Monday, July 25, 2005
Fishing Paradise
Lake Istokpoga is my favorite fishing lake ever. And yesterday I had the best session with fly rod, popper, and bluegills I've had in years.
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Social Intelligence
Never forget: humans are social. Human intelligence has a social matrix: and the society, the culture, governs what intelligence is acceptable, gets nourishment, recognition, and what intelligence gets ignored. What gets published is governed: by an editor (typically an editorial board) if not by a commissar (who himself has a matrix, support). What graduates and what gets left back is typically a committee decision.
(Of course nearly every one of these word/concepts has to be italicized.)
History, science, ... these are socially determined. Thus the reality our consciousness emerges within is social.
Simultaneously, we (all life) are organisms, populations ... species in an actual (non-socially determined) universe (Pleroma). Our maps are made in a real territory. Where the maps are too discrepant from reality, over time (after the oil runs out), corrections are made: by nature, truth, god. Subjectively, they appear as revolution ... death ... extinction; or as learning.
Literate societies, those with the thus-far most efficient means of propagating their memes, have thus far all been kleptocracies, hierarchically organized. Democracies claim to be bottom up, but anyone, no matter how map-ridden, can see it’s a lie. Jefferson, Franklin ... decided what the "people" were, what they wanted: and who qualified as people.
This of course is written by pk. pk advertises himself as a suppressed intelligence: ignored by the committees, by the commissars, by the public. As a child no one in my church, no one in my family, understood my theology. It doesn’t matter that I myself now reject it: the point is that it never got heard: at least not associated with pk. As a young man my reading, my explication, of Shakespeare’s sonnets never got heard, still hasn’t been heard: the best I can tell, not by a single individual, anywhere: even though I "taught" it in a college, even though I’ve now been writing it online for a decade (not that I've yet written it well, or completely, there or anywhere else). My adult (1970) offer of a bottom-up internet made a little bit of news by 1972: then none. The truth and history do not match.
After a revolution maps may be adjusted (which still doesn’t necessitate their being accurate). Before the 1960s all blacks were ignorant; since the 1960s black history is rich and complex. Facts get unburied (which still doesn’t make them complete). Under Communism, the Communists invented everything since the wheel. After its fall, maps get adjusted. Under the British Empire, God was an English gentleman (living off his investments). In America, Jesus was American: spoke English, shared the local prejudices (until the oil runs out).
Every institution has a crypt in which secrets are kept. I’m not saying for a moment that the secret Vatican archives are complete, wholly true. I am not saying that an accurate account of the theologies (or anti-theologies) of every heretic tortured is in that library, nor all Vatican science that didn’t get published to the public, nor all non-Vatican science repressed by the Vatican ... I am saying that there was a distinction, a discrepancy, between what the Vatican "knew" and what the Vatican published to the public. Elsewhere I’ve told how I learned that the Metropolitan Museum knew of many forgeries and misappellations among its collection NOT reflected in the labels shown the public. The Times too, Washington DC ... have unpublished archives: any item of which may be released when the Times, Washington DC ... decide is desirable: or necessary. Back to the wall, things get released.
And what gets released has a social matrix. The post-revolutionary society has its own agenda. With the revolution the doors to the Bastille are thrown open. The jailed thinker is released, the pickpocket is celebrated as a jailed thinker. Then the revolution makes its own new Bastille.
Knatz.com talks of how young pk loved jazz. I loved Bach too, but Satchmo was alive! Dave Brubeck was making great music NOW. I labored as hard as I could to promote the integrated swing of Benny Goodman to my school, my schoolmates. They didn’t want to know about it. Or, they already knew about it -- it being obvious; but they were unwilling to acknowledge what they knew officially. One teacher scratched the Lionel Hampton record she had given me permission to play in her haste to then stop the class from hearing it.
I couldn’t know at that time that what we were waiting for was Elvis! A white man we could give the adulation to, the money, the credit. We were waiting for Mick Jagger: don’t tell us about Muddy Waters.
See? That was BEFORE the 1960s.
Even today: we listen to the integrated music; but not if the integration struggle is acknowledged.
Thus our "history" is like a TV drama: suddenly we all have black best friends, gooks over for diner: so long as there’s no consciousness of how it came about.
These days my IonaArc blog gives a first look at Knatz.com-type new drafts. (Actually, I hope to develop the habit of noting all significant changes at Knatz.com through IonaArc: thus far only partially realized. Understand: these are drafts: first drafts (then second drafts). (N drafts go to Knatz.com: the real deal.)
