Month: July 2018

I said, when reading Aldous Huxley back in 2007, that I was having trouble seeing the wood for the trees – what specific points Huxley was making – even though it was already a given that some kind of perennial philosophy is what we are dealing with in real life.

Since before then my approach is always to seek parallels and connections – to synthesise my own view of knowledge (meta-knowledge) – rather than to seek difference with a view to tribal attack and defense. It does mean I leave a lot of detail behind, to treat general ideas as givens in the context of ongoing future-directed efforts. I’m an engineer, not the kind of researcher who needs to publish formal academic papers.

One such “given” aspect of perennial philosophy is the idea that Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality (MoQ) is the framework on which I’m able to hang pretty much any new ideas I come across. Things that don’t appear to fit are either a matter of re-expression, or they are flawed in themselves – a kind of meta-cognitive-dissonance on a grand scale. It works for me.

I mentioned this last when I published “After The Fireworks” a couple of weeks ago on the 50th anniversary of Pirsig setting out on his Zen and the Art motorcycle trip. That 50th anniversary prompted quite a few reflective pieces by others, and David Matos very kindly shared my link on his ZMM Quality facebook page. I got a lot of hits as a result, which prompted renewed correspondence in several media, and one set of comment threads from Bruce Adam on several of my blog posts as well as on the “After The Fireworks” post.

I’ve dubbed myself PoPoMo – that is I don’t particularly want to argue about Post-Modernism any more than I do (say) Logical Positivism. I’ve moved on from any specific philosophy to following the Eternal Golden Braid that runs through them all, a ubiquitous perennialism.

There is an evolutionary framework from the physical to the psychological. Pretty much everything, no, literally everything (*)- from the banes of modern life, populist-politics and fake-news, to the most fundamental new physics – hangs on that framework. The most current professional philosophical take on this biological (gene-meme) philosophy metaphor is probably the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) initiative.

[(*) BTW don’t confuse a truly universal metaphysical framework with the idea of a grand unified theory of physics. One exists, the other doesn’t. It’s possible to be universal in explanatory reach without being either fundamental or absolute.]

The remainder of this holding post is really just a collation of all the links and parallels that show how ubiquitous the perennial philosophy has been, provided in the comments from Bruce Adam.

Starting first with JBS Haldane because despite appreciating him and his work, I’ve never read him in the original or in biography. Particularly interesting now because in my role as a trustee, I’m involved in an on-line archiving project for the Rationalist (Press) Association / New Humanist going back over 100 years, and I’m pretty sure there is a lot of Haldane in there. [More later.]

This may help.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19278107-suffer-survive
(Martin Goodman biog of JS Haldane – father of JBS)

And this .
http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/haldanebio.pdf (Ronald Clark biog of JBS Haldane)

“[JBS]  was the cleverest man I ever knew. ” from Peter Medawar’s preface to Ronald Clark’s JBS biog.

Both fascinating biographies quite apart from any philosophical content.

[J S Haldane’s “Philosophy of a Biologist” is central to this.]

John Maynard Smith talking about Haldane:
https://www.webofstories.com/play/john.maynard.smith/23

And reading him at Eton:
https://www.webofstories.com/play/john.maynard.smith/6

(Many other good pieces in that Web of Stories btw.) And the Wikipedia page on JBS Haldane (not to be confused with his father JS Haldane) includes reference to Peter Medawar’s biography. (Already now on order.)

The opening remark in JBS Haldane’s “Possible Worlds”.

“It is not clear that professionalism is any more desirable in philosophy than in football or religion.”

Is indeed up there with Pirsig’s own disparaging “philosophology” take on professional philosophy. That recurring irony in my original “After The Fireworks” post.

The Huxley / Haldane relationship I’d never spotted before.

WK Clifford is largely new to me but also fascinating.

Here in his essays you’ll find his “Tribal Self” morality , his famous “Ethics of Belief” (which gives takes such a hard-pragmatic stance that William James was inspired to write his defence of Fideism “The Will to Believe”)

I recommend “On the Nature of Things in Themselves” Page 52.

The “tribal” nature of so much (low quality) discourse is indeed a core issue for us all. (The so-called “intellectual dark web” is one response to this.)

Parallels between Maslow and Pirsig in hierarchical evolutionary views of humanity I have previously noted. (Update here.)

And Doug Hofstadter on how so much mental evolution depends on slipping by analogy.

Schroedinger’s “What is Life” has already been influential to me.

And the Heisenberg / Northrop / Pirsig connections.

[Lots more to follow-up here and links to add.
For now let’s just end with this:]

Fundamental (sub-quantum) physics / metaphysics interface is a recurring interest here – especially those physicists that see the philosophical and epistemological difficulties they’re dealing with. (eg Rovelli and Verlinde much referenced here recently. I hold a particular information flow view of fundamental physics.)

QBism

https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-bayesianism-explained-by-its-founder-20150604/

“QBism would say, it’s not that the world is built up from stuff on “the outside” as the Greeks would have had it. Nor is it built up from stuff on “the inside” as the idealists, like George Berkeley and Eddington, would have it. Rather, the stuff of the world is in the character of what each of us encounters every living moment — stuff that is neither inside nor outside, but prior to the very notion of a cut between the two at all.”

This is a misreading of Eddington who actually champions WK Clifford’s “Mind-Stuff” in his Gifford Lecture.

Here’s an overview and defence.

Mind-stuff, in my book is the fundamental information I speak of. QBism is however new to me. I have some issues with interpretations of Bayesian ideas, same as any uses of statistical probabilities in complex situations where underlying models are presumed too simply. (eg Taleb’s work)

And a good deal more. Thanks Bruce!

Saw David Boulton speak on Thursday last, at a meeting of North-East Humanists in the Newcastle Irish Centre nestled incongruously between St James’s Park and Chinatown.

