Sesquipedalian Census, or Napoleon the Enlightened
When we lived in small groups nobody needed to count members. Even toddlers knew the group. It's kleptocracies, remote governments, government by proxies — representatives, ha ha — that want to count heads.
Still, the idea of "census" came slowly, and in stages: and required sophisticated math concepts and statistical approximations and sophisticated interpretation to make much sense. Ancient kings and their courtiers might devise strategies for estimating losses in a battle: issue each soldier a coin, know how many coins were distributed ... count the coins reclaimed after the battle: and you know, fairly accurately, how many losses you sustained, how many men you have still walking.
But the modern census started with Napoleon. He had bureaucrats under the charge of some sophisticated mathematicians "count" Frenchmen. (Frenchmen, what a funny concept: when there are Gauls, and Celts, and Catalonians ... all insisting that they have as much right to live as anyone else. The "French" language had to be shoved forcibly down everyone's throat. No trouble for the Gauls, but it sticks in the craw of the Catalonians, to name only one example.)
Forty million is what they came up with. It scared the bejesus out of every one of Napoleon's kleptocratic neighbors. The emperor of Austria trembled like a baby.
You see, these other monarchs had no idea how many "people" they had.
"Primitive" peoples can typically count to three. After three, they say "many." Governments up to Napoleon said, One, two, three; then they said "many." How many peasants are there? Many. Or they'd wax poetic: like leaves on the trees, like sands on the shore ...
Napoleon said, "Forty Million." A terrifying concept, for those sophisticated enough to know that a million is a lot, but too unsophisticated to know that the number is meaningless without other similarly accurate numbers to compare it to. What would the Austrian emperor have thought if his spies told him, the French have got forty million; but you're got thirty-eight million, or sixty million. The emperor should shit his drawers only if told, "The French have got forty million, and you ain't got but six hundred thousand." That's the time to pass out cold.
Mozart and da Ponte had Don Giovanni's Leporello number the Don's conquests quite specifically. Ma in Ispagna son già mille e tre. Very funny: because it's so totally unlikely (not just the number, but the implicit accuracy of record keeping). Hemingway's Nick Adams goes fishing, he sets up a perch in the grass. A grasshopper comes and sits on it. He plucks the grasshopper, hooks it , casts it, catches a trout. By that time there's another grasshopper sitting on the perch. No matter whether Nick catches a dozen trout or thirty, he will expect another grasshopper to be sitting on the perch for him to grab as his next bait. Nick doesn't take a census of the grasshopper in the county before he goes fishing. Don Giovanni didn't go to city hall to prowl for records before he went looking for another wench. No, no: one, two, three ... many.
Industrialists didn't take a census of the peasantry before testing how many children could sicken and die in their factories before there were no more children ready to be exploited for a penny a week.
Nietzsche said that the superman was like the ocean: infinite, capable of taking into himself endless amounts of poison and garbage while remaining himself pure: like God listening to endless gibberish from selfish morons wanting unstinted shit for Christmas. Peasants, wenches, children ... red bicycles ... Austrians ... One, two, three ... many. And many more.
The thing about language, any moron can use it. Any moron can say "infinite" without having passed a test administered by Georg Gamow.
Trouble is: we blather about many, and escalate it to infinite, without having measured the ocean or counted the wenches or the children.
I once sat with a lawyer, my jaw dropped, as I watched him "calculate" how much money we were going to make selling some stuff we were about to trick the IRS into helping us finance. The lawyer envisioned us publishing limited editions of lithographs. We'd print 250 there, sell the first 50 at $750, sell the next 50 at $1,000, raise the price to $2,000, sell them out, print the nth edition, sell the first image as cocktail napkins ... And within minutes had showed us a volume grossing $55 million: in a coupl'a years. This lawyer had no idea how difficult it was to sell one! or how long it took how few editions to sell beyond fifty. To him, money was infinite: put up a perch, and pluck the dollar that arrives to sit on it. Cast, catch, re-pluck.
