Oh yeah, we definitely need this.



I’m going to write as if the whole article were true. If it seems an extreme account to you, the one above, please leave comments and refer me to other sources.



A acquaintance of mine who visits Japan regularly has noted that there seems to be a want by some to put everything in terms of a warrior’s honor, and in-and-of itself, that may not be a bad thing but just one of those (*rolls eyes*) things. We use military metaphors in speaking about many everyday things regularly, no matter who we are.



But that doesn’t mean what people say regularly is irrelevant, for to discuss the top of the Japanese political system only misses the bigger issue. If Fukuyama is correct, we’re watching fascism grow again in Japan, as people are engaging in a denial of history in order to feel more united. Somehow, it seems that fascism is linked with a romanticism for feudal notions in Japan and Germany - Strauss has noted in his preface to Spinoza’s Critique of Religion that the Anti-Semitism of Germany in the Nazi era was something that had been there from the Middle Ages and had grown with their Romantic movement. Similarly, these ideas about honor and noble rule, i.e. -

I heard him explain in front of large public audiences how the people of Manchuria had tears in their eyes when the occupying Kwantung Army left China, so grateful were they to Japan. According to Watanabe, the Pacific War boiled down to race, as the US was determined to keep a non-white people down.

- probably have something to do with the idea of being a Samurai, I’m not sure. All I know about Japan I know from anime and restaurants in Dallas and Ichiro.



And that’s why I have lots of questions, not mean-spirited ones, concerning Fukuyama’s account, the main one being how we can talk people out of this idiocy, and what the character of it may be (is it a result of having too-soft politicians represent the liberal side?). The key one: Is there a fear of North Korea or China mainly driving this? If so, that’s an issue we can address directly.



But if there are delusions about a past which never existed emerging, then we have a serious problem, and we have to wonder what our post-war policy should have been in order to have put an end to this forever. Fukuyama is concerned with one leader telling another to “cool it,” but I think in this globally connected world, one leader telling another something probably means that whatever the situation, it’s too late.





Technorati Tags: japan, fukuyama, feudalism, fascism

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Instead of making grand pronouncements about how the Internet and technology are changing the way we take in and use information, perhaps we should recognize that there is a humility in specialization.



For to specialize could mean that one becomes supremely arrogant (*ahem*), but it also means one can hold off on pronouncing on a topic one knows nothing about.



With that in mind, what is the great virtue of blogging?



I propose that blogging has one and only one virtue: it allows people to instantly publish.



We can conjecture that such people aren’t afraid to be heard, and in some cases actually want to hear others, and maybe in some cases want to even discuss! And learn!



If that’s the case, then what blogging specializes in is Op-Ed. And I think that’s exactly right: except for a few really good writers, like Mark Steyn and Jonah Goldberg, a good number of people blogging online are providing more to think about than the mainstream pundits. The gloves are off, and they’re more than willing to provide sources and engage their readership (for better or worse) openly.



Getting people’s honest opinions is not a small thing - it’s momentous, actually. It can actually be harnessed immediately not by having the MSM come on TV and tell all the rest of us what “blogs” say, which is an artificial separation, but by inviting better bloggers to participate in MSM moderated forums.



Why not have good bloggers contribute for a special issue of a Sunday Magazine part of a newspaper? Get bloggers following the war to write on questions that would be their expertise, for example: Where is the war headed? What could be done better? What complaints do we hear that are legitimate, that aren’t? Now I know this is being done already to some degree, so I have a more radical proposal below:



The thing that is hardest to relinquish control over is how and what questions are asked. That’s where bloggers really are antagonistic to the MSM. So why not let them set the agenda for debate or investigation once in a while? Now granted, this proposal is going to favor bloggers that aren’t political, ones like Steve Rubel, who are interested in where things are going less than where things ought to be.