In the history of UK secularism and TV broadcasting, Boulton’s fame precedes him. Editor of many journals in this space over the decades and particularly known for his “World in Action” documentaries for Granada TV, his books including “The Trouble with God” and his involvement in the Don Cupitt inspired “Sea of Faith” network.

Fascinating to hear the story of his own evolution from an ultra- doctrinaire and insular Plymouth Brethren upbringing via socialism and CND to a firmly committed Non-theist Quaker Humanist. (A “Quaker” – being simply the ironically self-adopted pejorative epithet from 17th C critics of members of The Society of Friends. A branding that has stuck.)

When he started uncertainly with a self-effacing introduction to his “Confessions of a Devout Sceptic” title (a title which he has of course used before in talks over the years) and a list of 12 reasons why Beer is better than God, I thought for a brief moment he was going to give us a born-again anti-God polemic. I needn’t have worried. (He didn’t and the audience wasn’t entirely 21st C  New-Atheist types, notably 2 or 3 Christian Apologetics types including Jonathan McLatchie – PhD in Evolutionary Biology at NCL.)

He knew his history of UK secularism almost first hand – recounting Holyoake and others and touching on the whole christian-cultural, Quaker-industrial socialism crossover, Cadbury, Rowntree, Unilever and the New Lanark Mills, (though he didn’t mention the latter two by name). Fascinating story in its own right.

Particularly wonderful the whole creed-free “fellowship” angle to every human interaction whatever the context, religious or otherwise – a feature of the Society of Friends. I’ve already mentioned that as well as self-identifying as a Christian Humanist, he calls himself a Non-Theist on the God vs Atheism scale – exactly as I do. Whatever our creeds or lack of them, we’re all human, even theists and theologians, as I often point out.

The highlight was his honest response to a question – from the apologetics – that there was no rational explanation, nor even any post-rationalisation – of how he’d arrived at any intellectual description of his current Non-theist, Quaker, Humanist position at all. It was simply an evolutionary process of changing perspectives from real life experience. Long tradition being as important as the fellowship itself. Perfect.

[Post Note – interesting given my other ongoing dialogues with Libertarians, his Quaker position on near-absolute pacifism is probably the only point at which we’d maybe part company. Worth some dialogue.]

[Post Note – also, as in so many topics of discussion here on Psybertron, there is the “meta” angle. The only creed is no-creed. So hard for the one-dimensional strictly objective scientistic types to get a grip on such logical Catch-22’s.]

[Post Note – give his many secular editorial duties along the way, and the Jonathan Miller connection, presumably some Boulton tie up along the line with the Rationalist Press Association now Rationalist Association / New Humanist, of which I am a trustee and Miller was president.]

My densest statement of “the problem”, with minimum technical language, is as follows:

We CLASSIFY all that exists in the world in binary chops. That is, things are repeatedly subdivided [this] <> [not-this]. This is necessary for efficient organisation of sets of things in our world. (In properly scientific contexts, the analytic clarity is fundamental to defining and testing objective knowledge both logically and empirically.)

This is a good thing.

However if we also IDENTIFY individuals and things in the world according to these convenient classes, our language and discourse emphasises these “cuts” and crowds out the common aspects. (Current received wisdom in serious matters of everyday life is that we should attempt to be as scientifically objective as possible. Identifying individuals in natural language according to distinct classes. It’s a recipe for polarisation.)

This is a bad thing.

Slightly more elaborated with some technical terms and examples:

All taxonomic classifications of what exists in the world (ie ontology) are binary. That is, things are classified [this] <> [not-this] as many cuts as your Aristotelian knife permits. This “classical” objective model is what Wordsworth (and the romantic movement generally) feared when he wrote “we murder to dissect”.

This “cladistic taxonomy” is good, useful, efficient and necessary for organising clades (types, sets of things) in the world, the arrangements of our world.

BUT it is very dangerous for identifying individuals of those sets. It focusses on their differences, tends to dichotomise and polarise, crowd out the common ground. Now this too can be useful and effective if it’s a campaign, a battle, you’re fighting – temporarily, hopefully. But if all we do is identify people and things by their interest group – even self-identified ones like LGBTI / green / flat-earthers, you name it – we are setting ourselves up for one long series of wars rather than actually living life.

We need to find language that untangles the classification / identification confusion in common parlance. BUT “scientific” objective language has become the norm, the expectation of all walks of life, not just science itself. (Think WMD Dossier!)

People object to science not because they are anti-science “fruit loops” (another clade) but because this dichotomous scientific language has infected the whole of life. (See poets). Many people whose life’s work has grappled with finding alternative models and languages have been so frustrated they’ve gone on to become fruit loops.

Who knows, I may be one 😉

[Hat tip to Myles Power and his tweets dissecting an undoubted fruit-loop for inspiring this post.]

[Post Note: WMD?

#OTD 1994. Tony Blair elected Labour Leader. He tells party:

“The Tories have lost the nation’s trust. But that doesn’t mean we inherit it automatically. We have to work for it. We have to earn it.”

He would go on to become Labour’s most electorally successful Prime Minister pic.twitter.com/au1VthKYAm

— Tides Of History (@labour_history) July 21, 2018

Most successful …. until trust was destroyed by “fake” attempt to objectify reasons for military action. Just sayin’]

A Russian Take on Political Leadership

In the heat of Trump’s Putin-Helsinki summit fall-out, I posted this cartoon from Twitter to Facebook:

(Hat tip @NickBryantNY for tweeting it. A Brit journalist living in US.)

I posted it bare, without comment, letting the cartoon speak for itself. A picture paints a thousand words, but ~998 of them are in the eye of the beholder I find and that leaves a mid-sized infinity of meaningful sentences any one person might read into it.

