In Sweden, elections reveal a socialist crisis, which has installed a center-right government for the first time in ages. It is 'center-right' because it is desperate to exclude the actual right, the anti-immigration party, who did shockingly well. Thus, it is necessary to build a coalition across the major fault lines if the government is to avoid actually instituting some truly right-wing laws and policies.
Rasmussen polling, here in America, has been splitting things up between "the political class" and "mainstream" voters. It appears that methodology might be exportable to Sweden, where the political class prefers its class to its politics. Better to compromise on ideological principles than to let power escape the confines of the Usual Suspects.
Here at home, well-known right wing echo chamber The New York Times says that the real reason the Tea Party is doing well is women. Well, we knew that, right? Part of the power of the movement is that it represents a breakthrough in involving women with an interest in protecting the integrity of their families, and the traditions of liberty for their children.
Except the Times has a different point: actually, they say, the problem is that women aren't paying attention, are confused, and either depressed about politics or just unenthusiastic about it. If only women would outperform men at the polls, the Times says, the Democrats would do great!
That kind of underlines the problem, though, doesn't it? Why should it be true that the only portion of women to be generally enthusiastic and engaged this year is on the right, especially among those leading the Tea Party? Isn't this supposed to be the year that the Great Health Care Takeover represents such a relief to women (whom, we hear, disproportionately favor these kinds of socialist programs)? Shouldn't they be lining up to express their enthusiasm for more of the same?
The opposite is happening, and that's the real marker. What is the Democratic Party's agenda if they are returned to Congress with their majorities intact? We don't know: they have not said much of what they will do next if re-elected. Partially this is because they despair of the possibility, but partially it is because the Great Achievement has produced only fury from America -- not the expressions of love they told themselves to expect.
Elections
GB&U
Our dear friend T99 linked back to an earlier video re: ukuleles; but she left out the original in the series. This one is of special interest to us here!
Please enjoy.
Musical Jokes
Assistant Village Idiot reminds me how much I like them with his link to a Ukelele Orchestra video.
Slaughtering Meat
A big story in the UK today: it turns out that many institutions have begun using only halal meat, without telling anyone of the change. People are alarmed! Spokesmen explain that there's nothing to fear, because the change is just to make sure that Muslim customers can get what they want. Fausta asks:
Surely the spokesman would be equally agreeable to Kosher foods?Now that raises a curious question. Just what is the difference between Kosher and Islamic slaughtering? I was under the impression that the procedures were largely the same (as you would expect, since Islam sources much of its core material from originally Jewish sources). According to Wikipedia, the physical procedure is the same. Symbolically, there are two major differences:
Dhabiha requires that God's (see Islamic Concept of God) name be pronounced before each slaughter.[15] Some Muslims have accorded meat to be halal but not necessarily dhabiha; in other words, kosher meat is considered halal by some Muslims. This is according to the Hadith: "[I]t is narrated by Al Bukhari from Aisha the Prophet Muhammad's wife, that some people came to him and said, Oh God's Prophet, some people bring us meat and we do not know if they pronounced the name of God on it or not, and he said pronounce you the name of God and eat." Dhabiha meat by definition is meat that is slaughtered in the shariah manner and the name of God is said before the slaughter. In Shechita, a blessing to God is recited before beginning an uninterrupted period of slaughtering; as long as the shochet does not have a lengthy pause, interrupt, or otherwise lose concentration, this blessing covers all the animals slaughtered that period. This blessing follows the standard form for a blessing before most Jewish rituals ("Blesséd are you God ... who commanded us regarding [such-and-such]," in this case, Shechita). The general rule in Judaism is that for rituals which have an associated blessing, if one omitted the blessing, the ritual is still valid [see Maimonides Laws of Blessings 11:5]; as such, even if the shochet failed to recite the blessing before Shechita, the slaughter is still valid and the meat is kosher.So: if you slaughter meat so that it is dhabiha, which is the strongest reading of what halal meat requires, it is also kosher. If you slaughter meat so that it is kosher, it is also halal for at least some Muslims.
Therefore, the rational thing for a business to do is to slaughter all its meat dhabiha. Christians, Buddhists and atheists won't care; many Hindus weren't going to eat it anyway; and you satisfy both Islamic and Jewish law.
There are only two classes that are likely to object: animal rights activists concerned that this is an unacceptably cruel form of slaughter (which, frankly, it does not seem to be); and those who are motivated by an aesthetic desire to drive Islam out of Western life. That latter motivation is one that I think more understandable and acceptable than some do, though I do not share it; I am one of those who honestly does not think that Islam is an enemy. However, I also can understand the perspective of those who have come to the opposite conclusion.
