I have too much imagination: that's the reason the Director of Continuing Education gave for firing me. That was in 1973. The company was Stone and Webster which engineered nuclear power plants. John Constance hired me to be his assistant director but I'd come to make him antsy. I love his reason the more because by 1973 I was accusing the world, including Stone and Webster and John Dennis Constance of having too little imagination: I'd founded the Free Learning Exchange to offer digital librarianship of community resources as a replacement for coercive kleptocracy and its sleight of hand institutions, its compulsory school system preeminently. But the world was to self-complacent to save itself: an inconvenience to me but fatal to all of us.
But before I met Ivan Illich's concept of cybernetic social networking in 1970 I already had a favorite example of humans' lack of imagination. Hark back a decade or so before that. In the 1950s we worried about the nuclear bombs that we'd made and used coming back in our own face. Somewhere around 1960-something I saw a British documentary which shared the fear and pretended to marshal it. The film asked the audience to imagine a nuclear attack and then showed the film's own story board scenario fleshed by actors. We watched stiff upper lip Brits queuing up for food and water, all very civilized, very British. No, you fools: first you have to imagine that this theater is empty, or burned into nonexistence, we're all dead. Or most of us are dead and those few who are still alive and mobile are not queueing up nicely; they're gouging each others eyes for a sip of water.
The movie should I believe have asked us first of all to imagine that 99.9% of us, the lucky ones, were no longer alive.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Telephone
Cro-Magnon man could walk, run, hide in a cave. When you had diarrhea you could hide behind a bush, but everyone knew. Your family, your group, knew your ass, your guts, you knew theirs. With agriculture man came to live in "houses." By Roman times the rich lived in houses that afforded "privacy." Unable to see out, others unable to see in, you could abide in the bosom of your hearth, imagining that you were safe: and, once Hannibal was defeated, you were: for the moment. The Romans did the kicking, everyone else in reach got kicked.
By the time of the British version of empire the rich man lived in a house. He didn't answer the door, a butler answered the door, or a maid, or his perfectly behaved wife, or his perfectly behaved child. In the office outsiders could reach the rich man only through his secretary. The sheriff knocked down the door of the poor man, but by 1860, if the sheriff thought the plantation owner had committed murder, the sheriff rode up to the plantation house, bowing, showing deference: the black butler would answer the door, the black butler would show deference to the sheriff while the sheriff showed deference to the plantation owner in the person of the black butler. Eventually the sheriff would stammer out a message, Please, if it pleases, I have come, to, with your permission, arrest you, Your Ownership.
By the early Twentieth Century Hollywood was inventing itself. Movies that a short time before would have been made in NY or NJ or Chicago were made in Hollywood, near the hills above LA. Charlie Chaplin, a London music hall transplant, redefined fame while he redefined film wealth. Chaplin was the first film star to sign a contract for $1,000 a week. It made headlines everywhere. Chaplin, at the time of signing, asked could they make it $1,025? What was the $25 for? I need something to live on, he answered. Chaplin was planning to spend the entire big bill on production: he himself could live nearly on air. Before long Chaplin was making one feature film instead of multiple short films: one and two reelers. Chaplin set new financial records when his Modern Times charged $2 admission. The studios said no one would pay it, Chaplin said they would: and they did. Chaplin made a feature every five years or so thereafter, and though he continued to pay salaries to favorites such as Edna Purviance for decades in exchange for no obligations on their part whatsoever, Chaplin kept a great deal of the money from his features for himself and his own private uses. Ah, you may think, so that's why he lived out his old age with Eugene O'Neil's daughter, Oona, on a mountain in Switzerland, vacationing on the Riviera at will. No. Chaplin's Hollywood wealth paled beside the money he'd made by putting his Hollywood wealth into the phone company.
Chaplin got rich enough in Hollywood to become very rich on Wall Street; but, Chaplin wouldn't allow one of the black beasts into his home. If you wanted to sell Chaplin a Fuller brush, you had to knock on his door and deal with the butler. Chaplin, the twentieth-century rich man, had no phone.
Knatz.com's Teaching / Thinking Tools repeated Gregory Bateson's comments on communication under the metaphor of the game telephone. Gather people, have a party. Assign person A to write a brief message on a piece of paper and hand it to person Z. Person A then whispers the message to person B who whispers it to person C. When "the message" has been passed to all participants, that person declares the message aloud. Person Z then reads the original written version of the message. Commonly there will be little resemblance between the "original" signal and the message as relayed.
