The human world, the human kleptocratic world, is governed by human judgments. Some kleptocracies pretend to be guided by divine judgment: Christian European states, for example. But till God is heard from (so all would know it's God speaking (how would that ever happen?)) all we have are the Christian kleptocracies' word for it.
I believe in God's judgment: provided we understand God to mean truth: the actual territory, not some human representation, some "map" of the territory. But that judgment (the truth) will never be known by human kleptocrats. Or it may be approximated by individuals both intelligent and honest, by you, by me (on our good days): but the moment we form a group, a society, with compulsory school and military service, and taxation, and media run for profit ... No, no, no.
I was just recalling some human judgments portrayed in the Old Testament. Genesis has Lot visited by some angels. The nasty neighbors take the angels to be men: good looking men. The neighbors demand that Lot give his guests up to the neighbors so they can bugger them. Lot offers his virgin daughters instead. And God reduces Sodom and Gomorrah to rubble. But just before, did the Sodom Gazette report that the Sodomites had misidentified some victims for rape? No, no, no.
Trouble is, we only get to read the earthly judgments: while the exceptions, like pk's writing, gets ignored, or misrepresented, censored ... while pk is jailed.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Double Negative
Double Negative
Bio-Paradox
Because the pharms figure that what makes the kid hyperactive is hypo-activity of some behavioral repressor: maybe if the repressor is stimulated it will let the kid inhibit himself, naturally. Ah: behaviorism of a level more sophisticated than we're used to in the old simple-minded culture: the cue ball hits the eight ball, the eight ball drops into the side pocket; we're no more used to complex causes than we are to multiple body problems: we can handle Joe and Marilyn, but not one million people on the subway, everybody hand forced against somebody else's something or other.
Bear with me: I broaden the base:
The school teacher says that "two negatives make a positive." She illustrates,"I ain't gonna do that nohow" means that that non-standard-written-English speaker is going to do it! No, no, no, lady: lots of negatives mean negative, Negative, NEGATIVE. They're connected in parallel, not in series. (With batteries, series connection boosts the amperes; parallel connection deepens the voltage, it doesn't multiply the current.)
That's a start. I'll join my targets next time, forging a new metaphor.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Pretend Authority
Authority is necessary for any politically imposed belief system so the belief can be asserted over experience.
Real authority, were there any such thing — a church that actually hears and represents an actual god, a government that actually represents a population of sentient, non-toxic beings, I would be for. As it is, I'm against all authority that I'm aware of: as fraudulent, factitious, illegitimate. (Of course the authorities can, and have, side-railed me, silenced me, impoverished me, arrested me, and censored my writing as well as my speech. Notice that I haven't arrested or impoverished any authorities that I know of (though I do try to keep resources from governments by avoiding having an income, thereby being free of income tax.)
Schools pretend to have and to represent and to be able to bestow knowledge, skill, wisdom. Sounds good. But what you actually get are a bunch of experts telling people not to listen to Galileo and his telescope, that Copernicus was crazy, that some "theory" of "Creationism" concocted a century and a half after Darwin is legitimate "science" ...
King Herod ruled the Jews in Jerusalem by the forbearance of the lieutenants of Augustus Caesar. When Jesus was hailed by Jews (in the street as it were) as King of the Jews, Herod and the Temple priests tag teamed him, getting the Roman rubber stamps to help. Who were the experts? Jesus? the Son of God? No: the priests, the governors ... the money changers whose tables Jesus overthrew.
No. In heaven authority may be real; here on earth it's fraud: pure fraud followed by purer fraud.
Meantime, notice. You son tells you the priest fucked him in the ass. You tell your son that he's imagining things, for shame, the priest is a holy man. Then you see the priest with his robes up and your son held bent, you tell the bishop. For shame, the priest is a holy man, scolds the bishop. Finally the bishop sees it, tells the cardinal, the Pope ... the Times. For shame, the priest is a holy man.
The experts, authorities, can erase experience: over and over.
Related thoughts I'll sketch in a post on Discrepancy Reduction: at my pkTools blog.
Real authority, were there any such thing — a church that actually hears and represents an actual god, a government that actually represents a population of sentient, non-toxic beings, I would be for. As it is, I'm against all authority that I'm aware of: as fraudulent, factitious, illegitimate. (Of course the authorities can, and have, side-railed me, silenced me, impoverished me, arrested me, and censored my writing as well as my speech. Notice that I haven't arrested or impoverished any authorities that I know of (though I do try to keep resources from governments by avoiding having an income, thereby being free of income tax.)
Schools pretend to have and to represent and to be able to bestow knowledge, skill, wisdom. Sounds good. But what you actually get are a bunch of experts telling people not to listen to Galileo and his telescope, that Copernicus was crazy, that some "theory" of "Creationism" concocted a century and a half after Darwin is legitimate "science" ...
King Herod ruled the Jews in Jerusalem by the forbearance of the lieutenants of Augustus Caesar. When Jesus was hailed by Jews (in the street as it were) as King of the Jews, Herod and the Temple priests tag teamed him, getting the Roman rubber stamps to help. Who were the experts? Jesus? the Son of God? No: the priests, the governors ... the money changers whose tables Jesus overthrew.
No. In heaven authority may be real; here on earth it's fraud: pure fraud followed by purer fraud.
Meantime, notice. You son tells you the priest fucked him in the ass. You tell your son that he's imagining things, for shame, the priest is a holy man. Then you see the priest with his robes up and your son held bent, you tell the bishop. For shame, the priest is a holy man, scolds the bishop. Finally the bishop sees it, tells the cardinal, the Pope ... the Times. For shame, the priest is a holy man.
The experts, authorities, can erase experience: over and over.
Related thoughts I'll sketch in a post on Discrepancy Reduction: at my pkTools blog.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Mugging Santa
Santa is said to bring gifts to good little boys and girls on Christmas Eve. The gifts are for the children. All they have to do is sit and wait. Then they'll have them (if they're good.)
What though if the kids are bad little boys and girls? What if the bad kids (and grownups: kleptocrats, bureaucrats) know Santa is coming? What if the bad kids ambush Santa from the shadow of the chimney? Will the bad kids then legitimately own the good kids toys? (They will if they run the government and write the laws and monopolize the justice departments.)
God sent Jesus to offer us mercy. But we knocked him down, tortured him. Do we "own" the mercy?
Do kleptocrats have God by the short hairs? Or is God just giving us, still, all the rope we need to hang ourselves? An infinity of times.
What though if the kids are bad little boys and girls? What if the bad kids (and grownups: kleptocrats, bureaucrats) know Santa is coming? What if the bad kids ambush Santa from the shadow of the chimney? Will the bad kids then legitimately own the good kids toys? (They will if they run the government and write the laws and monopolize the justice departments.)
God sent Jesus to offer us mercy. But we knocked him down, tortured him. Do we "own" the mercy?
Do kleptocrats have God by the short hairs? Or is God just giving us, still, all the rope we need to hang ourselves? An infinity of times.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Law: Nature, God, Science, Society
If scientific law and nature's law and God's law are not one and the same then is there something wrong with science? or nature? or God? or the society which has such concepts?
