Glenn Beck has something major to do with another ambitious and tilted web portal, The Blaze*. Here’s a capture of today’s page. The ridiculous headline tops a truly funny/nutty video about some members, evidently, of the ‘professoriat.’

I’m okay with those who wish to protect the non-political nature of The Restoring Honor (umm, to America) protest ritual on Saturday. Why? Because even though politics was obviously and self-evidently implicit in, and concretely an aspect of, the event’s sub-text, by setting this to the side I can regard more fully that the event was about purportedly framed by a call to vivify both religion and patriotism.

Or, vivify some version of Christianity. You know: the new-fangled Beckian Christianity, an offshoot stripped of its social gospel and re-sanctified–I presume–to be a harsh Libertarian foundationalism; and one centered on personal responsibility and other stuff found nowhere at the center of a decent, magnanimous, moral old school Christianity.

Social justice is a very bad thing? …as the bumper sticker has it: Who would Jesus Bomb today?

newleftmedia @youtube

Two videos from the event, here for your viewing pleasure, should cause you to wonder about selective editing and the ease with which ignorance can be evoked. It is the case that at any gathering numbering ten or more people, it is likely child’s play to get someone to unwittingly embarrass their self, if he or she is asked about politics or religion.

However, I still would be open to a coherent presentation of the Tea Party case. I have spent more than a few hours looking for as much, and, probably because I’m modestly overly aware of stuff like philosophy and history, I have yet to find any cogent explication. Really, my bar isn’t set very high. And, this documentation doesn’t have to be convincing, it just has to be reasonable and reasonably intelligent. I’ll keep searching.

Slate V. Video

I certainly agree with the slathering Tea Party about one bare fact: the financial industry should have been held accountable for their grotesque, morally reprehensible, gambling. But, amazingly, now it seems the Tea Party is on the cusp of being co-opted by, in effect, the Club For Growth, Koch Brothers, and their ilk!

This is apparently where the Tea Party is headed: into the arms of the collectivist moneychangers, the very ones who happily took the tax dollar and rewarded themselves handsomely for allowing themselves to be bailed out. Why the Tea Party doesn’t get, as far as I know, that this synergy weds them with the other co-dependent side of the problem they’re so angered about, is a question which remains to be answered.

Of course, many have pointed out the Tea Party isn’t really a new wave at all. This may turn out to be true. Certainly their Constitutional and economic complaints have, over the last month or so, become terribly infected by the usual suspects, and to a degree by: racial, ethnic, and religious bigotry, Birtherism, and conspiracy-theory driven paranoia.

Their eliminativist leanings are ludicrous. Still, when 40% of Republicans think it possible that Obama has come to bring Shariah to the Republic, we’re witnessing something which has grown beyond the old Conservative/Liberal fault lines. For one thing, it seems this movement is very labile and able to shape shift between advocating against a Marxist Manchurian candidate, and, advocating against a Jihadi counter-crusader. All in all, the enemy posed is of an exceptionally large scale: Islam! Communism! All those other kinds of Christians! Brown and darker skin!

I’ll wait patiently for the video featuring the Tea Party smart set. Let me know if you find anything. As for Beck embracing the legacy of Martin Luther King, to me, Beck’s thrust seems much more in the direction of Martin Luther.

He said to them, “Beware! Keep yourselves from covetousness, for a man’s life doesn’t consist of the abundance of the things which he possesses.” (Luke 12:15)

But those who are determined to be rich fall into a temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful lusts, such as drown men in ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some have been led astray from the faith in their greed, and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows. (I Timothy 6:9-10)

He found in the temple those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves, and the changers of money sitting. He made a whip of cords, and threw all out of the temple, both the sheep and the oxen; and he poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew their tables. To those who sold the doves, he said, “Take these things out of here! Don’t make my Father’s house a marketplace!” (John 2:14-16)

Glenn Beck vs. Christ the Liberator – Reverend James Martin, S.J.

*The site will be run by Scott Baker, who helped launch the conservative Breitbart TV website. Politico reports that the site already has what appear to be paid sponsors – gold-based investment service Goldline. It’s also carrying an ad for a book by former GOP House Majority Leader Dick Armey. They have also hired Jon Seidl from the American Spectator and Meredith Jessup from Town Hall as reporters for “The Blaze.”

Ghosts in the Hollow from Jim Lo Scalzo on Vimeo.

