The world as he saw it

"...The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained to liberation from the self.

Society and Personality

WHEN WE SURVEY our lives and endeavours we soon observe that almost the whole of our actions and desires are bound up with the existence of other human beings. We see that our whole nature resembles that of the social animals. We eat food that others have grown, wear clothes that others have made, live in houses that others have built. The greater part of our knowledge and beliefs has been communicated to us by other people through the medium of a language which others have created. Without language our mental capacities would be poor indeed, comparable to those of the higher animals; we have, therefore, to admit that we owe our principal advantage over the beasts to the fact of living in human society.

The individual, if left alone from birth would remain primitive and beast-like in his thoughts and feelings to a degree that we can hardly conceive. The individual is what he is and has the significance that he has not so much in virtue of his individuality, but rather as a member of a great human society, which directs his material and spiritual existence from the cradle to the grave. A man’s value to the community depends primarily on how far his feelings, thoughts, and actions are directed towards promoting the good of his fellows. We call him good or bad according to how he stands in this matter. It looks at first sight as if our estimate of a man depended entirely on his social qualities. And yet such an attitude would be wrong.

It is clear that all the valuable things, material, spiritual, and moral, which we receive from society can be traced back through countless generations to certain creative individuals. The use of fire, the cultivation of edible plants, the steam engine-each was discovered by one man. Only the individual can think, and thereby create new values for society-nay, even set up new moral standards to which the life of the community conforms. Without creative, independently thinking and judging personalities the upward development of society is as unthinkable as the development of the individual personality without the nourishing soil of the community. The health of society thus depends quite as much on the independence of the individuals composing it as on their close political cohesion..."

"The World As I See It" by Albert Einstein: https://a.co/ck9RjxZ

Ritualization

"…once our acts have crystallized into a fixed routine, they may keep evolving, taking on symbolic significance and adding layers of meaning to our actions — this is called "ritualization." We can think of rituals as routines with a significant symbolic load… Ritualization is a potent stabilizing agent, a simple salve for a stressful time if only we are mindful of how we use its powers."

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-hidden-powers-of-everyday-rituals/

Happy Thanksgiving

The gratitude holiday. I just reread Oliver Sacks on the subject. He was defiantly grateful in the face of his late-life cancer diagnosis. In “My Own Life” he channeled David Hume and extolled an attitude of “detachment” that my own father (James C. Oliver, 1928-2008) also used to recommend. It fits our moment:

“This is not indifference but detachment — I still care deeply about the Middle East, about global warming, about growing inequality, but these are no longer my business; they belong to the future. I rejoice when I meet gifted young people — even the one who biopsied and diagnosed my metastases. I feel the future is in good hands.”

I’d like to feel that way too. It’d be easier if we could forget who’s about to recover the nuclear football. Really forget him. But the gifted young people in my Honors classes this semester have given me the same reassurance.

I made my annual Thanksgiving Eve trek down the Trace to Hohenwald yesterday, to fetch brother-in-law home for the holiday. It was an exceedingly pleasant trip, coming and going, sharing the Parkway (with its 50 mph limit) with just a few drivers, cyclists, and runners. Most repetitive rituals are, eventually, aren’t they? Especially when coupled with the thought, harder to suppress with each passing year, that for all we know it could be the last. 

Anyway, this is a fine holiday. Younger Daughter and her fiancé will be here soon, the house will be filled with the pleasant familiar old aromas and stories and parades etc. We’ll be appropriately grateful for all we have and try not to dwell on what (and who) is missing. 

I’m going to go now and pull Lay of the Land off the shelf and share some of Frank Bascombe’s gratitude too.

“The kind of happy I was that day at the Vet when "Hawk" Dawson actually doffed his red "C" cap to me, and everyone cheered and practically convulsed into tears - you can't patent that. It was one shining moment of glory that was instantly gone. Whereas life, real life, is different and can't even be appraised as simply "happy", but only in terms of "Yes, I'll take it all, thanks" or "No, I believe I won't." Happy, as my poor father used to say, is a lot of hooey. Happy is a circus clown, a sitcom, a greeting card. Life, though, life's about something sterner. But also something better. A lot better. Believe me.”― Richard Ford, The Lay of the Land

 

It's not all hooey, as my father more sagely understood. It's good to be grateful and know it. Clap your hands. Doff your cap. Swing.*

*I met the Hawk in Ottawa a few years ago, at the Baseball Conference. What a nice man. Like the philosophers--Socrates, Cicero, Montaigne et al--who think their vocation is about learning to die, he got into the mortality business himself when his playing days were through. But I think he also always understood that the meaning of life is to live.