That's what I just wrote among my Law quotes at my pKnatzQuotes blog. I hope the statement implies the essay that belongs with it. I post the statement here where such an essay might develop.
Initially I'll say only that I don't believe that human governments, kleptocracies all (these days) are competent to administer science: and if we don't know what the truth is, how can we write laws? how can we hear laws? I don't trust the Church's word on God; I don't trust the US' word on what the "people" say; I don't trust the Times to know or tell the "news"; I don't trust schools to know what science is: and that includes Harvard, MIT!
That's what I just wrote among my Law quotes at my pKnatzQuotes blog. I hope the statement implies the essay that belongs with it. I post the statement here where such an essay might develop.
Initially I'll say only that I don't believe that human governments, kleptocracies all (these days) are competent to administer science: and if we don't know what the truth is, how can we write laws? how can we hear laws? I don't trust the Church's word on God; I don't trust the US' word on what the "people" say; I don't trust the Times to know or tell the "news"; I don't trust schools to know what science is: and that includes Harvard, MIT!
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Monday, December 14, 2009
Competence
God, order ... law ... These are ideas that humans have without the competence to contemplate them well.
Friday, December 04, 2009
Culture
Culture is a faith-based phenomenon: evidence gets ridden over roughshod. Americans believe (as they're told) that they're "free" (while the government has its hand in all pockets, while school is compulsory ...), Christians believe that they're "saved" (while Jesus' disciples still get arrested ...), "scientists" believe that they're "rational" (while whatever ...) (Once the FBI lab has been caught falsifying evidence, why is there still a funded FBI lab? Why once university labs have been caught falsifying evidence are there still university labs? Why are there still governments? schools? (and universities?) Why are there still churches? Cheats from the get-go.
Culture, that's why.
Human cultures typically believe that they are competent at theology, science, history ... How many of those beliefs would bear testing? How are we going to stop God from being objective in his tests at Judgment? What percentage of God's messages have penetrated the culture to reach the target audience? Some? Any? Certainly not all.
I believe the answer is Some. Very few. And none that I've been involved in. The crazy thing is: the culture's soldier ants – cops, teachers, bureaucrats – don't even see what they're doing. They think they're "right"!
Knatz.com had many modules on culture. The above blurt is merely today's. I'll be restoring the earlier modules here at IonaArc as I can.
Culture, that's why.
Human cultures typically believe that they are competent at theology, science, history ... How many of those beliefs would bear testing? How are we going to stop God from being objective in his tests at Judgment? What percentage of God's messages have penetrated the culture to reach the target audience? Some? Any? Certainly not all.
I believe the answer is Some. Very few. And none that I've been involved in. The crazy thing is: the culture's soldier ants – cops, teachers, bureaucrats – don't even see what they're doing. They think they're "right"!
Knatz.com had many modules on culture. The above blurt is merely today's. I'll be restoring the earlier modules here at IonaArc as I can.
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Finch Bump
I tend to think of myself as "always" having been a teacher, and a great one, but this morning I recalled an incident from my adolescence proving that any such impression is far from true: an early attempt at teaching was ill-advised, unsuccessful, and turned brutal.
Pre-teen pk was always doing the neighbors' gardening, had a big newspaper delivery route, had a drawer full of money: and few expenses, very few vices: I'd indulge in malted milkshakes and Clark Bars at the worst. Generally the only other things that I bought were jazz records, a few of those weekly, but this memory involves an exception. I was in a pet store. One cage was active with tiny birds, "half" of which seemed to be in the air at one time changing perches. They were colorful in a pattern and of a combination of hues I wasn't familiar with: subdued grays, yellows: harlequins of subtlety. "Finches": $n.nn each, the sign said. I wanted that activity, I wanted to own it, to have it. I bought a cage and one of those finches for it, took it home, and hung it in our front enclosed porch.
The solitary finch was active I suppose; but nothing like the crowd of finches had been. Already I felt let down. But I didn't dwell on my disappointment, I had plans: I was going to train this finch. I was going to train this finch to perch on my finger. But my hand in the cage drove the finch crazy. Now the finch was hyper-active, didn't alight for more than a moment. A solution occurred to me: the finch will fear the wooden perch less than my finger: train the finch to the perch that I'm holding, then train the finch to perch closer and closer till the finch will perch on my finger.
But of course twelve or thirteen year old Paul had no experience with training anything, had no concept of time passing for individuals and populations. My finch was fleeing the perch I held just as manically as it had fled my finger in the cage. The poor bird was wearing itself out and was losing agility. I decided that we needed a break in our training. I topped up the finch's seed and water bowls and left it alone.
The next session went no better. But I had another idea. The bird might learn more to my satisfaction if the perch I held for it were longer, further away from the me he hadn't yet learned to love and trust. Sho nuff, I had a dowel in the basement. I had a dowel of a diameter the finch could grip. I got the dowel. Now we needed more room. The cage was too small. I closed the door between the porch and the living room to confine my circus to the enclosed porch and let the finch out. Immediately the finch flew as far away form me a possible and clung to a curtain at the top of a side window. No, no, train yourself to ME, I beamed my thoughts at the terrified bird. I approached the finch, holding the long perch out for it. But the dowel poking near its belly just drove the finch to the other end of the porch. This was not going at all the way I'd hoped and planned.
In a word: now I was getting tired. The bird would cling to the curtain top at the north end of the porch, but flee to the south end as soon as I re-crossed the porch near the middle. And something else was happening: the bird was beginning to poop all over the porch in its desperate flights. Paul's circus rehearsal was out of hand.
My grip on the dowel tightened. Had my face enough age to show a little character I'd start to look more like Bogart and less like Alan Ladd, more like Lillian Gish's father in Broken Blossoms and less like Lillian Gish, more like Wiley Coyote and less like Tweety Bird. I approached the center of the room. The finch saw me coming, and flew past me, high up near the ceiling.
I didn't plan it. I didn't see it coming. My action showed me that I didn't know myself at all. I swung the dowel like a saber. I slashed at my poor new pet.
Luck was against us, in the extreme. I connected. The little finch was knocked cold, clean out of the air, and lay on the carpet. I was heartbroken. What had I done? I picked it up, cradled it in my hands, blurted that I was sorry. Like a balloon the finch's finch beak inflated into a bump that seemed bigger than the finch. Did you ever see a bird with a bump on its beak? A bird that was all beak to begin with?
I put the bird back into its cage. The bird came to, and reclaimed a spot on a perch. But not for long. The finch fell to the cage floor. Before long it expired. I threw the corpse away, moved the empty cage to the basement. I'm not sure what young Paul learned that day; but old pk learned something: because just recalling the story this morning I realize: I'd forgotten completely about it! I learned that I hadn't learned to teach in one I'll-tell-you-whether-you-want-to-hear-it-or-not session.
Pre-teen pk was always doing the neighbors' gardening, had a big newspaper delivery route, had a drawer full of money: and few expenses, very few vices: I'd indulge in malted milkshakes and Clark Bars at the worst. Generally the only other things that I bought were jazz records, a few of those weekly, but this memory involves an exception. I was in a pet store. One cage was active with tiny birds, "half" of which seemed to be in the air at one time changing perches. They were colorful in a pattern and of a combination of hues I wasn't familiar with: subdued grays, yellows: harlequins of subtlety. "Finches": $n.nn each, the sign said. I wanted that activity, I wanted to own it, to have it. I bought a cage and one of those finches for it, took it home, and hung it in our front enclosed porch.
