Interesting figure. Looked through his official blog a bit when I was visiting the country last winter. One joke I remember:
A Romanian goes into a cafe and orders a cup of tea.
"Would you like Russian tea or Chinese tea?"
"Hm. Do you have coffee?"
Consider the principle of sufficient reason in the context of the development of technological infrastructure. Only a broad-based adoption of technology could focus a sufficient amount of resources on the central infrastructure. Perhaps, instead of seeing the end-gadget and the visual images on it, as an end in itself, the point of the whole thing -- also see it as a mechanism used to tap the resources of the end-user towards the creation of centralized infrastructure.
Went to the city's castle -- very ancient, has been held by a few empires over the last thousand years. Extraordinary views out over the plain, which are also visible at the (much smaller) citadel at the opposite end of the insular channel at the confluence of the two rivers. I try to make at least one visit there each time I visit here. I much prefer the castles in Transylvania, though -- there's something very discomfiting about seeing signs for lurid exhibitions of medieval torture devices, given the events of the last fifty years hereabouts -- at least in the northern castles, I'm absolutely confident that they haven't been used for warmaking or carceral purposes for a few centuries. One does get odd vibes. But I suppose I'm peculiarly sensitive. I still wonder a bit why people listen to orchestral requiems as art or entertainment.
Whatever the merits of nature and nurture, the directly proximate environment does shape the person. The traffic noise, the chaotic sidewalks, the scents of fried foods, the clouds of secondhand vapes.
Wealthier place aren't marked by these objective phenomena, and their residents seem to have a different general personality. Persistent correlation can indicate partial causation. Though having a lot of money can do other things to protect one's personality from the vicissitudes.
This is perhaps why, during the republic, they looked across the river and built apartments there. (Though curiously, they appear not to have extended the tram lines.) There is a famous local novel about the old architecture of the city, the protagonist, a romantic madman, looks in horror through is telescope at the characterless housing growing on the other side of the river. But there was green space, and planned development, and quiet. These things don't cost that much, except in the context of the band of detritus around urban areas, where square footage is costly, neighborhoods are ad hoc, etc.
One doesn't seek out sane housing for the sake of sane housing, as reasonable as that might sound. The housing shapes the mind, and the sensitive spirit. One turns into a bit of a troglodyte among the detritus, vaping, etc.
To their credit, they make it a point here to build sufficient housing for the population. I've seen this in several post-communist states. Whatever the many sins of the authoritarian state, it publicly preached a strong social ethic, and that ethic has persisted somewhat -- a very valuable residuum.
I can honestly say that I never encountered a law professor who appeared to care more for the object of their study than their own personal social standing. And I was looking rather closely.
That rule obtains in the academy generally -- the exceptions whom I've encountered have almost invariably been in philosophy or the arts.
To be clear, I studied the arts to practice the arts, then found things in the field to be a bit off-target, to use the mildest possible phrase. Then I studied law to practice law, and found the practice of law to be, with similar discretion, a bit corrupt. When, finally, I turned to the academy, it was largely animated by a sense that it was the source of the fact that ideas were no longer guiding things. It would have worked, but as it turns out, if you don't think that there is any truth to be found in the objects of study, there's apparently no need to preserve basic truth and honesty in the interpersonal world. At the end of it, I was basically trying to play baseball in the middle of a fistfight.
Onward. The old texts are still available, and they speak. There's also the possibility of making art at some point in the future, and if I ever find a path past the gates of the law, I'd be able to use those ideas to explain a few things.
The purpose of society is not to preserve and populate the forms of social life and industry. That can be done with a fraction of the population, and if necessary, within a context of near-absolute injustice and corruption, especially when social connections are mediated by technology.
The purpose of society is the answer to a single question: What is it that all of us should do now?
I remember reading Newman's Lectures on the Irish University when I was working at the hardware store on the Upper East Side, just after passing the bar exam. That, and Trollope, preserved some airy spaces in the mind during the hardscrabble days. Which were, of course, shortly to become even more hardscrabble.