It’s a cartoon, caricaturing lots of the essences of the “whole” picture, but obviously it’s not a comprehensive source of political information on Trump (or Putin, or America). Notwithstanding all of that, for me the two or three points it captures are:

• the “sycophantic” relationship Trump visibly evidenced in speech and action towards Putin, and
• the fact that this visibly evidenced behaviour is “destructive” to the America whose interests he’s meant to represent, and to any number of “western” institutions (like EU and NATO for example) targetted in the same trip.
• (Implicitly- Putin is pleased with the Russian benefit of this state of affairs)

I scarcely need point out a further day’s evidence would suggest a lot of other people in the west saw those same messages, compounded by Trump’s own follow-up retractions and tweets. So, when the smartest person I’ve ever known, Victor (V) – a Russian – responded “Are you serious?” to my posting it, I was naturally curious what (implied) message he was disagreeing with (see infinities, above).

[Post Note: This is a long post, with long embedded – Google translated – references and an attempt at statement by statement analysis as well as my own concluding section. Furthermore, since the intervening content is really only the first exchange between “strangers” – Me and Boris – without any prior dialogue, it is necessarily in need of greater clarification and elaboration at some point. So, what follows is the updated / consolidated conclusion from my side, with the rest of the original full post ======== “below the line”.]

Updated Conclusion: So before we can get to the practical difficulties of the best forms of imperfect / pragmatic / freely-democratic governance in a real world with vastly different cultural experiences in the history of different states, leaders, populations, cultures and global relationships between these …. we do indeed have a fundamental moral question at the root. (So fundamental it’s at the root of this 2 decade blogging project – and the reason it’s called “psybertron” – hence the reason I’ve made such a big deal out of the tiny exchange.)

Ironically Victor’s first response to my “let’s have a chat” direct message follow-up to his “Are you serious?” comment was:

“Hi, I don’t think there is much to discuss …”

Priceless! I suspected there was. He he. And as I said, Victor is a really smart guy.  I say that to emphasise how deep and difficult it is to untangle this, even with the best of intelligent intentions. And we have Trump – an immoral moronic imbecile – as the would-be (or is that wouldn’t-be) “leader of the free world” – can there be any greater irony? (Again it’s why I’ve latched on to Trump as a vehicle for the dialogue here – zero to do with fashionable memes and caricatures, except in the sense that that is what he has become.)

(And when I say fundamentally moral I really do mean fundamental. Values underlying even fundamental physics(!) – metaphysics – but we can make progress without diving so deep for now. I’m using moral / virtue / ethical / good / value / quality as more or less synonymous until we have some “good” technical reason to tease them apart.)

(And that’s just preamble to the long conclusion to what was already a very long post. My apologies.)

It’s about freedom, rights and responsibilities.

Victor and Boris are “(Skeptical) Libertarian”
I’m “(Skeptical Humanist) Liberal” I guess.

Now “libertarianism” has a spectrum of how free from institutional controls the a society of individuals and their culture need to be.

“[Wikipedia] Libertarians share a skepticism of authority and state power, but they diverge on the scope of their opposition to existing political and economic systems. Various schools of libertarian thought offer a range of views regarding the legitimate functions of state and private power, often calling for the restriction or dissolution of coercive social institutions.”

You can understand why anyone from a culture where coercive institutions (with ruthless leaders) are real world experience would be close to the total freedom / zero institutional control end of that spectrum. It’s no coincidence there is an east-west / left-right totalitarian frenzy going on around the current “breakdown of order” even, especially, in the dirty realities of the so-called “free-world”. Reliving the mistakes of 20th C “Europe” et al. All of it.

But tending to one end of the spectrum is one thing, and no doubt we all prefer the free end, the real point is about how meaningful is the idea of being at the absolutely free end and if not, what are the imperfect practicalities of being on the spectrum. (What was it Churchill said about democracy again?)

The totally free end implies absolutely no moral right for any institution or individual to be coercive of others, potentially lethally violent. That’s the Gandhi end of pacifism. Turn the other cheek. Absolutely zero circumstance where any “good” human would consider using potentially violent force.

You can make a case for contexts – less than the whole world – where that is indeed the best line to take, but I’ve never found a way of describing a whole world based on that other than anarchic chaos from which “society” must re-evolve – which only ever brings you back eventually to the same question of “so what is the best form of governance” for us.

Governance – the original cybernetics – is the root of Psybertron in our increasingly human-connected world. How else could I have “met” Boris?

No-one is ever going to argue against the idea that institutional arrangements – and the checks and balances that protect them from bad actors – could do with reforming, even extinction. They always will – see evolution of society.

No-one is ever going to argue against the idea that reform is sometimes best achieved through a shake-up and shake-down – a little creative-destruction.

No-one is ever going to argue against the idea that a useful idiot can – by definition -be  useful to us when it comes to creative destruction.

No-one is ever going to argue against the idea that creative destruction needs to be followed by creative evolution and imaginative synthesis, and that the useful idiot can therefore outlive their usefulness to us.

No-one that is except a Libertarian Extremist who rejects the idea that we might need to be able to coerce the useful idiot (and the useful idiot arrangements they’ve accidentally created along the way) out of power when no longer useful to us. Even if ultimately by force of impeachment rather than violent revolution.

We need more than faith in the power of our cultural will. We’ll need some institutional support for the idea. Giving up entirely – accepting that all institutions and politicians are inherently corrupt seems completely untenable – see anarchy and chaos. It’s why we recognise corruptibility of even the virtuous and have checks and balances in layers of accountability.

Useful idiots are OK, even immoral ones – Trump isn’t all bad – provided we maintain the power to dispense with his leadership when no longer useful and maintain the morality of the rest of society during the phase where his behaviour is influential. Good morals have intrinsic value to us all even if an immoral imbecile is sometimes useful – temporarily / locally valuable in a controllable context.