Now my friends, I am opposed to the system of society in which we live today, not because I lack the natural equipment to do for myself but because I am not satisfied to make myself comfortable knowing that there are thousands of my fellow men who suffer for the barest necessities of life. We were taught under the old ethic that man’s business on this earth was to look out for himself. That was the ethic of the jungle; the ethic of the wild beast. Take care of yourself, no matter what may become of your fellow man. Thousands of years ago the question was asked; “Am I my brother’s keeper?” That question has never yet been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society.

Yes, I am my brother’s keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by any maudlin sentimentality but by the higher duty I owe myself. What would you think me if I were capable of seating myself at a table and gorging myself with food and saw about me the children of my fellow beings starving to death.

Eugene V. Debs | src

CLOSENESS click for lightbox enlargement
S. Calhoun, 2010
ARK, (chosen, appropriated frames: using Dreamlines; hat tip to Leonardo Solaas)

How the Universe Works – Discovery Channel (many episodes available for the time being from the youtube channel documentarystreams)

I was 13 years old when, while laying on my back gazing at a crisp night sky, the awesomeness of the scale of things came to me as a thunder strike. On this evening I became amazed that I was gazing back into time, while situated as a hunk of sentient flesh prostrate on a thin layer of dirt and rock stuck to the surface of a planetary sphere. And, even then, it wasn’t at all adolescent solipsism, but, rather, that anyone could look so far away and so far back. This insight has informed my perspective ever since.

Then, a few years later, I investigated the cosmic scale of creation and destruction, and came away impressed again that entire galaxies may crash into one another. This puts a whole new spin on the mere, and in this light, inconsequential problem of mortality.

A near galactic-collision between NGC 2207 (left) and IC 2163 captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. Scientists predict the Milky Way will merge with its neighbor Andromeda in about 5 billion years. (USAToday)

“I think that is the ultimate insensitivity, anyone looking at that with any common sense would say, ‘What in the world would we be doing, you know, fostering some type of system that allows this to happen.’ Everybody knows America’s built on the rights of free expression, the rights to practice your faith, but come on.”

Eric Cantor, R-Va, said this recently. This is my favorite bald, asshat quote of the year–so far. It’s palinesque in its appeal to (some version of) commonsense, and it’s not at all over-the-top, given the waves of grotesque rhetoric the Cordoba House project has evoked. Cantor’s opinion here doesn’t amuse me because it is of the tinfoil type. (There’s plenty of that of course, much of it subsisting on the belief President Obama is a Manchurian candidate and, maybe, the world’s most un-Muslim-like Muslim.) No, what I enjoy about this quote is how it encapsulates the falling away of a whole string of conservative pieties: First Amendment, for suckers; Local governance-fuhgetaboutit; God-centeredness-who needs it?While, out of nowhere, Cantor here seems to embrace political correctness–got to have it, and got to have it rotate around being sensitive.

This last play in favor of sensitivity captures, evidently, a new Republican move to embrace sensitivity! Who would have thunk it? But, sure, “being sensitive” should probably trump the Constitution if one is willing to flip flop on what used to be a longstanding, thorough-going principle of personal responsibility. (I chose this one, from among several delicious choices.) Isn’t the ideologically driven advice from Republicans almost always along the lines of: ‘suck it up!’ ‘take care of yourself’ ‘obey the Constitution and our Christian foundations’ etc.? Until now.

Another impressive feature of the Republican embrace of, this time, religious bigotry, is how sanctimonious Cantor, Gingrich, Palin, are about the composition of necessary exceptions to the First Amendment. So: ‘We’re tolerant, we’re pro-Constitution, but, let’s face it.’ I had thought the Constitution was more hallowed than the site of the 9-11 attack.

I’m sure I’ll know it when it happens: when any of these self-identified bright lights attach an argument favorable to the First Amendment to their politically-correct call for sensitivity about the sensitivities of religious bigots and their reactions to a project that has zero to do with Jihadi aspirations.

Meanwhile, Jeff Merkley, D-OR, framed the ‘cognitive’ issue, and other facts, succinctly:

“I appreciate the depth of emotions at play, but respectfully suggest that the presence of a mosque is only inappropriate near ground zero if we unfairly associate Muslim Americans with the atrocities of the foreign al-Qaida terrorists who attacked our nation. Such an association is a profound error. Muslim Americans are our fellow citizens, not our enemies. Muslim Americans were among the victims who died at the World Trade Center in the 9/11 attacks. Muslim American first responders risked their lives to save their fellow citizens that day. Many of our Muslim neighbors, including thousands of Oregon citizens, serve our country in war zones abroad and our communities at home with dedication and distinction.”