I was just doing something in the bedroom. The phone rang. Rather than answer the bedroom phone I walked to my desk chair by my Mac, in the front of the house, sat down, and picked up. A voice with an accent that may have been from the subcontinent, some form of "Indian," said something that I interpreted to mean, Am I Mr. Knatz? Yes, I said and endured some more noise in that accent. "I don't hear well," I explained. "So far I've understood nearly nothing of what you've said." I listened further, assuming that it was a telemarketer, but not having proved it yet. I next explained that of the latest barrage I'd herd one word, but still made no sense of it: something Alliance.
Why wasn't the butler taking care of this for me? Why wasn't my perfectly behaved wife? or child?
Nah. I had to hang up on her myself.
By the time of the British version of empire the rich man lived in a house. He didn't answer the door, a butler answered the door, or a maid, or his perfectly behaved wife, or his perfectly behaved child. In the office outsiders could reach the rich man only through his secretary. The sheriff knocked down the door of the poor man, but by 1860, if the sheriff thought the plantation owner had committed murder, the sheriff rode up to the plantation house, bowing, showing deference: the black butler would answer the door, the black butler would show deference to the sheriff while the sheriff showed deference to the plantation owner in the person of the black butler. Eventually the sheriff would stammer out a message, Please, if it pleases, I have come, to, with your permission, arrest you, Your Ownership.
By the early Twentieth Century Hollywood was inventing itself. Movies that a short time before would have been made in NY or NJ or Chicago were made in Hollywood, near the hills above LA. Charlie Chaplin, a London music hall transplant, redefined fame while he redefined film wealth. Chaplin was the first film star to sign a contract for $1,000 a week. It made headlines everywhere. Chaplin, at the time of signing, asked could they make it $1,025? What was the $25 for? I need something to live on, he answered. Chaplin was planning to spend the entire big bill on production: he himself could live nearly on air. Before long Chaplin was making one feature film instead of multiple short films: one and two reelers. Chaplin set new financial records when his Modern Times charged $2 admission. The studios said no one would pay it, Chaplin said they would: and they did. Chaplin made a feature every five years or so thereafter, and though he continued to pay salaries to favorites such as Edna Purviance for decades in exchange for no obligations on their part whatsoever, Chaplin kept a great deal of the money from his features for himself and his own private uses. Ah, you may think, so that's why he lived out his old age with Eugene O'Neil's daughter, Oona, on a mountain in Switzerland, vacationing on the Riviera at will. No. Chaplin's Hollywood wealth paled beside the money he'd made by putting his Hollywood wealth into the phone company.
Chaplin got rich enough in Hollywood to become very rich on Wall Street; but, Chaplin wouldn't allow one of the black beasts into his home. If you wanted to sell Chaplin a Fuller brush, you had to knock on his door and deal with the butler. Chaplin, the twentieth-century rich man, had no phone.
Knatz.com's Teaching / Thinking Tools repeated Gregory Bateson's comments on communication under the metaphor of the game telephone. Gather people, have a party. Assign person A to write a brief message on a piece of paper and hand it to person Z. Person A then whispers the message to person B who whispers it to person C. When "the message" has been passed to all participants, that person declares the message aloud. Person Z then reads the original written version of the message. Commonly there will be little resemblance between the "original" signal and the message as relayed.
I was just doing something in the bedroom. The phone rang. Rather than answer the bedroom phone I walked to my desk chair by my Mac, in the front of the house, sat down, and picked up. A voice with an accent that may have been from the subcontinent, some form of "Indian," said something that I interpreted to mean, Am I Mr. Knatz? Yes, I said and endured some more noise in that accent. "I don't hear well," I explained. "So far I've understood nearly nothing of what you've said." I listened further, assuming that it was a telemarketer, but not having proved it yet. I next explained that of the latest barrage I'd herd one word, but still made no sense of it: something Alliance.
Why wasn't the butler taking care of this for me? Why wasn't my perfectly behaved wife? or child?
Nah. I had to hang up on her myself.
Such Knowledge
After such knowledge, what forgiveness?
TS Eliot
TS Eliot
Pre-dawn this morning that line by TS Eliot came into my head — After such knowledge, what forgiveness? — for the first time since I can't remember when. That's funny, that line used to live in my head, daily: 1956 or so when I first read it, through 1961, '64 when it was a regular visitor. It's been so long now since I've read any TS Eliot at all I don't even remember which poem the line is from!
After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Knowledge, forgiveness: Christian themes, pk themes. TS Eliot themes.
But it's 2010! What does the Twenty-first Century have to do with knowledge? with God? with forgiveness?
Of course it's the Christian shtick that we can be forgiven no matter what: if we are repentant. if we put our trust in the Lord.