Hardscrabbler. Harderscrabble. It's very important to find the right words for things. Cf. I. Berlin's anecdote about Akmatova in the bread line.
Looking at a map of the region in the 11th c. -- with possibly one exception, all of the places that I've visited were cities then. (And I think the one not on the map was in existence then, as well.) Not always under the same names, or in the same country, but still there. Perhaps the norm in Europe.
I have consciously looked for cities that were historical capitals or sees, sometimes in preference to current capitals. The ruins of time...
From the first draft of Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard, per today's entry in Chambers:
The thoughtless World to majesty may bow,
Exalt the brave, and idolise success;
But more to Innocence their safety owe
Than Power and Genius e'er conspired to bless.
And thou who, mindful of the unhonoured Dead,
Dost in these notes their artless tale relate,
By night and lonely contemplation led
To linger in the lonely walks of Fate,
Hark how the sacred calm that reigns around
Bids every fierce tumultuous passion cease;
Instill small accents whisp'ring from the ground
A grateful earnest of eternal peace.
No more with Reason and thyself at strife,
Give anxious cares and endless wishes room;
But through the cool, sequester'd vale of life
Pursue the silent tenor of thy doom
Proverbs for Paranoiacs, cont'd: If you are travelling in the Second World, and a large commercial van with dark tinted windows that was outside the apartment yesterday pulls up again the next morning, and then pulls away again a few minutes after you put some towels out to dry in front of the window, it's undoubtedly a coincidence. If anyone's asking.
[Update, apparently just a van in the local commercial traffic that decided to make an abrupt departure at that particular moment. But in the Balkans, any excuse for paranoia is useful. Keeps one on one's toes.]
Rather profound shift in powers of mental focus (not for the good), together with mild respiratory oddness. Assuming it's from the rooms above the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which were quite a shift from the quiet, somewhat swampy city of the Jedi Council. The paradigm for it in my understanding is the beginning of Tarkofski's Solaris -- the earthly home (which we see in the director's ending to be the world of forms), and then this deeply disturbing soundtrack of automobiles and traffic counterbalanced by sedative visuals. From the place of understanding to the difficult work and alienating journey.
Given the preponderance of the visual in experiencing films, people often take the traffic section to be simply soporific and sedative -- but if you listen to the audio on its own, it's actually deeply disturbing.
Walkure on the Bayreuth broadcast for the Sunday late afternoon/evening. Rheingold was in the Starbucks across from the national parliament, which went from daytime to nighttime lighting at the finish, which was quite powerful. But for the first day of the festival, the rooms adjacent to the busy road. Sufficient for the wanderer.
In this listening, I'm seeing Wotan as a sort of protestant figure. (Much to do with the reading of the past year, perhaps.) Building Valhalla against the ones who have gained spiritual power by renouncing earthly love. Walhall seems a more contingent proposition -- not a universal heaven, but a collection of the noble souls that Wotan's Valkyries are able to capture (St. Michael figures, perhaps) after Wotan had intentionally made the mortals' lives difficult and quarrelsome. Built by the human giants, not by the Gods. And he fears that the armies of the ones who have renounced love might even reach these souls that have been taken there and convert them.
And the ending with the Valkyrie who disobeyed him, even though entirely a creature of his will -- perhaps reckoning the cost of reformation, and attempting to ensure that its spirit will reach the future?
More things in heaven and earth, Horatio. Particularly earth.
Bit of a break in the heat. Rooms much more liveable. Still the busy road, but that's only noise. The absence of fumes and heat (presumably a change in wind with the weather) makes much more of a difference. The cost is much higher than what the locals pay in rent, but absent the caravanserai mentality, there would be no market whatsoever, an nowhere to travel to. The caravan continues.
The fundamentals are good -- wood floors, open space, double-glazed windows, but the clothesline is an old synthetic yarn that leaves tiny splinters in the clothing, the air conditioner was literally packed with dry and oily dirt (a half inch on the filter), and there were other electrical/plumbing things. In addition, there wasn't an open laundry room, so it's been a few weeks of hand-washing. It's being run as an inexpensive rental, so this apparently the mentality of an inexpensive rental in this part of the world. Which is odd. There's no reason that it couldn't be run shipshape without doubling the rent, but that's apparently the distinction. Hopefully, the month of exhaust fumes from the road won't cause any lingering cloudiness.
