Sidewalk Epiphany I

Individuals in Society:
The paradoxum homana

I was walking early this morning and thinking about something that often bothers me: How terribly out-of-touch I tend to be with my peers. It's hard for us to see eye-to-eye on almost anything, and I was pondering what exactly that means.

It seems to me that societal norms are useful constructs under the correct application- most notably, they help us maintain a centered existence. By measuring ourself against those around us we can quickly see whether or not we have begun to stray into non-normative, perhaps detrimental, behaviors and thoughts.

Unfortunately, it seems that as with many things in life the safest place is mediocrity. If we are to truly be free agents, acting of our own will and synthesizing new thoughts and actions we must depart from the crowd. While this ultimately frees us from the chains we are held in it also removes from us the ruler by which we can measure our life.

To step away from society is like walking a razor's edge: It is simple to fall to either side, into insanity or paranormal status, and even when we remain on the thin path of sound new reason we are likely to cut our feet a bit.

It is the same paradox Rousseau faced writing his Discourses, when he used a learned and sophisticated essay to say that learning and sophistication are the decay of humanity. In order to engage society and improve it, we must venture to where we can no longer measure ourselves against it, but simply trust and hope that our reason and thoughts have not led us astray.

I suppose that is what it means to be in the world but not of it- and the uncertainty of each step certainly provides for the fear and trembling needed to work out our faith.


How then, should I live?



-Benjamin

Verisimilitude

Verisimilitude:
the
Death of Logic in an Ad Hominem World

My friends are used to hearing me decline an invitation to a movie, gawping at my ignorance in regards to the latest primetime hit show, or my pestering about whether or not an activity, in spite of being enjoyable, is fruitful. I rarely get a chance to explain just why it is I see these things as not only wastes, but ultimately detrimental to society- people are pretty brief in planning these things, and no matter what the setting conversation does not provide a captive audience for a lecture circuit.
Fortuantely, my primary assumption in writing this journal is that you, the reader, have an active interest in what I'm about to say- my conscience has been soothed, and the soapbox has come out of the closet. Here we go!

Verisimilitude: Having the appearance of, or being percieved as true, factual, accurate.

We live in a world where the printed word is declining. Not that it is on the way out, mind you, but it is now the lesser of two forms of knowledge; it has gone from the primary source to a co-source, to being relegated to some scholarly use. Most of our media, information, entertainment comes in the form of images- which is the first thing I'll disambiguate. We have, for around 700 years, been a world of symbols. Far before they were even the tool of the masses, it was logos that allowed the Herbrews to write their Tanak, Plato his Republic, and Virgil the Aeneid. What has changed isn't that we use symbols, its that we now use images.

The difference is striking, when you take the time to examine it. The study of logos is nothing new; its greatest achievement was the creation of the written word. When you consider the power of text it is truly awe-inspiring: This is in itself a powerful paradox, the ability to take an abstraction- a thought- and make it concrete- a text. The most complicated abstractions can, with care, be taken out of the mind, out of flux, and put into a context and medium that is definite and unchanging. Text will communicate precisely what a person means, always.

Images do not fill this same role, as is evident to anyone who has ever seen one. I'm going to use one right now- a first and last for this blog- as an example.


Now, what am I thinking?

To be fair, I'll tell you right away that the prompt is impossible to answer. Everyone who looks at this picture will give you a slightly different answer, but none of them will ever get it right, absolutely, concretely.

That isn't to say there is a lack of information in this image. I'm holding a razor, in casual dress wear, a book on Logic, and a slightly-confused look on my face. That could mean a lot of things- the problem is that we can't know for certain which things. Ultimately, this is due to a lack of context; imagine I'm holding that razor to a mans throat. If all you see is an image, you could either convict me of manslaughter, or say that I'm shaving him. Without textual information, you cannot know which is true.

An image is a very thin slice of any moment; it can tell you manifold things about a moment, but only that moment. It has nothing to say about before, after, or any surrounding circumstances. In that sense, an image is context free- it cannot definitively tell you about anything other than what was happening at exactly the moment it was made. Furthermore, an image is incapable of communicating to you any useful information about the present: Neil Postman wrote (Amusing Ourselves To Death, p. 127)

"To be rationally considered, any claim must be made in language-- more precisely, it must take the form of a proposition, for that is the universe of discourse from which such words as "true" and "false" come. If that universe of discourse is discarded, then the application of empirical tests, logical analysis, or any of the other instruments of reason are impotent."