I realize that a lot of what I’m saying has been tried, but it isn’t happening fast enough. Not nearly fast enough, actually - it feels like everything is compartmentalized. There’s a huge audience out here on the Internet, and it’s disconnected from the audience that watches the nightly news, and unaware of how seriously it ought to take itself in some ways. I think anyone who has the patience to get through my work on Macbeth or Heidegger should stick their nose in the air - I may be wrong, but there are serious reading and serious questions being raised. Granted, it’s not being introduced by Katie Couric as a topic for discussion, and it shouldn’t be. (I know my audience is more humble, far more humble, than I am.)



But that’s exactly the problem: news up to this point has depended on a divorce between higher sorts of learning and a day-to-day flow of events. As I’ve noted before, one person who hated this state of affairs was no less than Thomas Jefferson. If the MSM can commit to an organizing/aggregating function regarding online media - finding the voices that are informed and thoughtful and interesting - and bring them to a wider audience, it will be doing something small and at the same time huge: it’ll be giving credit where credit is due, which is not only a smart thing for them, but a just and useful thing for the rest of us.







Technorati Tags: media, op-ed, MSM, blogging

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• Some very right-wing posts of mine at Irate Nation, if you haven’t seen them yet: “The Story of America” and “Does Technology Necessitate Changes in the Nature of Politics?” I wrote these and thought they were pretty polemical; now I’m kinda wishing I had saved them for this blog, as they explore a lot of territory intellectually, although nothing too deeply.
• This book Amy King has stumbled across sounds way too heady for me, but her post brings up a good question about poetry that I don’t mind tossing around without thinking too hard: Is there a philosophical basis for modern poetry?
• Gracchi reviews a book about the legend of Napoleon, and I wonder if it could be a reflection about myth and empire.
• Kristine Lowe discusses a law in France that seems rather restrictive of citizen-journalism, and journalism generally.
• Josh has posted a poem of Emily Dickinson’s that I’ve been staring at for a while now.
  
  

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Inspired by “The Departed.” Thanks to Joshua Rocks for listening to and critiquing these musings.



Those related to us genetically know our worst tendencies, and think they know of what we are capable. Knowledge of one’s genesis and what came before should therefore allow one to control another, if one has such knowledge.



It is against this backdrop that we lie, for to tell the truth is not the most honest thing always, but can easily be the most dangerous thing. After all, look at those who would use knowledge of one’s origins to control one: their pursuit of “truth” is a self-deception, a causing of a great harm for little purpose that makes them much, much smaller than they think they are. The critique of Death Cab yesterday, and how nihilism can come about in such clever guises, should tip us off as to a certain type of individual that revels in “truth:” I’ve met one too many people who like to say someone seems better than them, but since we’re all human, defined by the same awful tendencies, no one is really better than another.



So we lie to protect ourselves and not fall under another’s power so easily. But there’s a greater truth behind that “lie,” ironically enough: what is really happening is that we want control over our identity. We want the truth to be something we are, that we have proved ourselves.



And I think the upshot of all this redundant musing is this: when we say another is “living a lie,” what we really mean is that they have deceived themselves while retaining the power to deceive others. They have their hands on the most literal notion of truth there is. Those of us who do tell “lies,” in the tradition Plato carries over from Homer’s Odysseus, are doing so in order to grapple with our place in the world. After all, the opinions we posit to get at Truth, and sometimes fall short of the mark, might be characterized by many as lies.





Technorati Tags: truth, lies, the departed, lives

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Lightness

Death Cab for Cutie



There’s a tear in the fabric

of your favorite dress

And I’m sneaking glances.

Looking for the patterns in static

They start to make sense

the longer I’m at it.



Ivory lines lead

oo wha-ho, oo wha-ho



Your heart is a river

that flows from your chest

through every organ.

Your brain is the dam

and I am the fish

who can’t reach the cord [core?].



Ivory lines lead

oo wha-ho, oo wha-ho



Oh, instincts are misleading

you shouldn’t think what you’re feeling

they don’t tell you what you know you should want.