Oddly, I came here from the Jedi Council city, which had its own difficulties at times (Yoda's swamp, perhaps), and just before I left, I was watching Tarkovski's Solaris one night after dinner, and was struck by the soundtrack on the driving scene after the rural home at the beginning. Listening only to the sound, I was struck by how nightmarish it was. Just the constant rush of traffic, but...
In a moment of cynicism, I wonder if the world (multiplied tenfold in the last hundred years) has thought through what might happen if hundreds of millions of people in its most powerful country just start lying as hard as they can -- which seems to be the way things are going. Our mediated ways of understanding the way things are in the world won't necessarily pick up on this, but the context of everyday experience will change, and unrest will grow. And the mechanisms that have been developed to suppress unrest have grown quite potent, albeit quietly, over the last fifty years or so.
Ultimately, you do have to be a good person, if this civilization thing is going to work. ("You," not "one.") You don't have to accept the prevailing notion of the good, but you do need to formulate your own idea of the good, and especially in that case of exception, hold to it with all your being. The real danger is in the (now apparently increasing) thought that neither the common notion of the good, nor private notions of the good, nor the notion of private notions of the good can claim authority. In a crisis, of course, the wagons will circle around the first, but precisely because that will happen at the expense of the second and the third, we, quite wisely, won't entirely believe it.
Followed a small rabbit-hole to a digital facsimile of an early Gospel text at the Vatican library. On a whim familiar to anyone with a smattering of Greek or Latin who has ever visited a museum with artifacts from ancient history, decided to zoom in to see if I could make out anything myself, across 1700 years. Literally the first word I looked at: αποκαλυται.
And to bed, I think.
Again, my yeoman's Greek is full of misleading notions, but...
Conjecture: The missing root in "αρτον επιουσιον" was from a neologism, perhaps by the first translators to Greek.
"Should we say αρτον eχουσια?"
"Νο, it's not about power or authority, it's about the thing itself. Επι-ουσια is more like it."
"But that's not a word."
"Perhaps you haven't grasped what it is that we're doing here..."
In the Soviet film "Road to Saturn," the Russian spy who infiltrated the training program that the Germans were using to train Russian operatives is sitting at the table, drinking with one of the Russian women who are apparently being run in a parallel program. She looks at him with disdain, and says "You even drink like a German...We Russians have the truth, but we live in s--t up to our ears."
One peculiarity of some folks from the large country to the east whom I've encountered is a disdain for brooms. It took me a while to realize that this was a learned aversion, rooted in social distinction. The poor have brooms, the normal folks have vacuums. Similarly, both there and in other places, excessive organization or hygiene practices is sometimes marked as German behaviour. The need to distinguish yourself, for what might be entirely legitimate reasons, from the people of another culture can sometimes cause you to cede to them some objectively necessary aspects of human, as distinct from animal, behaviour. I presume this happens unconsciously.
The only way to keep this from happening is perhaps a culturally distant model. Two random cultures in the Americas might equally cultivate a specific Japanese mental discipline. Or perhaps it is possible to only have completely transcendent cultural models, notions of perfection not associated with any lineage or region. Perhaps America serves for this in the global context, or used to serve for this.
But there does have to be a discipline. Like the spy infiltrating the training program, you do need to have sufficient distance from both your own culture and the culture that is being proposed as the model, and yet be focusing your mental and spiritual energy on the task. As a result, being neither fish nor flesh becomes an objective of the psyche. (And the character is genuinely between two worlds a bit, as demonstrated by an almost unconscious sniff of the knuckle after sipping the drink.)
That focus is perhaps equivalent to the truth that the woman was speaking about. The desire for perfection that is so strong that it makes you consider the lesser perfections (e.g., hygiene, brooms) something that should be renounced. And yet, this focus, this apperceptive awareness, left to its druthers, would likely find those sorts of things useful.