An image is incapable of presenting any proposition whatsoever; it cannot be expository, it makes no arguments and no presentation of facts. An image does not engage in discourse, and is incapable of abstraction: Where text can engage in dialogue and communicate a specific message through abstraction, an image can only speak in concrete terms. It tells you that I have a razor; what I intend to do with it you can only guess at.

This fact about image-based communications has caused a major shift in our society's understanding of information, specifically with regards to the connotative meanings of text. In a very post-modern fashion people today will tend to look at connotative meaning as being specific to the person reading the text; many will go so far as to say that interpretation makes it impossible to clearly communicate between people because connotation is so varied and individual.
Before the age of imaged information, however, connotation was seen as a universal trait. While a woman and a lady might be denotatively similar, connotatively one was expected to understand the difference in behavior and social class between a woman and a lady. This is where text gains its ability to be abstract; the skilled use of connotation allows for thought, double entent, and complex argumentation. Rhetoric is born in this connotative conception of the world.
Because of image fixation, however, we have led people to think connotation is the same as a lack of context; that words are as loosely guided as images. We have allowed the laxness of our entertainment media to beg the question of connotation, leaving us with nothing to fall back on for reason or discourse. There is a distinct differnce between interpretations because of worldview and the kind of pseudointellectual free-for-all that ensues when we treat words like they are images. Ultimately, when we view the world without context, we not only fall ill to the image plague but rob text of its ability to invoke, incite, abstract, direct. We become incapable of discourse.

Because there is no chance for exposition in an image, we are required to find another means by which to authenticate any message we might percieve from it. Ultimately, this boils down to what is called verisimilitude; the quality of appearing true. When there is logical thinking and accompanying discourse something which appears true may be shown to be false- and vice versa- but when only an image is given to use we cannot make this distinction. Even the most rational thinker is left with his evoked emotions and perception of the verity of the image as a method by which to judge the veracity of any claims the image tries to make.
Take television advertising, for example. They show you a product, and they show successful people using the product. They do not tell you what it does, how it works, why you need it, why it is better than similar products. The simply show you the product in an apparently positive pseudocontext, and based on its verisimilitude a majority of viewers will choose it over a competitor. Sans reason.

Why this is important is that as we become more and more attuned to image-based media we see a shift in the basic thinking of individuals toward a standard of appearance rather than content. Once this happens everyday life begins to be driven not by reason or logic but by feelings. As an example, I will give you a fellow seen on college campuses everywhere: Joe Clean.

Joe, to all appearances, is a nice guy. Joe is quiet, clean, and doesn't bother the people around him. He is studious, disciplined, and always busy. Joe also has more hookups with women, and more of them simultaneously, than most of the football team. One of these things is not like the others- why?
Our culture still has certain ideas abou social context- for all of the first attributes, we do not expect Mr. Clean to have the last one. Because of this, young women in his presence see him as being safe, sweet, genuine. After knowing him for a time, their guard goes down- they assume him to be a secure figure, based on his appearance. It is then that Joe Clean makes his move; when the operating assumption is that Joe does clean things, it follows that anything Joe does is clean. Joe gets away with some very dirty things because they've been reassigned as clean- all because of verisimilitude.

Verisimilitude has created a society in which a red herring- like Mr. Clean's behavior- is the only focus. We're not ready or able to analyze any deeper than the surface appearance- we don't even realize there is anything more. We don't judge the book by the cover, we read the cover as though it were the book. Because of this now innate tendancy to accept facades as full content it is possible for us to believe someone who is honest to be a liar because of appearance; worse yet it makes us believe a lying scoundrel because they appear to be honest. If a man can throw a red herring, he can make anyone believe what he wants. There is no business but show business!