Personally I believe we’ve already got the message and he’s long past being useful, if he ever was. More trouble than he is worth. (Given all the other related crises as a consequence.) The practicalities of individual leadership and of controls in coercive institutional power matter enough not to leave the field clear for the morons or the immoral – wherever you see Trump and/or Putin on that matrix.

A useful idiot isn’t all bad but he ain’t good.

[I’m done. Discourse leading up to that below.]

[So, Victor – if we agree that Trump is NOT a useful idiot, how do we accept that it is inevitable that all politicians in power (idiots or Machiavellian) are necessarily corrupt?]

========

I’m a Brit whose lived and worked in US and Russia (and Norway, and Germany and Australia and China, and …)
V is a well-travelled Russian living in Moscow.
In the ABC that follows:
B is a Russian living and working in US.

Google Translated from Russian:

A says:

[A]
So it is. A respectable user found a chiseled formula that touches me. They say that those who did not like Trump, consist of cynical crooks and fools. The rogues built a caricature on Trump, and the fools took her by accepting the ugly doll they had slipped for the true president. In the crooks, I’m not good at the reason of natural naivety, I simply do not have time to get rid of it. So there’s a place for me among the fools. Well, from the outside you know better. One only worries. I, actually, looked and listened to no caricature. Had for quite a long time the opportunity to directly contemplate, listen and read Mr. Trump himself and personally. Without, so to speak, malicious, cynical intermediaries. And on the basis of his considerable life experience, while still in a solid mind and sound memory, I am ready to state firmly, that he showed me his image of goon, boor and ignoramus. I express myself in a distinct Russian language, although he showed me his image in a different language, which I understand well. Reading sometimes the reports of those whom the respectable user calls cynical swindlers, I find that the “caricature” presented by them surprisingly closely matches my personal, unmediated perception. Maybe in the classification of a venerable user fools like me and there are those most malicious rogues, but to myself I know for sure that, as indicated, I can not be a crook by definition. So, with the proposed chased formula, something is not quite right. Or not at all. I find that the “caricature” presented by them surprisingly closely matches my personal, unmediated perception. Maybe in the classification of a venerable user fools like me and there are those most malicious rogues, but to myself I know for sure that, as indicated, I can not be a crook by definition. So, with the proposed chased formula, something is not quite right. Or not at all. I find that the “caricature” presented by them surprisingly closely matches my personal, unmediated perception. Maybe in the classification of a venerable user fools like me and there are those most malicious rogues, but to myself I know for sure that, as indicated, I can not be a crook by definition. So, with the proposed chased formula, something is not quite right. Or not at all.
[/A]

B responds:

[B]
Thank you very much for honoring me with the title of “respectable user”.

You seem to think that my formula applies to you. But from what you wrote, it does not follow.

You write that from the observations of Trump you got the idea that he was a bitch, a boor and an ignoramus. Maybe it will surprise you, but my idea is about the same. I would just add that he is still monstrously narcissistic and very superficial. In particular, it does not prepare for press conferences, it does not know how to parry the simplest traps, etc.

And I would also prefer that, other things being equal, the White House would house a delicate, precarious, erudite, diligent and modest man. The problem, however, is precisely this “with other things being equal”. Because the practical results of the president’s work on his personal pleasure depend to the smallest extent, but primarily depend, first, on his ideology and, secondly, on his willingness to follow his principles.

And from this angle I will always prefer a hamovaty and maloerudirovannogo president or prime minister, adhering to the correct principles and their conduct – polished, elegant, well-read, pleasant-in all respects to his colleague, adhering to wrong principles or declaring one thing and doing another.

The most superficial acquaintance with the history shows that it was full of terrible dictators who differed in correct speech, good manners, the art of charming the interlocutors, the ability to insert in time the mention of something sublime, and also the ability to memorize many different figures, names and facts, at least and not true. In the same way, there were (and is) full-fledged unscrupulous careerists demonstrating the same set of characteristics at the top positions. Finally, these same virtues can easily be found in characters, conducting a very destructive policy, be it Obama, Trudeau, or any of dozens of European figures of the same series.

Simply put, it all goes under the heading “you checkouts or go.”

That’s it for those who were actually quite satisfied with the ridiculous tramp’s checkers right up to the moment when he announced joining the presidential race – but who gets furious with the course he is going to – that’s exactly what he is an enemy, they are exactly who generate one after another silly inventions about the “Russian trace”, etc. Not manners, he is their enemy, but an ideology.

Plus, as I have explained many times before, those who still can not recover from shameful self-immolation in a mud puddle, when they haughtily explained for a whole year that Trump could not win under any circumstances – and eventually put themselves in their own eyes full of fools. What, as you know, is bitter and insulting.

Here they are those who together create the caricature picture of “the enemy of America and humanity”, and so successfully that Boris Efimov and Kukryniksy in coffins are turned over. [/B]

Elsewhere, C asks B to elaborate on one point:

[C] 17 Jul 2018
“because the practical results of the President’s work from his personal nice depend on the smallest measure, and in the first place depend, first, from his ideology and second, from his willingness to follow his principles”.

Could you describe the principles of trump (as you understand them): 1., 2., 3.,

And in addition to tell for what you love and don’t love trump.
[/C]

B responds:

[B] 17 Jul 2018
I don’t like him at all, and just for a few reasons.

First of all, I don’t like politicians, Generals, prosecutors, judges, and such personalities willing to make decisions about the life and death of other people, force them to go to death, etc. D., well and for other similar reasons. This work nowadays is inevitable, but nothing cute I find it.

