLIGHT of Super Bowl week in the media I was exposed to.
The New York Times informed me: 1.) neurologists are rooting for the Packers because they are more concerned about the concussion issue than the Steelers; 2.) neither the Packers nor the Steelers have cheerleaders, which is odd for a game in Cowboys' stadium in a state where parents "all want their boys to be quarterback and their girls to be head cheerleader" (This was presented as an actual quotation from an actual resident of Texas chosen by the New York Times to speak for all the millions who live here.); 3.) there is a suburb of Dallas spending 60 million to build a high school football stadium; 4.) the stunning observation that some women are attracted to these hyper masculine behemoths. (Links: 1, 2, 3, 4).
The Packers were favored. Since the Steelers apparently think concussed players ought to walk it off and get back into action, I wonder if the bettors were reading the same press I was reading. I would naively guess the playing field would favor the recklessly abandoned.
I entertained myself by timing the extravaganza. The kickoff was at 5:34 and the final second ticked off at 9:06 (CST). The box score showed there were 119 plays. If you generously chalk up six seconds per play, that means there was twelve minutes of action in a three hour, thirty-two minute period; the other three hours and twenty minutes were advertising, show business, ceremonies, and talking heads telling us how great all of this was. I suppose I could have just tuned it all out when Jerry Kramer started his spiel about his Hall of Fame campaign.
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
Which is great stuff, except Aristotle never said that. It is a misattribution as they describe it on the wikiquote page. That was not Aristotle, but Will Durant paraphrasing Aristotle. The other sound bit which Kramer enjoyed telling us was that "we can achieve excellence by pursuing perfection." This was sourced as a Lombardi original. Looking up the Aristotle quotation I was reminded of that great Yogi Berra title: I Really Didn't Say Everything I said. We have a bunch of crosstalk in the library between proverbs and thinkers and I have a few of my own; somehow they got stashed into my memory and I cannot document them, but I have this conviction that certain great truths derived from certain other great thinkers. I have one I am sure belongs to Faulkner but I cannot place it, and another that I would bet came from Gandhi but I cannot tie that one down either.
The word for one of those is agrapha (or singular agraphon), Greek, not written. It makes a lot more sense for Gandi than it does for Faulkner. Faulkner was paid to write things down--you would think every memorable thing he ever came up with got written down someplace. The word for the Faulkner thing might be unindexed or not-hashed--it is there in the 70 000 or so pages of his complete works but nobody else ever took note of it, and if I want to find it again I will have to sit down and go through the 70 000 pages one by one with my fingers crossed and hoping.
The other thing which Kramer botched was his date of Aristotle. He said it came from 5000 years ago. His intentions were OK. Except that he spent most of the interview talking about how he isn't in the Hall of Fame. And this was THE HIGHLIGHT of Super Bowl week in the media I was exposed to.
The New York Times informed me: 1.) neurologists are rooting for the Packers because they are more concerned about the concussion issue than the Steelers; 2.) neither the Packers nor the Steelers have cheerleaders, which is odd for a game in Cowboys' stadium in a state where parents "all want their boys to be quarterback and their girls to be head cheerleader" (This was presented as an actual quotation from an actual resident of Texas chosen by the New York Times to speak for all the millions who live here.); 3.) there is a suburb of Dallas spending 60 million to build a high school football stadium; 4.) the stunning observation that some women are attracted to these hyper masculine behemoths. (Links: 1, 2, 3, 4).
The Packers were favored. Since the Steelers apparently think concussed players ought to walk it off and get back into action, I wonder if the bettors were reading the same press I was reading. I would naively guess the playing field would favor the recklessly abandoned.
I entertained myself by timing the extravaganza. The kickoff was at 5:34 and the final second ticked off at 9:06 (CST). The box score showed there were 119 plays. If you generously chalk up six seconds per play, that means there was twelve minutes of action in a three hour, thirty-two minute period; the other three hours and twenty minutes were advertising, show business, ceremonies, and talking heads telling us how great all of this was. I suppose I could have just tuned it all out when Jerry Kramer started his spiel about his Hall of Fame campaign.
02 February 2011
Vengeance on a Dumb Brute
In the current wikipedia article on Melville they have that business about the mental constitution of the man. I have seen a lot of odd things about Melville and particularly about his novel, Moby Dick. I am not obsessed with Ahab, but I am interested. Sometimes I can believe I am the only reader who understands what exactly is going on in this novel. (That is not a bad criterion for a an effective piece of art--it leaves much of the audience feeling that they have a special understanding of the artist's point.) There is something about a working voyage on the deep sea in danger and isolation and boredom which can drive men mad.
There is one sentence in particular which I don't think I will ever forget. They are talking about the whale and Queequeg (the cannibal) offers:
"And he have one, two, three-oh! good many iron in him hide, too, Captain," cried Queequeg disjointedly, "all twiske-tee be-twisk, like him-him-" faltering hard for a word, and screwing his hand round and round as though uncorking a bottle-"like him-him-"
Well it is not exactly a sentence as somebody else finishes what Queequeg seems powerless to get to the period at the end of. This character who is not a native English speaker emits one of the greatest phrases of all: all twiske-tee be-twisk, like him-him-.
The first time I read Moby Dick it was for a class. That was not much fun. On later readings with nothing at stake I developed a love for Melville's language. The story is OK, but the color and richness in Melville's language are what make the book great. If you have had a hard time with it before and are interested in trying again, my Joyce trick has worked for me for this book as well.
Another thing which I did not appreciate in my first reading of Moby Dick is that Ahab has a black magic ritual in that quarter deck chapter:
"Drink, ye harpooneers! drink and swear, ye men that man the deathful whaleboat's bow-Death to Moby Dick! God hunt us all, if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death! The long, barbed steel goblets were lifted; and to cries and maledictions against the white whale, the spirits were simultaneously quaffed down with a hiss. Starbuck paled, and turned, and shivered."