My Hero, James Taranto
My Hero, James TarantoHe never disappoints:
Maybe Barack Obama Is the Next Christine O'Donnell
"Tea Party Victory: Is Christine O'Donnell the Next Sarah Palin?"--headline, Washington Times website, Sept. 15
"Is Sarah Palin the Next Barack Obama?"--headline, PoliticsDaily.com, Sept. 17
Science, Evolution, Poetry
The New York Times today mocks Ms. O'Donnell for being inspired by Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. Let's talk about whether romantic and fantastic writings should be at the core of one's identity and thought. Along the way, we can address a debate we've been having here for a couple of weeks.
Evolutionary sciences are increasingly able to explain and predict human behavior. For that reason, as we discussed recently, fields like economics should take 'the evolution challenge' in examining their ideas about how people will behave. I suggested that philosophy should do the same thing -- to understand virtue as animal as well as rational, because it seems to me to be both. Looking at the effect of animals on humans, we find that there is reason to believe that much of our magic comes from working with them. We may best understand what Hegel was calling "magic" by thinking about training animals, and how much can be communicated across species and without words.
Against this basic thrust is a counterargument, which is that what passes for evolutionary science pertaining to humanity isn't very good. (H/t: Cassandra; but I recall T99 making this point not so long ago, in one of our discussions that I can't seem to find.)
Ladies, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. It is time to stop arguing with evolutionary theorists when they use bonobo behavior to justify their own low standards.... simply write to let me know what behavior of yours you'd like to rationalize, and I am confident that working together as a scientific team, we can find a gorilla somewhere out there doing that very thing with a vengeance.To some degree, evolutionary science can 'prove' a lot of different things depending on what you want it to prove. The author points at writing that appears to show some evolutionary license for infidelity, and asks why we don't also see evolutionary license for other things that she would like? After all, she can observe the behavior in chimps.
Let's face it -- the new "science" of infidelity is just not very scientific. It certainly provides a convenient "out" to deny personal responsibility, but anyone who buys this "science" is missing out on the best parts of being human: the freedom that comes from self-control and the intimacy that can only come with commitment.
Roger Scruton explores the problems of this neuroscience further in this article. Scruton raises many of the same points, and some others that are valuable. Wait, though: Let's make sure to consider his groundwork, before we look at the critique of the practice of these sciences:
Genuine science and true religion cannot conflict. Science discovers truths, religion reveals them. But no truth contradicts another, and all truths have a place in the scheme of things, bound each to each in a web of mutual implications. Pope John Paul II believed this, and made a point of emphasizing that the Church has neither the right nor the power to contradict the findings of science. Moreover, if science and religion conflict over some matter, then it is religion, not science that must give way. Of course the Church has not always obeyed that rule. But it is a rule dictated by the laws of thought.I might argue that the only bad fairy tales are "pious" ones; in general I think there's a lot in that kind of folklore worth considering. In general, though, Scruton captures the post-Enlightenment position well: reason is on a throne, and animality is considered something to be striven beyond, improved or controlled by reason.
Averroës and Aquinas wrote of faith and reason, rather than religion and science. But their concern was essentially the same: to reconcile human discovery and divine revelation. This concern has been central to Western civilization from its beginnings in the city-states of Greece. We are shocked by Plato, when he defends the “noble lie,” inviting us to propagate unbelievable myths for the sake of social order. We are shocked by Dostoevsky, when he writes that “if I must choose between Christ and Truth, it is Christ that I shall choose.” We are shocked by the person who protects his sacred texts from scientific examination, lest their status as “revelations” be put in doubt. We accept that there are falsehoods that it might be dangerous or impolitic to question. But we hope always for another and purer kind of religion, purged of superstition and pious fairy tales.
Since the Enlightenment, science has been capturing territory from religion, explaining the cosmos and our tiny corner of it in ways that make no mention of a supernatural plan. And for two centuries religion has been gradually giving way, accepting that now this feature of our world, now that one, could be accounted for without reference to God’s purpose.
To what purpose, though? What can reason tell us about how we should direct ourselves?
Well, one way you could approach that problem is by looking at the shape of nature, and seeing if you can divine an arrow pointing in some direction. You can call this the "purpose" of nature, and set yourself to achieving that purpose.