World’s oldest man dead at 112

Mr Tinniswood previously told the BBC he been "quite active as a youngster" and did "a lot of walking", but said he had no idea why he was blessed with such longevity. He insisted he was "no different" to anyone else, adding: "You either live long or you live short - and you can't do much about it."

https://c.im/@BBC/113548787978016155

A fable for our times

"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office."

— Aesop (620 - 564 BCE)

https://www.threads.net/@philosophybreak/post/DChL0Htsk1P?xmt=AQGz6zzarHuPe1ao_k2S_5l0w0H5Cdf-scO6igj7B17A5g

Ancient Greece via AI, “whispers of philosophers”

Cool tool. But I don't know any philosophers who whisper.

"They say true AGI will need to move us emotionally. Yet here I am, touched watching this AI-generated glimpse into ancient Greece circa 375 BC by cinAIma films. The bustling agoras, whispers of philosophers (watch with sound!), the echoing footsteps on marble are all brought to life. 

It's pretty remarkable how technology can bridge 2,400 years and in all honesty there's something profoundly human about using future's tools to understand the past."

https://www.threads.net/@marilynika/post/DCkE1PiSzAi?xmt=AQGzUwvOsYJFq3xMFFxPX32ZE5m036gIUvsIUmmZUeXBPQ

e

Yeah, sure

Wendell’s peace

It helps to recall that wildness preserves the world. A world, anyway.

Samantha Harvey’s ‘beautiful and ambitious’ Orbital wins Booker prize | Books | The Guardian

"Our unanimity about Orbital recognises its beauty and ambition. It reflects Harvey's extraordinary intensity of attention to the precious and precarious world we share".

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/nov/12/orbital-by-samantha-harvey-wins-booker-prize-2024

Against Panic: A Survival Kit

"…What this election has made absolutely, indisputably clear should have been clear to me all along: I will be fighting for the rest of my life to preserve the promise this country still holds for pluralism, for fairness, for decency, for true freedom. I am never going to breathe a sigh of relief. What choice is there but to fight?

…So for me there will be more watchful stillness. More walks in the woods to watch the still heron standing one-legged in the shallows; to watch the still deer, waiting to see if I mean them harm; to watch the stillness of the red-eared sliders, resting on the sunny log, and the stillness of the wood duck, whose stillness is on the surface only; to linger in the stillness of the lake itself, a perfect mirror giving back the sky.

There will be more books and more poetry and more time with friends and more afternoons sitting on a bench and watching the leaves fall. I will be fighting with all that I am, but I will also be reminding myself again and again not to wait for the world to give me a reason to sigh with relief. I will give myself respite. I will remember not to keep waiting for sweetness and rest to arrive on their own.

“If it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all,” Shakespeare wrote in “Hamlet.” I’ll remember that, too."
…
Margaret Renkl

Thread

margaret.renkl

1d

a day ago

It’s just all I’ve got.

It’s plenty. Thanks for finding the right words again. As William James said, life is no game of private theatricals. “It feels like a fight.” We must be meliorists. But we’re more fit for the fight after a walk in the woods, a talk on the porch, a trip to Parnassus. We’ll go on.

Vonnegut

https://www.threads.net/@humanists_uk/post/DCOso05oh3Z?xmt=AQGz8mUJLUXUeejaBs-wsK0zkmtw2EsmkQLDcPx1HngX7A

Nick Kristof’s Manifesto for Despairing Democrats

Lots of sound counsel here. For instance,

7. I will care for my mental health. There'll be many, many times in the next four years when we'll be irritated, anxious and alarmed, probably with good reason, so we need to find a way to relax and mellow out. For me, that's backpacking and making wine and cider. In my day job, I shout at the world, and it pays no attention, so it's a relief to raise grapes and apples and have them listen to me. And remember that sometimes the best therapist has four legs. A few years ago, many families got a pandemic dog, and for some this may be time to get a Trump dog.

...

nyt

Good advice from Einstein too (except for not reading newspapers):

Contemplate something else

I don't blame the universe, in fact there's solace for this electoral debacle in the cosmic perspective.

