"HIS PENSEES, NEVER FINISHED AND PUBLISHED POSTHUMOUSLY IN 1670, PRESENT PASCAL'S APOLOGIA FOR THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. ADDRESSED TO THE INTELLIGENT SKEPTIC."
"THE MOST INTIMATE RELIGIOUS WORK IS THE MEMORIAL. THIS SCRAP OF PAPER, WHICH RECORDS PASCAL'S EXPERIENCE ON ONE UNFORGETTABLE NIGHT IN 1654, WAS FOUND IN THE LINING OF HIS COAT AFTER HIS DEATH FOR HE CARRIED THIS REMINDER ABOUT WITH HIM ALWAYS."
"THE YEAR OF GRACE 1654,
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23, FEAST OF ST. CLEMENT, POPE AND MARTYR, AND THE OTHER MARTYRS.
EVE OF ST. GRISOGONO, MARTYR, AND OTHERS
FROM ABOUT 10:30 IN THE EVENING TILL ABOUT HALF PAST MIDNIGHT,
FIRE.
"GOD OF ABRAHAM, GOD OF ISAAC, GOD OF JACOB"
NOT OF THE PHILOSOPHERS AND OF THE LEARNED.
CERTAINTY. CERTAINTY. FEELING. JOY. PEACE.
GOD OF JESUS CHRIST.
MY GOD AND YOUR GOD.
YOUR GOD WILL BE MY GOD.
FORGETFULNESS OF THE WORLD AND EVERYTHING, EXCEPT GOD
HE IS ONLY FOUND BY THE WAY THAT IS TAUGHT IN THE GOSPEL.
GRANDEUR OF THE HUMAN SOUL.
RIGHTEOUS FATHER, THE WORLD HAS NOT KNOWN YOU, BUT I HAVE KNOWN YOU.
JOY, JOY, JOY, TEARS OF JOY
I HAVE DEPARTED FROM HIM:
THEY HAVE FORSAKEN ME, THE FOUNT OF LIVING WATER.
MY GOD, WILL YOU LEAVE ME?
LET ME NOT BE SEPARATED FROM HIM FOREVER.
THIS IS LIFE ETERNAL, THAT THEY KNOW YOU, THE ONE TRUE GOD,
AND THE ONE THAT YOU SENT, JESUS CHRIST.
JESUS CHRIST.
JESUS CHRIST.
I LEFT HIM, I FLED HIM, RENOUNCED, CRUCIFIED.
LET ME NEVER BE SEPARATED FROM HIM.
HE IS ONLY KEPT SECURELY BY THE WAY IS TAUGHT IN THE GOSPEL:
RENUNCIATION, TOTAL AND SWEET.
COMPLETE SUBMISSION TO JESUS CHRIST AND TO MY DIRECTOR.
ETERNALLY IN JOY FOR TODAY'S EXERCISE ON THE EARTH.
MAY I NOT FORGET YOUR WORDS. AMEN."
Sunday, February 28, 2010
WHOP THAT STEEL ON DOWN, ON DOWN
Now for the 'rest' of the day---Shabbat month comin' soon--
Thanks for the reminder, Joyce, in regards to metaphysical and metaphorical Hammers. I was going to use John Henry too but I ran out of time! The metaphor I had in mind is Hammer and Nails and Boreds as to the limitations of materialism. But if space, time, and matter(=energy) is in fact all there is, from whence arises information? That includes everything from life itself to language, meaning, and of course music.
No one has proved what Pasteur disproved, i.e. spontaneous generation; which turns out to be a bit of a myth, doesn't it? Pasteur himself was assailed in a railroad coach by a young man who reproached him for praying the Rosary. "Surely you don't believe such things in this day and age! Come and see me in Paris and I will teach you much about science!"
It's also true that since the Urey-Miller experiments produced just what you get from smoking--tar--no one is even attempting to find out how life arose from a theoretical primordial soup. The kind of naked triumphalism of lesser scientists and those who purport to speak for science recurs over and over, proclaiming "The End of Faith"--an odd claim indeed considering that faith in something is common to all men, with the possible exception of the suicidally inclined--and yet even they have some faith--that they can do the job, for instance.