Evolutionary science has some limits for you here, however: consider Kant's "first proposition" in his attempt to perform just this kind of a divination of the purpose of humanity.
All the natural capacities of a creature are destined sooner or later to be developed completely and in conformity with their end. This can be verified in all animals by external and internal or anatomical examination. An organ which is not meant for use or an arrangement which does not fulfill its purpose is a contradiction in the teleological theory of nature [i.e., the theory that nature has a purpose -Grim]. For if we abandon this basic principle, we are faced not with a law-governed nature, but with an aimless, random process, and the dismal reign of chaos replaces the guiding principle of reason.Well, Darwinian science has some bad news for you. The importance of random mutation suggests that chaos has exactly the formative role Kant did not want to see there; and that the facts are that most of these random mutations do not function to guide a species (or even an organ or capacity) toward some destiny, but lead to extinction. Some small number of them prove beneficial, or harmless, and so may survive. The first proposition, though, seems to collapse.
Another way you can use reason to try to guide us in setting ends is to restrict your view, so that you are looking not at nature as such, but at human history. If you can divine a few points through which you can project a line, you can call that line the arrow of progress, and try to follow it.
Notable philosophers who tried to do this include Karl Marx. His idea about the dialectic was that it could show us how humanity was progressing, and we could then chart a course for further progress. Marx despised the capital-oriented middle classes, but he thought them better than the rural populations they had replaced. (Search on "idiocy of rural life.") The grinding of capitalism would, he was sure, produce internal contradictions that would have to be resolved through a new way. That way lay collapse and revolution, but -- since it was along the arrow of progress -- also a better world.
We don't need to belabor the matter of just how deeply wrong this was, or how deeply harmful. One might argue that Marx was merely wrong about the direction of the arrow, and try it again; but the experience suggests that we should be very humble about any theory that promises "progress" to humanity.
If reason cannot set the final ends for virtue, then, what can? Scruton:
Take the case of erotic love. The Bible succinctly explains the deep significance for each other of Adam and Eve. What it tells us is beautifully amplified by Milton in Paradise Lost. But the truths so finely discerned by Milton and by the author of Genesis are not captured by brain science. That science has made great progress in understanding the mechanism of pair-bonding, induced by the release of oxytocin into the cortex during intercourse. The theory shows what is common to people and laboratory rats. But it says nothing about what distinguishes them, which is the I-to-I relation of lovers, as revealed in the smile and the kiss.This is the point that Cassandra and others are after: the higher nature that is achieved when animality is guided by reason. It is the poetry we get from Milton. What would evolutionary science say about this kind of poetry? That it was itself subordinate to the animality, I suspect: that romance and poetry are merely adaptive ways of achieving sexual access. Rational science finds that there is no rational nature separate from animal nature, for even the products of rationality are reduced at last to mere animality.
This is a problem for the Enlightenment! Enlightenment philosophy extends the ancient idea that reason (broadly read) should guide desire, to the idea that rational nature is the core of what it means to be human. It is what separates humans from the animals, and what places humans above the animals. If rational nature collapses into animality, the whole structure of the Enlightenment is in peril. All rationality turns out to be is a more effective animality. Rationality can hold its prominent position on the grounds of efficiency, but only for a while: for after the goods of animality are secured, we can no longer judge whether or not it is still more efficient. In order to judge, we need a rational standard: one of those arrows that Marx and Kant tried to build, which have proven so unreliable.
That is true if the Enlightenment is right about the core nature of humanity. That is to say, the Enlightenment understanding is wrong precisely if it is right: it fails on its own terms. If rational nature is the core of human nature, then animality is the core of human nature; science, and therefore reason, proves it.
If we take Scruton's groundwork seriously, we seem to be at the end of the debate. If religion must make way for what reason shows, then it will not do to have faith in a human nature above or separate from animal nature. All we have is an efficient adaptation: but efficient for what? It cannot guide us in any reliable way past the achievement of animal needs and desires.
That seems to be correct, if the Enlightenment understanding is where we make our stand. There remains a competitor.
The competitor holds that the core, essential nature of mankind is not rationality but romance. If there is a thing that makes us different from the animals it is the telling of tales. Into these stories about our lives we find friends and lovers to be not mere means to our animal or rational ends, but indispensable sources of romance.
The worth of others to us comes not from how they can help us achieve some end of our own, but in how their own ends and their own stories entwine with and enrich our tales. If they were only pieces of our story, they would be of small matter: but we find that their stories transform ours, and ours theirs, so that we are forced to regard them as equals of a sort. We may love them as enemies -- for what kind of a story has no villain? We may kill them, as it chances: but we are fools if we think that writes them out of our story. It only deepens the ways in which they alter the tale.
