Conversation

Opposing or otherwise complementing schools of critical thought, there exist patterns of lateral thinking, that may dawdle and meander but still be ultimately fulfilling of some role. They may lack immediate explanation as to their source or direction; some are discovered to be hollow and fruitless offshoots of the discussion. But they will live, die, and circulate by their own individual merits. Despite any apparent lack of substance, they still consist of thought, and hence I have strong faith in their breed. I would think that in the absence of scrutiny, there is no necessary absence of value.

(Lateral thought was formerly brought to me, I'll admit, by Robert Pirsig, but apparently, thankfully, it's a term originally coined by Edward de Bono, and so may warrant less reluctance.)

The scientific method has flourished, bringing critical discourse to its rightly-privileged place in social deliberation and fostering a healthy public skepticism. Today's claims, it is expected, undergo a certain ritual of thought to test durability, generality, and fundamental truth, and our purest mind holds to them that hold up. The weak and discarded ones will remain, idle and lonely, unwelcomed outside of public acceptance.

Which brings us to the mistrust of the outwardly unfounded word. It's been a boon to reason, and reason being boon to mankind I'll not speak to its detriment. However, I'll insist that it is no virtue. Only a cultural trait: lionized, presiding, but intended to delimit our domain.

Andrew Keen represents the general fear of Wikipedia, of blogs, and of anything unscrutinized by a professional eye. His alarmism already seems silly, and disdainful of the discriminating mind, but I'll read his book. My imagined rebuttal features the internet's obviously astronomical successes, tremendous possibilities, blah blah blah, but I want to go further. Insist that we haven't gone far enough. Every unfounded thing on everyone's mind should be published. Once we've managed to frame that conversation, critical thought will fan reason, lateral thought art, and each one the other.

Godard's Breathless

Patricia is intimately framed as she sits in bed. Her outward gaze translates as restless and reflective, mirroring the camera's marked disinterest in Michel. Meanwhile he remains focused on her: his caresses distract us, pulling the camera away from her face and along her legs, even as she struggles with her emotional vulnerability. "It's true that I'm afraid, because I want you to love me."

The audience is made complicit by this camerawork, pawing hand in glove at this foreign, fragile young girl. Michel's trite reassurances, duly disregarded, continue to reinforce our sense of shame. As she points out, we don't know what she is thinking. There is the implicit accusation that we don't even care.

She then confronts us: "I'd like to know what's behind that face of yours." The camera dutifully, ponderously pans over to Michel's face, and he sits, smoking, stupid. He mimes Bogart, again the impersonal and meaningless gesture, and she, empty, notes, "I've been looking for ten minutes, and I know nothing... Nothing."

Fear & Trembling

My mind is disloyal to trains of thought, and venally abandons them before their proving moments. Recently, in coming back to school, I've had to reconcile a sense of urgency with one of forbearance. To strike a new balance between freedom and discipline, and to forfeit one for another, I have to see myself misused by both, and it's hard. It takes an honesty I'm struggling towards.

Fear and Trembling, I'm told, is a ready cooperant to Hiroshima Mon Amour. Having seen the latter, I've started work on the first (with some grease for the gears). She is a knight of resignation. He is a knight of faith. Beautiful distinction, but let's hope I can make sense of the rest.

Blogging About Star Wars: Forgive Me, Lord

Finally, the Empire's discovered the secret Rebel Base and is preparing to destroy that particular unfortunate moon. Luke's switched off his scanner but hasn't yet released his photon torpedoes, and Leia, there on that moon, is watching the control screen anxiously. Those frames, that look of appeal and head-sandwich hair, mean to remind us of her imminent peril. But she's not quite confronting death, is she. She is tense, but doesn't consent to wince.

Before we question Carrie Fisher's acting abilities, know that her oncoming death is like ours inconceivable. Her surroundings, the other rebels and their base and those flamboyant buns, and too the earth underneath them all, is to come unglued and disband. How to prepare for such an absurdity? Should she flinch? Or sharply inhale? Not for anyone to say. Not even Lucas, a meddling megalomanic. Death must be too acutely personal an affair.