The solitary finch was active I suppose; but nothing like the crowd of finches had been. Already I felt let down. But I didn't dwell on my disappointment, I had plans: I was going to train this finch. I was going to train this finch to perch on my finger. But my hand in the cage drove the finch crazy. Now the finch was hyper-active, didn't alight for more than a moment. A solution occurred to me: the finch will fear the wooden perch less than my finger: train the finch to the perch that I'm holding, then train the finch to perch closer and closer till the finch will perch on my finger.
But of course twelve or thirteen year old Paul had no experience with training anything, had no concept of time passing for individuals and populations. My finch was fleeing the perch I held just as manically as it had fled my finger in the cage. The poor bird was wearing itself out and was losing agility. I decided that we needed a break in our training. I topped up the finch's seed and water bowls and left it alone.
The next session went no better. But I had another idea. The bird might learn more to my satisfaction if the perch I held for it were longer, further away from the me he hadn't yet learned to love and trust. Sho nuff, I had a dowel in the basement. I had a dowel of a diameter the finch could grip. I got the dowel. Now we needed more room. The cage was too small. I closed the door between the porch and the living room to confine my circus to the enclosed porch and let the finch out. Immediately the finch flew as far away form me a possible and clung to a curtain at the top of a side window. No, no, train yourself to ME, I beamed my thoughts at the terrified bird. I approached the finch, holding the long perch out for it. But the dowel poking near its belly just drove the finch to the other end of the porch. This was not going at all the way I'd hoped and planned.
In a word: now I was getting tired. The bird would cling to the curtain top at the north end of the porch, but flee to the south end as soon as I re-crossed the porch near the middle. And something else was happening: the bird was beginning to poop all over the porch in its desperate flights. Paul's circus rehearsal was out of hand.
My grip on the dowel tightened. Had my face enough age to show a little character I'd start to look more like Bogart and less like Alan Ladd, more like Lillian Gish's father in Broken Blossoms and less like Lillian Gish, more like Wiley Coyote and less like Tweety Bird. I approached the center of the room. The finch saw me coming, and flew past me, high up near the ceiling.
I didn't plan it. I didn't see it coming. My action showed me that I didn't know myself at all. I swung the dowel like a saber. I slashed at my poor new pet.
Luck was against us, in the extreme. I connected. The little finch was knocked cold, clean out of the air, and lay on the carpet. I was heartbroken. What had I done? I picked it up, cradled it in my hands, blurted that I was sorry. Like a balloon the finch's finch beak inflated into a bump that seemed bigger than the finch. Did you ever see a bird with a bump on its beak? A bird that was all beak to begin with?
I put the bird back into its cage. The bird came to, and reclaimed a spot on a perch. But not for long. The finch fell to the cage floor. Before long it expired. I threw the corpse away, moved the empty cage to the basement. I'm not sure what young Paul learned that day; but old pk learned something: because just recalling the story this morning I realize: I'd forgotten completely about it! I learned that I hadn't learned to teach in one I'll-tell-you-whether-you-want-to-hear-it-or-not session.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Shakespearean World
A world in which Shakespeare is revered, preserved, assigned doesn't spawn more Shakespeare; it spawns academic dreck. The "Shakespearean" world is chock-a-block choked with dreck writing: writing by the trained, by the certified.
(Did you ever read a document written by a school board? or by an English department? (Not by an English teacher; by an English department? (or a math department, or a history department ...?)))
(Media then save us: till media are saturated with media dreck.)
(Did you ever read a document written by a school board? or by an English department? (Not by an English teacher; by an English department? (or a math department, or a history department ...?)))
(Media then save us: till media are saturated with media dreck.)
Superstition
That we've outgrown superstition is the principal superstition today.
I don't believe that Alan Watts had any greater title than The Book: On the Taboo of Knowing Who We Are. That taboo applies as much today (if not more) than it did the day Watts' book was published.
What could be more pathetic
than a people who've replaced sexual terror
with an AIDS epidemic thinking that not
instantly jailing pornographers from the wrong
social station means that there are no taboos?
than a people who've replaced sexual terror
with an AIDS epidemic thinking that not
instantly jailing pornographers from the wrong
social station means that there are no taboos?
I don't believe that Alan Watts had any greater title than The Book: On the Taboo of Knowing Who We Are. That taboo applies as much today (if not more) than it did the day Watts' book was published.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Secular Absolution
"Te absolvo," says the priest to the sinner. "I absolve you." The Church spreads this idea that God can forgive sin and that God delegates his powers to the Church and the Church passes the miracle along to the priest.
That was once upon a time. The sinner could exploit the peasants, starve the workers, rape the virgin ... give a coin to the priest to help build St. Peter's Basilica, and the priest could say, "I absolve you." God was supposed to have to make good on it. (Who do you sue if he doesn't? The priest is personally without property: the Church owns all the property. Besides, you're dead before you realize you've been deceived: and of course the Church doesn't believe its own lies, or it would realize that all the defrauded souls would start howling.) (Besides: starving workers wasn't "sin"; sin was sacrificing to Baal, or eating pork, sacrificing a lamb with a a flaw, a mark on it, ... sin was holding your dick with your right hand ... failing to observe some taboo, failing to be precise in some ritual ...)
But now God isn't God: now the State is God. No one gives a shit about divine grace. No: we want secular salvation: from our secular god, the State: and the state buys our love with secular absolution: we steal a continent from the natives, Washington forgives us as we do it. We waste God's grace: Washington forgives us.
The State is the kleptocrats' proxy thief. DC steals cybernetic networking of the public from Jesus-Illich-pk, but perverts it into the planned obsolescence already reigning. But then the kleptocrats' thief absolves the kleptocrats. The left hand knoweth not what the right hand doeth: or pretends not to.
more, smoother, later
That was once upon a time. The sinner could exploit the peasants, starve the workers, rape the virgin ... give a coin to the priest to help build St. Peter's Basilica, and the priest could say, "I absolve you." God was supposed to have to make good on it. (Who do you sue if he doesn't? The priest is personally without property: the Church owns all the property. Besides, you're dead before you realize you've been deceived: and of course the Church doesn't believe its own lies, or it would realize that all the defrauded souls would start howling.) (Besides: starving workers wasn't "sin"; sin was sacrificing to Baal, or eating pork, sacrificing a lamb with a a flaw, a mark on it, ... sin was holding your dick with your right hand ... failing to observe some taboo, failing to be precise in some ritual ...)
But now God isn't God: now the State is God. No one gives a shit about divine grace. No: we want secular salvation: from our secular god, the State: and the state buys our love with secular absolution: we steal a continent from the natives, Washington forgives us as we do it. We waste God's grace: Washington forgives us.
The State is the kleptocrats' proxy thief. DC steals cybernetic networking of the public from Jesus-Illich-pk, but perverts it into the planned obsolescence already reigning. But then the kleptocrats' thief absolves the kleptocrats. The left hand knoweth not what the right hand doeth: or pretends not to.
more, smoother, later
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Monopoly
Say "monopoly" and we think "industry": or "markets. We think economics, money.