If it is the romance that matters -- not the animal desire, not the reason, but the poetry -- then we have a way of accounting for the power of Milton. We find that poetry and romance are not the byproducts of an animal search for reproduction, but the core feature of what and why we are. They are the point.
What that means is a topic for another day.
Njal's Saga Finale
Lars Walker reminds me that I have completely forgotten to finish up the reading into the saga of Burnt Njal. He kindly provides a review for those who would like to talk about the rest of the saga.
The last month has brought several new challenges, and I'm afraid that I let this matter drop. I do apologize to those of you who were interested in it; but if you'd like to discuss the remainder, this is a good place for it.
Choices
In general, I'll take the witch over the Marxist every time.
UPDATE: I think what I find amusing about this story is the idea that it will provoke some controversy among her supporters. The notion of a Satanic witchcraft that tempts young women is unremarkable to the most conservative, fundamentalist Christian. Having been tempted by it and turned away is a story of faith triumphing over evil, and redemption from the teeth of very real demons.
The other thing is that modern 'witches' are entirely harmless creatures, as far as I can tell. A witch today is someone who is experimenting with religion and mythology, in search of some personal meaning. Mostly they seem to come up with some combination of vegetarianism (or at least 'kindness-to-animals'-ism) and environmentalism. As long as these pillars are kept within the bounds of moderation, neither is especially harmful; and indeed, I believe in kindness to animals, and a magical world, myself.
All this is part of our tradition. There is room for Merlin at the Round Table, and the Lady of the Lake, as well as the Archbishops and priests and knights of the realm.
A Marxist is someone who has already found personal meaning in an ideology proven to be genuinely evil: for you shall know a tree by its fruits. It's an odd fact that the Marxist has the better claim to actually being motivated by Satan, in whom he does not believe.
They don't seem sure whether this was a thunderstorm, a tornado, or a "tornado-like storm," but whatever it was it's not something you see in Brooklyn every day. One death, tractor-trailers blown over, big trees down.
Thoughts on Democracy
From Kenneth Minogue:
I am in two minds about democracy, and so is everybody else. We all agree that it is the sovereign remedy for corruption, tyranny, war, and poverty in the Third World. We would certainly tolerate no different system in our own states. Yet most people are disenchanted with the way it works. One reason is that our rulers now manage so much of our lives that they cannot help but do it badly. They have overreached. Blunder follows blunder, and we come to regard them with the same derision as those who interview them on radio and television. We love it that our rulers are—up to a point—our agents. They must account to us for what they do. And we certainly don’t live in fear, because democracy involves the rule of law. Internationally, democracies are by and large a peaceful lot. They don’t like war, and try to behave like “global citizens.” There is much to cherish.Good! We might quibble a bit about the edges here -- as to whether being 'global citizens' is really what a nation-state is for, or whether it is for the defense of the people's liberties that it is constituted to protect -- but the author is a Briton. They have been swamped in such language for so long it's no wonder that it clings to them. Leaving those quibbles aside, this is a fine opening.
Yet it is hard to understand what is actually happening in our public life under the surface of public discussion. An endless flow of statistics, policies, gossip, and public relations gives us a bad case of informational overload. How does one tell what is important from what is trivial? The sheer abundance of politics—federal, state, and local—obscures as much as it illuminates.
My concern with democracy is highly specific. It begins in observing the remarkable fact that, while democracy means a government accountable to the electorate, our rulers now make us accountable to them. Most Western governments hate me smoking, or eating the wrong kind of food, or hunting foxes, or drinking too much, and these are merely the surface disapprovals, the ones that provoke legislation or public campaigns. We also borrow too much money for our personal pleasures, and many of us are very bad parents. Ministers of state have been known to instruct us in elementary matters, such as the importance of reading stories to our children. Again, many of us have unsound views about people of other races, cultures, or religions, and the distribution of our friends does not always correspond, as governments think that it ought, to the cultural diversity of our society. We must face up to the grim fact that the rulers we elect are losing patience with us.That's true enough.
What follows after is the interesting part, though. The question he ends up asking is this: Can the moral life survive democracy?
I would propose another, because the two questions should be considered in concert: if the answer to that question is in the negative, what duty do we derive from the answer?
Read it, and let's discuss it.
Techno Parody
I have a feeling we'll be seeing a lot more of this.
