Notably, the Founders did not envision the direct election of Senators, and the old ways would possibly give the state legislatures (i.e., the ideological centers of the interests currently being claimed by the populists on both sides) a more clear role in the national scheme, and -- most critically -- insulation from populist administrations and national political machines.
A society with a more or less permanent underclass of some size can never become a communitarian society. The resources of the society devoted to maintaining the underclass become a more or less fixed sum, and anyone outside of that underclass who requires the assistance of the society is drawing away from that on a zero-sum basis, imperiling the political compromise. Such a claim is resisted both by the defenders of the underclass and those straining to acquire as much wealth as possible for themselves. It is an unscheduled poverty.
So perhaps one danger of less-prosperous years is that a prosperous society will resist an expansion of the social role, as it will be seen as ceding more resources to the existing permanent underclass, which has only won its proportion by a hard political fight, and the resulting identity and cohesiveness; the latter will then operate to exclude these other claims.
Rather exhausting day yesterday. Sleep at 3AM, and waking out of sorts, late in the morning. Must take steps to prevent those sorts of days. Actually finished up shortly after midnight, but then there was dinner to be made, and distraction. Relatedly, the BBC, or as I call it, the Saxe-Coburgs' Marconi machine, appears to have taken the Goon Show archives offline, likely for purposes of exploitation. Shame. Excellent cooking/eating background noise.
My CV is solid, and I have a decent grasp on the mens sana et corpore sano, but this is still an extended exercise in catastrophe management (on an Atrean scale). I worked professionally for a bit, then did a decent conservatory degree, then ten years in the city. During that time working in the theatre, I set my basic stance towards the world. After about a decade, I was driven from that ground, and went to get a top-tier law doctorate; took as many doctrinal courses as I could (which is generally considered madness), and graduated with a good GPA, and passed the NY Bar with a strong score after self-study. Despite that, I was again rather quickly driven from that ground in the city. I then headed to a large midwestern university to do a research doctorate, synthesizing elements of these two fields. Took many courses, ranged broadly across the university, philosophy, history, etc., before writing the dissertation (the department didn't let me audit seminars when writing, contary to the usual practice). The department there was pretty corrupt, and I didn't go along with some of the bad things, and perhaps in response, when I finished the dissertation, they refused to schedule a defense.
That's the story so far. I am basically still working to vindicate that initial stance, but in the interval, my understanding of the struggle has considerably broadened. Onward.
In the difficult February, in the port city to the south, I used sleep as a means--a solid ten or twelve hours (as against the customary five and change) could preserve me against the difficulties. Now, whether or not that was a good notion (and it should be noted that it saw me safely through), with this springtime, the body needs to learn on a deeper level than it did last springtime that we're not doing that anymore. Gently down the stream.
(Abruptness, as the yogis point out, is dangerous. Advance the morning in half-hour increments, rather than trying to take a flying leap. Unless, of course you want to take a flying leap. In which case, go for it.)
Listening to Handel's Messiah from Moscow. All of this is still one disjointed, fractious, warring and confused project of the Enlightenment. Bloody wars under battling tricoleurs. So -- focus on the work of the Enlightenment. Don't get distracted with more transcendental thoughts. (These are notes-to-self.)
And yet, this is a very ponderous and unwieldy reading of it. Tones are very careful, and there is a rounded beauty to some moments that I've not heard before. But the heavy tones of centuries of Orthodoxy are obscuring the work that rings so clearly in the brash sunlit uplands of the Scottish and German Enlightenment. I remember a Samson and Deliah in Bucharest at the beginning of this peregrination -- I was reading Milton's Samson in the interval, and realized that I needed to think with Milton, rather than the with the dark, romantic tones of these eastern orthodoxies.
Being a Westerner, I should reason as a Westerner. The quickness of the mind, the Anglo-American law, German and British philosophy (with the odd American mixed in). Intellectually, nativism consists of placing yourself in the way of working with which you have greatest facility. Beckett wrote in French, but Beckett didn't write in order to write. His understanding of things was already complete when he staged some scenarios in order to show us how things are. If the world is still an active question, if there is hope, then we have to cling to the homelands of the mind, and its most familiar languages.
Which means that we need to take up the mantle of the Enlightenment in the context of effective history, even abroad.
Everyone involved is very smart, of course, but reading the TLS is a little like reading a political article in a trade paper, like the bar society magazines that I used to get free copies of as a student. The pieces themselves, though brightly lit, are largely unilluminating, offering at best a bit of schein, and the only useful things are generally the mentions of other things used to leaven the prose, either signalling erudition, or trying to send a worthwhile signal or two through the flames. Basically, reading for the offhand footnotes -- the small flickering things near the edges.
The possible chronology of the end of the last papcy is interesting. Assume that the doctors told him on release that he was near the end, and he should reduce his activity, and begin to seek some peace. Of course, what followed was a whirlwind of political and spiritual activity. (Against the morbid background of speculation and media interest -- the new form of the fascination with death and the desire to anoint the corpse, perhaps.) The point, as one SJ once explained to a retreat I was attending, is to finish the roller-coaster ride with your arms raised and shouting in exhiliration. Perhaps.
Of course, this happens against the background of a two-thousand year old see of authority. So the energy, in keeping with the spirit of the age, and of his spiritual discipline, might have another context in the larger picture. But at least he was true to the spirit of the age and his discipline, rather than imitating some general notion. And perhaps the spirit of this age and this discipline will prevail within history. That's the thing about history. Things change.
Notable that in the seating arrangements, heads of republican states appear to have been granted a status equal to those of reigning houses. As mis-translated Mao had it, perhaps it's no longer too soon to tell.
Which is not to say that the republics aren't in a bit of a mess these days. Perhaps the real point is that going backwards is no longer an option. Or perhaps the equvalence suggests that it is an option. Or perhaps it was all the caprice of a diplomatic cadre appointed by a more liberal administration.
Time tells.
For the pragmatic and political types, the fight happens inside the notion of the way things are. For those doing real things, this simply results in notions about the way things are thought to be becoming more or less useful at given points.
For the great mass of folks,though, the fight happens governed by the prevailing notions of the way things are. Not because it seems particularly veridical, but because it provides a lingua franca, a common currency, a λεγειν that they can use as a background and source of vocabulary for expressive speech.
A thought I came across today: Goethe's distinction between finding meaning in forms of being (Freude des daseins) and the meaningfulness of existence itself (Freude am Dasein). You must take the second view, if you're prepared to recognize that most of the rules of the game are themselves a game, at least for the game-players. For the rest of us, it's just a matter of trying to run the program with unreliable code.