Second, trump is extra unpleasant in a personal way. I won’t repeat myself, I’ve been mentioned his personality flaws many times.

But if still someone has to be president, it will inevitably be a man with a shitty moral guide. In particular, one that considers it possible to send others to war, to put them in jail and dispose of other people’s money.

In this case, it is possible to confine yourself to democratic politicians. That is, take out the brackets of dictators, Kings, usurpers, electoral forgers, conquerors and other skank.

Democratic same politicians personally i apportion on the scale of their aspirations to expand (or not to expand, and sometimes even and cut) the volumes of diverse forced regulation of their fellow citizens. The more a politician wants something forcibly to select or force – that, I think, is worse. And if a politician is ready for some previously existing regulatory coercion to review towards the reduction is better.

Aesthetic I’m considering something very secondary. Good when the good is still and beautiful, but if the bad is prettier, I’ll still prefer the good one.

So here’s to regulation – in the broadest sense – that trump is firmly and certainly showing himself the most deregulâtivnym president of our era. Here and direct deregulation (its scale is strongly limited by Congress and other factors), here and a much more cautious approach to new regulation, here and devolution regulation from the federal to the lower levels (which, as you and I understand, at all the optimal thing).

And he was originally promised to be like this – and so became, that is, it is for him not an undoubted opportunism, type as a kogdatoÅ¡nââ Clinton’s willingness to go to a sharp (and very correct) reduction of federal benefits just because he was afraid to block the Republican Bill for the third time – see. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Responsibility_and_Work_Opportunity_Act#Passage_in_104th_Congress).

In that kind of aksepte
[/B]

In a private message conversation V shared those social media links because he says B represents his position, and I said:

Too cynical!

To which V suggested:

Cynical critique of politicans,
the most cynical class of all people
🙂

So, my analysis of B’s position:

[B] “You seem to think that my [caricature] formula applies to you.”

I think intelligent people can appreciate the value and risks in caricatures and the vested interests of people using them, whilst at the same time forming their own opinions (even their own caricatures) based on empirical impressions gained as an individual following politics directly through multiple journalistic channels, relying on first-hand readings wherever possible. I know I do. I share a cartoon when I see humour and a message that fits (with some level of absurdity) with my own mental picture, not the other way around. I am of course as fallible and prone to errors of interpreration as the next person – but that’s why I ask people (like V) to point them out to me.

[B] “[He’s a] bitch, boor / ignoramus /  monstrously narcissistic / very superficial,  as well as [unprepared / ignorant of briefs / unskilled in rhetorical traps] etc …”

I think we’re all in violent agreement, that whilst Trump cannot be completely without intelligence, he’s an intellectual pigmy and an ignorant moron. And since we agree, it’s safe to say the impression has been gleaned from plenty of evidence of our own eyes as well as a whole range of interested caricatures. We don’t think we hold this opinion because we are brainwashed members of the alt-left libtards, I’m guessing?

[B] [Paraphrase] – “All other things being equal” … [prefer a leader who is] …  delicate, precarious, erudite, diligent, modest, polished, elegant, well-read, pleasant-in all respects, with ideology of “correct” principles with willingness to speak and act consitently with these – as opposed to the many opposite combinations.

I say, don’t we all? So we are in violent agreement again. These are personal character qualities and intentions for which we can use the good old Greek shorthand of “virtue”. [See also “after virtue” and “philosophy of action” take on virtues.]

[B] The problem, however, is precisely this “with other things being equal”. Because the practical results of the president’s work on his personal pleasure depend to the smallest extent, but primarily depend, first, on his ideology and, secondly, on his willingness to follow his principles. And from this angle I will always prefer a [-] president or prime minister, adhering to the correct principles and their conduct –  to his colleague, adhering to wrong principles or declaring one thing and doing another.

This is precisley the philosophy of action point: The Intent may seem the dominant view, but only in the context of the Character, and only with honest evaluation of action and likely Outcomes. [Naomi Goulder – Last session towards the bottom of this post.] I think it is wrong to say only one aspect dominates, it’s always about all three and their relationships in practice. So for example: Focussing instrumentally on outcomes is tanatamount to “all ends justify any means”. Focussing on intent (ideologies, principles and aims, explicit and implicit) ignores particular the honesty of execution and evaluation of outcomes. Honesty is one of the personal character virtues. And so on.

[B] First of all, I don’t like politicians …

That is at least honest. Not liking politicians is a prejudice. Politicians are fellow humans. “We” are the politicians.

[B] [I don’t like] … personalities willing to make decisions about the life and death of other people … in particular, one that considers it possible to send others to war.

In fact cause and effect are the other way around – not trusting politicians is what causes the problem:

“The problem… is creating this thesis of betrayal and grievance around the fact that all politicians are frauds and liars and cheats… it ends up with Donald Trump” – Tony Blair on the rise of populism #newsnight pic.twitter.com/8kLLNunq1D

— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) July 19, 2018

Politicians in leadership positions will always have to be prepared to make lethal decisions in conflict, even if (obviously) those with the preferred virtues (character qualities and intentional principles) would always prefer and work hard to avoid it. Any stronger position is pacifism – zero right to deprive any human any of their rights and freedoms or to kill a human individual under any circumstance? We have UN rights and responsibilities to help guide such decisions and actions. Politicians do things wrong, even do immoral things many would say in Blair’s case, even when they are on-the-whole of good character, but we need to be careful not to “throw baby out with the bathwater”.

[B] But if still someone has to be [leader] it will inevitably be a man with a shitty moral guide.

Absolutely not true.
[Unless your only moral standard is absolute pacifism above]

[B] Democracy …

… isn’t perfect.
[Which is just as well, because we humans aren’t perfect either.]

[B] Regulation … Trump  is showing himself to be the most deregulationist president of our era.