The parodies are actually better than the Auto Tune songs I've heard on the radio. At least they're clever.
Robin Hood
In just a couple of weeks, the movie that captures what the Tea Party is all about will be available. I suggest that it would make an excellent gift for anyone you might like to motivate to 'get out and vote' come November.
In the meantime, Hulu is running the old '50s television show. I picked up a copy of the complete series at Cracker Barrel, of all places. (Speaking of medieval things available from Cracker Barrel, they have right now a "harvest special" half-chicken roasted in apple cider and with apple slices, onions, and herbs. It is outstanding. Meats roasted or boiled with apples occur in many medieval recipes, but the mixture of savory and sweet is less common in modern foods. Get it while you can!) To return to the series, it's essentially "The Lone Ranger" set in the 12th century. This will not surprise long-time readers, since you know that the cowboy tale is essentially the knight-errant's tale: it is only the accidents that differ, as to when the story is set, or whether the horseman-who-rides-in-to-bring-justice bears a cowboy hat and six-guns, or chain mail and a sword.
The opening 'folk song' is... well, it's set to a tune that you can also hear in this highly NSWF piece from the Merry Wives of Windsor.
Remember, you were warned.
Hummers Swarming Like Bees
We went through nearly 4-1/2 gallons of sugar water today in the sixteen hummingbird feeders we have deployed. Tomorrow begins our county's annual Hummingbird Festival. It look propitious, if all these birds don't hitch a ride south on a north wind that's forecast soon.
I am not a big Palin fan. I am an atheist and not a social conservative in any meaningful sense. In my estimation, her chief virtue is that she annoys and enrages all the right people. However, I do recognize that she does honestly represent a wide and vital section of the America polity. I think the left’s inability to see Palin as a legitimate political figure reveals a great deal about their insular mindset and their deep need to see themselves as superior to other people even at the cost of a loss of political power.
Ms. Love, I think, hits on one the main motivations of what passes for "the Left" in the US. This 'deep need' to feel superior. One wonders what their childhoods were like.
Set Bacchus from His Glassy Prison Free
Set Bacchus from His Glassy Prison FreeSpeaking of book reviews, Lars Walker's excellent site www.brandywine.com often features them. I think it was they who inspired me to order "The Oxford Book of Parodies," which arrived today. It starts with the excerpts from "1066 and All That" that caught my eye in the review, including the immortal "Outfangthief is Damgudthyng." Parodies work best for me when they operate on an original that's both familiar and vivid in its style, so I'm the wrong audience for some of the featured pieces, but I appreciate these brief set pieces by Alexander Pope, from "The Art of Sinking in Poetry," for elegant everyday use:
Who Knocks at the Door?
For whom thus rudely pleads my loud-tongu'd Gate,
That he may enter?--
Shut the Door
The wooden Guardian of our Privacy
Quick on its Axle turn.--
Uncork the Bottle and Chip the Bread
Apply thine Engine to the spungy Door,
Set Bacchus from his glassy Prison free,
And strip white Ceres of her nut-brown Coat.
That last one is going to come in handy. Max Beerbohm nails G.K. Chesterton in "Some Damnable Errors About Christmas":
That is why for nearly two thousand years mankind has been more glaringly wrong on the subject of Christmas than on any other subject. If mankind had hated Christmas, he would have understood it form the first. What would have happened then, it is impossible to say. For that which is hated, and therefore is persecuted, and therefore grows brave, lives on for ever, whilst that which is understood dies in the moment of our understanding of it -- dies, as it were, in our awful grasp.Then Chesterton returns the favor with "Old King Cole" in the style of a half-dozen authors, including W.B. Yeats:
Of an old King in a storyHere is an updated A.A. Milne:
From the grey sea-folk I have heard,
Whose heart was no more broken
Than the wings of a bird.
As soon as the moon was silver
And the thin stars began,
He took his pipe and his tankard,
Like an old peasant man.
And three tall shadows were with him
And came at his command;
And played before him for ever
The fiddles of fairyland.
And he died in the young summer
Of the world's desire;
Before our hearts were broken
Like sticks in a fire.
Christopher Robin is drawing his pension;
He lives in a villa in Spain;
He suffers from chronic bronchitis and tension,
And never goes out in the rain.
. . .
Christoher Robin goes coughety coughety
Coughety coughety cough;
All sorts and conditions of Spanish physicians
Have seen him and written him off.