These facts of the matter go in one hand and the clear imperative of the 1st Amendment go in the other hand. Yet, this doesn’t settle the matter in a lot of people’s minds. Why this is so is of great interest to me. Opposition to the Cordoba project’s site location is not singular at all. It’s not simply only due to ignorance, or only due to practiced agendas, or only due to some politicized version of common sense.

Opponents’ antipathy surely can be understood in terms of psychology, yet, at the same time, understanding the nature of internalized distrust, false attribution, and, confirmation bias–to pick one constellation of behavioral features–doesn’t completely resolve that which constitutes behavioral explanations for upwelling of fear, anger, and, strong dislike, (ie.antipathy.)

The opposition is wide spread and encompasses a wide variety of people, and this surely includes persons who are highly educated, well-traveled, and, intelligent. The group of opponents also would have to include the opposite of this characterization, and, as well, include persons who believe all religions except for their own are members of a satanic opposition.

No simple explanation covers the entire group. But, Cantor’s prescriptive “come on” is simple. And, from this, it is apparent that a system of laws stands against very intense socially affective constructions. From my perspective, none of this yields to just supposing strong feelings based in counterfactual, socially-reinforced interpretations explains the, for example, commonsensical appeal to sensitivity, and fright about the strict ramifications of the 1st Amendment. Although, antipathy certainly isn’t, nor could it be, linked to opponents working through the salient facts. Those facts are also: simple.

But, the intense upwelling of affect, posed as it is by Cantor to literally trump the 1st Amendment, stands with all sorts of other propositions; propositions held by large groups of people with enthusiasm. Such enthusiasms do earn an account at least for reasons having to do with collective aspirations, which if realized, would subvert, if not overturn, all sorts of protective, often lawful, norms.

What and why and how people come to believe stuff has been one of the handful of my central interests for almost forty years. There is nothing surprising about the range of beliefs found at the extreme end of the continuum of antipathy about Muslims, and, similarly, about gays, Darwin, Democrats, elites, capitalists, banks and bankers, Dick Cheney, on and on.

In noting this, generally, it is optimal for people to internalize and be able to cope with factual, thus realistic, fears, sorrows and anger. Nevertheless, (I suggest,) a lot of energy and instinctual (or primary,) process potential attends to the status of our closely held beliefs–in the context of our each apprehending our various realistic and unrealistic interpretations of that which threatens those same beliefs. Antipathy may generally express primal fears oriented to not only having an Islamic cultural center set two blocks from where 9-11 unfolded, but also oriented to the very ideas that other believers, be they Muslims, metrosexuals, Harvard grads, Mexican laborers, progressive Democrats, (etc.,) have set themselves a bit too close to the home of belief–the self; and too close to: me and my own.

For me this antipathy spirals around the ‘low ordering’ of belief; about which I will riff in an ensuing post.

The Free Play Softball League gang. I took this picture right after our game last Sunday. It turned out to be a beautiful day, a well-played and close game. We obtained the modest goals of our 24 year-old tradition.

If you’re over 11 years of age and have a responsible adult along with you, you can play. If you’re a bit older, you can play. You can play if it’s the first time you ever held a bat in your hand. In this photo the range of ages describes a continuum of around 55 years. Hey, but several of our most grizzled players didn’t show up!

As I suggested to Dave Kolb, one of the founders of the game (and concept!) after the game, in reflecting upon how there were but four players at the field ten minutes before the 10am, yet, by 10:30 a full complement had rolled in,

Well, it’s an open system and that’s why it works out.

Dave and me both know this term, Open System, is the model of Harrison Owen.

Open Space Technology requires very few advance elements. There must be a clear and compelling theme, an interested and committed group, time and a place, and a leader. Detailed advance agendas, plans, and materials are not only un-needed, they are usually counterproductive.

The group must be interested and committed. Failing that, Open Space Technology will not work. The key ingredients for deep creative learning are real freedom and real responsibility. Freedom allows for exploration and experimentation, while responsibility insures that both will be pursued with rigor. Interest and commitment are the prerequisites for the responsible use of freedom. There is no way that we know of to force people to be interested and committed. That must be a precondition.