In ancient times there was a practice, believed to remedy bad luck, of killing the bringer of ill tidings. We remember this today with the adage 'don't kill the messenger'. Why not? Because all through the early parts of history what matter most about a piece of information whas said it: You always trusted the priest, or the king, because their position warranted them an image of trustworthiness. In the enlightenment, however, the philosophers had the realization that it didn't matter what the packaging looked like, it matter what the content was. Even someone who looked like a theif could be shown to be an honest man if the content of his message was rationally examined.
We continued in this manner until only recently. We have reached an age, hailed by the television and the photograph, in which it is the packaging, and not the content, which matters. Does it seem far-fetched to say verisimilitude has led us back into the fallacy decried by the Rationalists so long ago? I give this quote from a February 9th press conference with President Obama:

"When it comes to how we approach the issue of fiscal responsibility, again, it’s a little hard for me to take criticism from folks about this recovery package after they’ve presided over a doubling of the national debt. I’m not sure they have a lot of credibility when it comes to fiscal responsibility."

What is his argument? That because of a past failure, the present criticism of his plan is invalid. He makes no argument, no engagement, no discourse about his plan (which he should be anle to do, regardless of the critic, if it is a solid plan) and instead attacks the ability of his critic to engage in discourse. This, reader, is the classic argumentum ad hominem.

It was hailed by the media as a sign of "A President Who Thinks".

Reason is dead, and we have killed her.

Ultimately, the blame is indeed ours but we need not give up the fight. Can we go back to an age before the image? No, alas, but we can teach ourselves not to assume that an image is innocuous, nor that it belies an accurate representation of content.
We may limit our own exposure to images- and let text, and spoken language, socialize our children. In a world of entertainment, this is not easy, but ultimately is the only way we will prevent our species from destroying itself.
We must stop taking images seriously; TV and film are at their worst when they play at being serious forms of discourse- this is when the assumptions about content and context are at their worst, and we are most malleable to the power of logos.
Ultimately, we must cling to text, to reason, in this age of emotion and imagery. If we do not, we will suddenly find ourselves wandering into A Brave New World.

- Benjamin

Breaking the Chains: Media

Sat, March 28th: Benjamin finishes Amusing Ourselves to Death
Tues, March 31st: Benjamin absolves himself of all entertainment on the internet; all films and television; and all image-based media.

I gave up, amongst other things this week, Facebook.

People who know me probably wouldn't identify me as an internet junkie. I wouldn't have either, and I always held a somewhat aloof image of myself as being better than all the hoi polloi who were really addicted to their media.

This has been a humbling week.

There are a lot of reasons I believe that our modern means of information transmission will be the end of us, most of which I'm working on an essay to explain. This, however, is intended to be a personal anecdote; a journal and progression of more intimate nature- and I will continue to update it as I fight to battle the beast.

You see, it is my firm opinion that the internet, in almost all cases, has no fruitful applications. Once in a great while I will access the full scholarly might of JSTOR or BLAST!, but for the most part I find myself- along with a great many others- doing what is, I believe, colloquially referred to as "dicking around." Facebook provides hours a day of potential to feel connected, important, entertained, while doing nothing real for your undrstanding of the people around you, bringing you no closer to your friends, and giving you only fleeting amusement. Google has the power to bring anything to your fingertips, or more importantly eyes, but that power is rarely used for good over evil. A thousand bits of context-free trivia are delivered to millions of people every minute, fed by the concurrent tumor-like growths of YouTube, Newgrounds, and forums for every hobby imaginable. Wikipedia provides an intoxicating flow of what feels like information, but again is trivia. It's the ultimate trap for today's pseudo-intellectual; in a world where we define intelligence not as knowing about something, but knowing of many things Wikipedia is a pomegranate in the hands of a populus something like Persephone: Starving to death in the middle of a feast, and confronted with a thousand, million, billion little gems.

Those six seeds really, really cost her.

None of these things are inherent evils. There isn't anything morally wrong about entertainment, or enjoyment, or the internet. I'm not here to ring in some new intellectual Temperance. The problem is not the content of the message here, it's the assumptions it comes packaged in.

I think we're all a little jaded to the warnings about the dropping attention span of our world. Clearly, the world couldn't pay attention long enough to become concerned, so I'll leave that battle to other, stauncher giants in the fields of behavioral science. What concerns me most are the little "go", "forward" and "back" buttons on my browser- and perhaps, above all, "refresh".

Instantaneous gratification has arrived, and it is called the Internet. Anything you want is within mere seconds, no more. Anything. Vast volumes of information, trivia, entertainment, all only a click away. And we keep getting faster: Dial-up internet was once a luxury, but now most people would rather be waterboarded than forced to use it. We become impatient as soon as a page takes more than a few fractions of a second to load- think I'm exaggerating? Time yourself sometime. It's frightening.