Brutality in Book Reviews
It's a fine art, using the review to destroy someone's work. Of course, sometimes their work is of a character that destroying it is a necessary exercise in hygiene. If a reviewer notices bad behavior, they have the chance to cut off the harm before it can infect a field of thinking.
Of course, if the reviewer is the bad actor, one who knows that a book raises troubling questions that will undermine their own position in the overarching discipline. They can attempt to quash a book whose thesis is problematic for them by suggesting that no one should even bother to read it. The hope, then, is that no one will.
In either case such reviews can be a lot of fun to read; almost as much fun as British obituaries. It is important to be able to distinguish between attempts at hygiene, and attempts at assassination.
Two reviews of the brutal type have come across my screen recently. One of them is over a work of politics; the other, a work of history.
Politics:
On June 20, 2002, the United States Supreme Court decreed, in the case of Atkins v. Virginia, that the mildly mentally retarded were categorically exempt from capital punishment, reasoning that fully functional adults of diminished mental capacity were as a matter of law not as culpable for their acts. Writing eloquently in dissent, Justice Scalia drew a sharp distinction between the severely mentally retarded (who are truly not responsible for their actions), and the merely stupid (the category into which Mr. Atkins undoubtedly fell). Scalia argued forcefully that, with respect to the merely stupid, at least sometimes they deserve to be punished for their antisocial and destructive behavior.History:
This article, of course, is not about capital punishment. It is a book review of Dirty, Sexy Politics by Meghan McCain. However, the above discussion is relevant because I initially had reservations about writing this book review at all....
Either this book had no editor, or the editor assigned to the original manuscript threw up his or her hands three pages in and decided to let the original stand as some sort of bizarre performance art....
Meghan has a troubling habit of putting sentences and thoughts together as though they flow in some sort of linear train of thought, when in fact they have nothing to do with one another....
Were this a book from any other author, I might at this point be lamenting the fact that the author had an important message that would sadly be lost due to her horrible communication skills. Not so with Meghan McCain....
Dirty, Sexy Politics is 194 pages long; if you removed the descriptions of outfits and hairstyles so-and-so wore when such-and-such was going on, I doubt it would have scraped 120 pages.
There is too much here that is just simply wrong. Authors and texts are assigned to the wrong century (Hildegard of Bingen is swept back to the 11th century and Jean de Meun's sexual allegory of the Roman de la Rose is flung forward a century beyond Thomas Aquinas to be read as some kind of antidote to his theological summa)....For discussion, two questions:
Women did not write: what a slap in the face for the past three decades of medievalist feminist research which has carefully unearthed the works not just of individual brilliant women writers, but entire female monastic communities of authors and scribes. Indeed, Fossier may have a medievalist feminist revolt on his hands with his description of the iconic female political, poetic and didactic author Christine de Pizan as one of the vindictive ladies of the court....
...footnotes... there are none....
For the reader who finds my critique harsh, it is in fact the opinion of the author himself who confesses that "It is useless to accuse me of mixing up centuries, of being content with simplistic generalisations, of eliminating nuances of time or place, of using deceptive words and impure sources. I know all this and assume responsibility for it."
1) Which review is more damaging to the book?
2) In each case, do you take the review to be an act of proper hygiene, or an act of assassination?
Synthesis
It was the animals all along.
An anthropologist named Pat Shipman believes she’s found the answer: Animals make us human. She means this not in a metaphorical way — that animals teach us about loyalty or nurturing or the fragility of life or anything like that — but that the unique ability to observe and control the behavior of other animals is what allowed one particular set of Pleistocene era primates to evolve into modern man....It's a majestic thesis, one that is worthy of a great scholar and that should be fascinating to see defended in coming years.
[T]his also placed early humans in an odd spot on the food chain: large predators who were nonetheless wary of the truly big predators. This gave them a strong incentive to study and master the behavioral patterns of everything above and below them on the food chain.
That added up to a lot of information, however, about a lot of different animals, all with their various distinctive behaviors and traits. To organize that growing store of knowledge, and to preserve it and pass it along to others, Shipman argues, those early humans created complex languages and intricate cave paintings.
Art in particular was animal-centered. It’s significant, Shipman points out, that the vast majority of the images on the walls of caves like Lascaux, Chauvet, and Hohle Fels are animals.
It also happens to conform, by the way, to something Hegel said... about magic.