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When I hit a bit of a brick wall after the JD, and had to decamp from the city during a rough winter, I headed to Cleveland, where I had done my conservatory training. I rented rooms in Little Italy from some medical students from the Mideast, and headed right to the university library. I had studied Koine Greek in a class at the parish church with a Fordham classicist for about a year before the JD, so the first thing that I did was get a few of the Loeb octavos down off the shelf, along with a middle Liddell (no Great Scott to be found), and spend a few days re-centering myself by working through an (heavily reliant on facing-page translations) adaptation of the beginning of Sophocles' Ajax.
And in the evenings, the novels of Iris Murdoch. Mass-market, but the difference in usefulness between British mass-market novels and American mass-market is significant. A novel written by a moral philosopher at Oxon. in which she attempts to do the same thing in the novel as she does in her scholarship is very, very useful. American novels are cultural figurations that require us to find meaning in them, usually at some cost. I blame the Iowa workshop. Some interesting scholarship on the connections and motivations there. Saith Ajax.
My first purchases when building my office library during Ph.D. work were inexpensive copies of the Great Scott and the 2 vol. micrographic OED. I also found a very cheap copy of an original Chambers Book of Days, which turned out to be ex libris from one of the large Scottish universities. (All lost in the third year, of course, when the university workers took up the asbestos tiles in the flooring of my rooms without doing any abatement.) During these travels, it's more than once occurred to me that the universities hereabouts are building their English-facing programs very rapidly, and the American universities are trying to get rid of their printed books with almost the same urgency. Seems it would be simple enough just to fill a few shipping containers up, and send them over.
I read Charles Taylor's latest, on the Romantic poets et al. (finishing with Miloscz, which was appreciated) in Belgrade a couple weeks ago; the first half was valuable, but the second half seemed to peter out in a flurry of grace notes. The point of the first half, the defense of conceptual realism, seems important. If I can say that of two incorporeal notions, one is more important than the other, not just for me, but always and everywhere, much of the speculative reductionism that has enabled so much intellectual (and otherwise) corruption instantly loses its legitimacy. If there is an enduring map to the spirit, then we simply don't have the utter freedom of meaninglessness and devised games. It's as if there's an expedition, lost in the wilds, and half want to have a final extravant feast, as there's no hope of rescue or finding one's bearings, and the other half is trying to point out to them the fact that they actually do presently have a map in their hands.
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There is something quixotic about this shift that I've made in the last few months to putting more text out there. Anyone who was conditioned by the usual forms of of social life and television workplace dramas, and who stumbled upon a notebook of someone who is actually trying to do real thinking grounded in more secure notions of the past, is going to think the author a loon, and additionally (for reasons unclear to him), think that his opinion about that should be shared with others. And the trend in online writing is clearly away from such things; witness the close censorship and highly mediated social language on the twitmachine, or the fact that AI is routinely used to revise CVs to make them more like the sort of CV that one should write. Imagine a 1950's television character happening on a notebook of Heidegger, or one of the Monkees stumbling upon some writings of Derrida. It simply doesn't compute. I don't claim to be identical with such folks, but we are all playing, with greater or lesser skill, the same sport that the stranger would find baffling.
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Onward.
The triple crown was deprecated some time ago, but perhaps this scholar was the first to serve as the bishop of Rome and not be thought of as a king, or some sort of spiritual emperor, or political authority over empires. You could see that in the expressions of the curial officers, and in the conflicts in the media. And the reaction to the death was different. More that of a co-worker and a good person than a spiritual commander. So, political questions of succession aside, the question might be whether such an authority can be transmitted in the current political world. What meaning would it have for a second scholar and minister to take the office, without the political strength from the halo of a crown. Is the catholic form inherently aligned with kingship? The early bishops of Rome wouldn't have thought so, but as the church expanded though the world, it came into itself, brought into the fullness of existence by the peoples it came to encompass. (Hans Kung's history traces these doctrinal shifts clearly.) So, and this does resonate with the current global politics, the question might be for the species at large: how magic do we need our authorities to be? The impulse towards the old ways of sovereignty is a form of recollection; the secular world, contrastingly, is creating authorities without a history, without recollection, and lit only by the flickering thoughts of the television: all things new (and as a result, is susceptible to revanchist waves of populist fervour for old authoritarian forms). Perhaps there is a form of recollection that impels us to the new.
To the 500-year-old university for an orchestra concert by the region's professional ensemble. For some reason, the first row is sold at balcony proces, and the house and ensemble are small enough that the sound mix in the center front is quite good. Ere now. For the second piece, they wheeled out the concert grand, and I was staring right at the sounding board. The Grieg piano concerto. The nerves should recover by autumn. Otherwise very enjoyable.
Took a closer look at the architecture of the university on the way in. The massive building that had so impressed me before is laid out orthogonal to the main pedestrian avenue of the campus, but immediately across the street from it is an unpreposessing building at a slightly different angle, apparently the old gymansium, built in the 18th c. by the Jesuits, then run by the Pietists. Classical lines, everything square, unlike the quasi-gothic rounding in the main building across the street (which otherwise clearly draws from it). Apparently the meeting-place in 1848 as well. After looking at it for some time, the larger building across the way seemed modern and diminished. Classicism.
In the city, before 7:00 AM Mass, I would sometimes sit on the steps of the cathedral, waiting for it to open. Usually, I would think back to the time when the old church and Jesuit college was there, think about the philosophy that they might have been mulling in the shade of the trees at what became 50th and 5th. That gave me the grounding to enter the Rockefeller Center vibes of the cathedral. You do have to do that in NYC, especially now. Recollection. Else, you're just living in a theme park.
It's important not to overstate things. At it's most strong form, the critique that I'm coming to understand is simply that after the world war, mechanisms of industrial prosperity were set up that are now at full throttle, mostly for the good, but occasionally going a bit out of the furrow. Additionally, the generation that built these mechanisms perhaps understood its own children very well, so these machines and social forms are, to a large degree, idiot-proof. And, perhaps because of this, some very craven and corrupt people are now controlling some of these mechanisms and forms, both large and small.
The compendium, not to say magesterium, of past thought is still available. Cultivate your own garden.
Slogging on.
The bit of Shakespeareana that made the Guardian today seems completely spurious. Known since the late 70's, and the only new bit seems be that it turns out that the impecunious fellow referred to lived in a sort of run-down neighborhood with theatres in it, which might have been a fair guess anyway. And it might not even have been him, just a fellow of the same name. But apparently a headline piece in the subscription journal, so I'll reserve judgment until I o'erleap the paywall and land on the other side.
Frankly seems bit pitched to the present American administration--Shakespeare as the family man, ducks & drakes in a tony London suburb. Much of the Elizabethan cult of the 1950's was an attempt to capture the imaginations of the (sometimes former) colonies. Churchill's 'empire's of the mind.'
There's an obscure reference in Trollope suggesting that the map of the American colonies stayed up on the wall of the Ministry for the Colonies a bit further into the 19th c. than one would think. When an American refers to the king or the queen, it's invariably GB & Northern I by the G of G, never another.
England and St. George. The latter being, at best, half-English as the Billy Bragg song has it. Martyr of the Levant, born in Cappadocia, patron of Malta, Barcelona, Valencia, Arragon, Genoa, and England.
Given the many ways in which people use blogs, especially in the post-Twitmachine world, in which the internet is largely used by people to send smiley-faces, unclothed photographs, and intemperate and incoherent political exclamations to like-minded folks, that this is an old-school, 1990s stream-of-thought type operation, not really an attempt to communicate anything to anyone. I'm literally sometimes listening to Pearl Jam or Phish (TAB, technically) as I write these things.
One writes because one thinks, and a convenient means of recording these thoughts is at hand. And, the world being the world, this is undoubtedly being used by devious others in evil ways. But, as the fellow says, quod scripsit, scripsit. And this is also a limiting principle.
I'm not exaggerating the difficulties of maintaining focused thought on these sorts of odysseys. New respect for Adorno, Auerbach, Benjamin, et al.
And yet, things are slightly different. Those were the times in which the world divided into adversarial factions bound by solidarity and by loyalty to loyalty. If you were on the wrong side of the border, there was an--at least theoretically possible--escape to the right side of the border. Now, it's more of an omnes contra omnium proposition. A wandering Jedi from a galaxy far, far away could begin to lose his context. So, for that matter, could an itinerant Duke of Omnium.
And yet, as I write, I realize that being from the galaxy far far away is the essential constitution of the wanderer. The constitutive context is alienation. That's what keeps the game on. The strangeness of it all. Otherwise, you're just a local without a map.
Detachment. And yet preserving the human by that very detachment and conscious alienation. Onward.
A visual image for the 'unknown unknowns'. Imagine the mind as a sphere. Points of understanding emanate out from that sphere in all directions as beams of light with varying diameters. Each point of understanding is potentially infinite, just as the sphere is potentially infinite. These radiant points of understanding increase in area relative to the plane of the sphere as they go out from the sphere, like expanding cones, but the angle of increase is less than the increase of a cone the base of which would be at the center of the sphere, and the arc of which would be defined by its points of intersection with the sphere.
In other words, if that part of the sphere that intersected with these beams of light had expanded according to the natural arc of the sphere, the cone would be larger. Thoughts, while infinite, are directed outward from the subject, and don't have the native fullness of the mind.
So we have these thoughts in all directions, but as they travel outward and grow large themselves, making conceptual syntheses possible with other beams of light coming from the sphere -- not crossing, but in relation to each other, an even greater area of darkness is created between them. Perhaps this is the area of the 'known unknowns.'
The 'unknown unknowns' perhaps come from the fact that our thoughts and representations don't retain the native arc, the original angle of the expanding sphere, because they are directed towards the object. This would be the difference between the area that would be covered by a cone that retained the native fullness of the arc of the original sphere, and the focused beam, which although expanding and infinite, expands to a lesser degree. So the known unknowns are those areas outside of the boundaries of our thoughts, and the unknown unknowns are concealed between these boundaries in a sort of a penumbra around each notion due to the representational nature of thought itself.
I know what I know, and know what I don't know. But what I don't know due to the act of knowing is hidden.
Perhaps. Just a rough notion. Not particularly promising, quite yet.
I'm not exaggerating about having to rebuild the thinking machine in each new place. Start with a bit of fiction, eventually you follow the story. Then to the nonfiction, philosophy usually, and once that's in hand, pick the work back up. My notion was that I could travel with the books in arm's reach, like Autolycus or Dr. Who in his TARDIS, but apparently, if there is to be a journey, the mind must put the book down, and then make the journey. In fairness, this is Balkan busses and second-class rail, not the Concorde. But perhaps it's better to learn that way. And Prospero does break his staff and throw his books overboard before he leaves the island. (Or intends to.)
And not just to read and annotate to do things, or even to keep the mind engaged. The originary force of these ideas and objects. Discovering essential things, and making note of them.
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Interesting, the basilica for the pope's burial apparently has a close Jesuit connection. Loyola's first Mass was there, Christmas 1538. At the same time, it's not the Paris basement church of the avowals. Roma locata. [sic]
Signa, te signa tangis et agnis / Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor...
I go mad, I go mad, I shall wear my trousers plaid...
One goes on, despite it all.
Rather dispiriting day, all told.
I do feel compelled to note from time to time that in many parts and places, the whole thing is very much a sham. Just preserving the objection in the record. Even though stay and leave to appeal has been denied by the wizened, bespectacled, threadbare leprechaun on the ceiling with a tiny powdered wig playing the judge, on the grounds that "One canna stay and leave at the same time, can ye?"
They don't have that firm a grasp on civil procedure, to be honest, but their logic is sound, in a certain manner of thinking.
A peculiar experience: I was in the apse of St. Pat's, perhaps after the morning Mass, perhaps later, when a small fellow wearing a deacon's stole over an alb came up to me and handed me a small, inexpensive miraculous medal. I demurred at first, but he insisted. This was shortly after the election of the cleric who was head of the church as of this morning, in the short period before his work began, when he was consolidating his power in the Santa Marta house. The fellow in the apse was a foreign fellow--at first I thought he was alone, but after he handed me the medal, I noticed that two of the senior priests at the cathedral were watching him carefully from the recessed door to the passageway some distance away, and they seemed to be standing at attention (one was the MC, I think), and looking at the deacon with a sort of reverent awe.
I was never entirely sure what to make of the event, but I allowed my imagination to suggest what propositions it thought right in its free and harmonious play of thoughts, and took them as suggestions of imagination. People give miraculous medals--that wasn't the only one I was unable to refuse. I placed the medal behind the band of my hat, and carried it everywhere for a few years, until one night the hat itself was lost in a blizzard in midtown.
He is no longer a prisoner of death, he is no longer wrapped in the shroud, and therefore we cannot confine him to a fairy tale, we cannot make him a hero of the ancient world, or think of him as a statue in a museum! On the contrary, we must look for him and this is why we cannot remain stationary. We must take action, set out to look for him: look for him in life, look for him in the faces of our brothers and sisters, look for him in everyday business, look for him everywhere except in the tomb.
https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2025/documents/20250420-omelia-pasqua.html
Eternal rest grant him, and light perpetual.
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2025-04/pope-francis-dies-on-easter-monday-aged-88.html
When parsing American society, it is very important to keep the idea of appearances in mind. Conceptual realists posit that the world of appearances is mind-independent. That which we think the world to be is something beyond ourselves, but doesn't reach the actual existence of things. So manipulating this shared notion of how things are becomes the game. Baudrillard calls the resulting social world hyper-reality; this was the concept for the Matrix films.
The poet's blue guitar, that thing that changes things as they are, opposes the shared notion of the world that is the basis for this social reality. This isn't inevitable; a culture more inclined to be constantly seeking to determine the way things are, more truth-seeking, as it were, would accordingly value the poet's work in revealing things about the world. But if appearances govern, revelators threaten.
The mode of modernity, that trope of 'being with it', that emerged a short time after the decades of intense industrialization, might yet prove to be a very insidious thing. The reason for this is that it displaces the the general sense of how it is that things hang together -- the canvas or background of cognition and social form. The basic premiss is that the introspective stillness is replaced by a doing, lifting the individual into the energies of encounter. But my question is whether we then have the same disposition towards our own judgments made in the context of this energetic engagement, or whether we unconsciously devalue these second judgments, however useful they might prove to be in the social encounters, as not being our own. Even though we persist in maintaining the thought, and think that we have done our task in the context of the time by doing so.
Perhaps we have retained the power of judgment, and simply aren't using it. Sowing some doubt as to the secular world might therefore might be, specifically in the context of the present time, useful in a more broad sense.
Balkan Triduum, cont'd. The international train leaving Budapest was delayed until after midnight, so there was plenty of time to study the rafters, have a bit of bread and milk from Lidls, and work out which of my ebooks I didn't want to finish. (Knowing the location of the German groceries is an essential first part of learning any city.) The Dacia going to Vienna, on the occasions when I've taken it, has used open cars, as opposed to the closed compartments that become very trying for the visitor, as the locals tend to turn off all of the ventilation and seal up the doors and windows (before sometimes taking off their socks and shoes and putting them up on the seat). This is why I swore off Tito's train, until I found out that they can call the yard to find which cars had open seating. So it was a very, very bad ride in to Transylvania. After about the halfway point, I just sat on the folding panel in the passageway by the window, and tried to come as close to sleep as I could in that position.
Come morning, I found myself in one of the historical centers of Christianity in Transylvania. Found the old fortification walls; noticing a steeple just beyond it, I climbed up, my travelling kit in bags on my back. The first building was an old wooden Orthodox church, with a lively surrounding of flowering trees and chickens and roosters running around. Stood outside and listened to the liturgy for a bit, then walked over to massive Austrian fortress, 18th c. gates, with the informational sign pointing out the gap in the equestrian statue above the gate where a leader of a peasant rebellion was immured. Walked a bit further in, found a section of the old Roman road, and glimpsed a bit of the city beyond.
Then, back to a train (open car) for the last leg of the journey, passing many small mountains with flocks of sheep on them, being tended by a shepherd who usually seemed very intent on his phone. Walking directly over after the train had arrived, I arrived at the massive ancient stone church at 3:00 PM, and did some private work and meditation, before checking into the local rooms, cleaning up, and rushing out for a production of Hamlet at the city's Hungarian theatre. Very lightly attended. It seems that Good Friday evening services are more the case here than they are in the Latin West. Given the previous two nights (staying up after Traviata in Belgrade to pack, the above-mentioned bad cars added to the international train from Budapest), I could barely keep my eyes open at parts of the play). I'm a believer in seeing some theatre between the services of Friday and Saturday evening. It seems to ground things. The paradigmatic memory is a production of J.B. Priestley's I Have Been Here Before in a Saturday matinee in the East Village.
Balkan Triduum begins at St. Stephen's Basilica in Budapest. The bus from Belgrade allowed me to catch a bit of rest after packing and cleaning through the night, or whatever was left of the night after walking two hours back from the Traviata. The 6:00AM bells from the nearby Franciscan monastery chimed as I walked out the front door of the building, and then another two hour walk to the new bus station. Made it to the minute.
When I arrived in Budapest, I headed right to the baths, under the rule that when sleeping overnight on buses and trains during the journey, such things are wise. Learned that after trying to push through 3-5 day journeys at the beginning of the trek. A bit in the mineral pool, then two and a half cycles of the radiant rock sauna (at a third of the price of a cheap hotel), and then to the Basilica (after a bit of inner deliberation whether I might be better off taking it easy there, recumbens cum fratribus, or, technically speaking, alone). "Lord, if I'm mistaken, teach me my errors while I'm alive." And about 20 minutes later, I had the inner certainty that I should head south to the church. The first subway station had an issue with the fare machine, so I walked on down the line, including across a lake along a thin stone dam, following two children (who, it should be noted, weren't porting two bags of travelling kit).
When I arrived at the Basilica, which I've never visited, as there's usually an admission fee, I rant the gamut of the tour-staff and their quiet backing of the security folks. Oddly, they asked if I wanted to go to the English service. Given the rubrics, very surprised and wondering at this. I opted for the local language in the main hall, because the point was to be at the event. My guess is that she thought that I was just using it to catch a quick glimpse of the place, and although he was right about that, the way she was right about that would never have occurred to her.
To walk into the room is a wonder. Immense, bright and clean yet somehow still dull, smoky old walls, murals, and decorations. (Including four statures, presumably evangelists, who are on sorts of platforms in the crossing dome, parallel to the ground, to rather good effect.) Very interesting local liturgy that seems to resonate along the precisely the fault lines that give me some concern with the present politics here. No consecration bells, still the Lenten blocks. All crucifixes veiled, but still incensed, and after the long local devotional that followed the Mass, I assume they were bowing to the veiled cross above the tabernacle. At the conclusion of the communion rite, three sort of chalice-like pyxes were placed on the main altar. Abp., with concelebrants, offered incense and adoration from behind the sacramental altar. Then the removal to the altar of repose behind the main altar, never leaving the sanctuary, with a local variation on the Pane Lingua melody that I couldn't quite grok. Then, the return to the sanctuary, the congregation having sat down when they left view, and an old-style changing of vestments for the Abp, who then appeared to do a private silent meditation at the ambo, not a soul having left the darkened nave. Then to the old altar with the tabernacle -- removal of something, perhaps a corporal, and a solemn opening of the doors. Then (the order of some of these might be off), the Abp, with vested concelebrants, solemnly doused the six candles on the high altar and reverently stripped the altar. (Under the American system, this usually falls to the assistant sacristan at St. Pat's, and I have to imagine that he'd be surprised that anyone was watching. Though I usually was.) Then another private mediation at the ambo, followed by a very long spoken meditation in the darkened church, the Abp's reverent low tones the only noise. Quite powerful, actually, even not understanding a word. An attempt to hold them safe using the voice and mind alone, rather than the sacred appurtenances of the building.
Last year, I was with the Croatians in Mostar for these ceremonies, and among other things, I was very struck by the way that the priests used the formularies to create a dynamic of personal power. Herrschaft, in a certain way of speaking. But this is the nature of the sacred fabric here. The Boston puritans would call it priestcraft, but it has preserved the faith for centuries. Not incidentally, in this very building. And the essential fabric of the faith is that thing within which the things happen. That's why the long sermon in the darkened church was so powerful for me. Christ and his fishermen-and-tax-collector minyan had finished their three years of training; no more midrashes on the text and shared formal prayers, no more spiritual apprenticeship. Events now, not deliberate devisements would be the nature of the time. Only the voice and the thoughts of the one who remained -- not the sacrament and the power.
Events themselves, due to the nature of the event, would be the nature of the time.
Walked in for a last afternoon in the city. A piece by one of the national playwrights of the early 20th c. at the drama theatre was sold out in the balcony, but I managed to get to Traviata at the national theatre in time, $3 standing room. Violetta extraordinary, some moments of the singing were the equal of any house I've been to. With the walking around and picking up sundries for the journey, didn't accomplish the central intention of the walk in (an hour or so over a proper coffee). Will have to come back for that, I suppose.
This perpetual peregrination can be wearying. The plan for this leg of the journey was a month of excellent theatre with $5 tickets, and then a fortnight of desk and writing focus. Some complications -- social unrest cancelled about a third of the shows, slight injury meant that I had to stop the AM runs, but basically a good visit. Now to see if I can maintain the work while shifting places, TARDIS-like.
Chrism Mass at St. Pat's in the city. Always made it a point to be there when I was in town, starting two Card. Archbps. ago. The pillars near the pews in the back must think it odd that the actor fellow isn't there anymore. But pillars are just pillars. Peregrination seems preferable to the St. Sebastian approach.
Evening walk along the quay that I had hoped would be my dawn run, until a bit of an injury intervened. Not catastrophic, but the sort of thing that if not given time to heal, might have persisted for some time, so I just focused on the desk time. It's a remarkable city, definitely one of the places in the region I would seek out if I jumped over here for something more than a peregrination. Perhaps a year sometime to do some proper writing (Master & Margarita again). A book-lined apartment in an old concrete building somewhere. The politics and religion would be the difficult bit, but it's hardly an issue in daily life, more of a gestalt thing.
The general outline of the visit was a month of theatregoing in the center of things, followed by a fortnight at the desk in the periphery. Admittedly about a third of the theatregoing/concertgoing ($5/$6 tickets, for the most part) was lost to the political unrest, but the balance sufficed.
My second visit to this place. The danger of the second visit is a bit like trying to repeat a moment in a play that worked rather well the night before. Unconsciously, all of your energies go to placing yourself in that position, around these certain things that you remember as meaningful, in an attempt to conjure the initial magic of it. Then you slowly realize what you're doing, and begin again to look at the things around you as if for the first time, remembering their originary force when you first encountered them.
Looking forward to the third time already. I'm told that it's the charm.
I continue to think that the Matrix films were generally right, in an even stronger manner than the Baudrillard-based distortions of reality. Which are actually pretty uncontroversial. It's stronger than that. Until the false glazing of the normal way that things are with the world, the schein, the vague sense of everything in existence -- until this vanishes, you honestly can't tell a good thing from a bad thing.
Hence, perhaps, there is some danger in putting all of your writing out there, as opposed to filling notebooks on the desk. As Plato pointed out, once you've written something, there's no telling who might pick it up. Beyond the risk of gaslighting, there's also the certainty that much of it wouldn't chime with the way folks think about the world after watching television for a few hours.
Nonetheless, I've gone toe-to-toe with some rather interesting folks, and in every encounter, the open book has been clearly the right way to go. It might not make much sense, and it might be taken to be something that it isn't, but it will all be very necessary in the end.
Abraham Lincoln used to ask a certain riddle: If people decided to call a horse's tail a leg, how many legs would horses have?
The answer is, of course, four, because deciding to call a horse's tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. But it's perhaps revealing that a late 19th c. American lawyer would think of this. Pragmatically, in the language game one could play as if one played no other, if the expected answer was five, then five would be the correct answer. There, social norms govern the meaning. We've decided that certain things are quarks and opossums, and certain other things aren't, and these are our ways.
But this is why it becomes important that (late 19th c./early 20th c.) pragmatism is a species (or perhaps a descendant) of idealism, not empiricism. The ability to shift the language norm comes from the fact that the idea itself (that there is a thing called a horse) governs the positivist, empirical, long-settled, ultimately meaning-giving horse-leg-counting process. And that idea can be changed. The change in the idea would be the thing that governed the change in the normative constraints on speech, not some private contract as to language use. When social norms make changes in language use (in ways not directly governed by personal power), it is because something is revealed by the new usage that seems more valuable than the work the old usage was doing.
So, to sort of bring this together, Abe is right. If everyone decided to change a norm within a language, precisely because the scheme was sufficiently plastic to do this, the idea must be the source of the meaning, and not the long-settled empirical processes of verification. They simply wouldn't be able to do it without a more convincing idea. Without a vision, the people perish.
Perhaps.
Aristotle defines three types of pseudos -- the thing that is false (e.g., fool's gold); the thing that is spoken about falsely, and the person who is false. The critical point is that the first two allow us to see the possibility of the third. Otherwise, we would just have to assume that the person whom we encounter is playing certain games of language and action in a grand bid to prevail in life, and we needed merely to enter the game. On the contrary, it is possible for someone to go against their basic social role in a way that makes him or her so difficult to understand, that we continue to think about them according to their formal role, but know this cognition based in appearances to be false (1); and it is possible for people habitually to use language in a way that doesn't allow the alethic elements of speech to do their work (2).
Western society, particularly in its pragmatic, commercial aspects, has chosen to disbelieve in the possibility of this third risk, figuring that the effective people would merely rise. And, in fact, the industrial forms have been thriving. But systematically disbelieving in the possibility of personal falsity in the interests of game-playing seems a risk, and again, perhaps historically a bit unique.
If the industrial forms continue to flourish, and the trucks of frozen hamburgers continue to roll in every few days, the only indication that things might be a bit wrong is the slow discovery of the nature of the people around you, and the events within the apparent world, as they unfold.
So, perhaps, gently down the stream. With care to the surroundings.
#cloudyday
At that moment, he was coming in from the countryside. He happened to be passing by when he unexpectedly found himself caught up in a drama that overwhelmed him, like the heavy wood that was placed on his shoulders.
https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2025/documents/20250413-omelia-palme.html
This is interesting. In the section below as well, there's the suggestion that those who are accidentally suffering are carrying the cross as well. Having been wandering through a part of the world where different faiths have been trying to vindicate themselves for centuries, you can definitely see certain "types" of society associated with the different faiths and confessions. The notion that those suffering within these societies, say, for example a Christian culture, in an entirely incidental manner--but in a way that would not be occurring if the society was not caught up in the work of social progress, that the suffering is united in a sort of Cyrenian way, even absent consciousness of the specifically Christian character of the difficulty.
Difficulty: does that mean that someone who suffers because an Islamic society is trying to change the world is outside the specifically redemptive suffering?
Imagine two Simons of Cyrene. One knows of Jesus, the other doesn't. The second actually carries the cross. The first carries Dismas' cross, but identifies his difficulty with those of Christ.
Perhaps the answer is that the initial perception of the situation doesn't govern. The Cyrenian didn't know what he was doing when he began to do it, but then perhaps he noticed something. Perhaps the one in a foreign culture who identifies his sufferings with those of Christ comes to understand, by this attempt at understanding, that they're distinct from them. But the disposition is to questioning the difficulty, coming to understand its nature. Not just submitting to the difficulty without willing it, letting the compulsion be determinative. To understand the difficulty, not in a pragmatic sense, but in a teleological sense. The whole point of the exercise is that the nature of the difficulty--as difficulty--ultimately isn't determinative. Its meaning is determinative.
I've been trying to find, among many other things, places where I can do some work in the more formal style, as opposed to the desert-island apodictics (which sometimes actually turn out well). In particular, I think this would be the time to look at a legal history of the corporate form -- in the Hegelian sense of the history; analyzing what we thought we were doing when we unleashed the forms of these companies of discovery and invention, derogating or devolving their power from the monarchs. One of the interesting untold stories of early modern England is how many people were digging up their estates in commercial frenzy in Leicester's Commonwealth. In addition to companies sent off to Muscovy and the Indies, and the monopolies that consolidated trade, mineral development of land assets was very much on the uptick. Some interesting cases about which of the rocks inherently belonged to the freshly protestant throne.
It seems that we're presently on the brink of a sort of axial shift away from the world of public law and towards the corporate state model. Populating social forms of industry from among the population, as opposed to structuring the republic. But people still seem to behave politically as if the state were distinct from corporate interests. This isn't a question of corruption, it's a shift in the nature of the state. And now, we're to the point at which people think it right that those excluded from the social forms of industry have no productive place in the society. Which would be all well and good, if that were to be the ordained and established rule of the society, but I can't help but think that at some level, the people are still mentally, despite the economic reality, within an ordered republic, or even a kingdom. (The old Roman epitaph for the generals: "They did not despair of the republic.") Perhaps the modern voters even make the current politics into a semblance of a kingdom in order to ratify that belief against economic reality.
The real scholarship on the corporate form, reaching to its earliest antecedents in the context of natural law, is Gierke, mostly untranslated, although Maitland famously translated one of the books.
Just one of the things percolating in the mind. As the semaphores from the passing academic ships grow less frequent, I'm actually shifting my thoughts to more essential thoughts. Fleshing out the philosophical worlds that I made quick tracings of in the dissertation, keeping connected to the theatre as a sort of touchstone. German enlightenment, and its correlates in modern analytic philosophy. And that's probably the right way to continue, as the essential nature of the thought keeps the mind focused on a day-to-day basis.
The received wisdom in most fields is that if you're not in one of the top few programs in a field, it really doesn't matter what you write about in school. And if people had the slightest notion of what happens, given that license, at the state universities, we'd likely go back to having normal schools only (schoolmarm training). But, despite the fact that I found myself in a bit of a swamp in my department, I took enough classes across campus in philosophy and history to develop the sensibilities and research skills sufficiently so that I know what to look for, and how to think about it when I find it.
So I do have a principal project in the mind, should the opportunity arise. But for now, continuing the more essential philosophy, faith, and aesthetics (theatre). Given my druthers, I'd like to think about these things and shape them to a coherent form. I would read, write, and think about these things if I found myself on a desert island with no prospect of leaving. But if I were to play a more formal part in the academic industry, I certainly would know what I would want to bring to their attention, and could likely put something worthwhile together.
On the other hand, perhaps, like Auerbach and Adorno, I should write as if there would be readers, even in the present peripatetic times. And if I were still in the city, I might do that. The Rose room would be a congenial place for such a thing--there are probably a dozen such projects being pursued in it every day. But there are certain differences between the cases of Auerbach and Adorno and my present situ. For the nonce, at least, I should probably continue to work according to transcendent principles. Those of which I can honestly say I can do no other. Actually learning quite a bit about both the older philosophies and the more recent thoughts along those lines.
In contrast to earlier visits (on my first visit, not only did I frequent the patriarchal cathedral and the large cathedral (odd--Rome does that too), but I was at the midnight Easter service at the latter, and it was my principal point of memory for the city in the interval. But given some recent experiences in the churches of the national church, quite understandable given the present politics, I've been respecting their discipline, and (on my own initiative) staying clear, except for the occasional visit to the parish near the seat of government, built in the early 20th c. Some rather extraordinary dreams, though.
From my windows here, I can see a long-abandoned (at least, I've never seen it unlocked) small Catholic church. On one of the first days, there was an extraordinarily large and clear rainbow across the panorama, landing directly at the church. Or perhaps it was to the Orthodox monastery nearby, which seems to be quite thriving. (It doesn't seem large enough to be a monastery. Perhaps it's like the Romanian manastre, which seems in my (quite likely mistaken) experience, to be frequently used to designate a church.) Though the peals I hear are Latin peals, not Orthodox peals. Perhaps another nearby church. Quite a few of them about.
Long walk around some unfamiliar parts of the city on a warm spring day. Political festival was in the streets by the Sbux that I had mentally figured on for a post-Passion Sunday Americano, so I ducked into the one in the tourist quarter for a bit. Very scrupulously avoiding all the politics--didn't even leave the rooms on the day of the big rally last month. Ended up taking a long loop around the new city. Many miles circling, after the 2 hr. direct walk in. Absolutely exhausted at the end.
The background music at the cafes and stores here is odd. Basically the 1980s AM radio catalogue, almost invariably in English, but redone, evened out, usually heavily auto-tuned, likely by artists signing away perpetual worldwide rights in exchange for the delivered lunch and the demo tape. A cult of authenticity, and close listening to phonographs might be opportune hereabouts. Some exceptions to the muddle: I still treasure the moment in which I walked into an underground grocery at an intersection, and the Gypsy Kings' "A Mi Manera" started up. But for the most part, English. A bit like the Christmas fair music in Hungarian Romanian Transylvania, also almost invariably in English. The relics of St. Nicholas were after all, translated to the trade center of Bari, and became a merchant cult. The saintly gift-giving bishop. In many places hereabouts, Latin Christianity stands for commerce, and the old empires of the north.
All things to all people. Actually, this is the need for the universal church, one not defined by any understanding of it outside its central truths. Even though it does exist to these people principally through the means of these understandings. But the phenomenological context also bears the mystery, which is to say, the sacrament.
Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad...
To drive the human from the ground of the human. Because, bluntly put, a human grounded in the human could defy them. And madness is the honor of strange gods.
---
In the history of pigeons, a species that sort of reveals to city-dwellers how far they've been driven from their own self-possession, as the city transforms the form of a bird into a neurotic, pacing, circling, twitching thing, it apparently has never occurred to a single one of them to fly straight up for as long as they could, just to see what was there. (Or if it has, if there has been the occasional Cortez or Columbus of the species, they vanished, and the habit never caught on.) This is perhaps because a pigeon knows what it is to be a pigeon. An internal map of a relatively modest territory to be traversed at relatively low altitudes is what gives them meaning as themselves, and they would likely think it a negation of their own nature to investigate a high cloud one day.
Perhaps our grounding as ourselves does give us strength and a measure of self-possession. The sorts of things that would likely prove essential at moments of daring attempt. When we dare, we dare as ourselves.
------
Another Holy Week. Not to cast oneself up into it, not to honor it as a strange constellation that has suddenly hove into view, but to observe it. As ourselves, in self-possession and recollection of the event. To honestly observe the feast.
They've torn down the Hotel Yugoslavia, by the way. The ghosts of thousands of Moscow apparatchiks vacationing in the warm south by the Danau must be a bit confused. And sold the downtown bombed buildings to New York developers. Perhaps they'll sell the Zemun air command center to the Chinese or the Russians, and the Sava will again divide the worlds.
Revisiting, as usual, Mann's Joseph cycle for the holiday. His Egypt is America, I think. The refugee view, at least. From the customs at the ports, to the customs of the cities (which perhaps could be specifically associated with some careful scholarship). The old-world refugee intellectual, in the context of the alliance in the world war, with perhaps a tincture of Scheherazade, was trying to tell us something.
Jacobi's criticism of Kant's system is unintentionally revealing. "Without this thing (the thing-in-itself), I cannot enter the system, and with it, I cannot remain in the system."
A philosophical system is not a book within which one can eternally dwell. It is a method -- met/odos, "with road." A path that, on balance, seems wiser than the others, and leads one to a useful place. The fact that the dualism of the thing in itself makes it impossible to think that Kant's system has resolved the mystery of human existence is the system's greatest virtue, pointing us squarely at the right spot as we look beyond the place where we stand.
Relatedly, coming to understand that the pragmatism that I've been crusading against is in fact the overwhelmingly preponderant misunderstanding of the doctrine, which is actually a species of idealism. And yet, taking these facts as true, according to the lights of the doctrine itself...
Looking out on the massive concrete apartment houses of Brutalism. Taken as buildings, as buildings are usually thought of, the preponderance of the critics are right. But this merely tells us about what criticism is intent on doing in the world. The point is that the better way to think about a building, closer to what it is in itself, is a place for all of these people to live. Whatever their station in society, to have libraries of philosophy, enlightenment literature, facsimiles of the ancient texts, and a solid table or two. In this culture, this was the explicit hope. But very few of them live in that manner now, and perhaps, like the people in every other country, very few of them ever did, despite (or perhaps because of) the inexpensive ideological publishing houses, which were seen as a legitimate extension of the state. In the event, the humans didn't wish to live in that manner. It's an odd species. Bit capricious.
Very little discussion, if any, in this part of the world about the hazards of aerated concrete. (Contrast the Roman concrete, still going after two millennia.) Apparently still being widely used. Might be an issue (or worse) in a decade or two. #notexpert
Not at all an economist, but as a few interestingly placed stores yesterday recalled, what sunk the veer rightward in the UK recently was the cost of financing government debt, after the costings on the changes were published. Treasury yields seem to be on the uptick; I suppose the next gradation of the news cycle would be some hard math on the up-front costs actually being incurred. #notexpert
Of course, another interesting thing about the UK example is that the PM's rival and successor was likely in the city, actively briefing against the plan. If this veer does go south due to these sorts of hard costs, the second-order danger might be an emerging internal logic that everyone needs to follow the chosen guide--or else.
Noted on the first day of the administration that the internal civil-service noncompliance terms were very odd. Sometimes there's a bit of an art in determining which aspect of the universe is next in the great spinning-wheel slot machine of eternal return.
One thing I've noticed about this city--mostly from things I've seen online, but occasionally in person: citizens and police will occasionally get into an argument in which both sides believe that they are right, and that reason will eventually vindicate their view, and resolve the argument accordingly. I'm not sure if they realize how rare that has become.
Interesting, the governing party looks to be holding a large rally in the city this weekend. I'm far enough on the periphery now that it shouldn't affect me, except for the Sunday walk in for Mass and coffee. The general plan for this visit was a month in the center to see as much theatre as possible (managed about 2/3 of the plan, despite the cancellations from strikes and marches), and then a fortnight on the periphery to write. A few factors have combined to keep me from the AM runs, but still hoping to get back to that discipline soon.
Perhaps an inherent aspect of superpower-scale states: if you go to the political or cultural centers, you have to play along with the darker aspects of the game, or you find yourself without the ability to secure the basic necessities. And perhaps only networks with this level of personal domination are capable of creating continent-wide schemes of force. Perhaps it was the same in old Rome, or early modern London, and with the flourishing of mechanized industry, there's now much less starvation in the streets--in places, none at all, even with the population (mostly workers) multiplied tenfold in the last century or so. But the thought persistently recurs that the plan in Philadelphia, Virginia, and Boston a few centuries back was for a considerably lighter yoke and burden vis-a-vis the state.
In addition to everything else, it's conceivably gotten a bit more perilous to be abroad, given all the custard pies being flung in the corridors of power. Politeness and a complete lack of grounds for suspicion at the border crossings seems to be the order of the day. Kowtow to the Maharaja, and keep to the Officers' Mess.
One of the downsides of living in the Age of Reason is that virtually everyone is energetically characterizing reality in such a way that they secure their own position and advance in the world. (On occasion, this is explicitly defended as a sociological precept: the battle of symbols.) And while this sort of pragmatic approach has its merits, it can occasionally get in the way of those of us trying to actually do things in the world. </gripe>
One of the reasons that I've been careful (although being probably sufficiently anonymous and inconsequential in the large capital city) not to take sides in any of the cultural questions in these nations is that I respect the endogeneity of forms. Inasmuch as the people here are reaching to the prominent existing institutions of arts and scholarship states-side, I (along with quite a few others, apparently) know that many of these institutions have become a bit corrupt relative to their ideals over the course of the last generation, so the ones here looking to make contact would have to make contact and go down that road for a bit until they reach the place where I stand now. On the other hand, if the arts and scholarly institutions (the latter are much stronger here, and possibly not yet tinctured with the falseness) within a country can prevail within the country, they will become more firmly rooted, and able to eventually make contact with those outside. Blaga's notion (contra the miniatory philosophy lecterns of Vienna) of the plai is something more than longing for a lost idyll at a time of industrialization. "That which we are, we are -- one equal temper of heroic strength." Made strong to approach the mystery.
Made the medieval-peasantry two hour walk into the city. Might have caught the end of Mass, but a large event had shut down the roads in that direction. Veered to the coffeehouse by the university and finished The Ambassadors. The last time that I read it, I hadn't read quite as much philosophy, and missed that the entire ending happens in the context of Dr. Johnson's refutation of Bishop Berkley. Literally, as if kicking a rock. Henry's innovation: Strether thinking it a hornpipe. Dance as the empirical form of idealism.
Dry goods acquired, market wandered through, made the two hour walk back. A good Sunday, in the formalist sense of action that leaves open space for contemplation, but when I returned to my desk in the exurb, I realized how much focus had been lost with the four hours of walking. And no Mass--which was equally my (most grievous) fault, as I couldn't quite get to consciousness in the morning when the alarm sounded. Springtime must untie that.
Eve of the Orthodox Ascension, as depicted on the holy doors. One can't therefore enter the depiction, but the event's nature as door is shown. In a way, the negation of the depiction, showing the limits of such things. I suppose the Herms of the hermeneutic were much the same function. Using the vocabulary of the things we do, we do things to use words.
Saw a photo of a famous writer the other day, and from the photo and the biography, I'm wondering if a past acquaintance of mine was some form of unacknowledged relation. One of the state-school undergrad folks, none of whom I was especially close to at the time, or afterwards. He proved to be astonishingly well connected in the city, and got away with quite a bit at the school. Enjoyed his regular nickel-ante games in the city until someone pointed out that he was using marked cards.
The state school of the undergrad has changed very much from the liberal arts/experimental theatre/debate team paradigm that defined my time there. I've visited the campus a few times. The university police are using the old building that had the debate office (the police also took over the old theatre where I did my MFA soon afterwards; apparently they're rather into real estate these days), the experimental theatre has been torn down, the old theatre is no longer in use, and most of the campus is now across the highway in a school of integrated sciences and applied technology.
So less dreaming spires than seemings dire. No intimations of eternity in stone palaces, but on the bright side, it's sometimes possible to find a useful book or two, perhaps have some coffee while reading it, or even find a place to do a bit of theatre. Ca suffit. Ca toujours suffit.
Given the inexplicable and impenetrable (and, I must point out, late-arising) walls blocking the arts & the learned professions stateside, I might have to try to do do everything as a writer. Which is probably the same sentiment felt by a lunatic in an asylum who gains his only satisfaction each each day by tracing apparently random patterns on the wall. So, you know, good company.
The sound of the bells does carry the nature of the sanctuary with it, but that is perhaps not its primary function. Not at all an expert on campanology, but there are some interesting things about it. The Orthodox in Lent, or perhaps in monastic austerities apparently prefer hammers on wood--kontakion, or something like that. The founder of Islam wanted someone to call from the place of prayer, thinking a human voice was better than the sound of iron. Of course now, those voices are modulated quartz and electricity. A mathematician at Oxford once founded a new college (I think) further away from the dreaming spires, because the bells kept breaking his trains of thought. In folk beliefs, they have the power to avert storms. In Puritan New England, the largest one would be slowly tolled when word of death was received.
Interestingly, at Rome, at least according to Fortescue (I think), the bells at consecration were omitted from the papal liturgy, and from the rubrics for bishops in their own dioceses.
Something about source and emanation, perhaps. They're quite idyllic in the present context. Which is perhaps to say, the unsettling effect is welcome. Indications of the source.
Again. Read the books written just under a hundred years ago, and the works before them. Come to a certain understanding of the world that is adequate to phenomenological reality, and that offers a method (μετ - οδοσ) of thinking about it in a clear and distinct manner. No one is to this manner born.
Then, endeavour to understand what happened. Using the forms of disciplined life of the past, and not categorically rejecting the novel aspects of the world, categorically reject the notion that they must be thought about in a certain way. Be wary of intellectual apprenticeships. Power is a transcendent aspect of human experience in history, and being in the spell of another, whether in person, or through the medium of technology, can damage your ability to understand the world.
The old disciplines of thinking provide you with the means to understand; the novel aspects of the world are the objects of this understanding. Be wary of the reversal of this. (The actual, and helpful, reversal is: adequatio: perception / clear & distinct : understanding. Perhaps.)
Gently down the stream.
The difficulties encountered in these years of trying to find a post abroad leveraging the J.D. have likely proved insurmountable. (Thankfully, this is only one of my university teaching qualifications.) Away from the Anglo-American context, the J.D. is often rated as a first degree (akin to a B.A.). So even with my coursework and training in international public law, structural elements get in the way. (International public law wasn't my central area, but I took a few seminars and worked as a research assistant in the area, so I had a competence, in addition to my more central work in American criminal, commercial, and constitutional law; since I took as many courses as possible, I was able to develop a few more competencies than those taking the usual minimum number in quest of an uber-high GPA).
This false equivalence of the J.D. is likely by design, a device of the Powers that Be to keep the common law folks from the door. (Even though their private law is almost invariably based on common law principles and pedagogy, and the civilian aspect is only in the public law systems.)
I've had some leads, and even a signed contract in hand. But in the event, things did not eventuate.
Which is perhaps fortunate, since I've had to fold that work back into the other research work, which might yet prove fruitful, if the crick don't rise.
Mystified by the trade numbers. International trade isn't something that I have more than an average citizen's understanding of, but the overstory of matching numbers falls apart completely once you realize that one number is the imbalance in trade and the other is the tariff imposed, and the blunderbuss nationwide targeting of foreign states would seem to shut down trade from that country completely. I would have to assume that if your margin is 6% to 7%, any tariff above these numbers means that the goods simply don't ship. Else, the foreign states would have to come up with a scheme to favor particular industries. Apolitical, as always, but it does seem that some slide-rule work has been done in crayon.
Interesting -- apparently the non-self-executing ICC jurisdiction inside the Magyar state is being held up on a question of head-of-state immunity. International law consists of many sensibilities overlaid, not just in space, but also in time. And there are some jus cogens rules that antedate any legislative enactments. Of course, in the present case, this presents a difficult political question.
https://szakcikkadatbazis.hu/doc/8612513
I continue to think that the Matrix films were basically right, but in a way that, unsurprisingly is not apparent at first glance. In brief, if you ground yourself in the prevailing norms of this society, look to this sort of participation in the world to gain meaning from the world, and attempt to become skillful in this manner of life, you will miss the fundamental truths of existence. And yet the order of things is governed by those who have prevailed in the realm of the third. This is not a society in which you can live in the language's downtown. (And there are societies in which such things are possible.) Your truth must come from your house in the country.
New rooms much more civilized than the last. The last were chosen for being right across the street from the parliament, near a church I remembered from the first visit, and close to the theatres. Turned out to have a Sbux very near as well. Which, if you consider it as a systematic means of turning street-level retail space into a means for sitting quietly with a book and some coffee, is not a bad thing. And doesn't weave you into the local mode of life as much as the seated cafes with table service--have avoided the latter in every country that I've visited, with very few exceptions.
I suppose it would be possible to have civilized quarters squarely in the center of things, but those sort of digs are generally reserved for those whose minds are not their own. Not to mention that the desire for such things leads to people gaining them as ends, not means -- e.g., new New York.
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