Interesting, the guiding trope of the TLS this week is the deep state, as reflected in American thought. Given that the notion first surfaced in the LRB, describing political structures in the Arab states, the long arc of thought appears to have reached its end--and hopefully not its apotheosis. Like the other expressions, having reliably indicated a certain thing in being for a certain space of time. The bits of sapient mud will have to think up some new noises now.
I've mentioned this several times, but I think the general notion is important, and might explain many things: within the prosperity of the postwar industrial forms, which can function equally for a strong civil society and a weak civil society, things are starting to fall apart a bit. Academic credentials, experience, and skills tend not to count for much. You must be liked. They're not creating an ordered society, they're inviting people to a party. If you're the sort of person who is to be invited and you have the right education, skills and experience, so much the better. Frankly, I've never liked parties, and I've never thought that the point of life was to be found acceptable by other people. Our task is to hold the tent up in the present age, not to relax in the billowing part with the greatest ease. A society, within its time, continues to strain upward using the shared forms of experience, rather than severally enjoy the ultimately meaningless party until it's time to leave.
Another note along these lines: until I spent some time abroad (writes Ovid), I didn't have a sense of my own ethnic identity in the minds of others. When you grow up from childhood in a certain context, you tend to assume that the way you are being treated is the way that people are treated. There is the notion of "the conversation" among disfavored minorities in America, when the adults try to point out the dangers to their otherwise blissfully ignorant children. I never had any real grounding in my ethic heritage, but in retrospect I can see that it was a cause of some contention within my family and among their associates. As I looked back over my experiences, noticed how things worked out, and remembered the things that were said, it dawned on me that, at least in some cases, my perceived ethnic heritage was the dispositive factor at certain crucial moments. The challenge, now that I've had such a conversation with myself, is to preserve the transcendent ground on my side of the fence, and keep those kinds of thoughts on the other side of the fence--where they have been all along.
Peculiar journey. The last rooms, although I had stayed in them before, proved difficult, as with the midsummer foliage and the wall opposite, it was a bit like a basement, and the reason for the dozen or so air fresheners around the WC and hallway became apparent, as I slowly became aware that there was a sewage blockage. Rented at multiples of the local cost, of course, with added insurance costs. Looking back on it now, as I consciously just swam the tide, as it were, at the time. Travel in this part of the world for an American of Slavic/German ancestry isn't necessarily straightforward at times. There's an ethic of rules of hospitality, and everyone's eager to make a bit of money on the tourist industry, but they sometimes clearly expect clueless Americans from Disneyland with rolling luggage from the airport. And Bosnia is not a place where you would want to tally up and remember the micro-aggressions on sidewalks, benches, and grocery stores. Just swim on through a country bedeviled by more spiritual forces than most Americans could handle for more than a few days. (Like many other countries in the region.)
Rented luggage storage on checkout day, which I had previously thought to be a luxury, but came to understand a necessity. The contractor was a Celtic pub, which was reassuring, but I then checked that sense as deceiving when I realized it was staffed entirely by (kilted) locals. Peculiarly un-Hibernian. So I made a point of going through the bag item by item on a park bench afterwards, as I have no intention of spending a decade in a Serbian prison from contraband that had accidentally fallen inside somehow.
Then the difficult journey. Afterwards, figured out enough of the tram to get from the distant bus station to the center. The Sbux across from the parliament had a WC that reeked of sewage, so I just briefly ducked in before decamping to a chair outside for the 90 minutes or so before the diplomats' mass at the Cathedral. (Audibly translated from English to French by someone in the back, including the words of institution and--perhaps--consecration.) Then to the check-in, did the first level of cleaning in the rooms in a rather noisy and industrial neighborhood (but very close to desirable areas and the main roads). As it turns out, the listed shared laundry facilities amount to contacting the staff, scheduling a pick-up, and then paying 5e/load, so I'm back to laundromats and hand-washing, like in Bucharest a little over a year ago. Humble quarters. And then the grocery for water and food. (Made sure to go back to the Sbux and the same grocery the next day, rested, cleaned, and more professionally dressed -- all of the cultures in this part of the world are honestly an inch from fascism (in different, interesting ways), and one does have to both be careful of such things and not care a bit about them.
Last bit of cleaning of the rooms today, including prising the half-inch of caked dust from the internal filter of the AC unit. (Peculiarly, the way these units are designed here, presumably given the inability to run ductwork through external walls of unreinforced masonry, there's no fresh air from these units -- they invariably recycle room air.)