Philosophers don't often write about magic, because mostly few of them believe in it. I do, of course; but it's unusual. This comes not from Hegel's writings, but from the Zusatz -- the student notes of his lectures -- on paragraph 405 of his Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
For an understanding of this stage in the soul's development it will not be superfluous to explain in more detail the notion of magic. Absolute magic would be the magic of mind as such.... Among adults, a superior mind exercises a magical power over weaker minds; thus, for example, Lear over Kent, who felt himself irresistibly drawn to the unhappy monarch.... A similar answer, too, was given by a queen of France who, when accused of practicing sorcery on her husband, replied that she had used no other magical power than that which Nature bestows on the stronger mind to dominate the weaker....Of man! One might say that this is one of those occasions where "humanity" cannot be introduced as a substitute. A Man or a Lady can work this magic: but not just any human. Some of us walk among them with our heads held up; and others fear them, having forgotten what it ever was to be Man. Man, in this formulation, is of the kinship of Hector: Tamer of Horses.
[A]lso over animals man exercises a magical power which dispenses with any kind of mediation at all, for these cannot endure the gaze of man.
Having just trimmed the feet of a thousand pound Tennessee Walker tonight, one who wasn't keen on the operation, I have to say that there is something to Hegel's concept. So much lies in the gaze you give the animal before the operation; and if someone can hold the horse's head, and keep the gaze, all is easy that might otherwise be impossible.
Horses are a miracle anyway: that they have a void in their teeth right where we might put a bit; that they, unlike dogs (or Tolkien's wargs) have a spinal structure that is fit to bear the weight of a rider. The magic isn't ours alone; but part of what we do with them is magic. Anyone who says otherwise has either never tried it, or never looked it in the eye.
Paintings of Petra
Obscured by smoke damage, the paintings of ancient Petra have been carefully revealed. Petra is chiefly famous for its stone work, which account for the name: Pliny the Elder gave us the Greek name for it, and as we all know, petra or petros means "rock" in Greece.
Lascaux
LascauxYesterday's screen-shot on my search engine, Bing, was of the 17,000-year-old cave paintings at Lascaux in southern France. (Bing has stunning screen-shots almost every day, by the way.) I went on a hunt for information about the caves, and found this link to an excellent virtual tour (click "visite de la grotte"), then got distracted before I'd checked many of the other links. When I tried again this morning, a lot of new articles came up about some old "Life" photographs of the painting that recently re-surfaced, which I suppose was what inspired the folks at Bing to feature Lascaux yesterday. 
These renderings of a horse and a bull have been among my favorites for years. I always wondered: was the artist a natural? What did his tribesmen think of his skill? Was everyone brought up to try his hand at this beautiful work?
This fanciful site about "Atlantean Man" in pre-Columbian North America suggests that I am a descendant of the Cro Magnons who made these paintings:
Comprehensive studies of blood types also show that Mayans, Incas and Auracanians are all virtually 100% group O, with 5-20% of the population being rhesus negative. This was the blood type of the original Europeans and stems from Cro-Magnon man (Kurlansky, 2001). The races that possess this blood type are races of the Americas, the Canary Islands, the Berbers, the Basques, and Gaelic Kelts.Like both my parents and (necessarily) both my sisters, and like about 7% of the population, I have O-negative blood. I am in fact a hotbed of recessive traits, including straight blonde hair, absence of a widow's peak, blue eyes, lack of dimples, and thin lips. (On the other hand, my chin is not cleft, I can roll my tongue, I am not color blind, my earlobes are of the "detached" shape, and I am not susceptible to poison ivy.)
Get ready for a roller-coaster ride if you do a search of "Cro Magnon" plus "O-negative blood type." The Net is stuffed to the rafters with eccentric theories about the mystical meanings of bloodtypes. There's a special diet, for instance, keyed to what your bloodtype tells you about whether you are essentially more paleolithic or agrarian.
The author of this strange O-Negsite believes that Rh-negative blood is an "angelic trait, passed to us by the Watchers." She lists some fascinating traits we O-neg types have in common. "Low blood pressure," check. "Love of space or science," OK, I'll go with that. "ESP," "unexplained scars on body," "sense of not belonging to the human race," "extra rib or vertebra," and "capability to disrupt electrical appliances" -- hmmm. I believe I've mentioned my alienation issues, and I did have a watch repairman claim once that my wrist was exerting an electromagnetic influence that accounted for his failure to fix the problem. I can't swear I don't have any extra ribs or vertebrae, but I'm pretty sure I lack inexplicable scars. Unless they're being hidden from me.