Patience is a virtue; one that the instant information world is stomping out.

Furthermore, in the realm of things like Facebook and Twitter, is the erroneous sense that we need to be permanently and instantaneously connected to all of our friends. I was horrified to discover that I've begun to think in terms of facebook statuses: Whenever I do something good, or bad, or trivial in general I immediately have a witty third-person commentary ready. Why, I ask, does the world need to know that I bought great coffee today? Is it imperative that they realize what a bang-up day I had last week, or how much drama there is in a family event? No. Quite frankly, almost (if not all) of the information we can transmit via Facebook or Twitter isn't even worth sharing with other people. In fact, that is the point. We live in a society that has redefined intelligence not as knowing a lot about something, but knowing of many things. Trivia. It's why all our games are about it now: CatchPhrase, Jeopardy, crossword puzzles, Wheel of Fortune. We feel smart when we know answers to these things, but what are those answers? Junk. Trivia. But the only thing we transmit as information in todays world. We've created, as the great Neil Postman said, pseudo-contexts for it all- rather than learn things contextually, we've taken to the much more entertaining method of learning whatever the hell we feel amused by, then creating a context for it.

Tacitus would roll in his grave to see it all. Immediate, unfiltered, undiscerning communication.

Lastly, I'm terrified by the way personal communications are breaking down. People no longer can make eye contact; they only feel comfortable in large groups of people, or on internet communication channels. I have friends, right here at the college, who I almost only speak to via IM clients. I've offered to meet with them for conversation, but they still haven't managed to take me up on it. I can think of one person, delightful as they are, who I only ever talked to via Facebook. I haven't had a real conversation with them since I gave it up, and the ball is in their court.

Who feels like placing bets on whether we ever really talk?


4/19/09- Benjamin sets 4/30 as the date he will stop using IM clients, except for situations scheduled in advance with people who are otherwise incapable of meeting with him in person. Benjamin still has not spoken with the Facebook Friend.

4/28/09- Benjamin meets with the Facebook Friend

4/30/09- Benjamin abandons IM clients; discovers he has no social life. Zaq, I've got your message and will be sending you a detailed response just as soon as I have the time! Good to hear from you, friend!

Forgivness: Ira hominis non implet iustitiam Dei

This begins a series on social justice, focusing largely on Governmental issues with some preference given to the judicial system.
The author recommends that you briefly acquaint yourself with the works of Thomas Hobbes, specifically Leviathan,
and the later works of Tolstoy- most notably The Kingdom of God is Within You and Resurrection

Forgiveness is not a strange word to most people. Similar to tolerance, we are frequently told about the merits of forgiveness, and its application in our daily lives.
What is it, though? Can we give a definitive meaning? Are we capable of a connotative grasp of what forgiveness really is, or do we only have a dim sense that it exists in some plane parallel to our own?
Many religions have placed heavy emphasis on forgiveness of some sort or another, which lends an immediate sense of importance. Clearly we are expected to practice whatever this act is if we are to achieve alignment with the Divine- in fact, one would be hard pressed to find a system of belief in which forgiveness is not on some level encouraged; in fact, it is never discouraged.
We have a shallow sense of forgiveness, and it's hard to argue that fact. If someone displeases us, makes a mistake, or wrongs us slightly without intent we are quick to release them from any bondage. But what of more serious offenses? The Sermon on the Mount (Matt. v.21-43) gives a list of special commands, keynotes for today's discussion being:

The First Law: 'that man should not kill, nor harbor anger against his brother; should consider no one worthless; and if he has quarreled with anyone should make right with him before bringing himself before God.

The Second Law: 'that man will not commit adultery, and that to look on a woman with lust is also adultery against her; should he come together with a woman, he must never desert her.

The Third Law: 'a man shall never bind himself by an oath; let your yes be yes and your no be no'

The Fourth Law: 'No longer will you ask eye for eye; if you are struck on the cheek, offer the other. Man should forgive an injury and bear it humbly, and never refuse a service desired of him'

The Fifth Law: 'Man will not hate his enemies, but shall love and serve them'

Many other commands are given, but these are easily separated, defined, and for our purposes we do not need to discuss every possible offense that may be sin; we only need a few things we can clearly say are sins. These fill that need, as they are specific commands from the mouth of Christ.
Let us consider, for a moment, our actions in response to a failure to carry out one of these commands.