Anyway, a lot of work remains to be done on this one: revisions, extensions.
(Of course nearly every one of these word/concepts has to be italicized.)
History, science, ... these are socially determined. Thus the reality our consciousness emerges within is social.
Simultaneously, we (all life) are organisms, populations ... species in an actual (non-socially determined) universe (Pleroma). Our maps are made in a real territory. Where the maps are too discrepant from reality, over time (after the oil runs out), corrections are made: by nature, truth, god. Subjectively, they appear as revolution ... death ... extinction; or as learning.
Literate societies, those with the thus-far most efficient means of propagating their memes, have thus far all been kleptocracies, hierarchically organized. Democracies claim to be bottom up, but anyone, no matter how map-ridden, can see it’s a lie. Jefferson, Franklin ... decided what the "people" were, what they wanted: and who qualified as people.
This of course is written by pk. pk advertises himself as a suppressed intelligence: ignored by the committees, by the commissars, by the public. As a child no one in my church, no one in my family, understood my theology. It doesn’t matter that I myself now reject it: the point is that it never got heard: at least not associated with pk. As a young man my reading, my explication, of Shakespeare’s sonnets never got heard, still hasn’t been heard: the best I can tell, not by a single individual, anywhere: even though I "taught" it in a college, even though I’ve now been writing it online for a decade (not that I've yet written it well, or completely, there or anywhere else). My adult (1970) offer of a bottom-up internet made a little bit of news by 1972: then none. The truth and history do not match.
After a revolution maps may be adjusted (which still doesn’t necessitate their being accurate). Before the 1960s all blacks were ignorant; since the 1960s black history is rich and complex. Facts get unburied (which still doesn’t make them complete). Under Communism, the Communists invented everything since the wheel. After its fall, maps get adjusted. Under the British Empire, God was an English gentleman (living off his investments). In America, Jesus was American: spoke English, shared the local prejudices (until the oil runs out).
Every institution has a crypt in which secrets are kept. I’m not saying for a moment that the secret Vatican archives are complete, wholly true. I am not saying that an accurate account of the theologies (or anti-theologies) of every heretic tortured is in that library, nor all Vatican science that didn’t get published to the public, nor all non-Vatican science repressed by the Vatican ... I am saying that there was a distinction, a discrepancy, between what the Vatican "knew" and what the Vatican published to the public. Elsewhere I’ve told how I learned that the Metropolitan Museum knew of many forgeries and misappellations among its collection NOT reflected in the labels shown the public. The Times too, Washington DC ... have unpublished archives: any item of which may be released when the Times, Washington DC ... decide is desirable: or necessary. Back to the wall, things get released.
And what gets released has a social matrix. The post-revolutionary society has its own agenda. With the revolution the doors to the Bastille are thrown open. The jailed thinker is released, the pickpocket is celebrated as a jailed thinker. Then the revolution makes its own new Bastille.
Knatz.com talks of how young pk loved jazz. I loved Bach too, but Satchmo was alive! Dave Brubeck was making great music NOW. I labored as hard as I could to promote the integrated swing of Benny Goodman to my school, my schoolmates. They didn’t want to know about it. Or, they already knew about it -- it being obvious; but they were unwilling to acknowledge what they knew officially. One teacher scratched the Lionel Hampton record she had given me permission to play in her haste to then stop the class from hearing it.
I couldn’t know at that time that what we were waiting for was Elvis! A white man we could give the adulation to, the money, the credit. We were waiting for Mick Jagger: don’t tell us about Muddy Waters.
See? That was BEFORE the 1960s.
Even today: we listen to the integrated music; but not if the integration struggle is acknowledged.
Thus our "history" is like a TV drama: suddenly we all have black best friends, gooks over for diner: so long as there’s no consciousness of how it came about.
These days my IonaArc blog gives a first look at Knatz.com-type new drafts. (Actually, I hope to develop the habit of noting all significant changes at Knatz.com through IonaArc: thus far only partially realized. Understand: these are drafts: first drafts (then second drafts). (N drafts go to Knatz.com: the real deal.)
Anyway, a lot of work remains to be done on this one: revisions, extensions.
Steroid World
Yesterday’s sports headline cited Barry Bonds’ promise that he’d definitely play again, possibly this season: the season thus far having proceeding without him following a knee operation. Today’s headline declares Bonds’ "Return Uncertain." The background for these possibilities is not only baseball and Bonds’ recuperation but the Balco steroid scandal. How much pressure is afoot to dissuade Bonds from healing? There are baseball traditionalists who wish out loud that Bonds had never lifted a bat.