Anybody remember the pre-9/11 book, "The End of History"? These pronouncements may sell books--but are in the same category as "88 reasons why Jesus will come in '88." If that were not enough, by the next year this pastor had found an extra reason which made 89 reasons why He will come in....you guessed it...'89! Thankfully that was the end of it; instead we have nearly 300 Chicken Soup books.......Andy Warhol, come 'n get it!
Well nothing stops us second-rate writers.
Bach to music, if I may: After I mentioned Mavis Staples I went back and listened to "Freedom Highway" (in my car, of course) and if I may say so, everything I've been trying to say, and a whole lot more, is compressed into that little strand of tape..but it made me wonder again about a certain double standard; that if I talk about Jesus in public, I'm offensive; but no one goes out of their way to attack a black man's faith or proclamation..maybe it's because I haven't suffered enough but been a child ruler of enmassed privileges. And there's no way to argue that that is not the case. Any exceptions among us, "as it is to this day" ???
However, sympathy for the Jews about the Ha-Shoah seems to have run out quite some time ago. But they are a special, unsubsumable case and in many ways guaranteed to offend in the same way Joseph offended his brother hoods. And if the Jews automatically have offended, how much the more offensive to our egos is the most famous Jew of all? This is why it remains such a powerful curse word--nobody says, "O Moses!" when they hit their thumb with the proverbial ( and non-metaphysical) hammer.
(A good place for a break--hammering out blues for the common man, breaking dishes, and so on)
Thanks for the reminder, Joyce, in regards to metaphysical and metaphorical Hammers. I was going to use John Henry too but I ran out of time! The metaphor I had in mind is Hammer and Nails and Boreds as to the limitations of materialism. But if space, time, and matter(=energy) is in fact all there is, from whence arises information? That includes everything from life itself to language, meaning, and of course music.
No one has proved what Pasteur disproved, i.e. spontaneous generation; which turns out to be a bit of a myth, doesn't it? Pasteur himself was assailed in a railroad coach by a young man who reproached him for praying the Rosary. "Surely you don't believe such things in this day and age! Come and see me in Paris and I will teach you much about science!"
It's also true that since the Urey-Miller experiments produced just what you get from smoking--tar--no one is even attempting to find out how life arose from a theoretical primordial soup. The kind of naked triumphalism of lesser scientists and those who purport to speak for science recurs over and over, proclaiming "The End of Faith"--an odd claim indeed considering that faith in something is common to all men, with the possible exception of the suicidally inclined--and yet even they have some faith--that they can do the job, for instance.
Anybody remember the pre-9/11 book, "The End of History"? These pronouncements may sell books--but are in the same category as "88 reasons why Jesus will come in '88." If that were not enough, by the next year this pastor had found an extra reason which made 89 reasons why He will come in....you guessed it...'89! Thankfully that was the end of it; instead we have nearly 300 Chicken Soup books.......Andy Warhol, come 'n get it!
Well nothing stops us second-rate writers.
Bach to music, if I may: After I mentioned Mavis Staples I went back and listened to "Freedom Highway" (in my car, of course) and if I may say so, everything I've been trying to say, and a whole lot more, is compressed into that little strand of tape..but it made me wonder again about a certain double standard; that if I talk about Jesus in public, I'm offensive; but no one goes out of their way to attack a black man's faith or proclamation..maybe it's because I haven't suffered enough but been a child ruler of enmassed privileges. And there's no way to argue that that is not the case. Any exceptions among us, "as it is to this day" ???
However, sympathy for the Jews about the Ha-Shoah seems to have run out quite some time ago. But they are a special, unsubsumable case and in many ways guaranteed to offend in the same way Joseph offended his brother hoods. And if the Jews automatically have offended, how much the more offensive to our egos is the most famous Jew of all? This is why it remains such a powerful curse word--nobody says, "O Moses!" when they hit their thumb with the proverbial ( and non-metaphysical) hammer.
(A good place for a break--hammering out blues for the common man, breaking dishes, and so on)
HOME WHERE MY "THOTS" ARE GOING/SECRETING
Scattered Thots from Scatterbain--after the manner of Pensees--with thematic elements and hanging chads
First, the twitter/tweet
What I did yesterday: nursing home rounds, hospital rounds, getting angry enough to recycle about three fourths of my piles of unuseds. This impulse comes at irregular times and the trials that constituted last week caused me to despair; feeling very disorganized and wanting so very much for vacation tostart, as they say, "yesterday!" I just get mad enough to throw things away without looking through them. It works.