As I think the term money definitely applies but as secondary, far secondary, to power, to influence: to control. Social control, the control of the minds of the subjects of a kleptocracy. It doesn't just apply to the west but we westerners think the west is the world: our exposure is western, our schooling is western ... like Judeo-Christianity.
There: Judeo-Christianity: a set of religions of monopoly. One Temple, One Church, claims that One God created, owns, rules all. Monopoly.
The one Church claims one orthodoxy: no discussion allowed. Or, if there is discussion, the discussion is faked. This Protestant once sat in on a confraternity for Catholics. A priest gave us the dirty on what was wrong with the movie Martin Luther. He asked if any of us had seen it. I said I had. I asked if he had seen it: he hadn't. Yet he was lecturing us: from ignorance. Ignorance as authority: that's monopoly.
In the one US the government monopolizes the gold: and the schools, and the taxes, and the law, and the justice ... and the jails ... Oh, pardon me: control may be fought over among the federal level, the state level, and the county level ... When I was in jail I watched in stitches as the state cheated the fed while the county cheated the state.
This could extend in any of many directions. No doubt I'll be back: if I live, and can still see, and have fingers.
As I think the term money definitely applies but as secondary, far secondary, to power, to influence: to control. Social control, the control of the minds of the subjects of a kleptocracy. It doesn't just apply to the west but we westerners think the west is the world: our exposure is western, our schooling is western ... like Judeo-Christianity.
There: Judeo-Christianity: a set of religions of monopoly. One Temple, One Church, claims that One God created, owns, rules all. Monopoly.
The one Church claims one orthodoxy: no discussion allowed. Or, if there is discussion, the discussion is faked. This Protestant once sat in on a confraternity for Catholics. A priest gave us the dirty on what was wrong with the movie Martin Luther. He asked if any of us had seen it. I said I had. I asked if he had seen it: he hadn't. Yet he was lecturing us: from ignorance. Ignorance as authority: that's monopoly.
In the one US the government monopolizes the gold: and the schools, and the taxes, and the law, and the justice ... and the jails ... Oh, pardon me: control may be fought over among the federal level, the state level, and the county level ... When I was in jail I watched in stitches as the state cheated the fed while the county cheated the state.
This could extend in any of many directions. No doubt I'll be back: if I live, and can still see, and have fingers.
Embracing Injustice
I embrace injustice.
Injustice is all I've gotten, all I'm gonna get. I might as well embrace it: I've got to embrace something.
Could that be what Jesus meant by loving your enemies? On the cross did Jesus love those who were crucifying him? If his need for love was desperate enough, he'd have to: because the mortal agony was all he had left!
Injustice is all I've gotten, all I'm gonna get. I might as well embrace it: I've got to embrace something.
Could that be what Jesus meant by loving your enemies? On the cross did Jesus love those who were crucifying him? If his need for love was desperate enough, he'd have to: because the mortal agony was all he had left!
Friday, November 20, 2009
Dancing Thoughts
Cha Cha for the Hands
I'd been taking requests all morning at my line dancing class when I announced that we'd do the Special K Cha Cha: I reviewed the sequence of steps and selected Marc Anthony's I Need to Know on the CD player.
Highlands Senior Social:
Ahn, Paul, Barbara, Jean
I love the dance, and I love the song. I love Marc Anthony's polyphonic composition and his precise performance. I enjoy dancing with the core of dancers who were on the floor with me at the moment: Nancy, Isabel, Barbara, Joyce. Others would join us but not yet. At the end of the number Isabel and Barbara were conferring on something:One said, "I've got the steps, I'm trying to learn the hand movements."
"There are no hand movements," I said. "Do what ever seems natural."
(And Jim Clark, setting up his guitar amp for the ballroom band that would begin playing at 10, volunteered, "My utilities guy says, 'Do whatever spins the meter'.") There was no time at the time to make sure that my point was clear (or to make sure I'd heard them right) (my hearing being none too reliable these days) (so I'm not even sure they were talking about the Special K, the dance we'd just danced). But my thoughts for the rest of the class were teeming with associations, clarifications ... analogies. I share some here:
Whole Body
There isn't any part of Michael Jackson's body that wasn't part of the dance he accompanied his "singing" with. Every digit of every finger, his ears, his ear lobe, knew exactly where each sixteenth beat was. It would almost seem that simultaneously every follicle of his hair knew as well where each third of each beat was. Fred Astaire was in total command of his body and was wholly at one with the swing music: as Michael Jackson was one with the funk. And it isn't just dancers: back in the 1950s I loved to watch Horace Silver while I listened to his music. Different parts of his body pulsed with each of the several variations of the rhythm he was exploring. His left foot was tapping one rhythm while his right foot was beating another, his head was nodding with a different emphasis while his elbows made rude comments: all while playing the most unbelievable funky piano accompaniment to his band. Charlie Parker's drummer told of the immortal saxophonist demonstrating rhythmic independence for him. Bird took over the drum set, his alto sax still strung from his neck, and kicked a Charleston beat on the high hat, a Dixie beat on the bass drum, beat triplets on the snare drum with one stick while accenting quarter note triplets on the tom tom with the other. That's the sort of rhythmic juggling the saxophonist can do! Each digit is alive!
For line dancing the choreography may cover only the feet (the body necessarily following) but the dance welcomes the whole body, mind, and spirit.
If the women had been referring to the Special K, and liked what I was doing with my hands, good, let them do something similar: or something different. We're all dancing, all dancers. (And it helps if the body has natural resonance to music (and is trained into mastery of some of the subdivisions of time). We're not the Rockettes, identical in as many details as the Roxy Theater can control; we're free: within a prescription.
Let me narrate an analogy:
Analogy: Skiing
I didn't ski till I was twenty-two or -three. Once I skied I became mad for it. I injured myself almost instantly, but didn't stop. By my third trip I was skiing expert slopes with names like Hell Gate. But it was several years before I skied those expert slopes well: well enough so that lifetime racers at Tuckermans Ravine accepted me as one of them. I remember a watershed moment which transformed me from not-really expert to expert enough. My best ski buddies at Sugarloaf Mountain in Maine were instructors there. Hubbie was a German professor at Colby during the week and Herr Skimeister on the weekends. In all our time together Hubbie never "instructed" me in anything: till one day. He said he bet that if I cut a quarter of an inch off my ski poles it would help me get my weight forward for the pole plant. I did it. With my new shorter poles I made sure that each turn commenced with me coming forward to plant the pole tip right by the tip of my ski. It was magic. I was transformed. I instantly became a better balanced, more dynamic, more graceful skier! (And more courageous! (I was already far more daring than suited my wife (or my employer).))
Then I realized that the length of my poles had nothing to do with it; the essential point was I wasn't getting my weight far enough forward in initiating the turn. Skiing safety depends on turns, and turning depends on alternately weighting and un-weighting. The weighted ski resists turning; the unweighted ski finds resistance unnoticeable. As long as I returned my weight forward for each change of edges I was rescuing myself from the natural tendency (natural cowardice) that causes intermediates to hang "back" on steep slopes: putting sludge into their turns, and inviting overturning. No, no. You get on top of gravity. You ride it. You keep your upper body in the fall line: while you swish your skis from side to side, like windshield wipers. We fall off the saddle every time we lag. Suddenly, even on the steepest slopes, where it counts most, I was skiing with my whole body.