Chasing down links from this and similar sites reveals related theories, such as that the Basque people were Starchild-like invaders who started the whole O-negative Cro Magnon thing, including not only cave paintings but standing stones like Stonehenge. Or that Quetzalcoatl was an early Viking survivor whose energetic procreation explains why native Central Americans also have an unusually high incidence of O-negative blood. There's also something about "Reptilians" that I can't quite get a handle on, though it shows up often.
Gotta go. A large monolith has appeared outside, and has sent a message to my reptilian O-negative blood that is urging me to go make some cave paintings.
Immigration in Germany
There is a significant debate that is being stifled in Germany, argues this piece from Der Spiegel:
Sarrazin has been forced out of the Bundesbank. The SPD wants to kick him out of the party, too....We can probably separate out the parts of this that are about 'the Enlightenment' from the parts that are not. There is a similar anti-immigrant sense in the United States, where the immigrants are from a post-Enlightenment culture -- indeed, Mexico ran the gamut of the Enlightenment all the way to socialism.
But what all these technicians of exclusion fail to see is that you cannot cast away the very thing that Sarrazin embodies: the anger of people who are sick and tired -- after putting a long and arduous process of Enlightenment behind them -- of being confronted with pre-Enlightenment elements that are returning to the center of our society. They are sick of being cursed or laughed at when they offer assistance with integration. And they are tired about reading about Islamist associations that have one degree of separation from terrorism, of honor killings, of death threats against cartoonists and filmmakers. They are horrified that "you Christian" has now become an insult on some school playgrounds. And they are angry that Western leaders are now being forced to fight for a woman in an Islamic country because she has been accused of adultery and is being threatened with stoning.
(For of course socialism and Communism are the last children of the Enlightenment -- the fruit of exposing all institutions to thorough and constant revision according to the reason of thinking men, men of letters. The French Revolution and Mao's revolution were alike in exposing every institution to withering revision, and in claiming that they were doing so in the light of reason. Karl Marx was quite a man of letters, and for many years the words 'intellectual' and 'socialist' were almost synonyms. Not for no reason! Marx's ideas are compelling and deeply considered. They also happened to be wrong; but it is telling that it was not until Joseph Schumpeter that there was a good explanation for just why and how he was wrong. Reason can lead, but it can also mislead.)
But I digress. The point is that a lot of anti-immigration sentiment is not about the Enlightenment; it is about preservation of culture. The Enlightenment looks like the division from Germany, but find a place overwhelmed by another post-Enlightenment culture, and we see that it is not the real division. Now it looks like language; but find a place where people of the same language are immigrating in massive numbers (say, Indians moving into England) and now...
There is nothing dishonorable about wanting to protect a culture with the institutions of government. Indeed, to a large degree, that is what a nation state was ever designed to do. Far from an abuse, it was the purpose of governments of this type to provide a space for a people of a certain character to live according to the laws that seemed right to them.
That, critics argue, has an ugly history. Well, so it does, if by ugly you mean a tremendous amount of war and bloodletting. Cosmopolitanism has an ugly history, as the socialist and communist period demonstrates. The defense of a religious character has an ugly history; so does the defense of scientific atheism. The Enlightenment has worked great good here; great harm there. So has the Church; so has any church. So has democracy; so have monarchies.
Aristotle argued in the Politics that there were three legitimate forms of government: Royalty, Aristocracy, and Constitutional Government. Each of the three can be perverted, and the perversions are named: Tyranny, Oligarchy, Democracy. Each of these three destroys the state by using the power of the government not for the common good, but for the good of the dominant faction. This means injustice in the short term, and eventual revolt.
What, though, is the common good in Germany? Is it that which is good for Germany -- i.e., maintaining its wealth and internal stability? Is it that which is good for Germans -- i.e., maintaining their cultural institutions and relative prosperity? Is it that which is good for everyone in Germany, without regard to the poverty in Turkey and elsewhere that is leading to these waves of immigrations? Is it what is good for humanity, though that means leveling the prosperity of Germans to funnel wealth to places like Greece and Turkey? What if those places waste it, as Greece has done so thoroughly? Now you are sliding into the perversion of Democracy, in Aristotle's terms: a destructive government dominated by transfers of wealth to the indigent. Where, though, was the place where you were working for the "common good," and not using the government in favor of one particular part -- for ethnic Germans, say, making them and their institutions a privileged class?
"Well, why shouldn't Germans be privileged in Germany?" Ah, but that was the idea with the ugly history.
Ultimately it is humanity that has an ugly history. It has also a terrible future. I am no prophet, but I have every sorrowful faith in that.