Onward, in a (or perhaps the) manner of speaking.
Day of setting up, reacquainting myself with this part of the city, remembering that is was possible to work and think here. If you try to make these jumps without care for that sort of thing, it's five days before you can read, a week before you can think, and a week and a half, if not a fortnight before it's possible to write. The dog doesn't bark, and the caravan moves on.
Part of looking to the types of folks who were displaced during the second world war (Adorno, Benjamin, Mann et al.) is creating a mimetic model of a person who does something more than survive the journey.
Le Carre told the story of going backstage to meet Thomas Mann after one of his unsuccessful lectures on the latter's return to Germany. The writer, standing there in his suspenders and collared dress shirt. The young student Cornwall asked to shake his hand, and did, and remembered it. The reason we make statues is that we can then think about ourselves as being in the company of such folks, not just staring up at the plinth. Becoming like them, to a certain degree. It allows us to place ourselves in the contexts of ideas and experiences that we would otherwise consider completely alien to us. Imitation is a door, not a way of life, but it is a good door.
The Kantian notion of appearances ultimately being the ground of things does point us in the direction of the things themselves (perhaps the ultimate goal, answering Jacobi's complaint), and it also makes us aware of what other people are doing with their truth claims. The world has always been overlaid by shared views of the world composed of gossip, misdirection and mistake -- the risk of present error might be that in the attempt to ground these perceptions in the way that things actually are, one of these systems needs to acquire extraordinary mechanisms of perception and corresponding influence so that truth can govern the world. And the things going on now quietly, behind the scenes with certain California data-based companies, when combined with AI management, might actually being such a scheme into existence, and more troublingly, action.
To which, I can only reply, with a bit of Kant in my rucksack -- go back to Kant!
Interesting balancing of continental civil rights and archaic practices of privilege aiming to eventually accomplish much the same thing.
https://www.thetimes.com/article/a072aa94-9264-4076-8542-15177b2d80e3
To the local research library -- from what I've been told, the only one open to the public, associated with one of the large trusts sustaining the old city. Rather problematic place. Books have to be requested 4.5 hours before closing. Electronic catalog in need of a cleanup; perhaps a dozen categories for Language: English. One of the two volumes of Andric short stories I managed to request was also in need of some cleaning -- lifted it up and opened it before I noticed that it was covered with what I hope was caked-on food of some kind. Was hoping to find Andric's thesis on spiritual life in Bosnia under the Ottomans, but peculiarly, the only edition in the catalog was in German. Also, a biography of a Sufi saint from the UK who has written some interesting things on Shakespeare proved un-locatable in time. Did notice an interesting title on Islamic courts in the old Republic. Will have to check it out on the next visit, whenever that might be.
Walked over to the cultural center for the first half or so of a set by a local blues/funk ensemble. Quite good. Was reading Hoffmann's Serapion Brothers. A bit uncanny at points -- to be sitting in a converted synagogue in Bosnia listening to a blues jam while reading a story about a poet and composer, old friends, meeting during the carnage of the Napoleonic wars and talking about art and war.
Local recycling appears to have dropped off a bit, as in the neighboring nations. Usual bins not in evidence, and the central bin location in this half of the city appeared to be filled with garbage when I ran past the other day. Two local incentivizing machines, one dispensing transit tokens, and the other dispensing food for stray dogs (a concept I've seen in a few countries, and always found a bit puzzling -- the prescence of hungry strays at the waste disposal point would seem to disincentivize)--but these generally don't accept the large water bottles that buid up from the daily supply.
Build broad, stong pipes, and--only then--figure out ways to incentivize the inflow.
Oddly, in the market-based country on the east of the peninsula, recycling appears to be going well. (So long as you find out which sector of the city is controlled by the recycling-friendly factions.) Second-to-last time I was there, it took some doing to find a clothes donation bin; I finally found one by a local Orthodox church. On my next visit, they were quite ubiquitous.
One other oddity about the northern city in that county. On my first visit, I rented an apartment in a concrete tower at the top of the hill, from which I could see the flashing lights on the immense steeple of the old medieval church in the distance. On the second visit, I was much closer in, but facing the other direction, so I looked up at the apartment I had rented on the first visit. On the third visit, I returned to the first apartment, and as I looked for the second apartment below, I realized that it was precisely on line with the steeple of the medieval church. Not a function of the street grid, or of main arterries, as the second place was off the main roads. More things in heaven and earth.