But Russell was right, it's no use dwelling on the "less agreeable characteristics" of the world we wake to this morning. Time to walk it off, and then get on with continuing the perennial fight for happiness and justice for all.

Sisyphus is happy.

"I do not myself think that there is any superior rationality in being unhappy. The wise man will be as happy as circumstances permit, and if he finds the contemplation of the universe painful beyond a point, he will contemplate something else instead…. reason lays no embargo upon happiness; nay more, I am persuaded that those who quite sincerely attribute their sorrows to their views about the universe are putting the cart before the horse: the truth is that they are unhappy for some reason of which they are not aware, and this unhappiness leads them to dwell upon the less agreeable characteristics of the world in which they live." — The Conquest of Happiness, Bertrand Russell

"If this life be not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight..." --The Dilemma of Determinism, William James

It does feel like a fight. Kamala was a joyful warrior. Meliorists aim to be joyful warriors. We can be, so long as we remember to take our regularly revitalizing moral holidays. 

Words matter

In low moments, I sincerely doubt that anyone ever changes their mind, and I especially doubt that anyone ever changes their mind in response to an op-ed. But our planet, our home, is in mortal danger, and words are all I've got. So I'm taking my very best shot here: Margaret Renkl

==

Just passed a colleague in the hallway, noted my feeling of apprehension about today. What does it tell you, he asked? I don't read tea-leaves, I said. 

But I do know this: words, despite all their limitations and misdirections, do matter. They're our testament, they record our dreams and aspirations. And apprehensions.

"Language is the archives of history, and, if we must say it, a sort of tomb of the muses. For, though the orgin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: Second Series

What Is Cornel West Thinking?

He's bearing witness to something beyond politics. But what we need TODAY is votes, not prophecy. Votes, and an end to the sorrow of MAGA-style fascism.

That would be a real occasion for joy. And brotherhood.

"…While West and I were talking, we were interrupted by an acquaintance who also lives in the building. "So when are you gonna come out and endorse my woman?" the neighbor said.

"What woman is that?" West said.

"My woman Kamala," the neighbor said. "Come on, Cornel! Do it for the country."

"Oh, I pray for her," West said.

"Pray for the country, if she doesn't win," the neighbor said. To change the subject, the neighbor, who is a classically trained singer, mentioned that he was about to sing at Carnegie Hall, as part of a chorus performing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. "Brother, brother," West said. "You're gonna sing 'Ode to Joy' in the midst of all this sorrow? You're bearing witness in a beautiful way…

"I think that, no matter who wins, we're in for dark times," he said… But if there's a few of us who still can cross bridges, and cut across different ideological and racial and regional lines, then that's a crucial role to play as your empire undergoes its decline and decay. And that goes far beyond politics.""

https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/what-is-cornel-west-thinking

The Future of the Planet Hangs on This Vote

"In thinking about climate change, I often feel desperate, but in talking with others I try not to lead with despair. Like all human emotions, despair is contagious. Worse, it leads to immobility, and we have run out of time for hand-wringing. If ever we must resist the temptation to fall into despair, surely it is now, with the election polls so close and the future of the planet hanging on what happens Tuesday.

A lot of other things hang on what happens Tuesday, too, as The Times has deeply reported over the last weeks in a series called "What's at Stake in the 2024 Election." As president, Donald Trump could destroy the stability of our institutions, including American democracy itself. He could further trample women's reproductive safety and autonomy, terrorize immigrant Americans, roll back hard-won rights for L.G.B.T.Q. people, imperil what's left of the impartiality of the courts and weaponize government to prosecute anyone he perceives as an enemy, end all hopes for curtailing gun violence, close off access to affordable health care, threaten the free press, and fray the social safety net in all its forms. And that's just the beginning of an almost limitless list of dangers he poses.

Of them all, the one that most often keeps me up at night is the way a second Trump presidency would imperil the planet. Climate change, which Mr. Trump calls "a scam," is a threat multiplier: Every existing global conflict, every human vulnerability and every form of social instability is already being exacerbated by climate calamities. There is no issue on the political table that will not be made exponentially worse if we allow the living earth to enter its death throes, and yet climate has rarely been part of the political discourse during this election year..."