For the rest of my day I definitely took a vacation from my problems-- since I was making rounds in the Amboy nursing home I decided to go on to Dixon and try cross country skiing on the old homestead. Instead of a lake,woebegotten, I visited the old Rock River and what we used to call "the drainage ditch."(a far too prosaic name, in fact) It was delightful and refreshing. I went to the peninsula where I proposed to Flo except that there are actually two peninsulas and can't remember which one! Scared a few rabbits. Also skied on the first slope upon which I ever set skis which some of you remember as the little "barn hill." I was of course reminded of all the delightful days we set out on the Rock River during the good old summertime, water skiing with my dad. Thanks, dad!
Now full of stickems I returned to my real home. It was a very humbling experience to not be able to recognize where our lane was. It's like the New Yorker cartoon from last week, with a couple walking the city streets and the man saying, "Someday we will look back at all of this and not be able to remember any of it." Actually long-term memory is the last to go. One of the patients I visited in Amboy can't say anything that makes any sense but still, like my grandmother at age 100, does remember the old songs and sings along. And yodels. Did I mention she yodels?
Speaking of music, last night years of preparation came to fruition, and we had Bach night with Winifred Hoffman; music that I have been preparing for for years I was finally playing and rather than being frustrated at not being a better sight reader etc., it just rocked and rolled right out. The songs included, "My Heart Ever Faithful," "Sheep May Safely Graze" and "Jesu' Joy of Man's Desiring." I do believe that Y'shua was there too, taking my mind off performance issues.Yaddah, yaddah, yaddah!!! My heart wasn't so faithful but He brought it to pass anyway.
More later, perhaps.............
First, the twitter/tweet
What I did yesterday: nursing home rounds, hospital rounds, getting angry enough to recycle about three fourths of my piles of unuseds. This impulse comes at irregular times and the trials that constituted last week caused me to despair; feeling very disorganized and wanting so very much for vacation tostart, as they say, "yesterday!" I just get mad enough to throw things away without looking through them. It works.
For the rest of my day I definitely took a vacation from my problems-- since I was making rounds in the Amboy nursing home I decided to go on to Dixon and try cross country skiing on the old homestead. Instead of a lake,woebegotten, I visited the old Rock River and what we used to call "the drainage ditch."(a far too prosaic name, in fact) It was delightful and refreshing. I went to the peninsula where I proposed to Flo except that there are actually two peninsulas and can't remember which one! Scared a few rabbits. Also skied on the first slope upon which I ever set skis which some of you remember as the little "barn hill." I was of course reminded of all the delightful days we set out on the Rock River during the good old summertime, water skiing with my dad. Thanks, dad!
Now full of stickems I returned to my real home. It was a very humbling experience to not be able to recognize where our lane was. It's like the New Yorker cartoon from last week, with a couple walking the city streets and the man saying, "Someday we will look back at all of this and not be able to remember any of it." Actually long-term memory is the last to go. One of the patients I visited in Amboy can't say anything that makes any sense but still, like my grandmother at age 100, does remember the old songs and sings along. And yodels. Did I mention she yodels?
Speaking of music, last night years of preparation came to fruition, and we had Bach night with Winifred Hoffman; music that I have been preparing for for years I was finally playing and rather than being frustrated at not being a better sight reader etc., it just rocked and rolled right out. The songs included, "My Heart Ever Faithful," "Sheep May Safely Graze" and "Jesu' Joy of Man's Desiring." I do believe that Y'shua was there too, taking my mind off performance issues.Yaddah, yaddah, yaddah!!! My heart wasn't so faithful but He brought it to pass anyway.
More later, perhaps.............
Saturday, February 27, 2010
News from Lake Winipisaukee
Everywhere I am running into reminders of Lent, even in the newspaper columns on Ed's page. Since I have never officially celebrated- if that's the word- Lent; nor Mardis Gras for that matter, this particular season started out with no consideration of participation.