Sure, but regulation is a balance.
Part of the imperfection in a democracy.

In conclusion, I don’t actually find any arguments there to suggest Trump “is a good thing” even ones I might disagree with?

What have I missed??????

There are two points I would make:

Firstly, I had expected to find the idea that someone prepared to act to “shake up” existing order and imperfect institutions has some value even if they were an imbecilic moron with immoral aims and lousy character. This is true – it’s been called creative destruction for a couple of centuries, and tactically “useful idiots” can be quite, er … useful. But it leaves the question of useful to whom?

Secondly though, is it just a preference that a leader be otherwise “good” as well as being a “useful idiot” or does being “good” have some value over and above immediate instrumental outcomes? It has at least two values. One is that surely we need “good” leaders to help create the better outcomes in the ruins (opportunities) created by the destruction and also that surely we want good leaders to reflect and set the moral tone of all our actions.

If we are saying we can have separate leaders (and institutional arrangements) to do the immoral destructive stuff, and separate leaders (and institutions) to do the moral and creative stuff, then these latter “moral” institutions would need to be able to control and override the immoral ones – be able to treat tactically them as “useful (but immoral) idiots”. Sounds like theocracy. If not those with the immoral aims and objectives would be controlling or competing for the creative activities too.

You cannot be serious V?

[END]

I seem to have been following Ev Williams around the web for years.

After a few months handcrafting my own HTML and PHP pages during 1998-2000 I started with Blogger in 2001. I migrated to WordPress in 2005. Switched back and forth to Blogger (briefly) and various Google offerings but stuck with WordPress to this day across several personal, charitable, not-for-profit and commercial projects – with parallel publication of my main “hobby” (life’s-work) project to Medium since 2016 without registering as either subscriber or partner. Twitter I’ve had for over 10 years and for the past 4 or 5 is my social-media “channel” of choice. Facebook I barely tolerate as a channel for those genuinely social friends and family for whom FB is their only active web presence.

Blogger, WordPress, Twitter and Medium are all or have been Ev Williams projects.

WordPress is a wonderful eco-system – so much “free” open-source stuff in themes, widgets, plug-ins and integrations. You get what you pay for, I find, and I have ended up with quite a stack of hosts, licenses, accounts and services. Eggs in many baskets, so reasonably survivable redundancy, if now a little over complex and unsustainable in terms of cost and management effort. Ironically, the biggest unsustainable – and valuable – basketful of eggs is probably my Google / Gmail account. I’m looking at a serious rationalisation and consolidation task.

I’m thinking about Medium as my main platform. $50 a year seems a good deal. This Fast Company interview with Ev Williams from last year shows how he is thinking about the sustainability model for Medium.

Especially intrigued by this:

“figuring out signals of value that can’t be gamed”

Beyond “claps” (ie likes) and shares / comments, how is the quality of given content judged, and then rewarded by promotion and (potential) income. The current subscriber upgrade interface says:

“We’ll distribute your membership fee directly to writers based on how much you read, engage with, and applaud for their work.”

Read, engage and applaud. Ultimately it’s all algorithms, like FB and TW, the key question will be how “meta” they are to the variables being logged explicitly and how non-gameable they will be to individuals, bots and campaigns.

I wonder? Signals of value that can’t be gamed is pretty much the focus of my life’s work.

Intelligent Flow

We remain Caught
In a Web of Thought,
Dislocated from our natural senses,
Which argues the Toss
Between Prophet & Loss
As to whether
Life is Created by Intelligent Designation,
Or
Abstracted from randomly generated particular
According to which best fits
Some pre-conceived niche

Stuff & Non-sense I say!
At this dawn of today

Nature’s made of Flow
Don’t you know
Not building blocks
Assembled by some hidden hand
According to some Master Plan

Yes, even building-blocks are made of Flow
And Flow is made
From space and energetic Flux
In receptive-responsive relationship
Also known as Love
Our only true Source of natural, evolutionary Creativity

=====

Alan Rayner

Tweeted this morning by Alan Rayner following a twitter exchange on “fluidarity” yesterday. All roads lead inevitably to love(*). The metaphysical language of receptive-responsive-flux at the heart of Alan’s Natural Inclusion worldview remains hard to fit into accepted norms of rational discourse – arguing the toss between prophet and loss –  but is seen to be entirely natural in his poetry.

(*) What’s so funny ’bout … ?

8th July 1968 was a Monday 50 years ago when Robert Pirsig set off from the Twin Cities on his Honda CB77 Superhawk with son Chris riding pillion and friends John and Sylvia Sutherland alongside on their BMW. That road trip to California formed the narrative of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZMM). You get a clue to the summer holiday timing when Chris finds discarded 4th July firework cases at the Shadehill campsite near Lemmon (SD) on the evening of day 2.

Many fans of ZMM – it has sold many millions – have pieced together such arcane details over the years, from DiSanto and Steele’s Guiebook to ZMM (*1) to the many so-called Pirsig Pilgrims who have dropped in to the DeWeese’s in Cottonwood Canyon, Bozeman (MT) as they’ve retraced the journey for themselves.

[All references in footnotes, read on … ]

Artist friends of the Pirsigs from the days when Bob had worked teaching English composition at Montana State in Bozeman 1959 to 61, the DeWeese’s are signficicant to the chatauqua – the public educational dialogue – within the ZMM story. Bob shifts his metaphors away from his main thread on the mechanics of motorcycles to that of a seemingly mundane self-assembly barbecue for the edutainment of his artistic audience. As well as being a teacher of English rhetoric, Bob had previously also written manuals for early computers and weapons guidance systems. All the while we are reminded that the real object of our maintenance is ourselves. What we are looking for is an operating manual for our minds.

