You may be a vegetarian or even like vegetables, but you
don’t want to turn into one. With robots or bots as they’re called becoming
ascendant there's a tendency to try to compete with expeditious
mechanical objects that exude no discernible affect. Even robots possessing a
high degree of A.I. have a vegetative affect, to the extent that they
experience highs or lows. Computer generated voice recognition systems and
robo callers all get the job done, but there's a lack of the kind of emotion that
makes for a memorable experience. The
recent e coli scare with regard to romaine lettuce should put people on guard ("E. Coli Outbreak Tied to Romaine Lettuce Expands to Sixteen States," NYT, 4/19/18) Vegetables are not all that their cracked up to be. Sure a vegetable is a
living thing but it doesn’t cluck like a chicken, moo like a cow or oink like a
pig and when all is done and masticated, you end up imbibing a lower level
experience. Edamame does not produce the silence of lambs. Ersatz meats that
are made from tofu do not elicit that famous Wendy's “where’s the beef? that produces the Robert Ringer Looking
Out for #1 kind of feeling. A couch potato doesn’t appear out of nowhere.
He or she is the product of eating too many carbohydrates.
Monday, April 30, 2018
Friday, April 27, 2018
The Return of Marco Polo's World
In a review of Robert D. Kaplan’s The Return of Marco Polo’s World: War, Strategy, and American Interests
in the Twenty-First Century ("Foreign Policy From the Dark Side," NYT, 3/28/18) Bret Stephens quotes the
author thusly, “The very idea that some sermon or blog or tweet has gone viral is a sad reflection on the state
of individualism in the 21st century. The electronic swarm is a
negation of loneliness that prepares the way for the new ideologies of
totalitarianism.” Kaplan’s locution is a brilliant statement on the narcotic
effect of technology. The internet of everything has become so all consuming
that solitude is misperceived as depression. The Opium of the Intellectuals is the title of a book by Raymond Aron rephrasing Marx’s famous quote, but it's not ideology as the hive mentality that's increasingly becoming operant in
political culture. Populism has come a long way from the era of La Follette and
Huey Long. Now it’s a tribal mentality whose ethos is ultimately technology.
Tyrants spare their followings from the burden of freedom by offering a cloak of belief.
But cybernetics has ultimately created a
human ant colony that’s ruled not by thinkers but algorithms masking as
historical dialectics.
Thursday, April 26, 2018
The Fifth Law of Thermodynamics: Things Pile Up
There should be a law of nature dealing with the fact that
things seem to pile up. It might even be the Fifth Law of Thermodynamics. When
bad things happen they come in herds and the good news in flocks. It’s actually
a singularity when one bad or good thing happens. To some extent this
is understandable. Say you’ve been turned down for an important job. You're more likely to be in a bad mood and experience road rage which can lead to an
accident or uncomfortable confrontation that leaves you feeling even worse than
if you'd gotten the job. Or you might go
home and fight with your wife or partner and end up leaving scars or
even in a huff saying things you didn’t mean that cause the relation to break
up. Conversely, let’s say you got the job, you're more likely to succeed with
that person with whom you wanted to get into a relationship AND you might get
that rent stabilized apartment you’ve coveted thrown in with the bargain. The
positive attitude that emerges on the heels of your success leads to further
success. It’s kind of the way money works. The rich get richer since they
always have money to invest, while the poor get poorer simply because they have
to use up every cent they have to survive. As the old adage goes, one door closes, another closes.
Wednesday, April 25, 2018
Pornosophy: The Joys and Pitfalls of Domesticity
Domesticity can be a source of great solace. You see the
same person all the time, and in the most intimate settings imaginable, and you
don’t think twice about it. Though they’re the center of your life, it’s as if
they don’t exist. Same sex roommates rarely experience the kind of enmeshment
that characterizes couples who have come out of the romantic stages of their
relationships and are in for the long haul. There's even a scene during Performance a l970 film about a
reclusive rock star where the characters played by Mick Jagger and Anita
Pallenberg evince an almost horrifying familiarity with each other as they walk
around in their underwear. It’s possible to reduce even the sexiest of stars to
a humdrum lifestyle which was one of the achievements of the film. But it’s
important not to let this go to far. Familiarity breeds contempt goes the old
saw and no one wants to get to the point where the sight of a once loved object
produces indifference. How to maintain sexual chemistry and the
comfort and trust that derives from routine? The answer is that it requires a
certain amount of work. Never get to the point where the sight of your other
half’s secondary sex characteristics is taken for granted. Like Kegel exercises
which increase bladder control, sexualization of partners requires practice. You
have to constant remind yourself that the person in front of you is not your
beloved so and so, but a naked man or woman. If you look at the one you love as
if they were a stranger, you will love them even more.
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
Dawn of the Dandy
In his review of Philip Mann’s The Dandy at Dusk (TLS,
2/23/18) Richard Canning quotes Oscar
Wilde thusly, “in so vulgar an age as this, we all need masks.” How far away
dandyism seems in this era of moral probity, with it’s language police and
politicized sexuality! How would the l9th century flaneur or boulvardier navigate affirmative consent? Talk about paradigm shifts, the dandy would
run aground in a time fixated on the notion of human betterment. As Mann says,
“Everything the dandy feels, does, says or wears reflects a desire to stop the
clocks.” You may not ever have met a dandy, but the basic idea is that of a
person who lives in a world of irony, who wears ancien looking clothes
(as least more ancien than the era he is living in) and talks with an
affectation that's a mockery of aristocracy. Of course the dandy is above
literally everything including aristocracy which usually puts him (sorry
dandyism not being politically correct is as Mann points out usually a male
affair) in a state of poverty. Though the Duke of Windsor and the French filmmaker
Jean-Pierre Melville are apparently cited by Mann, most dandies are above the
kind of ambitions that lead to wealth while at the same time being the product
of a self-invention that’s not usually the province of a blue or black-blooded
upper crust background. Dandies thrive in cosmopolitan settings and normally show little
interest in either healthy foods or environments. There were lots of dandies in
l9th century Paris and during the 80’s and 90’s in Manhattan where refugees
from the social revolution of the 60’s patronized eccentric Victorian
structures like the Dakota and the Osborne, oases of anachronism amidst
the juggernaut of progress which would take off again at the millenium.
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