It's a paradox: where the danger is the greatest, you throw yourself into the danger: then you dominate it.
Same applies to dance. Same applies to everything.
Lesson
Meter, Rhythm
Meter is the predictable side of the rhythm. The dances that I do are all either common time of waltz time: either 4/4 or 3/4: four beats to a "measure" or three beats to a measure. The music that I love to listen to, sing, or play may be in 5/4 time, or 6/8 time, or 2/2 time, and I wish I did encounter dances in those times (in 6/8 time especially, I do love 6/8 time) (and maybe some dances, like the polka, are in 2/2 time); but trust me: the line dances I encounter and the ballroom dances at our social are basically 4/4, with the occasional waltz thrown in. That's meter: meter declares what the rhythmic regularity is; but it ain't music till it becomes irregular, unpredictable. That's the rhythm: the part that's different, a part that one may fall in love with.
I find I Need to Know to be rhythmically fabulous: salsa of the highest sophistication. But though I also love the Special K Cha Cha, there's one thing about the dance I find week: its juncture between choruses. I would like to see it re-choreographed with a better turn around.
Juncture
My dance training consists of a two week course in the sixth grade, and some line dance participation in this my seventy-first year. I don't know if there are dance theorists who use either term; but they've got to have the concepts. I develop them by analogy from linguistics and from music. Juncture here is the border shared between two distinct things: like a sea shore; like the ending of chorus one and the beginning of chorus two ... Here's an example from linguistics: consider the phrase "night rates": now consider the word "nitrates." The phonemes are identical; yet in the one case we all clearly hear "two" "words"; while we hear one in the latter. The difference is one of juncture. "Night rates" separates the /t/ from the /r/; "nitrates" links them: blurs them.
I am not crazy about how the Special K cha cha recycles itself: how count #32 junctures against the next cycle starting with count #1. I think the juncture could be improved. Whereas I love some of the junctures we had just danced: Amos Moses, for example: of The Electric Slide. (Details may follow.)
Turn Around
"The turn around" is a musician's phrase: in jazz music, in pop music. Let's say you're playing a twelve bar blues. The song displays a harmonic and rhythmic pattern over twelve measures: that's the first chorus. When it's your chorus you play the same progression of chords, but your solo should "comment on" the melody; not just repeat the melody. (Miles regularly improvised counter melodies. That's why Bird was in love with the raw kid.) And no matter whose chorus it is, when the last two bars are arrived at, bars eleven and twelve, use chords that point at the final tonic chord; not the tonic chord itself. In other words, if the blues is in G, not only do you use a lot of 7ths (and maybe 9ths and 11ths and 13ths) (that's what makes it "far out"), your final measure will be G (or G7), the tonic, giving a sense of closure, of finality: but while cycling through the choruses you don't want it to close, you want to keep it open: so you substitute chords that "point at" G: Am7 / D7, for example. The Am7 / D7 chords turn the chorus back on itself: a final G will finish it.
Analogy: Writing
Here's a different analogy, from writing. Edgar Rice Burroughs ends a middle-of-the-novel chapter with Tarzan trapped in the pit with the lion: that keeps the narrative open, ongoing. Having him marry Jane is how Burroughs might close the last chapter: the end of the story.
Analogy: Ballroom
Analogy from ballroom dance: I dance a fox trot. I use my slow, slow, quick-quick step; I sense the tune ending: I put my partner into a spin: and we bow / curtsy to each other on the final beat. That's the tonic, the cadence, the closure: all before is ongoing: turn around.
Illustrations: Juncture
Line dances are all a given number of counts. The counts don't have to match the beats in the music. They typically don't. Pop music is often based in a sixteen measure pattern. the number of beats in a chorus is therefore four times sixteen = sixty-four. Line dances are typically sixteen beats, thirty-two beats, thirty-six beats ... It doesn't matter: 4/4 line dances will come out fine with 4/4 pop music. Never mind where the musicians' measure is; synch with the count of the dance.
I criticized the turn-around of the Special K ChaCha: I'll illustrate in a moment. First I'll set it up with an illustration of a turnaround, the juncture between repetition one and repetition another: in the line dance Amos Moses. Amos Moses is only eight counts. On 1 you place your right heel forward; on 2 you bring your right foot back beside your left, transferring your weight to your right foot. On 3 you place your left heel forward. On 4 you bring your left foot back with your right, but turn it one-quarter turn counter clockwise. If you started facing a north wall, you're now partly turned toward the west wall. On 5 you swing your hips square with the west wall as you bring your right foot into a step to your new right, the north wall. On 6 you step your left foot behind your right foot, a kind of a "vine" move to the right (north at the moment), transfer weight. On 7 you move your right foot further right (or north), but start to twist back clockwise (soon to face east), as on 8 your left foot follows your hips around to square with the east wall.
That's the "chorus": eight counts: eight counts with a quarter turn left and a half-the-hall turn right. You start out "north"; you end up east: after turning west: all in eight counts. But now here's the thing: you continue the dance. You recycle. Count #9 is a repetition of Count #1.
By itself, one 8-count cycle is cute. But you ain't seen nothin' yet. 5, 6, 7, 8 turns around into 1, 2, 3, 4. And the juncture is funky. Even a dancer with good balance will have a time maintaining an erect neutral posture from which to resume the right heel forward, right heel back, left heel forward, left foot turn ...
There a natural, an inevitable lag between your feet and your hips. Funky, man, move those hips. Come on girl, push that tush!
continues in a sec
I'd been taking requests all morning at my line dancing class when I announced that we'd do the Special K Cha Cha: I reviewed the sequence of steps and selected Marc Anthony's I Need to Know on the CD player.
Highlands Senior Social:
Ahn, Paul, Barbara, Jean
This pic is not of the class
but of a line dance during the regular morning session.
It looks to me like we're at
Count #13 of The Electric Slide.
but of a line dance during the regular morning session.
It looks to me like we're at
Count #13 of The Electric Slide.
I love the dance, and I love the song. I love Marc Anthony's polyphonic composition and his precise performance. I enjoy dancing with the core of dancers who were on the floor with me at the moment: Nancy, Isabel, Barbara, Joyce. Others would join us but not yet. At the end of the number Isabel and Barbara were conferring on something:
"There are no hand movements," I said. "Do what ever seems natural."
(And Jim Clark, setting up his guitar amp for the ballroom band that would begin playing at 10, volunteered, "My utilities guy says, 'Do whatever spins the meter'.")