The First Law: A man on the street murders another man, who happens to be the father of three small children and the only source of income for his small family. There are two responses here: One from the individual and one from the community. The individual will most likely be traumatized and hurt by the death of their relative- this is normal, and acceptable -but will likely also develop contempt for the murderer, and a desire to see their loved one avenged. This may or may not be released, constituting some form of forgiveness on the individual level. If it is not, however, we see an interesting yin to our murderer's yang: The relative of the victim has now in their heart broken the very same commandment that the murderer did, making them equally guilty before Christ and therefore in similar need for forgiveness from the Divine.

The community is first to be defined: We do not refer to a group of peoples, or an individual- this is neither a neighborhood or a dictator, but it may be either. It is the dialectic term I have assigned to the Leviathan- the source of governing power in whatever society these events occur in. (See Hobbes, Leviathan).

That said, most communities will give the following response: The murderer will be sent, with or without trial, to an institute of corrections. He will be incarcerated or executed, exiled from the system by the system; this will theoretically protect the system from corruption. This is called justice, and it is repeated by procureteurs many times over, for offenses of hate, murder, libel, thievery.
This is, with some variation, the response of individuals and communities to sins as defined by the above commands- as well as a slough of laws which have marginal- or no- basis is scripture or the teachings of Christ.

Just how we bring the justice system in line with the teachings and life of Christ is a topic argued for thousands of years now- and we'll begin unpacking here with a post on forgiveness and non-retributive justice.

-Benjamin
--fax mentis incendium gloriæ--

A Few Words Regarding Posting

A Brief Explanation:
"Why I Post Less Often Than Planets Are Born"

Most blogs are run a little differently than this one; if you haven't noticed this already, you probably should check your pulse. I've never really explained why, though, and have recently received feedback regarding my low number of posts- something which, I admit, makes it difficult to check in every day and see if there is some new delight waiting for you.

I set out to write this blog on a weekly basis- the hope was that every weekend I would put the polishing touches on a week worth of work. That's the whole point: A week worth of work, minimum. I wanted to create a blog that was an answer to all the stream-of-consciousness blogs out there; one that was more than just armchair sophism or polemic that was, because of its nihilistic views, seen as 'philosophic'. Those blogs are, unfortunately, very popular.

This journal sees a surge of pageviews every time I post, usually peaking two days afterward. All in all, however, I doubt there are too many returns- you don't check daily something that never changes. To remedy that, I have set this blog up to send RSS feed of a short abstract from any new writing; subscribe to this feed and you'll be notified each time I update the journal, and you never need to check fruitlessly again!

As for the original goal of weekly work: I am returning to this model. I currently have several short essays in the works for publication here, including one to flesh out the ideas I've presented here: That words have meaning, and ideas have consequences. Since this post will segue so well into that topic you can expect to see it by the end of this weekend.

Until then, I thank you for your patience as I continue to search for a rhythm by which to run this forum; and for your continued appreciation for the desire to put real content before quantity.

-Benjamin

Omnia Vincit Amor

OMNIA VINCIT AMOR:
A Panegyric for a Valentine

It has often been lauded as high praise to Love that it is blind; also that it conquers all things to overcome the universal condition of man, that is to say the brokenness and dysfunction present in each one of us. A brief reflection on these qualities shows them to be incompatible, leaving us to determine whether Love is a dichotomous entity, a dialectic, or possessing of an entirely separate quality from these.

When it is said that Love is blind it is not meant to be complimentary, that much is certain: The phrase is almost entirely reserved for the trite observation of a somewhat more seasoned, skeptical individual as pertains to a young couple happily floating along. The implication is that in Love one does not see the faults of the loved, but only sees the things they want to in their partner. This is most certainly blindness, but is it Love? It is analogous to a doctor, seeing his patient blind, saying that it is the feet of the man which cause the problem because the patient only stumbles while walking!