The leadership of an Open Space event is at once absurdly simple and very tricky. The simplicity derives from the fact that the group itself will, and must, generate its own leadership. The tricky part comes in letting that happen. The demands placed upon the initial group leader are therefore limited and critical. Dealing with the limited aspects of group leadership is easiest and may therefore be done first. The functions here are to set time, place, and theme.

The function of leadership is to provide a focal point for direction, and not to mandate and control a minute-by-minute plan of action. The details must be left to the troops, which means amongst other things, the troops must be trusted. In no case can any leader possibly solve all problems or direct all actions.

There are Four Principles and One Law which serve as guides to the leader and all participants. The principles are: Whoever comes is the right people. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have. Whenever it starts is the right time. When it is over, it is over. [excerpts] Source: Brief User’s Guide to Open Space Technology

Our softball group obtains some of these features, but, then, Owens’s model is not geared to folding in competitive goals at all. So, our game approximates the value set of openness at the same time it integrates a variety of individualized values, some of which are in alignment with the closed system provided for by the implicit structure of a ‘sporting’ contest. Yet, what I will term ludic meta-values trump the seeming disjunction between the zero-sum of winning/losing, with, openness to “just showing up” and “just playing.”

One set of problems I’ve been making notes about, as a student of our game, concerns the distribution of equity. This has dovetailed with my reflections about my own role as a leader-the-game-has-evoked. As an agent of aspects of this distribution, (for example by making out the ad hoc lineups each week,) my intentionality with respect to the structure of each week’s game departs from the role specified by Owen. In noting this, I have also come to comprehend how those ludic meta-values are concretely mediated as a matter of the collaborative learning about the sense of the game.

This doesn’t mean the learning constitutes a normative principle, nor does it mean there is any particular procedure for this kind of collaboration, nor does it mean every player would identify its constructive factor. This does mean, as far as my current comprehension goes, that this sense of the game is robust, and is funded by experience of the collective implementation of the game’s generous system. In other words, what the players collaborate on is, in effect, throwing together an Open System every Sunday at or around 10am. From this is derived the multiple, not singular, sense of the game. And this happens non-explicitly, and, to large degree, as a fact of the constructive subconscious; (my term.)

The Free Play Softball League convenes its open system every Sunday at 10am, at Forest Hills Park-Cleveland Heights, on field #8. If you need to loosen up, or take a few batting practice swings, 9:45am is a good time to show up. But, it doesn’t matter, because you roll in anytime before we stop play at noon. See you there!

A long, long time ago, in a distant universe…

Sometime around about 200,000 it “all” drops away. The current recorded evidence for the powers of creative artifice–that of homo sapiens sapiens–shows the story of adaptation and innovation to reflect a process of accrual. I don’t tire of reminding people who assert different using (usually magical) developmental facts, that their dodgy form of psychology, theology, or philosophy, or what-have-you, makes no account of the bare facts on the ground several hundred thousand years ago.

For example, the most ancient evidence serves as a powerful empirical rejoinder to the any theory of intelligent design. Why would a designer build the highest form of sentient life to be so primitive? Moreover, where is any account to be found in any theism or traditionalism or foundationalism able to make an actual account? No, in fact every bright idea can be seen to arise, to be evoked as-it-were, from a point of aroused curiosity or pressurized necessity. But, then, as one tracks backward, each and every bright idea literally disappears.

Video: Stephen Calhoun, using photographs taken from the Hubble orbital observtaory.
Music: Kamelmauz

Lucy’s Species May Have Used Stone Tools 3.4 Million Years Ago

Evidence for the survival of the oldest terrestrial mantle reservoir

Study: 650-Million-Year-Old Sponges May Be World’s Oldest Animals

50,000 Years of Dreamtime

The settlement of Australia is a breakthrough in the “human story.” Very soon after anatomically modern humans began to replace (and to some extent assimilate) other lineages of our genus in Eurasia we pushed beyond the previous outer limits of the domains of humankind. The ancestors of Australian Aboriginals swept past the Wallace Line, and quickly settled the Ice Age continent of Sahul, consisting of Australia and Papua New Guinea. The biogeography of Australia is well known. Aside from bats and some endemic rodents the continent was free of placental mammals before modern humans arrived.