I gather it used to be commonplace to ask people what they are giving up for Lent..I have done some fasting in my days, and when I was in TEC, "wheat" was something you gave up for a particular participant to remind them- and you- that it was a serious responsibility to pray before, during , and after the TEC or Cursillo. And were we praying for Aunt Noodlenose's elbow or for the parking lot project? No, there was unity in the one thing we asked, which was that they and we would meet Christ by the agency of the Holy Spirit.
At the same time I have been getting a strong sense that I am to put this blog to sleep, to lie fallow; to, in the immortal words of Dr. Leo Marvin, "Take a vacation....from my problems!!!" I will be on the road anyway, and so March seems to be an excellent match for, "Give it a rest, why doncha?" I may resume after Easter, Lord willing. Again I say, Lord willing.
I may tie up a few loose ends in the AM.....stay "posted"
I gather it used to be commonplace to ask people what they are giving up for Lent..I have done some fasting in my days, and when I was in TEC, "wheat" was something you gave up for a particular participant to remind them- and you- that it was a serious responsibility to pray before, during , and after the TEC or Cursillo. And were we praying for Aunt Noodlenose's elbow or for the parking lot project? No, there was unity in the one thing we asked, which was that they and we would meet Christ by the agency of the Holy Spirit.
At the same time I have been getting a strong sense that I am to put this blog to sleep, to lie fallow; to, in the immortal words of Dr. Leo Marvin, "Take a vacation....from my problems!!!" I will be on the road anyway, and so March seems to be an excellent match for, "Give it a rest, why doncha?" I may resume after Easter, Lord willing. Again I say, Lord willing.
I may tie up a few loose ends in the AM.....stay "posted"
Thursday, February 25, 2010
WHO IS THIS "SORRY" FELLOW?
"Sorry....sorry....I just get carried away........" John Cleese as Sir Lance-a-Lot
Who's sorry now?
I am; because in retrospect I have written so many non-sequitors lately that are highly or maybe absolutely prone to misinterpretation. Also because "confidence in the flesh" is so easily attained in life, let alone in blogging. It has been my goal to get beyond legalism; and not only that, but to try to communicate (if necessary using words) something beyond religion, and politics, and even personal opinion.
Obviously, only partial, and stumbling at that, success is possible for me, or anyone else. "The ground is level at the foot of the cross"--the very point that so infuriated Nietschke. So, as at the beginning, I ask your indulgence and patience, recalling that the Amazing thing about Grace is its ability to turn sour grapes into sweet wine.
The example pastor used last night was of OT Joseph, the technicolor dreamcoat guy. In the discussion he pointed out that Joe started out as a bit of a cad--and certainly a boaster. He managed to alienate each and every one of his brothers by telling them his dreams which turned out to be prophetic but sounded obviously rude and crude, as they would also to clueless us. "Don't tell everyone your dreams." The brothers, in part rightly, deemed this the height of arrogance, the capstone of a fatal career. Murder was planned and almost carried out except for the guilty conscience of one bro, who convinced the others to make a fast buck by selling Joe down into Egypt.
Yet, had he not infuriated them, Joey would not have ended up in Egypt at all--would have learned nothing--and would not have even ended up loving/saving his brothers in the end. The question is, how much of the initial offence was due to confidence in the flesh, and being the favorite of his father Jake, when such honor was supposed to be given to the eldest? And how much was planned by God?
I do not compare myself to Joe, though, who in some people's opinion was a "type" or foreshadowing of the Messiah.I have had no dreams of which to boast, nor has any great power or privilege been granted to me, "for such a time as this." So I must tread even more cautiously than Joe did. It is likely that even with 60 years of confidence in the flesh, I have still not learned my lessons. Although human "wise-dumb" is often blatantly obvious, it is very subtle when the practitioner practices it, because we cannot understand ourselves, of physical necessity and owing to our inherently selfish subjective views. We need other people to reign in our madness and our zeal.
As Sir Lancelot exits in "my own particular idiom" from the canage he has caused, he swings over the bloodied crowd on a rope. Which leaves him dangling nowhere; saying"..uh...does somebody want to give me a push?" Over a cliff perhaps?