Whole Body
There isn't any part of Michael Jackson's body that wasn't part of the dance he accompanied his "singing" with. Every digit of every finger, his ears, his ear lobe, knew exactly where each sixteenth beat was. It would almost seem that simultaneously every follicle of his hair knew as well where each third of each beat was. Fred Astaire was in total command of his body and was wholly at one with the swing music: as Michael Jackson was one with the funk. And it isn't just dancers: back in the 1950s I loved to watch Horace Silver while I listened to his music. Different parts of his body pulsed with each of the several variations of the rhythm he was exploring. His left foot was tapping one rhythm while his right foot was beating another, his head was nodding with a different emphasis while his elbows made rude comments: all while playing the most unbelievable funky piano accompaniment to his band. Charlie Parker's drummer told of the immortal saxophonist demonstrating rhythmic independence for him. Bird took over the drum set, his alto sax still strung from his neck, and kicked a Charleston beat on the high hat, a Dixie beat on the bass drum, beat triplets on the snare drum with one stick while accenting quarter note triplets on the tom tom with the other. That's the sort of rhythmic juggling the saxophonist can do! Each digit is alive!
For line dancing the choreography may cover only the feet (the body necessarily following) but the dance welcomes the whole body, mind, and spirit.
If the women had been referring to the Special K, and liked what I was doing with my hands, good, let them do something similar: or something different. We're all dancing, all dancers. (And it helps if the body has natural resonance to music (and is trained into mastery of some of the subdivisions of time). We're not the Rockettes, identical in as many details as the Roxy Theater can control; we're free: within a prescription.
Let me narrate an analogy:
Analogy: Skiing
I didn't ski till I was twenty-two or -three. Once I skied I became mad for it. I injured myself almost instantly, but didn't stop. By my third trip I was skiing expert slopes with names like Hell Gate. But it was several years before I skied those expert slopes well: well enough so that lifetime racers at Tuckermans Ravine accepted me as one of them. I remember a watershed moment which transformed me from not-really expert to expert enough. My best ski buddies at Sugarloaf Mountain in Maine were instructors there. Hubbie was a German professor at Colby during the week and Herr Skimeister on the weekends. In all our time together Hubbie never "instructed" me in anything: till one day. He said he bet that if I cut a quarter of an inch off my ski poles it would help me get my weight forward for the pole plant. I did it. With my new shorter poles I made sure that each turn commenced with me coming forward to plant the pole tip right by the tip of my ski. It was magic. I was transformed. I instantly became a better balanced, more dynamic, more graceful skier! (And more courageous! (I was already far more daring than suited my wife (or my employer).))
Then I realized that the length of my poles had nothing to do with it; the essential point was I wasn't getting my weight far enough forward in initiating the turn. Skiing safety depends on turns, and turning depends on alternately weighting and un-weighting. The weighted ski resists turning; the unweighted ski finds resistance unnoticeable. As long as I returned my weight forward for each change of edges I was rescuing myself from the natural tendency (natural cowardice) that causes intermediates to hang "back" on steep slopes: putting sludge into their turns, and inviting overturning. No, no. You get on top of gravity. You ride it. You keep your upper body in the fall line: while you swish your skis from side to side, like windshield wipers. We fall off the saddle every time we lag. Suddenly, even on the steepest slopes, where it counts most, I was skiing with my whole body.
It's a paradox: where the danger is the greatest, you throw yourself into the danger: then you dominate it.
Same applies to dance. Same applies to everything.
Lesson
| No matter the steps, the part prescribed, the part your feet have to do and do in synch with the others – Dance with your whole body. Use your arms, your hands, your fingers – not just for balance, but to express the rhythm, the dance, the music, yourself! |
Meter, Rhythm
Meter is the predictable side of the rhythm. The dances that I do are all either common time of waltz time: either 4/4 or 3/4: four beats to a "measure" or three beats to a measure. The music that I love to listen to, sing, or play may be in 5/4 time, or 6/8 time, or 2/2 time, and I wish I did encounter dances in those times (in 6/8 time especially, I do love 6/8 time) (and maybe some dances, like the polka, are in 2/2 time); but trust me: the line dances I encounter and the ballroom dances at our social are basically 4/4, with the occasional waltz thrown in. That's meter: meter declares what the rhythmic regularity is; but it ain't music till it becomes irregular, unpredictable. That's the rhythm: the part that's different, a part that one may fall in love with.
I find I Need to Know to be rhythmically fabulous: salsa of the highest sophistication. But though I also love the Special K Cha Cha, there's one thing about the dance I find week: its juncture between choruses. I would like to see it re-choreographed with a better turn around.
Illustrations in specific line dances will follow below.
Juncture
My dance training consists of a two week course in the sixth grade, and some line dance participation in this my seventy-first year. I don't know if there are dance theorists who use either term; but they've got to have the concepts. I develop them by analogy from linguistics and from music. Juncture here is the border shared between two distinct things: like a sea shore; like the ending of chorus one and the beginning of chorus two ... Here's an example from linguistics: consider the phrase "night rates": now consider the word "nitrates." The phonemes are identical; yet in the one case we all clearly hear "two" "words"; while we hear one in the latter. The difference is one of juncture. "Night rates" separates the /t/ from the /r/; "nitrates" links them: blurs them.
I am not crazy about how the Special K cha cha recycles itself: how count #32 junctures against the next cycle starting with count #1. I think the juncture could be improved. Whereas I love some of the junctures we had just danced: Amos Moses, for example: of The Electric Slide. (Details may follow.)
Turn Around
"The turn around" is a musician's phrase: in jazz music, in pop music. Let's say you're playing a twelve bar blues. The song displays a harmonic and rhythmic pattern over twelve measures: that's the first chorus. When it's your chorus you play the same progression of chords, but your solo should "comment on" the melody; not just repeat the melody. (Miles regularly improvised counter melodies. That's why Bird was in love with the raw kid.) And no matter whose chorus it is, when the last two bars are arrived at, bars eleven and twelve, use chords that point at the final tonic chord; not the tonic chord itself. In other words, if the blues is in G, not only do you use a lot of 7ths (and maybe 9ths and 11ths and 13ths) (that's what makes it "far out"), your final measure will be G (or G7), the tonic, giving a sense of closure, of finality: but while cycling through the choruses you don't want it to close, you want to keep it open: so you substitute chords that "point at" G: Am7 / D7, for example. The Am7 / D7 chords turn the chorus back on itself: a final G will finish it.
Analogy: Writing
Here's a different analogy, from writing. Edgar Rice Burroughs ends a middle-of-the-novel chapter with Tarzan trapped in the pit with the lion: that keeps the narrative open, ongoing. Having him marry Jane is how Burroughs might close the last chapter: the end of the story.
Analogy: Ballroom
Analogy from ballroom dance: I dance a fox trot. I use my slow, slow, quick-quick step; I sense the tune ending: I put my partner into a spin: and we bow / curtsy to each other on the final beat. That's the tonic, the cadence, the closure: all before is ongoing: turn around.
Illustrations: Juncture
Line dances are all a given number of counts. The counts don't have to match the beats in the music. They typically don't. Pop music is often based in a sixteen measure pattern. the number of beats in a chorus is therefore four times sixteen = sixty-four. Line dances are typically sixteen beats, thirty-two beats, thirty-six beats ... It doesn't matter: 4/4 line dances will come out fine with 4/4 pop music. Never mind where the musicians' measure is; synch with the count of the dance.
