Beyond Rivalry - language

Irony - Now, More Than Ever

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 20:17:49 -0500

At least, that's what Joan Didion seemed to say, per a NYT article, at a talk she gave a week after the U.S. election, when she "lamented that the United States in the era of Barack Obama had become an 'irony-free zone,' a vast Kool-Aid tank where 'naïveté, translated into "hope," was now in' and where 'innocence, even when it looked like ignorance, was now prized.'"

Columnist Roger Rosenblatt, after 9/11, "said that while irony had its place and time, this was not it." Some events, he says, "are so big that they almost imply an obligation not to diminish [them] by clever comparisons."

John H. McWhorter, "semiconservative black commentator," sees a reduction in irony as a natural and praiseworthy reaction among white people to having voted Obama into office and in doing so expiating "white America's sins" and "showing that you are past the nastiness."

I gotta go with Joan. Irony (particularly phase III irony) is all about puncturing propaganda, "stating the lie in order to expose the lie," pointing out the discrepancy between what is expected and what actually results, and in doing so examining the nature of human folly and vanity. So particularly when we're feeling good about…

Evolution and Conversion, cont'd (3)

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 06:15:00 -0400

(Previous posts on this topic: here and here.)

I'm into chapter 5 now (page 173) and have read chapter 3 twice. A lot of it still eludes me (the last time I read The Origin of Species was in high school), but here's what I've noticed:

Chapter 3, The Symbolic Species

This chapter, more than the others, is directly related to Darwin's theory of evolution, and concerns how the mimetic theory of culture parallels Darwin's theory of genetics as it also explores the evolution of mimetic theory and culture itself, the order in which things have occurred.

** "The theory of evolution seems to me quite powerfully sacrificial. ... Darwin ... stresses the importance of death just as much as the importance of survival. In some sense it is representing nature as a super-sacrificial machine...."

Girard agrees with sociobiologist E.O. Wilson that religion is adaptable: "I claim that religion protects men and societies from mimetic escalation. Religion has an adaptive value. But this is not enough: it is also the source of hominization, of the differentiation between animals and human beings, because ... through sacrifice it creates culture and institutions."

"One can argue that many groups and societies perished and were…

Conversation and Status Signals

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 09:55:00 -0400

Following my notes on Status Anxiety and my thinking over the last several years about leadership, rivalry, mimesis, facilitating film-focused conversations, the subtleties of friendship, and so on, I came upon Dave Pollard's blog entry today titled "The Politics of Conversation." He references Keith Johnstone's book Impro, in which Johnstone "explains how pervasive dominance and submission behaviours are in human interactions." Johnstone's example (the one Dave shares) is the complicated dance done by two people walking towards each other on a sidewalk, a dance we've probably most of us done hundreds of times in our lives. It's a dance I do multiple times most days now. The question is, who moves over, and when, and how?

Then Dave references Peter Collett's The Book of Tells, which "teaches you to read status displays in body language," describing the dominant and submissive displays (signaled by body, hand, eye and face signals, and in speech), and he uses a photographic example of people in a meeting, reading their body language for status information.

The questions he asks are:

Are "non-hierarchical, leaderless political and economic structures -- communities of peers" unnatural?

Are these status displays, and our apparent unconscious need to make them, interfering with…

Reason-Giving: Four Kinds of Reasons

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:10:00 -0400

At the heart of Tilly's book Why? (see previous post) are the four kinds of reasons he posits: conventions, codes, stories and technical accounts.

Conventions and codes don't posit cause-and-effect; they simply appeal to socially appropriate formulas as explanation:

CONVENTIONS -- Conventionally accepted reasons. Examples: My train was late, I wasn't in the mood, she's just lucky, gotta run, I'm so busy,

CODES -- Rules, basically. Particularly relevent in law, medicine, the military, government, religion, diplomacy, sports and so on.

Stories and technical accounts do posit cause-and-effect:

STORIES -- Explanatory narratives, usually used for exceptional, unusual, or unfamiliar events.

TECHNICAL ACCOUNTS -- cause-and-effect explanation used by authorities and specialists in their fields (engineers, physicians, programmers, artists, etc.)

To show the difference among these, Tilly starts the book with a discussion of causes put forth early on, by politicians and survivors, for the 9/11 terrorists attacks:

Story: Terrorists did it, but lax officials let them do it.

Convention: Modern life is dangerous.

Code: Because we have freedom to defend, we must combat terror.

Technical accounts: (Not many given initially. Later, specialists gave accounts of "how airplane crashes brought down supposedly unshakeable buildings, what went wrong with American intelligence," etc.)