Our dependencies are soon revealed: "I dare not trust the sweetest frame." Somebody wanna give me a push?
Who's sorry now?
I am; because in retrospect I have written so many non-sequitors lately that are highly or maybe absolutely prone to misinterpretation. Also because "confidence in the flesh" is so easily attained in life, let alone in blogging. It has been my goal to get beyond legalism; and not only that, but to try to communicate (if necessary using words) something beyond religion, and politics, and even personal opinion.
Obviously, only partial, and stumbling at that, success is possible for me, or anyone else. "The ground is level at the foot of the cross"--the very point that so infuriated Nietschke. So, as at the beginning, I ask your indulgence and patience, recalling that the Amazing thing about Grace is its ability to turn sour grapes into sweet wine.
The example pastor used last night was of OT Joseph, the technicolor dreamcoat guy. In the discussion he pointed out that Joe started out as a bit of a cad--and certainly a boaster. He managed to alienate each and every one of his brothers by telling them his dreams which turned out to be prophetic but sounded obviously rude and crude, as they would also to clueless us. "Don't tell everyone your dreams." The brothers, in part rightly, deemed this the height of arrogance, the capstone of a fatal career. Murder was planned and almost carried out except for the guilty conscience of one bro, who convinced the others to make a fast buck by selling Joe down into Egypt.
Yet, had he not infuriated them, Joey would not have ended up in Egypt at all--would have learned nothing--and would not have even ended up loving/saving his brothers in the end. The question is, how much of the initial offence was due to confidence in the flesh, and being the favorite of his father Jake, when such honor was supposed to be given to the eldest? And how much was planned by God?
I do not compare myself to Joe, though, who in some people's opinion was a "type" or foreshadowing of the Messiah.I have had no dreams of which to boast, nor has any great power or privilege been granted to me, "for such a time as this." So I must tread even more cautiously than Joe did. It is likely that even with 60 years of confidence in the flesh, I have still not learned my lessons. Although human "wise-dumb" is often blatantly obvious, it is very subtle when the practitioner practices it, because we cannot understand ourselves, of physical necessity and owing to our inherently selfish subjective views. We need other people to reign in our madness and our zeal.
As Sir Lancelot exits in "my own particular idiom" from the canage he has caused, he swings over the bloodied crowd on a rope. Which leaves him dangling nowhere; saying"..uh...does somebody want to give me a push?" Over a cliff perhaps?
Our dependencies are soon revealed: "I dare not trust the sweetest frame." Somebody wanna give me a push?
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Another Tuesday, with Sorry
Now for that question that has been praying on everyone's mind; "yadda yadda yadda" According to The Straight Dope site, Jerry was not the source but Lenny Bruce. It goes on to explore the various spellings and their possible derivations.
Except for one.
Enter Yaddah and see what you get.
I know Lenny was Jewish, and the site makes reference to Jewish comedians. You'd think the connection to Hebrew would be obvious. "Facilitating shallow investigations since 1973?"- that year alone should point out the obvious limitations of "dope."
This brings up at least two points; the first being Abe Maslow's famous dictum, "When all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Like Calvin we are simply little kids with their first hammer, looking for anything nail-able, such as Mom's coffee table. And as Hobbes mentioned elsewhere, "In the past you've been a remarkably poor judge of what your mother cares about."
The second is the power of the human will. We see what we wanna see.Our filters are as close to omnipotence as any fleshly thing we are likely to know. We pay attention to things that remind us of things we like, or with which we are familiar. Which explains, apart from DNA, why the older we get, the more we act like our parents, the very people whom we swore never to imitate or follow when we first smelled independence....Default mode. Feelings come and go, ideas come and go, people and spirits of people come and go----
But I have yet to meet a person without a strong will. I think this decision-making organ is very close to the pith of a person, and it certainly tends to define a personality. Psychiatry using a multitude of approaches is modestly successful at dealing with feelings and thoughts. Programmers and deprogrammers come and go; but as Mr. Carroll said, "The question is, who is to be master, that's all." I guess that requires a decision of some sort- or the decision to decide not.