I criticized the turn-around of the Special K ChaCha: I'll illustrate in a moment. First I'll set it up with an illustration of a turnaround, the juncture between repetition one and repetition another: in the line dance Amos Moses. Amos Moses is only eight counts. On 1 you place your right heel forward; on 2 you bring your right foot back beside your left, transferring your weight to your right foot. On 3 you place your left heel forward. On 4 you bring your left foot back with your right, but turn it one-quarter turn counter clockwise. If you started facing a north wall, you're now partly turned toward the west wall. On 5 you swing your hips square with the west wall as you bring your right foot into a step to your new right, the north wall. On 6 you step your left foot behind your right foot, a kind of a "vine" move to the right (north at the moment), transfer weight. On 7 you move your right foot further right (or north), but start to twist back clockwise (soon to face east), as on 8 your left foot follows your hips around to square with the east wall.
That's the "chorus": eight counts: eight counts with a quarter turn left and a half-the-hall turn right. You start out "north"; you end up east: after turning west: all in eight counts. But now here's the thing: you continue the dance. You recycle. Count #9 is a repetition of Count #1.
By itself, one 8-count cycle is cute. But you ain't seen nothin' yet. 5, 6, 7, 8 turns around into 1, 2, 3, 4. And the juncture is funky. Even a dancer with good balance will have a time maintaining an erect neutral posture from which to resume the right heel forward, right heel back, left heel forward, left foot turn ...
There a natural, an inevitable lag between your feet and your hips. Funky, man, move those hips. Come on girl, push that tush!
continues in a sec
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Get Down
Soon after we married Hilary wanted a kitten. Soon she wanted a dog: to keep the kitten company. (Then she wanted a baby: just a little one, please.)
Hilary wanted a scottie, which we'd named Angus in advance. (Imagine our surprise when the pup we brought from Macy's puking all over the subway was a German shepherd.) I determined that I'd become a good dog trainer. When Angus chewed my slippers I spoke harshly to him. From then on Angus chewed only Hilary's slippers. I trained Angus never to get up on the couch. Thereafter Angus vacated the couch as soon as he heard us coming home: or at least as soon as he heard me coming home.
Once when Hilary was pregnant and walking Angus he pulled her down and dragged her. That time I ignored the book's admonition to make sharp noises near the dog, especially near the dog's snout, but never to actually hit the dog. I did hit Angus that time. I beat Angus. A lot of good it did. But someone clued me in: "How old is the dog," that person asked? "Is he two yet?" "No: a year and a half." "Never mind," he said, "Be patient. Until he's two he's a puppy: un-trainable. Once he's an adult you'll see your training take effect." Wow, was that true. Once Angus was two he proved to be the most amazingly intelligent and well behaved dog. I've already told some Angus stories elsewhere. The Fed in censoring my AgainstHierarch.org domain knocked all my domains, all three thousand of my text files off line and my couple of thousand graphics. Gradually I'm remounting some of the modules, but thus far I don't think any Angus stories have been resurrected. But I tell this Angus story for a different reason. Actually it's not an Angus story at all: it's a Paul story: a Paul and his society story.
You see: the one dog training lesson I got from the books that actually worked and worked almost right away, long before Angus was two, concerned training Angus not to jump up against people: pawing at their shins, thighs, and crotch. The book said to deflect the dog with your knee: wait till the dog is half way launched, where he can no longer see your knee coming. Then just stick your knee out and deflect the dog from landing against your legs or body. The book "explained" that the dog would eventually give up. Eventually the dog would assume from his failures to land on his target that human beings simply can not be jumped up against. By golly, whether or not that reason applied, the technique nevertheless worked. Angus stopped trying to climb people.
And now I see how very well the same technique should have worked on me, would have worked on me had I had any sense. All my life I've tried to explain things to my society: how to live like humans, how to be less shameful, less illegitimate, less foolish, less deadly ... I've devoted my talents to writing my messages as stories, as myths, as jokes ... as art. But the society doesn't want me jumping up against its vulnerable parts: so it just puts its knee out. No matter what I say, no matter how humorously I weave the matter, the society doesn't want my paws in its sensitive parts, and it deflects me. The stories aren't published, my professors all play Peanuts' Lucy and pull the football away before I can kick it. My novels aren't published. Finally my domain modules are outright censored.
But look: here I am: stupid me: still trying to communicate!!!!
Hilary wanted a scottie, which we'd named Angus in advance. (Imagine our surprise when the pup we brought from Macy's puking all over the subway was a German shepherd.) I determined that I'd become a good dog trainer. When Angus chewed my slippers I spoke harshly to him. From then on Angus chewed only Hilary's slippers. I trained Angus never to get up on the couch. Thereafter Angus vacated the couch as soon as he heard us coming home: or at least as soon as he heard me coming home.
Once when Hilary was pregnant and walking Angus he pulled her down and dragged her. That time I ignored the book's admonition to make sharp noises near the dog, especially near the dog's snout, but never to actually hit the dog. I did hit Angus that time. I beat Angus. A lot of good it did. But someone clued me in: "How old is the dog," that person asked? "Is he two yet?" "No: a year and a half." "Never mind," he said, "Be patient. Until he's two he's a puppy: un-trainable. Once he's an adult you'll see your training take effect." Wow, was that true. Once Angus was two he proved to be the most amazingly intelligent and well behaved dog. I've already told some Angus stories elsewhere. The Fed in censoring my AgainstHierarch.org domain knocked all my domains, all three thousand of my text files off line and my couple of thousand graphics. Gradually I'm remounting some of the modules, but thus far I don't think any Angus stories have been resurrected. But I tell this Angus story for a different reason. Actually it's not an Angus story at all: it's a Paul story: a Paul and his society story.
You see: the one dog training lesson I got from the books that actually worked and worked almost right away, long before Angus was two, concerned training Angus not to jump up against people: pawing at their shins, thighs, and crotch. The book said to deflect the dog with your knee: wait till the dog is half way launched, where he can no longer see your knee coming. Then just stick your knee out and deflect the dog from landing against your legs or body. The book "explained" that the dog would eventually give up. Eventually the dog would assume from his failures to land on his target that human beings simply can not be jumped up against. By golly, whether or not that reason applied, the technique nevertheless worked. Angus stopped trying to climb people.
And now I see how very well the same technique should have worked on me, would have worked on me had I had any sense. All my life I've tried to explain things to my society: how to live like humans, how to be less shameful, less illegitimate, less foolish, less deadly ... I've devoted my talents to writing my messages as stories, as myths, as jokes ... as art. But the society doesn't want me jumping up against its vulnerable parts: so it just puts its knee out. No matter what I say, no matter how humorously I weave the matter, the society doesn't want my paws in its sensitive parts, and it deflects me. The stories aren't published, my professors all play Peanuts' Lucy and pull the football away before I can kick it. My novels aren't published. Finally my domain modules are outright censored.
But look: here I am: stupid me: still trying to communicate!!!!
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Self
Everyone thinks "only" of his self.
("His" there is of course a [sic] joke. Language contorts us before we even begin to model experience.)
But understand: the self is an idea: an idea which always (the older one gets) includes others.
A mother's self will include her baby,a lover's self will include the beloved,
a soldier's self may include not only his buddies but his enemy.