We live in an amazing time. Last weekend both Tigar Woods and Jack Nicklaus walked the same golf links. Roger Federer’s march of greatness in tennis rivals Tiger’s in golf.
When Babe Ruth was making himself known as the Sultan of Swat, neither of us were around to see or appreciate it. All we have is a moment of two on film. I was alive throughout Hank Aaron’s career, but I wasn’t paying enough attention to appreciate what was before us. (The army stuck me with people who did pay attention: and their racist comments still rankle my ears. "He sees something white, and he hits it with a stick," was Joe Garagiola’s public comment.)
I am not exactly a baseball fan but by now I know enough to see at least part of Barry Bonds’ method: he’s got strength, speed, eye sight, eye-hand coordination -- and he waits and waits and waits till the ball positions itself for his maximum impact!
Did he take steroids? I don’t see how it’s possible that he didn’t. I also don’t see how it’s possible that many an unnamed star also didn’t. Think of photos of Magic Johnson arriving at the NBA; now think of recent photos of Magic Johnson. Sure he might have still continued to grow into his twenties; but into his thirties? and forties?
It isn’t just Bonds who needs an asterisk in the record books: it’s our whole era.
We live in an amazing time. Last weekend both Tigar Woods and Jack Nicklaus walked the same golf links. Roger Federer’s march of greatness in tennis rivals Tiger’s in golf.
When Babe Ruth was making himself known as the Sultan of Swat, neither of us were around to see or appreciate it. All we have is a moment of two on film. I was alive throughout Hank Aaron’s career, but I wasn’t paying enough attention to appreciate what was before us. (The army stuck me with people who did pay attention: and their racist comments still rankle my ears. "He sees something white, and he hits it with a stick," was Joe Garagiola’s public comment.)
I am not exactly a baseball fan but by now I know enough to see at least part of Barry Bonds’ method: he’s got strength, speed, eye sight, eye-hand coordination -- and he waits and waits and waits till the ball positions itself for his maximum impact!
Did he take steroids? I don’t see how it’s possible that he didn’t. I also don’t see how it’s possible that many an unnamed star also didn’t. Think of photos of Magic Johnson arriving at the NBA; now think of recent photos of Magic Johnson. Sure he might have still continued to grow into his twenties; but into his thirties? and forties?
It isn’t just Bonds who needs an asterisk in the record books: it’s our whole era.
Saturday, July 09, 2005
Reason & the Rain Forest
We all hear how the rain forests of the world are disappearing. We all hear reasons: the people need to eat today more than they need to breathe tomorrow ... The developed nations have suckered the Third World into hock, and now they have to burn their capital ...
Fine. But we should be suspicious of reasons offered by those in the game. What reasons might a disinterested Martian come up with? Well, I don't know any disinterested Martians to ask, but I'll pretend that I'm one:If humans won't restrain their own growth, natural forces will have to (and natural forces aren't altogether stupid: just slow). The rain forests are the lungs of the earth. Maybe "Nature" doesn't want us to breathe tomorrow and knows that we're short-sighted today.
Etc. But here's another angle: a kleptocratic angle:
Governments like to know where things are: their resources, their enemies, their slaves ... Once upon a time a people, sensing an enemy, could "disappear" into the woods. The South American governments have found that exterminating Amazon tribes isn't always easy: some of them just disappear. We in the north had the same problem: with Apaches and so forth.
When someone wants to kill school children, it's a piece of cake: because the government has herded them all into a school. Fish in a barrel. If someone wants to kill strikers, it's easy: they're striking at the factory!
So: if we destroy the rain forest, and all concentrate into camps, whoever wants to destroy us will find us easy to find. There will be nowhere to hide. OK, that's government. But who says Nature can't use government for its own purposes?
Fine. But we should be suspicious of reasons offered by those in the game. What reasons might a disinterested Martian come up with? Well, I don't know any disinterested Martians to ask, but I'll pretend that I'm one:
Etc. But here's another angle: a kleptocratic angle:
Governments like to know where things are: their resources, their enemies, their slaves ... Once upon a time a people, sensing an enemy, could "disappear" into the woods. The South American governments have found that exterminating Amazon tribes isn't always easy: some of them just disappear. We in the north had the same problem: with Apaches and so forth.
When someone wants to kill school children, it's a piece of cake: because the government has herded them all into a school. Fish in a barrel. If someone wants to kill strikers, it's easy: they're striking at the factory!
So: if we destroy the rain forest, and all concentrate into camps, whoever wants to destroy us will find us easy to find. There will be nowhere to hide.
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