Rheingold livestream from Bayreuth, a coffeehouse across from the capital of the old Republic, while trying to finish Jaeger's Paideia. The argument of giants over the completed hall, mortals hungry -- not for the spirit of youth, the original bargain (that which giveth joy to their youth, perhaps), but gold. And then the question of the ring of power, and then the murder of the brother. An old story.
We fashion aesthetics, picturings, of past dystopias in an attempt to avoid them. Jack-booted thugs, etc. (Which, to be fair, is sometimes necessary due to the danger of imitation.) But if you are acting in a craven manner and causing harm, you are creating that which the observers will eventually fashion an aesthetic around and learn to fear, and to teach others to fear. And the aesthetic, or picturing, which is to say, the sense of how it is with the world, will then necessarily describe you. This might be the place just beyond where the thinker sits.
Honestly like trying to read and think in an unventilated tollbooth on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. (Which I would also try to do, if it were necessary.)
It's odd, though not unlikely, that these rooms are the antinomy of the present place (industrialization, etc.), while the dank, lightless rooms in the last place were a corresponding antinomy (contemplation, etc.). When renting apartments on a strict budget, once things are no longer neutral, they become characteristic of the place, occasionally too much so.
Computer/connection more than a bit wonky over the last several days. Might need to do another rebuild.
Bayreuth season opens tonight, I think. Hope springs eternal. Though mostly in the countries to the north. As for the professor in Vanya or any number of migrants from Africa or the Middle East making their way through the forests -- the picture of a Swedish cabin, that notion of northern civilizations, can exert a peculiar fascination in midsummer in southern Europe.
It's an interesting time in the shining city on the hill, as the world can see. This isn't an accidental executive -- when a preponderance of hundreds of millions have to cast their vote, the verdict is never not meaningful.
At the end of the sixteenth century, the travelling theatre in England changed. People now had to pay to get in. (This resulted in a few brawls.) The theatre started to be staged in guild halls and commercial centers, and the audience strained to show as many outward signs of wealth as they possibly could. In the well-told tale, this has a lot to do with the Reformation.
If you believe that the having of money and power are good in themselves, and sufficient for the devotion of a life's work, you will make a certain kind of world. In a prosperous society, this ostentatious flaunting of wealth and power might seem like an effective mechanism for keeping the factories churning and the trucks of frozen hamburgers rolling. But correlation is not causation. And when even the philosophers become pragmatic about the relationship between civic ideals and industrial prosperity, the proposition that life is a game, with the goal being to acquire wealth and powerful positions, and that success in this game writes both the rules of the game and the meaning of the game, begins to sink its deeper roots among the hundreds of millions.
Ground yourself in the truth of your being each day, and you will come to know the character of the times.
The noise and pollution of these rooms are really difficult. Like trying to read Henry James in the median of I-95. And not the good bits. Baltimore. Jersey.
After the sunless rooms with sewage problems in the last country, I seem to be encountering housing antinomies. Excesses in one direction or the other. (Not being able to book sufficiently in advance due to some admin shenanigans was the main cause.)
Onward, in moderation.
You can't waste time, and your life, vaguely gesturing at the pervasive corruption. Go back to the texts that were written before the corruption set in -- they're freely available now, and not the province of the academic libraries (that nobody uses now, anyway). Come to a separate understanding of the world strong enough to stand in the light of the tradition, and if the world, or some small portion of it, has need of it, help them if you can.
Shifting tactics on making the rooms workable. The irritation and infection, which I at first thought was an illness from the journey, doesn't appear to be particulate-based. The air is stale, especially in the afternoon, but the summertime 2.5 numbers are negligible. (There have been places during this journey where the meter has gone to purple--approximately 3-4x what's usually considered a lock-the-doors crisis stateside.) Perhaps it's a dust mite thing -- I did clear almost an inch of packed dust off of the climate control filters when I arrived. Bagged the curtains, rolled the rug, and covered the mattress in a plastic tarp. Will see if the symptoms persist.