As pk is always saying, there isn't anything in human consciousness that isn't an idea. Our only "contact" with the cosmos is through signs, symbols, information. The mind (an abstract) is based in a wetware of electrical switches. There are no concrete things there. None. (Except the wetware itself.)
("His" there is of course a [sic] joke. Language contorts us before we even begin to model experience.)
But understand: the self is an idea: an idea which always (the older one gets) includes others.
a soldier's self may include not only his buddies but his enemy.
As pk is always saying, there isn't anything in human consciousness that isn't an idea. Our only "contact" with the cosmos is through signs, symbols, information. The mind (an abstract) is based in a wetware of electrical switches. There are no concrete things there. None. (Except the wetware itself.)
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Dummy Tackles
An article online this morning reminds me of an old conundrum of mine. NFL teams drill their players in running, blocking, passing ... but all punches are pulled in tackling practice. They practice everything hard: except tackling. They don't want to injure their own stars. Come Sunday each team's stars can waltz through the other team's punch pullers.
Kids grow up playing Bang Bang, You're Dead. I did. And I was steeped in cowboy movies with their bar fights, John Wayne taking a punch, shaking it off, and powing the other guy. At the end of the cowboy movie Gary Cooper would shoot umpteen bad guys so he could finally go one on one against Frank Miller and kill him dead, Grace Kelly then forgetting her Quaker foolishness and giving him a kiss. Real gun fights really killed people; Hollywood has only one Gary Cooper: so Hollywood chairs crumble to sawdust when crashed on his head, Hollywood haymakers just miss: and the actors playing the heavies get to sue big time if they sustain a bruise from practice with Jean Claude Van Damm. As a kid my Christian training made me resist enjoying the general culture's training: one hour of love and tolerance on Sunday has a hard time standing up against 24/7-1 of Hopalong Cassidy getting hit with sawdust chairs. I refused cooperation in following John Wayne and Gene Autry. It wasn't until I was at college and started going out of the general way to watch Akira Kurosawa's direction of Toshiro Mifune in chopping off heads and cutting people out of their kimonos with his katana.
I discovered that I loved the violence: violence with a heavy moral always. Then I'd watch Mifune go one on one (or one on a dozen) in any director's samurai flick. But by that time I was an adult (of sorts: do any of us ever really reach adulthood?) I loved art, including cinematic art, but I loved science too: Darwin, evolution, Bateson ... And I thought and thought: how can it be good for the species for "our" hero to kill "their" hero? (Or for their hero to kill our hero?) If the Yankees beat the Dodgers every year, why were there still Dodgers to beat next year? (I never doubted that the lords of Flatbush wanted to raid the Bronx (or beter yet, Manhattan) and rape and pillage, leaving none alive.)
If Gary Cooper shoots every other six footer every two hours, how can there even be one six foot Gary Cooper?
Now, restate the problem: if the NFL players really played to tear each others head off, how can there be more than one NFL player left with a head? And if all punches are pulled, if all is Hollywood, how come there are real fatalities in real wars? Are there any real wars? The NFL doesn't mean to practice fakery, but that IS what they practice. Come Sunday heads get torn off only by accident: and then everyone howls.
Why howl for blood, and then howl if there is blood? (Is that what it is to be human these days?)
Once upon a time wars were to kill enemies. But then war changed. Now wars are to kill a few so the surviving bulk can be ruled: as passive consumers. The Romans killed the Celts to take over their salt mines without paying them any royalty. Modern Romans (like us) kill as few Celts as possible: so we can own the salt mine, paying surviving Celts peanuts to work the mine: and then sell them the salt!
Ah, I've wandered into related areas. I meant to stick with the one point: lions competing against hyenas on the savanna can kill the hyena without much visible harm to the lions, but the big male lions can't kill all the other big male lions without harming the lions as a whole.
In the wake of worshipping Kurosawa's costume flix I heard about martial arts tournaments where the combatants could break bones, maim, and maybe kill each other, all scrambling for the one top spot. Musashi doesn't just beat Kojiro; Musashi kills Kojiro. (And Kojiro doesn't mind: he wanted to discover whose bushido was better: and Musashi shows him).
I'll develop this further later.
Kids grow up playing Bang Bang, You're Dead. I did. And I was steeped in cowboy movies with their bar fights, John Wayne taking a punch, shaking it off, and powing the other guy. At the end of the cowboy movie Gary Cooper would shoot umpteen bad guys so he could finally go one on one against Frank Miller and kill him dead, Grace Kelly then forgetting her Quaker foolishness and giving him a kiss. Real gun fights really killed people; Hollywood has only one Gary Cooper: so Hollywood chairs crumble to sawdust when crashed on his head, Hollywood haymakers just miss: and the actors playing the heavies get to sue big time if they sustain a bruise from practice with Jean Claude Van Damm. As a kid my Christian training made me resist enjoying the general culture's training: one hour of love and tolerance on Sunday has a hard time standing up against 24/7-1 of Hopalong Cassidy getting hit with sawdust chairs. I refused cooperation in following John Wayne and Gene Autry. It wasn't until I was at college and started going out of the general way to watch Akira Kurosawa's direction of Toshiro Mifune in chopping off heads and cutting people out of their kimonos with his katana.
I discovered that I loved the violence: violence with a heavy moral always. Then I'd watch Mifune go one on one (or one on a dozen) in any director's samurai flick. But by that time I was an adult (of sorts: do any of us ever really reach adulthood?) I loved art, including cinematic art, but I loved science too: Darwin, evolution, Bateson ... And I thought and thought: how can it be good for the species for "our" hero to kill "their" hero? (Or for their hero to kill our hero?) If the Yankees beat the Dodgers every year, why were there still Dodgers to beat next year? (I never doubted that the lords of Flatbush wanted to raid the Bronx (or beter yet, Manhattan) and rape and pillage, leaving none alive.)
If Gary Cooper shoots every other six footer every two hours, how can there even be one six foot Gary Cooper?
Now, restate the problem: if the NFL players really played to tear each others head off, how can there be more than one NFL player left with a head? And if all punches are pulled, if all is Hollywood, how come there are real fatalities in real wars? Are there any real wars? The NFL doesn't mean to practice fakery, but that IS what they practice. Come Sunday heads get torn off only by accident: and then everyone howls.
Why howl for blood, and then howl if there is blood? (Is that what it is to be human these days?)
Once upon a time wars were to kill enemies. But then war changed. Now wars are to kill a few so the surviving bulk can be ruled: as passive consumers. The Romans killed the Celts to take over their salt mines without paying them any royalty. Modern Romans (like us) kill as few Celts as possible: so we can own the salt mine, paying surviving Celts peanuts to work the mine: and then sell them the salt!
Ah, I've wandered into related areas. I meant to stick with the one point: lions competing against hyenas on the savanna can kill the hyena without much visible harm to the lions, but the big male lions can't kill all the other big male lions without harming the lions as a whole.
In the wake of worshipping Kurosawa's costume flix I heard about martial arts tournaments where the combatants could break bones, maim, and maybe kill each other, all scrambling for the one top spot. Musashi doesn't just beat Kojiro; Musashi kills Kojiro. (And Kojiro doesn't mind: he wanted to discover whose bushido was better: and Musashi shows him).
I'll develop this further later.
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