"People can snow me, which is why we grant so few interviews," said an interviwer at U of Ill during an exception granted to me in the Vietnam era, and said interview may have been was one reason why I ended up at their medical school. Plus it was cheap. And it is quite possible I did snow him, because I had not-so-good reasons for going into medicine and had only the vaguest idea that since it involved science, I could probably do it. (It reminds me of a lesser-known Donovan song in which he chides one of his friends who got involved with medicine- "The doctor bit was so exciting,wasn't it? --or something to that effect. Not really.
People can have the worst possible reasons for doing something, and yet, defying reason and their own feelings, they often completely make it happen by an act of a persistent will. In my case I found better and better reasons for doing medicine rather than "art," for example; to the point now where I can't imagine doing anything else.
On the negative side, psychiatrists are terrible at managing personality disorders. Psychology has very little of practical value to add to the treatment of even the most-studied personality disorder of all, alcoholism. When I was in training for detox etc. it did not take me long to realize that the only thing that could change a personality (will) was an act of God--but only if and when the sufferer gives permission to be changed on a very core level. Fellow recovering alcoholics are much better at detecting bull and sham change than the sharpest counsellor. In fact, I found that the more advanced the intellect, the fewer practical results. And, I might add, I have never once seen drug treatment to be the slightest help towards recovery. Because the will cannot be treated by drugs. One of the standard excuses alcoholics offer is, "I guess I just don't have enough will power, Doc," when the near-absolute power of an intractable human will is simultaneously looking me in the face.
Of course we are now told that "science proves," that there is no such thing as the soul, and in particular that evolutionary biology and neurobiology have ruled out free will. However, now we are back at the tool problem. "The Pope? How many divisions does he have?" asked Joe Stalin. Joe had a big Hammer which turned out to be ludicrously small. But it's all he really had- besides a few major personality disorders .
In order to come to conclusions such as these, one has to assume that the universe consists only of Hammers (with energy) and Nails(that matter) and things that are permeable to Nails given enough space and time. But such a hypothesis is not provable or even falsifiable on our level or any conceivable level, leaving us with Isaac Asimov's final comments about the God hypothesis: --I might possibly be wrong, but it's not worth my time to pursue it--. Not worth his time!
Perhaps another scientist or three can help us here-- but science as it now exists is a culturally driven phenomenon and can only offer us a few brands of hammer and nails and not much time to decide whether or not we have a free will or not. Joyce knows the folk song, "Hammer and Nails," I am sure. Feel free here to sing or hum--I like Mavis Staple's version.....
Except for one.
Enter Yaddah and see what you get.
I know Lenny was Jewish, and the site makes reference to Jewish comedians. You'd think the connection to Hebrew would be obvious. "Facilitating shallow investigations since 1973?"- that year alone should point out the obvious limitations of "dope."
This brings up at least two points; the first being Abe Maslow's famous dictum, "When all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Like Calvin we are simply little kids with their first hammer, looking for anything nail-able, such as Mom's coffee table. And as Hobbes mentioned elsewhere, "In the past you've been a remarkably poor judge of what your mother cares about."
The second is the power of the human will. We see what we wanna see.Our filters are as close to omnipotence as any fleshly thing we are likely to know. We pay attention to things that remind us of things we like, or with which we are familiar. Which explains, apart from DNA, why the older we get, the more we act like our parents, the very people whom we swore never to imitate or follow when we first smelled independence....Default mode. Feelings come and go, ideas come and go, people and spirits of people come and go----
But I have yet to meet a person without a strong will. I think this decision-making organ is very close to the pith of a person, and it certainly tends to define a personality. Psychiatry using a multitude of approaches is modestly successful at dealing with feelings and thoughts. Programmers and deprogrammers come and go; but as Mr. Carroll said, "The question is, who is to be master, that's all." I guess that requires a decision of some sort- or the decision to decide not.
"People can snow me, which is why we grant so few interviews," said an interviwer at U of Ill during an exception granted to me in the Vietnam era, and said interview may have been was one reason why I ended up at their medical school. Plus it was cheap. And it is quite possible I did snow him, because I had not-so-good reasons for going into medicine and had only the vaguest idea that since it involved science, I could probably do it. (It reminds me of a lesser-known Donovan song in which he chides one of his friends who got involved with medicine- "The doctor bit was so exciting,wasn't it? --or something to that effect. Not really.