I smiled and nodded not because I believed that I (or anyone) could sell all those images out, but because I knew that the dentists and doctors and plumbers my lawyer would approach for the capital, the IRS pushing their scam, would have no more idea about how hard it was to sell anything out than my lawyer did, and that therefore, by New Years, we'd have hundreds of thousands of new dollars in our bank accounts and multi-millions of dollars worth of new inventory, some of which actually would sell (provided it was me doing the selling).
The logic is impeccable: as long as you know nothing of the real world.
Sure there are publishers who've printed a Sinatra album, an Elvis album, a Beetles album ... sold it out, printed more. But there are many more publishers who printed a YoYo album, and sat with the inventory, paying the warehouse bill till they go belly up.
Never mind: that's more than I meant to say about all of that. I didn't mean to lose sight of my target: kleptocracies.
The Romans didn't invent salt mining. It was the Celts who were the salt masters in the Roman's part of the world. The Celts organized salt mining, salt extraction. Salt was essential for preserving food. Preserved food is essential for kleptocracy: for keeping armies moving: on their stomachs. The Celts flourished. Until the Romans noticed that they were flourishing.
The Romans flourished not by inventing anything, but by stealing inventions, and then administering them. Let the Celts invent the salt business: the Romans could then just take it away from them: the way the US, the universities, the corporations stole the internet from Ivan Illich, Jesus, and me: perverting it as they did so. Point is: once the alpha kleptocracies, following blindly in the wake of the Romans, assuming that there will always be other poor countries to exploit, other poor countries to steal resources from, the buyer determining the selling price for the seller, has destroyed all the open grasslands, all the wet lands, all the forests, all the reefs ... we'll set up a perch, but wait and wait for a new grasshopper to come and be bait for us. We'll look for new wenches to deflower and won't even find any old whores. And children to work for a penny a year? why there simply will be none to be found, none to be found at a penny a second either: and neither will we be here to do the finding.
First draft, what the hell.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Friday, January 16, 2009
Obverse
The obverse side of the coin is the heads side; not the tails. Right? What could be clearer, less ambiguous?
Nothing: on a coin. But what about other human dualiites? Male / Female? Rich / Poor? Matter / Energy? Wait. Before investing mental processing in any of those pairings, in or proposing pairings of your own to process, stay with me and let me propose a couple I promise are fertile: and don't forget, I'm laying tracks toward a question of ambiguity in what's obverse in complex dualities. I precede a bulls eye with a near hit:
What is an American public's purpose in censoring Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn from school and public libraries? Well, the claimed purpose (from traditional racists of course) is to combat racism. Twain's characters say "nigger," are called "nigger" ... and "nigger" is lower case. First, here's an example. In Huck the protagonist stumbles onto a down-river aunt of his friend Tom Sawyer that his up-river friend is scheduled to visit. There are some cute confusions of identity, the friends loyally trying to cover for each other. In any event Auntie asks the presumed "Tom" why he's so late. "Tom" claims that there was an accident, an explosion on the river boat. Auntie exclaims and asks, "Was anyone hurt?" "No ma'am. Killed a nigger," our slick liar replies. Either Huck or Tom could easily improvise such a lie: they're boys, they've cleaver, they're anti-Authoritarian ... And neither of them is a died-to-the-marrow racist, but they both speak the language and dress in the costumes of their day. So, I ask: is censoring such great literature an act opposing racism? Or is it an attempt to cover our history from ourselves and from our children? so racism can continue to poison the culture? invisibily?
Both interpretations are obverse by two different meanings of the word. There's "obverse," meaning "principal reason," and there's also obverse, meaning principal counter-reason.
Ambiguity can dissipate information, dilute it; or ambiguity can multiply information: near double it, more than double it ...
Racism is a classic pk subject, but even more core is schooling and deschooling. What's the obverse purpose of compulsory eduction, administered by state-controlled school bureaucracies? To educate? Or to regiment?
To make us independent? or to cripple us into dependency?
Well, both answers are obverses: incompatible obverses.