One reason for ZMM‘s success and fanbase was that it caught the zeitgeist of its 1974 publication. It was “culture-bearing” at a time when many were dissatisfied with a post-hippy void left by rejection of the increasing mechanisation of life living with the prevailing military-industrial-complex.

I’m going to camp out on the land
I’m going to try an’ get my soul free
We are stardust,
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden.

(Joni Mitchell “Woodstock” Big Sur, 1969)

Pirsig provided a reflective philosophical dissertation packaged up in a motorcycle road-trip / buddy-movie script on what back to the garden might mean for a generation of seekers after truth and goodness.  Think Easy Rider minus the sex and drugs and rock’n’roll, or Kerouac’s On The Road stream-of-consciousness with added index-cards. Many ZMM fans found satisfaction in the qualitative individual Zen-lifestyle advice they found there. Whether classified on the shelves under philosophy or under lifestyle, it sold millions and still does. But Pirsig was on a more tangible mission to define quality as something altogether more metaphysical, underlying the whole of objective reality.

This is the start of what I’ve characterised as a persistent irony with Pirsig’s work. A Catch-22. I didn’t come to Pirsig until 2001 aged 45 after 25 years as an engineer. When I did, this battle to dissolve the distracting division between things classically objective and romantically subjective was already raging between Pirsig afficionados who at the same time were working to establish his Metaphysics of Quality (MoQ) as a thing – the object of serious academic study. The example of modern-day Stoicism (*2) gives hope to the idea that life-style advice and serious academia are not mutually exclusive when in comes to living philosophy.

Pirsig himself wrote his follow-up to ZMM in Lila, published in 1991, as his attempt to establish his MoQ more explicitly as a philosophy, though again his message was bound-up in the rhetoric of a “road-trip”. Actually a sailboat trip this time down the Eerie canal system, the Hudson and the Intra-coastal waterway via downtown Manhattan, where the audience for his chautauqua this time are fellow sailors, Robert Redford and a bar-girl Lila he picks-up along the way. Contrasting with the mysterious recluse persona cultivated to market the original ZMM, Pirsig did in fact go out on the road to promote his philosophical ideas on quality in 1993 and 1995. Pirsig himself however never engaged in comparative criticism with fellow philosophers, a practice he once dubbed disparagingly as philosophology. A philosophologist being to a philosopher as an art-critic is to an artist.

The Lila Squad, those that had taken-up the challenge of Lila to set Pirsig’s MoQ in the philosophical canon, formed an on-line discussion  forum whose primary condition for membership was to have read Lila as well as ZMM. 12 years later in 2003 Dan Glover was able to publish Lila’s Child (*3), a consolidated set of interpretations on Pirsig’s MoQ complete with Pirsig’s own annotations.

As I mentioned, I was a latecomer to Pirsig. I had joined the Lila Squad on the MoQ-Discussion (MD) forum only in 2002, the same year I read both ZMM and Lila for the first time. I stayed active thru 2010 though I’d already signed-off my own Pirsig learning aims in 2008 and eventually dropped-off any participation in 2014.

Anyone “debating” Pirsig’s MoQ has their own reasons for doing so. Initially anyone might honestly claim to be curious to learn and/or test understanding. For some Pirsig becomes the professional interest of their career in philosophy and/or education. Given non-acceptance of Pirsig in mainstream philosophy, that represents significant personal investment by those that do so, in order to achieve and maintain such a position.

Now, as Dan Dannett has said, philosophy is a contact sport. Even small differences over otherwise large levels of agreement can lead to quite vicious personal and rhetorical fisticuffs. Everyone has their own good-intentions, but bad-faith easily sets-in as the default position regarding the disagreement and questioning of others. Claims of authority of direct communication with the author, some I’d even characterised as Pirsig’s Bulldogs. Sometimes even expressed agreement is tainted with ad-hominem suspicions of wilful misrepresentation for personal interests. Part of that irony, where relegation of the ego is an explicit aspect of the MoQ.

People pressing each others buttons.  All kinds of dirty tricks, and not just rhetorical ones. There was even one infamous “Sokal” trick of presenting a spoof paper to test the Pirsig “establishment” response. Suffice to say bad feelings linger between certain parties over particular disagreements. Mis-representation and trolling seem part of the fabric of social-media reality in 2018 but ever since on-line mailing lists and internet discussion forums were invented, flame-wars and very public personal attacks have been occupational hazards. These are of course as old as philosophical discourse itself. If I learned anything, it’s that academia is as inter-personally cut-throat competitive as any commercial business.

After a decade of participation I’d learned a lot about philosophical and rhetorical debate generally but the Lila Squad / MD bubble no longer felt like a healthy environment in which to make progress on either Pirsig or philosophy in general. I actually made several acquaintances that have become firm friends and stayed in regular contact, some still in ongoing Pirsig-related contexts and not solely on-line.

One such, in his last post on his own blog relating to Pirsig, back in 2010 wrote of another Pirsigian (*4): “[We’ve] have had several long-standing disagreements for over seven years now” and an increasing “rudeness” where “we’ve found less and less new to talk about”. In that same piece he goes on to describe the specific point of disagreement – the idea of accepting a “Subject-Object Layer” in order to resolve definitive mis-understandings of the level which Pirsig had called “Social”. Ironically, those defending the Pirsig status quo were actually displaying a more static social view of the ongoing evolutionary dynamics of human intellect, but at some point we all have to stop arguing and live life.

I, and I think I speak for a few others, didn’t stop participating in Pirsig debates because I’d lost interest in Pirsig. Far from it. Pirsig’s MoQ had become embedded in my own world view to the point that I’d lost interest in arguing about that in particular. I’m quoted by others as holding that “Pirsig’s MoQ represents the best framework for the whole of reality I’ve come across” (*5). I still believe that, even though no-one can have the last word, ideas always evolve and anyway, I prefer synthesis to criticism.