What is blinding is fear: Fear of being alone, fear of failure, fear of change. It is most certainly human nature to avoid being wrong. The more vacuous a relationship really is, the more we need to hope and pray that it's okay- turning a blind eye to the problem, and leaning on a sophism that says that ignoring the problems is in fact the key - no, the hallmark- of a healthy relationship. To say that it is Love to be blind to a person is to discredit Love terribly; loving an image of someone you've imagined is no love at all. Loving someone blindly is only foolish.

So does love conquer? This is the older idea of the two; Virgil proposed it in the middle days of the Roman Empire. Today we use it as the justification for our blindness- if Love conquers all things, then our differences and our problems are no problems at all, in fact they'll be overcome and happily packaged for us by Love! This is what the woman who knows her boyfriend is practicing an infidelity tells herself as the woman walking by thinks that Love is blind; it is a way for us to feel safe and secure in a flawed relationship while creating for ourselves the image of some kind of nobility. Ultimately, however, this is no Kierkegaardian sacrifice but a Wertherian romanticism; it will only lead a downward path to hurt and despite.

We further must consider what it would mean for Love to conquer our differences in relationship: A conqueror is rarely benevolent. The word itself is not a word of peace nor love, nor is it pleasantly connotated- neither was it in Virgil's day, a war-like time of Roman pride. (Keep in mind, Virgil was commissioned to write an epic history for Rome. Key words: WRITE HISTORY) It was in 47 BC that Julius Caesar used the words "Veni, vidi, vici" to describe his conquest of the Gauls- a campaign that can be equated with massacre and annexation of land for the purpose of ethnic cleansing and the expansion of an Empire.

If Love is about one person seizing control of another, ethnically cleansing them, and using them to expand their empire, it's been seriouslly overrated.

And that's the problem with both of these sophisms: They're just that; catch phrases that are just close enough to how it really is to seem right, to sound nice and wise, but to ultimately ring hollow. Love is something in the middle; or something that looks similar. Like we might say a blind man has a problem with his feet because we know no better ourselves, this diagnosis is unable to provide a solution.

I will include here a confession of my own that I am not especially eager to air publicly, because of my pride, but which I know that I must. I have partly out of pride, partly out of fear, spent most of my life living that Wertherian ideal; finding the most painful possible outcome and throwing myself into it out of a sense that it is noble to suffer, that it is better to lose love and write epic ballads about it than to have a happy, healthy relationship.

I've idolized the Brahms, the Mahler, the Phantoms of the Opera in this world; it hasn't been pretty. I've hurt a lot of people around me doing it, and I've hurt myself too. When you spend years orchestrating social failures for yourself, you start to forget how much of it you set up in the first place. I began to believe that I really was a failure, that I really wasn't loveable, and that I couldn't trust the people who said I was.

I'm free of that now in part because of recent experiences, in part because I've come to see what really is incredible about love. The experiences simply served to teach me that it is worthwhile to do hard things, not just things that feel hard. The Wertherian route is the easy path to take- you garner a lot of sympathy for a problem you don't really need to have in the first place. To actually make love work is a lot harder, and isn't as glamorous, but it is noble. And wonderful!

The problem with love being blind or conquering is that it means you can only love something that is as you like it. One way or another you're hiding from the truth of who someone else is, and loving an image you've created of them. It's false, it has no merit. If you believe someone is perfect, it's easy to love them! Why wouldn't you love a perfect being?

And if you have no choice, it has no merit. This is where Love becomes spectacular: You don't need to! We as humans have been loved by God not because we are perfect, but because we are flawed- not in spite of that fact, but because of it! Love is only possible where there is imperfection! If real love is more that just a feeling of warmth but rather a committment we make to another person regardless of feelings, an ideal we look up to and, if we understand it, would never violate, then it is certain that love must not be blind- for a blind person can see perfection no better than flaws- nor can it conquer- for to love a conquered person is to love oneself.

Love cannot conquer all things. It does not erase the past; it cannot change the present. Love will not alter persons or circumstances. It is no respecter of monies, of classes, nations, borders. Love is no feeling, no magic. Love is the ability of one entity to see another entity, in all their wretchedness and say- in full awareness- "This is beautiful".

Love cannot conquer all things- and that is what makes it beautiful: It doesn't need to.


Immer,
Benjamin

Dedicated to J__ M__ , 2/2009 Et nos cedamos amori