It does have a psychological effect. Bit off the game. Onward.
Stardust at the Proms. Hoagy C. seems to be orbiting back into the cultural view. Probably won't extend to the more playful corners of his catalogue. But there is some worthwhile magic in his stuff. I remember walking through the part of the campus at Indiana that inspired Stardust -- quite an idyllic spot.
This is a part of the world marked by atavistic political structures. Perhaps this country is a kingdom. A kingdom has a king, and usually dislikes him intensely. (At least one of his two bodies. Girard goes so far as to say that given the fascination with the model, and the rivalry that it generates, a king is simply a condemned prisoner with an exceptionally long commutation of sentence.) But in such a culture, it is thought, nonetheless, that there should be a king, and this king is the one at hand. A republic tends to function in a different, more mercurial manner. With occasionally problematic results, given the types of people who can come to power. Historically, this part of the world has seen many states in this model -- witness the monarchies that essentially governed the old Republic and the large nation to the east for decades.
A nation doesn't change its character by political action, but by cultural transformation. A kingdom can't become a republic by electing a republican slate. In the same manner, the government has nothing to do with whether a country is a kingdom, a pure democracy, or a republic. The people make the king. Transformation, if it is desired, has to come in the nation's notions of itself, before its political actions can be characterized as transformative.
Apolitical, of course, as to local questions. None of the local political factions or paradigms seem to hold much truth or seem justified to me, which is as it should be. They exist for the people of this place, and the people of this place are the only ones who can find them either necessary or superfluous. The form of the state is a matter for the people of the place.
One thing to keep in mind in the context of American political discussions: In East Germany a generation ago, the border guards were convinced to fire on people attempting to escape by being told that the people scrambling over the wall were stealing the value of their education from the state.
These questions are not entirely anodyne.
Still trying to find a way of using these rooms. Picked this one over the usual residential place, as a business seemed safer than a random person given the politics, and, more importantly, there was a solid table and chair. I cleaned out as much of the accumulated dust from the climate control as I could reach, wiped down all the surfaces, and cleared the drains (no chemicals), but the air still feels bad, and there are some corresponding systems. (To understand the nature of a place, watch the way your physical and psychological mechanisms function.)
Wind from the south in the AM brought clean air, but the shift to the west and the heat of the afternoon made things stale again. Hard to tell if the the bad things are coming from inside or outside. Likely a bit of both.
Since there turned out to not be a laundry room, it's hand laundry for the most part, a skill I acquired from the (also peak tourist--summer) garret across from the economics college in Bucharest. Part of the difficulty is that some shenanigans a couple of months ago left me with a bit less of a reserve than I'd like, and I couldn't book the last two places sufficiently in advance.
Onward.
Interesting, Taverner's Veil of the Temple is opening the Edinburgh Festival this year. I remember the Lincoln Center performance shortly after the Temple Church premiere. Groundling ticket, so the floor for the full eight hours -- composer in attendance, signalling for the audience to rise by raising both arms in a grand gesture as he stood. And then on to the dawn. Time (and the time) can be known in many ways, if you don't take it for granted.
Interesting talk about sugar in the carbonated drinks. The pivot to corn syrup was Nixon, I think, primarily because of Cuba. Wondering if there's anything in play there -- Florida businessmen seem to be driving it. When I was still eating processed foods, Diet Coke was the elixir of choice, it's sort of a NYC business thing.
Not exaggerating the current quarters. It's near a nice part of the capital, basically the UWS of the city, but it downhill, in an industrial quarter, with a bit of a canyon above a narrow, busy street. Basically like going from the most unheimlich quarter of Louisiana to the most toxic corner of Bayonne. (At several multiples of the prevailing local rents.) Hopefully, the one month's stay won't be too catastrophic on the health.
Odd and powerful dreams after leaving the last country, a country characterized by strong dreams. I haven't entirely put aside the notion that there might be a spiritual ground for the wars in this part of the world. A divided sky.
Onward.
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.
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