Some ex-MD Pirsigian’s continued to plough their own furrows in academic philosophy, so they have personal interest in solving the problem of how to fit Pirsig into the philosophical canon. There are obvious relationships to the Greeks, to Kant and to the US Pragmatists as well as Zen Buddhist philosophies to be explored. None of which we can even attempt here. Still only one person to my knowledge, Anthony McWatt, has successfully made Pirsig’s MoQ the subject of their entire PhD thesis, though gradually more and more academics have Pirsig as a string to their bow. McWatt also went on to create several documentary films, the second of which “On the Road with Robert Pirsig” I’d recommend as an introduction for any Pirsig newcomer with”On the Road with John Sutherland” as probably the best of the bunch for those already interested.

As I suggested, one supreme irony in Pirsig is his rejection of comparative philosophical debate. He’s not in the mainstream precisely because he didn’t like mainstream behaviour – he rejected the academy – and yet, for many, a serious question is what’s the best way to get the essential value – quality – of his work recognised by the mainstream?

One attempt by “established” UK philosopher Julian Baggini in 2006 (*6), to tease out connections between Pirsig and the accepted canon, foundered at least partly because the Pirsigian camp chose to conduct the dialogue by indirect correspondence. The attempt to insulate Pirsig himself from perceived critical intent of philosophology was surely misguided, but in any event it achieved little progress. We can’t fail to notice the parallel in the subsequent rise of the intellectual dark web as a safe-space for constructive dialogue on the publicly disagreeable?

But, there is ultimately that Catch 22 in attempting to fit a novel take on what it means to be rational, using the rationality of established public academic discourse. Pirsig himself noted the exasperation in trying to add something new to mainstream philosophy whilst at the same time manouevring to outflank the entire Western canon. Philosophy is not just a contact sport, it’s war and the Art of War was written by a Zen Buddhist (*7). Good luck to those on that quest.

For many others, the point is that direct and immediate participation  – the radical empirical experience of what matters most in life – is the lesson learned beyond any academic rationalisation. The koans of Zen serve to emphasise that rational responses to life’s biggest questions can be beside the point to actually learning the answers in living practice. Most of us have of course chosen our own balanced selection from the available menu.

Pirsig died only last year, his books still sell and philosophical debate continues 50 years on, if a little more diffuse and less intense than the Lila Squad years. As I noted at the time, his demise prompted a renewed interest in his work and many reflective pieces on what that meant to many different people. [Underway since then has been a new film project with the working title “Pirsig’s Journey” – sadly since defunct.] Pirsig more than once discussed a film project directly with actor-director and mutual-admirer Robert Redford and in later years let it be known that official biographical rights to follow that up lay with his wife, now widow, Wendy (*8). There is a certain perfect circularity that the film project was targetting the Sundance festival for its release.

====

More information – generally:

[2024 Update – see Robert Pirsig Association.]

My own “Psybertron Pirsig Pages” of Pirsig, ZMM, Lila, and MoQ links and many more Pirsig references in the blog. Including my own personal (and naive) thought journey and the Pirsig Biographical Timeline. [Biographical source materials and correspondence archive with Mark Richardson and extended in his “Zen and Now“. And here, my own 2018 “sign-off” from further Pirsig research.]

Those Pirsig Pages also include an “External Links” section, which I generally keep up to date. For now examples include:

• • • Henry Gurr’s “ZMM Quality” web site of the ZMM road-trip narrative locations and so much more. (Also via Facebook). [See also Gary Wegner’s ZMM Route Map in Google format.]
    • David Harding’s “Good Metaphysics” for metaphysics and the MoQ itself.
    • “Pirsig dot org” (temporary holding pages) incorporating key content from Good Metaphysics and “Robert Pirsig dot org” pages of Anthony McWatt (retired). [McWatt-Pirsig correspondence archive also at MSU and at Harvard. 2024 Update – Note that all the above (and more) resources / links being organised and indexed under that recovered URL of the Robert Pirsig Association at www.robertpirsig.org]

[Easy Rider, On the Road, Catch-22, Cuckoo’s Nest, Woodstock
– givens inspired by the beat generation?]

More information – the specifics referenced:

(*1) DiSanto & Steele’s – “Guidebook to ZMM”

(*2) Massimo Pigliucci’s – everyday stocism as living philosophy “How to be a Stoic“. (See also his blog at “Footnotes to Plato“)

(*3) Dan Glover’s – “Lila’s Child”

(*4) Matt Kundert’s – “last post” 2010 Pirsig / MD post.
(Also his 2006 post on Dewey, Pirsig and Rorty.)

(*5) Ian Glendinning’s – retrospective on MoQ Worldview in a picture.

(*6) Julian Baggini’s – Pirsig “interview”.

(*7) Sun Tzu’s – “The Art of War“.

(*8) Wendy as custodian of Pirsig’s story – Tim Adams’ November 2006 interview drew on my existing timeline for much of the story Bob had already shared in correspondence, but in fact Bob makes explicit (jokey) reference: “I told Wendy she should sell [the book / bio / film adaptation] rights as soon as I die.” [Update 2022 – see “On Quality” edited by Wendy Pirsig. and this newly released video of a talk by Robert Pirsig just a few weeks after publication of ZMM.]

=====

[Timely post-note on living philosophy:

 “Zen and the Art of a Higher Education – It may seem odd for the university educated or even university educators to welcome a book that seems to view the academy as enemy territory. But properly understood, and more in keeping with Pirsig’s original intentions, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance shows how the learning in a lecture hall or seminar room should be preparation for a life of learning on the open road.”

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen is Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from LA Review of Books 15 July 2018.
A recommended read on many levels.]