One of the more revealing things that I've seen in the media from the present American president was the disparaging of the notion that the country is an experiment, a test of a certain social proposition.  This is disconcerting, because I've never encountered a historical narrative that didn't hold this to be true.  For a very long time, the word was governed a certain way, and then another way of thought started to take hold in the northern European island nations.  The colonization of (at least the top half of) the hemisphere was based on this new social order, and if it falls apart after a relatively short run of three or four centuries, we'd lose a lot.  

If you're being tested, and you don't know that it's you being tested, if you prevail, it won't necessarily be you who prevails.  In the same way, we should be clear that a very specific idea of governance and social order is being tested to see if it is a true way for human beings, and it's being tested in the historical context of other ways of going about things.  If things go badly wrong, the conclusion might be drawn that a democratic republic can't be trusted with the mechanisms involved in governing an entire continent.  

It is possible to err.  In the context of a general prosperity, it's easy to forget that. 

(Apolitical -- I have no opinion as to which of the present factions would be most, or least likely to provoke the error.  Just pointing out to the baseball players that they are, in fact, playing baseball.)

I am a bit careful about how I look for opportunities these days -- which trees I shake.  If any of the several networks of folks who've gone up against me in the past decided to be marginally less evil for a brief moment, I could find myself entering a world with an ordained outcome -- "things bad begun..."

So I emphasize the formal aspects of the qualification and experience--so many degrees, so many courses, so many years of experience of practice at a certain level.  But, as I've increasingly discovered, the present order of things relies much less on the way things are than what happens when you talk to people. 

(As strange as that might sound, if you paraphrsed it out, you might reach the essence of the problem.)   

Skipped the AM run to nurse a bit of a twinge through the weekend.  Onward. 

 

 #oscotlandscotland

(Another litmus, perhaps -- those who take these lyrics to be in the past tense, instead of imprecation.)

This is many years of experience talking: the people who are successful and influential in the present order of things (on every level of society) are, by and large, not good people, and the sense of reality that they create in their interactions is not a good world -- despite the structures of postwar industrial prosperity, and the fact that the trucks of frozen hamburgers still roll into town every week.  Perhaps it was ever thus, but it most certainly is thus.

Look to the past.  Piece together a world from the relics. 

 Octave of the Assumption.  Same note, just more high and lonesome.

 One test of the general outlook might be whether someone assumes the calendric octave is a upward journey, or the other thing...

 One difficulty with thinking about religious things is that pretty much everyone who has given their ideas serious thought has a rather good point, and yet they occasionally completely disagree.  The puritans of the new world, for example, all the way to their antinomy in the (still-thriving) know-nothings of the midlands, were vehement in their criticism of orthodoxy.  Several of the founders explicitly equated both the eastern church and the western church to the Vedic pantheon and practices.  As I travel, from time to time, I do pick up on some of the same vibes around the orthodox clergy as I did among the sorcerers (almost invariably apprentice-level) in the theatre and experimental theatre.  And yet, the mind is a mysterious thing, and the whitewashed walls and clerestory doctrines of the reformation might not bring the whole of the human along on their forays into higher things.  Cf., perhaps, "I will draw all things to myself."  

It appears that the good air comes from the north here, while winds from the south bring a peculiarly acrid air.  I've been in some difficult places in the winter (3x -4x the levels of emergency levels of pollution stateside--HEPA at full blast at the desk, and jedi shemaghs over the mouth and nose outside, before they became a political symbol), but I would certainly not want to be here in January and February.  Although I understand that it's significantly better than it used to be.

https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20091104.html 

Cf. the Enlightenment vs. the romantic/historical school.  Very similar -- indicating an underlying truth about the mind, perhaps.

Postprandial:

 

 

Perhaps the question we are heading towards: whether a state (as distinct from government) in the service of the 60%-70%, administered by a more or less corruptly selected further subset of the group, is a valid desideratum.  The percentages are high, in historical context, cf. Picketty's second book, but given the industrial mechanisms at hand, an ogliarchy in service of the democratic preponderance is not necessarily the only option at hand.

I see this reflected in local conflicts here.  There seems not to be a push for elections, as the political machine would have enough influence to carry a preponderance, but at the same time, the mechanisms of social advancement are gummed up by the corruption.  (At least in the view of those protesting, or just grousing.)

One misleading notion: that in an increasingly educated society, there are either fewer career slots or fewer signs of social distinction to compete for.  The present reality, seems to be that, as JK Galbraith said when equating the universities of India and the American Midwest, you either go along with things, or find yourself out in the field/street.  Not really a plumage competition there. 

Up past midnight rebuilding the netbook.  It's the sort of computer that folks likely would consider not worth the risks of theft, but the fact that makes that so also does other things in the world.  

Gently down the stream, stream permitting.

If you ultimately believe that words serve only to help groups of people get along, you will create corporate and social structures in which the primary task of each person is to hold such a position in such a world.  

 Google appears to have de-indexed the "ephemera" part of this site.  Spent some time on the seach console figuring it out, and there are a few oddities.  Can't say that I blame it.  Taking up valuable disk space that might be used for the things that people customarily use the internet for.  Will continue puttering around to see if I might have missed a trick.

Looks like I left the last country just in time.  Some of those riot images are places I was walking through & reading in a couple of weeks ago.  Some interesting goings-on near the end sugggested to the (perhaps overly imaginative) observer that it might not be the best time for an American to be wandering around.  And the rooms were very bad.  But a decent, prosperous, and hospitable country (with reasonably priced Starbucks coffee--like NYC in the early aughts).  And the capital of the old Republic.  Listened to the live Bayreuth stream of Rheingold (from a Sbux) while watching night fall on the legislature's building, and the lights come on.  Bit magical.

Like every country, its problems are its own, and should be sorted by the folks with a legitimate interest in the matter.  #primedirective

Still mulling the notion that the fantasy novels of Tolkein (read only once or twice) and C.S. Lewis (re-read yearly) have their sources in undisclosed wartime travels in the Balkans and elsewhere.  Lunatic notion, but the second Lewis novel has clear resonances with his American travels, and the others seem to have a similar verisimilitude -- and the overarching theme is an Englishman type coming into contact with distant cultures. And then there's the powerful City contacts of Charles Williams.  (My hierarchy puts him between the two.)

Every work of fiction is an invitation to fictionalize the life of the author.   

 

 

One trick in securing the housing is to find a place somewhere between the cobblestoned tourist-catering places and the hobbit villages.  Clearly, the present booking has landed me far afield into the latter.  Much like the place in German Romanian Transylvania some time ago, the only difference being that the neighbors' chairs facing the windows are much closer here.  Will be a bit of an exercise in dispassion. Om.