When I die and the world dissolves, my own instance will come unglued, and my mind will submit and forfeit its orchestral order. Philip K. Dick has trusted, for 35 years, that

"Reality is that which, when you stop
believing in it, doesn't go away."

Plato's chains are on us, and reality is around the corner; our hands are kept from knowing its touch. And if Lucas thinks to retrofit anything ever again, my reality will drive me for its own sustainment to kick his doddering ass.

"A whole city will be raised from the earth
and fall back in ashes."
Marguerite Duras, Hiroshima Mon Amour

Religion as Answer

Salman Rushdie: "Religion answers needs in us."

As the subject of faith comes under consideration, each debate pulses with an undercurrent of humanity. We struggle to reconcile how faith can complement atrocity here, and elsewhere offer comfort and meaning. There's a mad dash to categorize it, to fit it wholly in a box labelled Pathological or Divine.

But Rushdie hits on truth, here. Religion is a mask on the underlying motives. It's not a goal in itself; religious popularity is a function of history, society, and ultimately individual choice. It fills a role, and otherwise would not enjoy such prevalance. The subject of this debate is not god, it is man.

I knew a guy who insisted that no Nirvana song had any meaning. There did not exist a reason for it to be so popular. You're missing the point, I'd say. There obviously is meaning, because it was recorded by someone, and someone listens to it, and puts it out. Doesn't matter if it's the sound of a urinal, as soon as that happens, it's been injected with meaning by humanity itself.

This guy is what's wrong with prescriptive linguists and New Atheism. A bittersweet difference, though: I got to punch him in the head.

Rushdie on democracy:

"One answer to the question is democracy... We don't have an absolute view of what is right and wrong; we have an argument about it... At a certain point, we believe that slavery's okay. At a later point, the argument develops... It seems to me that that argument is freedom."

On 9/11:

"It was a hinge moment, if only because it showed us that we're now inescapably involved with each other. We can't disengage. There's no way, even if America wanted to, to return to a kind of Fortress America, isolationist policy... The world is too interpenetrated..."

On Islamic extremism:

"The IRA is a relevant example, because when the Catholics of Northern Ireland became disillusioned by being represented by the IRA, that is what brought the IRA to the peace table. At that moment their power disappeared. And that's why I'm saying that it is, in a way, incumbent on the Muslim world to reject Islamic radicalism."

The Stranger

What a ferocious finish. The tirade against a priest's feeble benedictions. The book suggested first Catcher by its general meh, and also Hemingway or Voltaire or Coetzee by its concise sentences. It's a style I'm drawn to, one descriptive and forthright. Maybe it's a copout, to avoid the pitfalls of more flowery writing, but you can't say it hasn't worked for these guys.

I loved the humid frustration, all over Algiers but first felt trudging behind Maman's coffin. The clinging clothes and desperation, the ravenous desire to escape. That's enough, we're told. Everything else was incidental, and maybe Meursault was indeed "unlucky". But Camus wasn't taking on the judicial system, and the book's treasure comes from the vehement backlash of this man.

Its tone leaves you haunted, and all of chapter 5's a catapult. His descending rationality at the extremity of his life, helpless and hope-hungry. "Despite my willingness to understand, I just couldn't accept such arrogant uncertanty." No one had the right to pray for him, and in that collective fatality he found his only restitution.

"For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators on the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate."

Human Dynamic

My pet theory is that people can affect themselves in three ways:

People can change how they act.
People can change how they think.
People can change how they feel.

These are layers, behavior masking thought, and thought masking true underlying sentiment. A change to behavior is superficial, and has little impact beyond the cosmetic. Deeper layers, though, will shine through. Ceteris paribus, an individual will gradually defer to the inmost character.

But in this model, is influence strictly directed outward? Developmentally, we seem to take on behavior before our personality is established. And merely acting in one capacity for long enough, I'm drawn to believe, has sometimes stronger implications to your character.

So maybe this model involves more seepage than hitherto considered. Regardless, however (and here I'll offer a truism), the central element to change is TIME. Only time will tell, to oneself and others, the inmost nature.