But we're not repentant! What trust do we put in the Lord? We're not contrite. If we're contrite, say, over Vietnam, what are we doing bombing Afghanistan?
Are we bombing Afghanistan? I don't know. I no longer know anything. That I ever thought I knew much was all illusion, an illusion forcibly inherited from my far from honest or intelligent or knowledgeable or forgiven culture.
PS I see I had it in my quotes files, at Knatz.com and at pKnatzQuotes blog. So it has been in my head more recently that I'd said. Wrong about another thing.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Mislabel
Knatz.com was big on the concepts of misrepresentation and mislabeling. Knatz.com got deposed: domino-censored, in the wake of federal censorship of my AgainstHierarchy.org. My unconstitutional arrest and subsequent parole is now over. Of course they can arrest me again, but their threat of constantly watching me is now officially expired.
Before my arrest I'd featured some Knatz.com modules by posting them here at IonaArc. Since my release I've added a couple, then others at my PaulKnatz blog. But I haven't get gotten to add my pieces on mislabeling and misrepresentation.
The Christian story shows the Temple of Jerusalem pretending to represent God while instigating to get Jesus crucified. The Temple of Jerusalem still exists, is still in business.
Ivan Illich said similar (that is to say, profoundly Christian) things about the Roman Catholic Church. (He himself was a priest, a monseigneur!) The Roman Catholic Church pretends to represent Jesus Christ. It's claim is not better based than the claims of the Temple of Jerusalem.
Jesus got crucified.
Illich got defrocked, the rug pulled from under him.
I, pk, a disciple of Jesus (via Ivan Illich and direclty) say that the United States pretends to represent the people of America but that we, US, do not. We do not represent God or Jesus or the People. We are thieves, kleptocrats. We are the damned.
We, as a group; not me, individually.
I'll be adding more about this: but everything I've written in the last forty years says the same things. You don't know my writing because your owners do not want you to know my writing: or Jesus' words: or God's words.
But of course there I'm doing a little mislabeling of my own: using metaphors at least, using metaphors I know the kleptocrats are constitutionally incapable of understanding: God doesn't speak in words, though all possible messages are there: here: in the universe. It takes science to read it: science rendered impossible by coercively state-run everything.
Knatz.com's Thinking Tools made this point (not yet transferred to pkTools blog):
Raymond Smullyan delighted the Johnny Carson show with a logical puzzle: say you have three containers. One holds dimes, another holds nickels, the third mixes dimes and nickels. Each is labeled: with one of the three possible lables. Each is mislabeled!
Raymond asked Johnny (and the audience): What's the fewest number of containers you have to open to figure out the correct labels: and what's the fewest number of coins that have to be examined.
And the answer is: One coin from one container: that is, one coin specifically from the mislabeled "Mixed" container.
Think about it: you'll see.
Now: Knatz.com had told that story, and made the following point: but before continuing the point, I merge with another, related point: Newton figured out the gravitational relationship of the earth and the moon. Newton figured that the earth and the moon held each other by gravitational lassoes as it were. There were two forces: gravity, holding the two bodies together, and inertia, making the two bodies want to get away from each other on a tangent, like a stone thrown from a sling. Newton decided that the two forces just balanced: and the moon and earth remained tethered. (Modern science agrees, with a slight modification: the moon is actually pulling away, slightly.
New posed and solved the species' first Two Body problem.
Writing my novel By the Hair of the Comet in 1982 ff., I wanted to calculate the ephemeris of a fictitious comet. I asked an engineer with a fondness for science fiction to help me with my Three Body problem. I wanted to use the sun's mass and Jupiter's mass to estimate a path for a comet of mass x. The engineer could only bluster. There are no solutions for three body problems. Human genius is already impressed with itself for getting a toe-hold with a Two Body problem.
Now: Raymond figured out a Three Mislabels problem: But human beings live in a world where Everything is mislabeled! There's no logic that can solve our problems.
Newton, fabulous genius: not smart enough. Raymond: very clever: not smart enough.
Illich, Fuller ... pk: not smart enough.
Now: will we live long enough to see: Is God smart enough?
Can evolution find a way for life to survive despite kleptocrats ruling everything? Crucifying gods, defrocking saints, jailing cybernetic revolutionaries.
Before my arrest I'd featured some Knatz.com modules by posting them here at IonaArc. Since my release I've added a couple, then others at my PaulKnatz blog. But I haven't get gotten to add my pieces on mislabeling and misrepresentation.
The Christian story shows the Temple of Jerusalem pretending to represent God while instigating to get Jesus crucified. The Temple of Jerusalem still exists, is still in business.