Margaret Renkl, continues

Trial and Error at the TPA

Comments on Trial and Error: A Defense of Fallible Judicial Review by Adam Lake (Brown), Tennessee Philosophical Association annual meeting, Vanderbilt. November 2, 2024

“There is all the difference in the world between having something to say and having to say something,” said John Dewey in The School and Society (1899), in which he had something quite important to say about how the best and wisest parents (and teachers) comport themselves in the vital social function of educating and acculturating the next generations in the ethos of democracy. “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely, and acted upon, it destroys our democracy.”

That was an aspirational statement. Too many parents (and teachers) have always betrayed a prejudicial bias either for their own children or for children who most resembled themselves. The best and wisest are exemplars, not representatives.

By a similar token, too many judges and other legal actors have always betrayed a prejudicial bias for their own ideological commitments and partisan preferences–often masked behind something amorphous and sacrosanct they’ve called The Law.

[“Amorphous? Laws are codified and precise, yes. But when Justice Roberts says in the Obergefell dissent that the court is not a legislative body and has no business altering law, it has become monolithic and ill-defined. "Whether same-sex marriage is a good idea should be of no concern to us. Under the Constitution, judges have power to say what the law is, not what it should be." And this seems disingenuous. The courts' interpretations are inevitably construed as prescriptive, not merely descriptive. Notice Justice Roberts's own should in his disavowal of prescription. And as Justice Kennedy concluded the majority opinion in that case, the petitioners were simply asking "for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right." If it does, then our jurists should say so. {And if they say so for good and compelling reasons, then it does.}]

But lately it seems to some of us that this tendency has swung hard right, that it is an increasingly narrow and unlovely malformation of legal philosophy, and indeed that it threatens our democracy.

It is from that concern that I would like to join Adam’s brief on behalf of a more democratically humble, circumspect, and falliblilistic sensibility... (continues)

Solvitur ambulando: a lesson for us all

On Monday this week a student committed suicide in our library. School was closed on Tuesday. I went for a hike in the woods, wishing the victim had walked away from despair and chosen to stay with us.

In class yesterday we talked about it...

Resources, & if you want to talk about it

If anyone would like to talk about the tragedy on Monday, feel free to comment here or in class. 

Center for Counseling and Psychological Services 615-898-2271

Other campus & community resources...

Lea's Summit, Percy Warner Park-October 29,2024

"It must be recognized that staying alive though suicidal is an act of radiant generosity, a way in which we can save each other.  

...

None of us can truly know what we mean to other people, and none of us can know what our future self will experience. History and philosophy ask us to remember these mysteries, to look around at friends, family, humanity, at the surprises life brings — the endless possibilities that living offers — and to persevere. There is love and insight to live for, bright moments to cherish, and even the possibility of happiness, and the chance of helping someone else through his or her own troubles. Know that people, through history and today, understand how much courage it takes to stay. Bear witness to the night side of being human and the bravery it entails, and wait for the sun. If we meditate on the record of human wisdom we may find there reason enough to persist and find our way back to happiness. The first step is to consider the arguments and evidence and choose to stay. After that, anything may happen. First, choose to stay.”  --Jennifer Michael Hecht, Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It

==

Stay: The Social Contagion of Suicide and How to Preempt It
By Maria Popova

"If you’ve ever known someone who committed suicide, or have contemplated it yourself, or have admired a personal hero who died by his or her own hand, please oh please read this. Because, as Jennifer Michael Hecht so stirringly argues in Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It (public library), numerous social science studies indicate that one of the best predictors of committing suicide is knowing suicide — a fact especially chilling given more people die of suicide than murder every year, and have been for centuries. Suicide kills more people than AIDS, cancer, heart disease, or liver disease, more men and women between the ages of 15 and 44 than war, more young people than anything but accident. And beneath all these impersonal statistics lie exponential human tragedies — of those who died, and of those who were left to live with their haunting void.

To be sure, Hecht’s interest in the subject is far from the detached preachiness such narratives tend to exude — after two of her dear friends, both fellow writers, committed suicide in close succession, she was left devastated and desperate to make sense of this deceptively personal act, which cuts so deep into surrounding souls and scars the heart of a community. So she immersed herself in the science, philosophy, and history of suicide searching for answers, emerging with an eye-opening sense of everything we’ve gotten wrong about suicide and its prevention..." (continues)
==

My morning mantra: When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love." -Elbert Hubbard, probably... and not Marcus Aurelius

==

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”

― Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder