https://www.prairiehome.org/shows/58155.html #saturdayradio
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.
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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.
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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.
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