Ahab pours grog into the hollow connector ends of the harpooners' weapon points and they drink libation and swear a blood oath for Ahab's vengeance upon the dumb brute. Ahab's destruction is nothing more than a representation of evil invocations returning back to their source. The law of karma. The points are of course screwed onto the harpoon shafts, all twiske-tee be-twisk.
Ahab's ravings are not the speech of a self-actualized Maslow man. This is the feature of the language of Moby Dick which can be the hardest on the reader. Melville is creating a character who is mad, and madness is never easy to follow. Melville himself had sailed with whalers, and if you have ever spent time working on the deep ocean you may know exactly what he was writing about.
On Christmas Day the New York Times published a long story about the last hours of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which was destroyed in a blowout and explosion and fire last April in the Gulf of Mexico; eleven of the crewmen on the rig died that day. The thing in the article which disturbed me most was the following sentence:
"In a few hours, the drilling crew’s 21-day hitch would be done."
I have done a handful of 14 day tours offshore, and one 21 day tour. The last day of my one 21 day tour was the longest day of my life, and the last hour of that day was the longest hour. After fourteen days my brain turned to mush. I was on seismic survey ships instead of drilling rigs but the environment is similar: heavy equipment, high pressure hydraulics, diesel engines with thousands of horsepower, flammable fluids and welding equipment. On the back deck of a seismic ship, as on a drill ship, there are a thousand different ways to die.
You are in close quarters with a bunch of other guys (mostly) but the isolation is severe when you are a thousand miles from a 911 emergency operator. If the sun is out and there are no clouds, there is a view which is spooky as Ahab's black magic curse of the whale--there is nothing in any direction but blue, blue sky above, blue water below, any direction you turn there is nothing but a uniform blank blue field in your vision. One time I was staring at it and six white storks came out of the blue and flew right over the ship. It was maybe only ten minutes from when they appeared to when they disappeared in the other direction, but that also was like an interval of forever.
There is one sentence in particular which I don't think I will ever forget. They are talking about the whale and Queequeg (the cannibal) offers:
"And he have one, two, three-oh! good many iron in him hide, too, Captain," cried Queequeg disjointedly, "all twiske-tee be-twisk, like him-him-" faltering hard for a word, and screwing his hand round and round as though uncorking a bottle-"like him-him-"
Well it is not exactly a sentence as somebody else finishes what Queequeg seems powerless to get to the period at the end of. This character who is not a native English speaker emits one of the greatest phrases of all: all twiske-tee be-twisk, like him-him-.
The first time I read Moby Dick it was for a class. That was not much fun. On later readings with nothing at stake I developed a love for Melville's language. The story is OK, but the color and richness in Melville's language are what make the book great. If you have had a hard time with it before and are interested in trying again, my Joyce trick has worked for me for this book as well.
Another thing which I did not appreciate in my first reading of Moby Dick is that Ahab has a black magic ritual in that quarter deck chapter:
"Drink, ye harpooneers! drink and swear, ye men that man the deathful whaleboat's bow-Death to Moby Dick! God hunt us all, if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death! The long, barbed steel goblets were lifted; and to cries and maledictions against the white whale, the spirits were simultaneously quaffed down with a hiss. Starbuck paled, and turned, and shivered."
Ahab pours grog into the hollow connector ends of the harpooners' weapon points and they drink libation and swear a blood oath for Ahab's vengeance upon the dumb brute. Ahab's destruction is nothing more than a representation of evil invocations returning back to their source. The law of karma. The points are of course screwed onto the harpoon shafts, all twiske-tee be-twisk.
Ahab's ravings are not the speech of a self-actualized Maslow man. This is the feature of the language of Moby Dick which can be the hardest on the reader. Melville is creating a character who is mad, and madness is never easy to follow. Melville himself had sailed with whalers, and if you have ever spent time working on the deep ocean you may know exactly what he was writing about.
On Christmas Day the New York Times published a long story about the last hours of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which was destroyed in a blowout and explosion and fire last April in the Gulf of Mexico; eleven of the crewmen on the rig died that day. The thing in the article which disturbed me most was the following sentence:
"In a few hours, the drilling crew’s 21-day hitch would be done."
I have done a handful of 14 day tours offshore, and one 21 day tour. The last day of my one 21 day tour was the longest day of my life, and the last hour of that day was the longest hour. After fourteen days my brain turned to mush. I was on seismic survey ships instead of drilling rigs but the environment is similar: heavy equipment, high pressure hydraulics, diesel engines with thousands of horsepower, flammable fluids and welding equipment. On the back deck of a seismic ship, as on a drill ship, there are a thousand different ways to die.
You are in close quarters with a bunch of other guys (mostly) but the isolation is severe when you are a thousand miles from a 911 emergency operator. If the sun is out and there are no clouds, there is a view which is spooky as Ahab's black magic curse of the whale--there is nothing in any direction but blue, blue sky above, blue water below, any direction you turn there is nothing but a uniform blank blue field in your vision. One time I was staring at it and six white storks came out of the blue and flew right over the ship. It was maybe only ten minutes from when they appeared to when they disappeared in the other direction, but that also was like an interval of forever.
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About Craig
- Craig
- Houston, Texas, United States
- I have been living in the lovely neighborhood of Spring Branch in the great city of Houston since late in 2005. I started out with the idea of making this blog about my life in this neighborhood. That did not last long. Right now I am posting every five days on the alternating topics of literature, philosophy, psychology, and metaphysics. This project has been ongoing since July 27, 2010 and I believe it will continue for at least a few more months.