Odd day. Went to the coffeehouse in the early afternoon to read, and elected to sit outside amid the upturned chairs (morning storm), louring clouds, and occasional drizzle rather than risk the airless rooms inside. The people here seem to be a bit like the Chicago folks -- apparently comforted by airless warmth. The closeness of it, perhaps. Then the rain started in earnest, so I explored the downtown mall across the street, picking up a few necessary supplies.
Then, a long day filled with completely useless and frustrating matters, well into the night, missing the free concert at the arts center that I had mentally penciled in.
If things were going well, if Denmark didn't have the sulphur smell to it, I'd still try to wake from the thoughtless tread through the days that seems to animate so much of the world. But, with things going the way they are, waking isn't a virtue, but a necessity.
Postprandial: "July Rain" -- "Where will you go when spring floods the earth?"
Important set of UK international chambers seems to have reached a conclusion on the conflict in the Levant. That the sort of thing (unlike almost everything else in the news) that is more significant than it might at first appear to be. Perhaps. Haven't followed those conversations closely.
One tension in Kant is that knowledge can't reach beyond experience, and perception, and therefore experience, is limited to appearance. That which limits our thoughts is itself a bit false. Or at least chimerical. But, like a dull schoolteacher, it still wields the rod.
Things are seldom what they seem / Skim milk masquerades as cream...
Also. If you have gone through a time when there were extraordinary physical difficulties associated with simple existence, these times will recur to your mind in the future. Don't accept the pop-culture explanation for this. This is your life reaching from a place of danger to a place of safety. From the place of safety, remember the place of danger, conscious that it is of the same material life. Build that bridge for recollection in tranquility.
As I've become acquainted with the subtle and not-so-subtle aspects of this (historically unique) part of the world, lines of force have developed. I incline towards a certain place when I encounter a certain difficulty. I might devoutly wish myself into the busy streets of Bucharest, or (as happened in a difficult February in the nation to the south) the mountains of Bulgaria. And this isn't entirely about the empirical aspects of the place. Once you find the three (perhaps four) lines of main force -- from the West, the south, and the East (and perhaps the north), you can sort of feel where you are in that spiritual geography.
Keeping in mind as well, that pining is a classic human fault. No matter where you are, or in what straits you might be, there have been times in your life, or (/and) there will be times in your life when you wish that you were precisely in the place where you are. Everything in a life tends to the essence of that life, as it becomes known in time.
Discouraging day. Discovered a plumbing problem in the rental in the AM, which might have been running sewage through the shower drain for some time now, went out for a Sunday hot chocolate ($2.50), did some reading (Peirce, Wolff biography (couldn't focus), Jaeger's Paieda (could focus)) at the cafe and at some parks around the city, caught a bit of the Mass of the Faithful at the local parish church, but arrived later than planned, as I mis-timed the vespersII mumbling and the crosstown walk. (Have avoided the cathedral since the tourist/massgoer confusion that ended with my walking in despite the fact that the old fellow was grabbing onto me and trying to pull me back.) Then to the theatre for an hourlong piece that the English-language website listed an hour later than the (apparently correct) time on the local version. Perils of data entry.
Eavesdropping on a slightly tape-delayed Carmina Burana from the east now, quite good, especially the soli. Heard an excellent version in Bucharest earlier in the year from the back balcony no-view. (Intentional, as I didn't want to be distracted by the staging.)
Some sabbaths one survives, rather than finds the triumph. Boldly on to the other six days.
One result of the interesting paths of late, and long, is having remarkably little tolerance for the "All is lost, I ordered my latte without foam" line of thinking. It's a social and historical fact that in a world without consciousness of the divine, and people even unable to imagine the possibility of their own experience of eternal time, that in the game for social power, people cultivate habits of conspicuous consumption and learned incapacity. And to be rather obvious about it.
The game is at least partially to 'get a rise' out those around you. This is the part that gives an advantage in the social game. When you become angry at a person, group, or conceptual belief, it's the first step to being controlled by the question of them. A complicated formulation, but follow it. Anger at the night draws us into the question of day and night, as the two are the same question. Heraclitus, I think.
So when a conspicuous consumer appears before you, cultivate dispassion, and look as closely as you can, and try to understand.
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