Note: Male / Female above: If the woman is on top, is it not intercourse? Is she then guaranteed infertile? Coins are coins, but other dualities are not coins, and are not necessarily simple.
Hey, wait a minute pk: you glibly cite Matter / Energy as a human duality?!?!?
pk answers: I won't back down from that on the basis that all human concepts, including the concepts of physics (including the concept "God"), are exactly that: concepts. And they're all human, no exceptions: at least not until we can meet and compare notes with a non-human sentience. Once we meet intelligent Alderberanis, then we can begin to become objective about who's intelligent, what's sentient ...
2009 02 03 What I've written thus far on the obverse both here and above, is inadequate. Part of my problem as author (and yours as thinking-reader) is that what I have in mind shares subsets with so many other important concepts from ambiguity to limitations of human sentience (with severe limitations to human intelligence and honesty!) I'll try to do a more complete job at my InsTic.blogspot.com.)
Nothing: on a coin. But what about other human dualiites? Male / Female? Rich / Poor? Matter / Energy? Wait. Before investing mental processing in any of those pairings, in or proposing pairings of your own to process, stay with me and let me propose a couple I promise are fertile: and don't forget, I'm laying tracks toward a question of ambiguity in what's obverse in complex dualities. I precede a bulls eye with a near hit:
What is an American public's purpose in censoring Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn from school and public libraries? Well, the claimed purpose (from traditional racists of course) is to combat racism. Twain's characters say "nigger," are called "nigger" ... and "nigger" is lower case. First, here's an example. In Huck the protagonist stumbles onto a down-river aunt of his friend Tom Sawyer that his up-river friend is scheduled to visit. There are some cute confusions of identity, the friends loyally trying to cover for each other. In any event Auntie asks the presumed "Tom" why he's so late. "Tom" claims that there was an accident, an explosion on the river boat. Auntie exclaims and asks, "Was anyone hurt?" "No ma'am. Killed a nigger," our slick liar replies. Either Huck or Tom could easily improvise such a lie: they're boys, they've cleaver, they're anti-Authoritarian ... And neither of them is a died-to-the-marrow racist, but they both speak the language and dress in the costumes of their day. So, I ask: is censoring such great literature an act opposing racism? Or is it an attempt to cover our history from ourselves and from our children? so racism can continue to poison the culture? invisibily?
Both interpretations are obverse by two different meanings of the word. There's "obverse," meaning "principal reason," and there's also obverse, meaning principal counter-reason.
Ambiguity can dissipate information, dilute it; or ambiguity can multiply information: near double it, more than double it ...
Racism is a classic pk subject, but even more core is schooling and deschooling. What's the obverse purpose of compulsory eduction, administered by state-controlled school bureaucracies? To educate? Or to regiment?
To make us independent? or to cripple us into dependency?
Well, both answers are obverses: incompatible obverses.
Note: Male / Female above: If the woman is on top, is it not intercourse? Is she then guaranteed infertile? Coins are coins, but other dualities are not coins, and are not necessarily simple.
Hey, wait a minute pk: you glibly cite Matter / Energy as a human duality?!?!?
pk answers: I won't back down from that on the basis that all human concepts, including the concepts of physics (including the concept "God"), are exactly that: concepts. And they're all human, no exceptions: at least not until we can meet and compare notes with a non-human sentience. Once we meet intelligent Alderberanis, then we can begin to become objective about who's intelligent, what's sentient ...
2009 02 03 What I've written thus far on the obverse both here and above, is inadequate. Part of my problem as author (and yours as thinking-reader) is that what I have in mind shares subsets with so many other important concepts from ambiguity to limitations of human sentience (with severe limitations to human intelligence and honesty!) I'll try to do a more complete job at my InsTic.blogspot.com.)
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Do You Believe In God?
Human language can be used to model the territory honestly, efficiently, accurately, but that is its Sunday-best, not the costume it grew or weaned in. Creatures in rut declare their identities: Yearning frog here; or Capable bull. So do rutting predators: I'm a male lion. But hunting, the predator conceals its identity. The female lions stalking the gazelle try to declare nothing of their imminence to their targets: Silence, they say: never mind us, we're just waving grass, tricks of the light ...