Ivory lines lead

oo wha-ho, oo wha-ho



Ivory lines lead

oo wha-ho, oo wha-ho



Oh, instincts are misleading

you shouldn’t think what you’re feeling

they don’t tell you what you know you should want.



Ivory lines lead

oo wha-ho



Ivory lines lead

oo wha-ho





Comment:



I got the lyrics for this song from songmeanings.net and if you get a chance, you should skim the comments underneath the lyrics. This entry is more or less a thinking-through of why interpretations go in so many directions. I know the commentators are just kids for the most part, but it is really amazing to me how fast interpretation can go awry, how we need something in common at base in order to understand each other and not just be ranting.



The ironic thing is that this song’s lyrics are comment-worthy because they address that last issue in some small way. I mean, I know it’s risky posting an interpretation of this song given how many bad ones there are out there, and also given the fact that I don’t know if the final word of the second stanza is “cord” or “core.”



I think the first stanza and the idea of “ivory lines” are pretty obvious. It’s clever, don’t get me wrong, really clever: there’s a tear, but the folds of the dress, the “patterns in static,” serve to cover up the tear at points (what makes attraction electric? Seeing or not seeing everything?). The ivory lines are skin or underwear, more than likely skin: let’s just go for the more visceral image, since all underwear would be is one degree removed from that.



Now comes the hard image. What does it mean for a heart to be like a river? Probably that there is no heart in this girl; there is only a brain where emotion (think about this word in its most literal sense) stops. What’s curious is how the speaker thinks himself a fish caught in the river that is her. That idea alone means that a “core”/”cord” ambiguity can be resolved either way, and one gets the same theme: either way, our speaker can’t be hooked by her, or get through to her on the level he wants to.



The bit about instincts - our speaker is a fish, after all, residing in schools - involves a self-admonition: “you shouldn’t think what you’re feeling.” Agreed, it would create better interpretations if one were more dispassionate and willing to take in multiple possibilities before pronouncing what something could mean. But on a higher level, all there is that is a “response” to “instincts” is the negative nature of most laws: “don’t do this, don’t do that.” With so much emphasis on what one can’t do, how could one conceive of what is the greatest good?



Do note that Death Cab’s lyrics are exceptionally tricky here. For me to make the argument above, it would be better if the lyrics read “they don’t tell you what you should want.” They say instead “they don’t tell you what you know you should want,” which is reconcilable with our not trying to teach how to find and love what is good, but also indicates that we do know what is good and do not need to be told. In addition, the last statement is perfectly reconcilable with the idea that she is what I want, and that’s a “good” thing too.



So what shouldn’t be thought? Should the speaker not have feelings for the girl? Should he not be thinking about how it is an impossibility for him to get her, because she is mentally closed to him? Is her mental closedness a result of her being loved the only way she engages the idea of love? Is his instinct that he lusts, or that he wants to be restrained in lust? Is there a real distinction between instinct and knowledge, given that things make “sense” based only on time? Does he know what is better, or not, or could he know what is better? I think the kids at songmeanings rightly got super-confused about this song. There’s an enormous amount going on here, and ambiguity is sometimes the refuge of those being less than intellectually honest. It’s easy to say that lots of things are confusing and therefore no one can have the right answer, so one can do whatever.



And that’s why sometimes one needs to look at the beginning to figure out the end. “Lightness” implies The Unbearable Lightness of Being, drunkenness, the lack of knowing what is good (or even what gives control), and also ties into the electricity metaphor invoked by “static” and the brightness of “ivory lines.” I think the best metaphor for solving the problem is to ask what makes us substantial - when we consider that we are potential, and that our substance comes about through fulfillment of the promise that we are, we realize that education is a taking of what we already know and a shaping of that into something greater.



The word cognate with our word “music” in Greek meant a complete liberal-arts education: that was what was needed to recite and interpret Homer. Music was what made the guardians of the Republic strong, and what helps make the social order in the Laws last. Once upon a time, there was something common at base, in music, before everyone acted and focused on their own individual base desires…





Technorati Tags: death cab, lyrics, music

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