People can have the worst possible reasons for doing something, and yet, defying reason and their own feelings, they often completely make it happen by an act of a persistent will. In my case I found better and better reasons for doing medicine rather than "art," for example; to the point now where I can't imagine doing anything else.
On the negative side, psychiatrists are terrible at managing personality disorders. Psychology has very little of practical value to add to the treatment of even the most-studied personality disorder of all, alcoholism. When I was in training for detox etc. it did not take me long to realize that the only thing that could change a personality (will) was an act of God--but only if and when the sufferer gives permission to be changed on a very core level. Fellow recovering alcoholics are much better at detecting bull and sham change than the sharpest counsellor. In fact, I found that the more advanced the intellect, the fewer practical results. And, I might add, I have never once seen drug treatment to be the slightest help towards recovery. Because the will cannot be treated by drugs. One of the standard excuses alcoholics offer is, "I guess I just don't have enough will power, Doc," when the near-absolute power of an intractable human will is simultaneously looking me in the face.
Of course we are now told that "science proves," that there is no such thing as the soul, and in particular that evolutionary biology and neurobiology have ruled out free will. However, now we are back at the tool problem. "The Pope? How many divisions does he have?" asked Joe Stalin. Joe had a big Hammer which turned out to be ludicrously small. But it's all he really had- besides a few major personality disorders .
In order to come to conclusions such as these, one has to assume that the universe consists only of Hammers (with energy) and Nails(that matter) and things that are permeable to Nails given enough space and time. But such a hypothesis is not provable or even falsifiable on our level or any conceivable level, leaving us with Isaac Asimov's final comments about the God hypothesis: --I might possibly be wrong, but it's not worth my time to pursue it--. Not worth his time!
Perhaps another scientist or three can help us here-- but science as it now exists is a culturally driven phenomenon and can only offer us a few brands of hammer and nails and not much time to decide whether or not we have a free will or not. Joyce knows the folk song, "Hammer and Nails," I am sure. Feel free here to sing or hum--I like Mavis Staple's version.....
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Let your lil' light Shimer
Recently TNY featured a cartoon of a Wash DC building with a stone heading: "Bureau of Connecting The Dots." I hope my readers will "connect" with this Bureau soon as it may help you to make sense of this blog--but I doubt it.
On a musical note (ta-da!!!) some friends and I got together to make up a recorder trio. Many of you know Winifred Hoffman and the other person is a band director from Earlville HS whose name I have not yet fully filed upstairs. When I first started playing music in public I was with a group called The Old Town Renaissance Consort and it was exactly as advertised; we played instruments of the period. Playing a Renaissance recorder is a little bit difficult because they had not developed the smaller holes at the bottom of the recorder and the range was more limited; it was frankly a more primitive instrument. However there are a number of brass instruments whose ancestry go back to such instruments as sakbuts and krumhorns. As I say, they are not the most convenient instruments to play well. The Baroque instruments are pretty much all that I use now but we rarely played Baroque music in this consort.
However, although I have played in many groups since then, more off than on, I have found some attraction to Renaissance music largely because of its complex rhythms. Renaissance writers of music seemed to delight in dashing conventional expectations about rhythm and in some instances tonality. In many ways it is extremely modern and reminds me of some forms of modern jazz. So I have quite a large collection.
However here is the problem: no one wants to play it. To most people even professional musicians it just doesn't sound right and coordinating even two people with these back- and- forth polyrhythms just does not appeal to very many people which includes listeners. It is frankly not very listenable: there are of course exceptions.
Therefore the music I had been saving up was a flop. Also some arrangements by Benjamin Britten based on traditional tunes did better but still became tiresome for the group. Eventually I brought out some Water Music by Handel and Winifred said, "Oh you've been hiding the good stuff from us!"
Now here is where you get to connect the dots:
I realized recently, upon getting some promotional material from Shimer College, that the Great Books upon which the program is based is, perhaps increasingly, a very selective bunch of tomes which tend to be from the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. There is for example, a Montaigne essay contest that seems to be somewhat of a flagship enterprise in terms of outreach. In retrospect, there was certainly a dearth of authors from the Reformation, or the Counterreformation; and there was in particular very little from the Roman Catholic tradition either. Late Greek and Roman philosophy was very well represented in particular of course Aristotle and Plato. What I learned about the Reformation I basically learned from the Karnowski family and numerous other sources well outside the influence of Shimer College.