Humans rut: boy, do we ever. Humans can also sit and munch veggies: chew the fat, chew the cud. But humans also hunt, humans also prey on each other: oh, not for calories, there wouldn't be too many of us around if we did that; but for resources, for turf, for bragging rights: a rutting stage.
Well, different things at different times. Of course. Different things at the same time as well. And the attribution is necessarily interpretational in all cases: unless there's an infallible God to dictate objective truth to us: at Judgment: infinitely far away from us in time, orthogonally far removed from us in space, and logic.
Do You Believe In God? can mean a zillion things, but an open sincere naive inquiry into the details of your faith is the least likely. I propose that there's nearly always one meaning: alternate-obverse if not primary-obverse: Are you on my team? Not Do You Believe In God? But Are you within my semantic and political control?
Actually, if you think about it, very few questions we ask each other are independent of power, politics, of jockeying for control. Who did you vote for? That nigger? We're always testing our alliances, testing our level in the pecking order: trying to rise, looking for a chance to cheat.
Note: for a consideration of ambiguity in our concept of "obverse" ("alternate-obverse if not primary-obverse" above), see the next post. (2009 02 03 Note further, what I've written thus far on the obverse both here and there, is inadequate. I'll try to do a more complete job at my blog InsTic.)
Also: Though I have read Huck multiple times and studied about Huck many times more, none are within recent decades. I avoided retelling the plot in detail so I would be risking fewer errors, but I still could have made one. Realize: it doesn't matter, the point about America, politics, literature, censorship and racism are the same regardless of whether it was Tom or Huck-as-Tom improvising his lie.
Humans rut: boy, do we ever. Humans can also sit and munch veggies: chew the fat, chew the cud. But humans also hunt, humans also prey on each other: oh, not for calories, there wouldn't be too many of us around if we did that; but for resources, for turf, for bragging rights: a rutting stage.
Do You Believe In God?
What do we mean?Well, different things at different times. Of course. Different things at the same time as well. And the attribution is necessarily interpretational in all cases: unless there's an infallible God to dictate objective truth to us: at Judgment: infinitely far away from us in time, orthogonally far removed from us in space, and logic.
Who goes there? Friend or foe?
Friend.
Should we shoot in the direction of the voice? Or provisionally believe the voice: until s/he gets close enough to put a knife in our ribs?Friend.
Do You Believe In God? can mean a zillion things, but an open sincere naive inquiry into the details of your faith is the least likely. I propose that there's nearly always one meaning: alternate-obverse if not primary-obverse: Are you on my team? Not Do You Believe In God? But Are you within my semantic and political control?
Actually, if you think about it, very few questions we ask each other are independent of power, politics, of jockeying for control. Who did you vote for? That nigger? We're always testing our alliances, testing our level in the pecking order: trying to rise, looking for a chance to cheat.
Note: for a consideration of ambiguity in our concept of "obverse" ("alternate-obverse if not primary-obverse" above), see the next post. (2009 02 03 Note further, what I've written thus far on the obverse both here and there, is inadequate. I'll try to do a more complete job at my blog InsTic.)
Also: Though I have read Huck multiple times and studied about Huck many times more, none are within recent decades. I avoided retelling the plot in detail so I would be risking fewer errors, but I still could have made one. Realize: it doesn't matter, the point about America, politics, literature, censorship and racism are the same regardless of whether it was Tom or Huck-as-Tom improvising his lie.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
pk Profile 2009
I've been writing since 1948: stories, novels, essays, science ... Little was published other than by myself. My university ignored my reading of Shakespeare. The world largely ignored my offer of a cheap internet in 1970, as it's more recently ignored my theory of macroinformation. The fed censored me in 2007 and now threatens me if I republish. There's nothing new about authorities hating saviors. Some of my classic modules I'm trying to repost at my blogs.
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