He notes that…

Reason-Giving

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:45:00 -0400

I read about sociologist Charles Tilly's book Why?: What happens when people give reasons ... and why (2006) at about the same time I watched a "House, MD" episode (It's A Wonderful Lie) in which House says, "The only reason to give multiple reasons is that you're searching for what the person wants to hear." That struck me as exceedingly true, and I thought that Tilly might have more to say about what's behind reason-giving.

Tilly says that reason-giving happens only in relationships (and only in human ones) and he makes a direct connection between reason-giving and status within the relationship, or, the perceived equality of the relationship. The main determiner of the kind of reason we give is not the behaviour we're explaining or the situation, but rather the relationship we have with the person to whom we're giving the reason:

"Reason giving resembles what hapens when people deal with unequal social relations in general. Participants in unequal social relations may detect, confirm, reinforce or challenge them, but as they do so they employ modes of communications that signal which of these things they are doing. In fact, the ability to give reasons without challenge usually accompanies a position of…

Morality

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:20:00 -0400

A couple of thought-provoking posts at Overcoming Bias about morality (among many there lately on the topic): The Moral Void and Is Morality Given. See also the comments.

From the first, the question is posed: "When you cannot be innocent, justified, or praiseworthy," which course of action will you choose anyway?

And this, pointing to labelling and authority as it relates to morality, and to our propensity for letting someone else define 'morality':

"In 1966, the Israeli psychologist Georges Tamarin presented, to 1,066 schoolchildren ages 8-14, the Biblical story of Joshua's battle in Jericho:

"'Then they utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and asses, with the edge of the sword... And they burned the city with fire, and all within it; only the silver and gold, and the vessels of bronze and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD.'

"After being presented with the Joshua story, the children were asked:

"'Do you think Joshua and the Israelites acted rightly or not?'

"66% of the children approved, 8% partially disapproved, and 26% totally disapproved of Joshua's actions.

"A control group of 168 children was presented with an…

Differentiation and Status

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:35:00 -0400

"1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was [a] formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 3 And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light 'day,' and the darkness he called 'night.'"

God continues to separate (land from seas, moon from sun, elements of time) and create various kinds of things (vegetation, animals), and in verse 25 looks it all over and declares it "good."

Someone recently cited the Genesis passage I've quoted above as part of an argument about language's creative capability as it differentiates among things. I couldn't assent to what was said and now I can't even recall the argument properly, because I couldn't feel the sense of it at the time -- I think it's related to George Lakoff's cognitive linguistics ideas. In any case, my misunderstanding of an argument that's fuzzy for me is my jumping off point :-)

I've been reading Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety, and his premise,…

RIP George Carlin (1937 - 2008)

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 10:05:00 -0400

Comedian, political humourist, anti-censorship crusader and thinker George Carlin died yesterday of a heart attack at age 71. He released his first comedy album, Take-Offs and Put-Ons, in 1967, acted in 'That Girl' and the movie 'With Six You Get Egg-Roll,' and by the end of the 1960s, "he was one of America’s best known comedians." In 1970, feeling he was "living a lie," he ditched his clean-cut, conventional image and material for the long-haired look and seven-words-riddled, edgy patter he's known for. That switch resulted in the cancellation of a 3-year-contract and "he was advised to leave town when an angry mob threatened him at the Lake Geneva Playboy Club"!

NYT obituary

BBC News obituary

Time magazine already has "How George Carlin Changed Comedy" on its website.

AP/Chicago Tribune tribute

Transcript of "The Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television," from his 1972 album Class Clown. (NSFW)

An editorial cartoon featuring Carlin, printed in today's Chicago Tribune, which went to press before news of Carlin's death.

Crafting Luminous Reviews

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:00:50 -0400

Fun essay in the NYT's Papercuts by Bob Harris, listing his choices for the seven worst words frequently used in book reviews. The comments are even funnier, by which I of course mean compelling, nuanced, readable and haunting.

Collective Wisdom (Initiative) - Responses

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 14:05:00 -0400

A friend asked me to check out this Collective Wisdom Initiative website, so for the past couple of days I have been reading it, in bits and pieces. As she so understatedly said, "There is a lot of material here." I have a lot more to explore, if I choose to, and some time I probably will.

I want to respond to (my interpretation of) what I've read here, instead of sending long emails to a few people, which might be seen as personally meant when they're not; these comments are about me -- they're my response, my experience, my beliefs, etc., all subject to change any minute now.

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GENERAL RESPONSE

There is so much material here, too much for me to synthesise now, so I will comment on the bits and pieces I've explored that speak to me.

I think I have a vague sense of the overarching theme, something like "collective wisdom comes from truth and leads us to truth." Perhaps? I like some of the basic elements of: Seeking the Edge, Invoking the Daimon, Blessing and Invocation, Beauty, and Wholeness. They all speak to me deeply, as I interpret them.

The fundamental (I think?) belief that "Together…