This would explain, in retrospect, why I was a persona non grata by the time I graduated. Ironically I have found this to be true time and time again. Whenever I would present myself as a sort of a "Renaissance Man," I would find acceptance in, for instance, my residency programs or other para-academic groups-- but I would find rejection by the majority as soon as I started to transition from, for instance the mindset of Montaigne to the mindset of, say, Pascal.
Now compare the music of the Renaissance to the music of the Reformation. Notice any difference?
Interesting sidelight: Shimer College is now recruiting homeschoolers. Very prominently. Better late than never I suppose. They had better recruit from somewhere! More later.
teaser-- how many of you are familiar with the 3 1/2 hour French film, "The Mother and the Whore"? If so -- I'm talking to you Dennis -- what do you remember about it? It would be interesting to compare notes. I saw this in Chicago when it was new and it sure didn't seem like 3 1/2 hours. But then again, I loved, "My Dinner with Andre".
On a musical note (ta-da!!!) some friends and I got together to make up a recorder trio. Many of you know Winifred Hoffman and the other person is a band director from Earlville HS whose name I have not yet fully filed upstairs. When I first started playing music in public I was with a group called The Old Town Renaissance Consort and it was exactly as advertised; we played instruments of the period. Playing a Renaissance recorder is a little bit difficult because they had not developed the smaller holes at the bottom of the recorder and the range was more limited; it was frankly a more primitive instrument. However there are a number of brass instruments whose ancestry go back to such instruments as sakbuts and krumhorns. As I say, they are not the most convenient instruments to play well. The Baroque instruments are pretty much all that I use now but we rarely played Baroque music in this consort.
However, although I have played in many groups since then, more off than on, I have found some attraction to Renaissance music largely because of its complex rhythms. Renaissance writers of music seemed to delight in dashing conventional expectations about rhythm and in some instances tonality. In many ways it is extremely modern and reminds me of some forms of modern jazz. So I have quite a large collection.
However here is the problem: no one wants to play it. To most people even professional musicians it just doesn't sound right and coordinating even two people with these back- and- forth polyrhythms just does not appeal to very many people which includes listeners. It is frankly not very listenable: there are of course exceptions.
Therefore the music I had been saving up was a flop. Also some arrangements by Benjamin Britten based on traditional tunes did better but still became tiresome for the group. Eventually I brought out some Water Music by Handel and Winifred said, "Oh you've been hiding the good stuff from us!"
Now here is where you get to connect the dots:
I realized recently, upon getting some promotional material from Shimer College, that the Great Books upon which the program is based is, perhaps increasingly, a very selective bunch of tomes which tend to be from the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. There is for example, a Montaigne essay contest that seems to be somewhat of a flagship enterprise in terms of outreach. In retrospect, there was certainly a dearth of authors from the Reformation, or the Counterreformation; and there was in particular very little from the Roman Catholic tradition either. Late Greek and Roman philosophy was very well represented in particular of course Aristotle and Plato. What I learned about the Reformation I basically learned from the Karnowski family and numerous other sources well outside the influence of Shimer College.
This would explain, in retrospect, why I was a persona non grata by the time I graduated. Ironically I have found this to be true time and time again. Whenever I would present myself as a sort of a "Renaissance Man," I would find acceptance in, for instance, my residency programs or other para-academic groups-- but I would find rejection by the majority as soon as I started to transition from, for instance the mindset of Montaigne to the mindset of, say, Pascal.
Now compare the music of the Renaissance to the music of the Reformation. Notice any difference?
Interesting sidelight: Shimer College is now recruiting homeschoolers. Very prominently. Better late than never I suppose. They had better recruit from somewhere! More later.
teaser-- how many of you are familiar with the 3 1/2 hour French film, "The Mother and the Whore"? If so -- I'm talking to you Dennis -- what do you remember about it? It would be interesting to compare notes. I saw this in Chicago when it was new and it sure didn't seem like 3 1/2 hours. But then again, I loved, "My Dinner with Andre".
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