Ivan Illich said similar (that is to say, profoundly Christian) things about the Roman Catholic Church. (He himself was a priest, a monseigneur!) The Roman Catholic Church pretends to represent Jesus Christ. It's claim is not better based than the claims of the Temple of Jerusalem.
Jesus got crucified.
Illich got defrocked, the rug pulled from under him.
I, pk, a disciple of Jesus (via Ivan Illich and direclty) say that the United States pretends to represent the people of America but that we, US, do not. We do not represent God or Jesus or the People. We are thieves, kleptocrats. We are the damned.
We, as a group; not me, individually.
I'll be adding more about this: but everything I've written in the last forty years says the same things. You don't know my writing because your owners do not want you to know my writing: or Jesus' words: or God's words.
But of course there I'm doing a little mislabeling of my own: using metaphors at least, using metaphors I know the kleptocrats are constitutionally incapable of understanding: God doesn't speak in words, though all possible messages are there: here: in the universe. It takes science to read it: science rendered impossible by coercively state-run everything.
Knatz.com's Thinking Tools made this point (not yet transferred to pkTools blog):
Raymond Smullyan delighted the Johnny Carson show with a logical puzzle: say you have three containers. One holds dimes, another holds nickels, the third mixes dimes and nickels. Each is labeled: with one of the three possible lables. Each is mislabeled!
Raymond asked Johnny (and the audience): What's the fewest number of containers you have to open to figure out the correct labels: and what's the fewest number of coins that have to be examined.
And the answer is: One coin from one container: that is, one coin specifically from the mislabeled "Mixed" container.
Think about it: you'll see.
Now: Knatz.com had told that story, and made the following point: but before continuing the point, I merge with another, related point: Newton figured out the gravitational relationship of the earth and the moon. Newton figured that the earth and the moon held each other by gravitational lassoes as it were. There were two forces: gravity, holding the two bodies together, and inertia, making the two bodies want to get away from each other on a tangent, like a stone thrown from a sling. Newton decided that the two forces just balanced: and the moon and earth remained tethered. (Modern science agrees, with a slight modification: the moon is actually pulling away, slightly.
New posed and solved the species' first Two Body problem.
Writing my novel By the Hair of the Comet in 1982 ff., I wanted to calculate the ephemeris of a fictitious comet. I asked an engineer with a fondness for science fiction to help me with my Three Body problem. I wanted to use the sun's mass and Jupiter's mass to estimate a path for a comet of mass x. The engineer could only bluster. There are no solutions for three body problems. Human genius is already impressed with itself for getting a toe-hold with a Two Body problem.
Now: Raymond figured out a Three Mislabels problem: But human beings live in a world where Everything is mislabeled! There's no logic that can solve our problems.
Newton, fabulous genius: not smart enough. Raymond: very clever: not smart enough.
Illich, Fuller ... pk: not smart enough.
Now: will we live long enough to see: Is God smart enough?
Can evolution find a way for life to survive despite kleptocrats ruling everything? Crucifying gods, defrocking saints, jailing cybernetic revolutionaries.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Golgotha
The people stood around Golgotha with their thumb in their ass while Jesus was crucified.
Of course it's impossible to tell how true the story is: like most stories it's fairly empty of facts. But I know this: today,
Christians stand around with their thumb in their ass
while Jesus' disciples get much the same treatment!
And do you know what? what may be worse?
Americans stand around with their thumb in their ass while freedom fighters are persecuted, the society using its whole arsenal to remain kleptocrats, damned, unChristian: and not free.
Hypocrites coming and going.
Christians stand around with their thumb in their ass
while Jesus' disciples get much the same treatment!
And do you know what? what may be worse?
Americans stand around with their thumb in their ass while freedom fighters are persecuted, the society using its whole arsenal to remain kleptocrats, damned, unChristian: and not free.
Hypocrites coming and going.
Friday, November 05, 2010
Satisfied
I'll be satisfied when God puts everyone in hell. Once there I hope he'll use me to explain to a finally captive audience why they're there: exactly what I already do, for God, without the audience.
But what if God doesn't put everyone in hell? Or what if there is no God, no matter how clearly he's communicated to me? Or what if there is no hell: other than here, right now, and all time previously over the last five or ten thousand years?
Oh, well: I never really expected to be satisfied anyway.
But what if God doesn't put everyone in hell? Or what if there is no God, no matter how clearly he's communicated to me? Or what if there is no hell: other than here, right now, and all time previously over the last five or ten thousand years?
Oh, well: I never really expected to be satisfied anyway.
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