As for when these humans made landfall, there is some debate as to that particular issue. The oldest remains from Australia, Mungo Man, has been dated to anywhere between 70,000, and 30,000, years before the present. If we took the older date then Australia would have been settled almost immediately after the expansion of non-African modern humanity. If we accepted the younger date, then the settlement of Australia would have been concurrent with the final replacement of Neandertals by modern humans in Europe. The current consensus seems to be that Mungo Man dates to approximately 46,000 years before the present. As the first dating of a particular individual from a species in a region is liable to miss earlier individuals who were not fossilized it seems likely that Australia was settled by anatomically modern humans on the order of 46,000 years before the present, but somewhat earlier than that date. That would imply that Australia was populated by anatomically modern humans at least 10,000 years before Europe. One should probably not be too surprised by this. Out-of-Africa humans were probably initially tropically adapted so lateral migration would have been easier, but also, there were no hominin competitors in Australia.

As a longtime collector of teaching stories, especially in the form of teaching cartoons, I always have an ear and eye for materials which deliver the teachable moment in super condensed form.

I have a few pictures in the collection, but today I deliver a photograph that fits the bill, found via google search.

The following clip contains a lot of material, if you are fascinated by the conjunction of personality and communication.

Here’s the transcript.

Palin: like how? What’s up?

Kathleen: You swore on your precious Bible that you would uphold the interests of this state, and then when cash was waved in front of your face, you quit.

Palin: OH, you WANTED me to be your governor! I’m honored! Thank you!

Kathleen: I wanted you to honor your responsibilities. That is what I wanted. I wanted you to be part of the political process instead of becoming a celebrity so that you could (inaudible). And if that’s the best you could do, then good for you. If that’s the best you could do.

Palin: Here’s the deal. Here’s the deal. (inaudible) That’s what I’m out there fightin’ for Americans to be able to have a Constitution protected so that we can have free speech…And ALSO there…

Kathleen: In what way are you fighting for that?

Palin: Oh my goodness!

Kathleen: In what way?

Palin: To elect candidates who understand the Constitution, to protect our military interests so that we can keep on fightin’ for our constitution that will protect some of the freedoms that evidently are important to you too.

Kathleen: By using your celebrity status, certainly not by political status.

Palin Daughter: How is she a celebrity? That’s my question.

Palin: I’m honored! No, she thinks I’m a celebrity!

Palin Daughter: That’s funny that you think she is.

Kathleen: Well, you’re certainly not representing the state of Alaska any longer…even though…

Palin Daughter: She’s representing United States?

Kathleen: Yes, I know. You belong to America now, and that suits me just fine. Yeah.

Palin: What do you do here?

Kathleen: I’m a teacher

Palin: Oh. (Eye roll and protracted grimace)

Palin Daughter: Oh.

Kathleen: I also have a few other jobs. I’m married to a commercial fisherman. And so I fish.

Palin: Oh that’s cool. So am I! I married to-we probably have a lot in common!

Kathleen: Yeah. You know, I think that we do.

Palin: Hi! (waves to camera) Are we on video?

Kathleen: Too bad. I’m more of a still camera girl myself. (inaudible) I am, I am…I will tell you I’m very pleased to meet you.

Palin: I’m honored to meet you, I really am. And, no we both agree on the freedom of speech and the-

Kathleen: Yes we do.

Palin: you know – the protection of that. So, um, no I and, you know… best of everything to you too and Yeah.

Kathleen: Thank you for coming over.

Palin: Well, okay. It’s nice to meet you anyway.

There’s much of interest here. Palin seems confident her affability will allow her to transmit a jumble of ideas to her audience, a school teacher from Alaska.

I highlighted one chunk of her phraseology because it evoked for me thoughts about what it must be like to, in effect, be Mrs. Palin having her onrush of thoughts and then instantly delivering them. There’s something roundly unmediated–in the psychological sense–going on in her.

People have said to me Palin is a cynical character. I would suggest she’s not the least bit cynical. It seems she believes her own bullshit and she also truly believes there is a common sense she is called to “front.” This common sense is wholly foundational for her–which is to suggest it trumps everything. She may feel very sorry for all those who have lost their common sense.

Yet, at the same time, Palin lives in her own world and, crucially, doesn’t experience it as anything besides its simply being the real world. From this position, she’s running her strategy on this women: befriend her and deliver the transmission, and, her job is done.

What kind of world is the transmission coming from? Borrowing from Heiddegger, this clip shows Palin coming from a pre-ontological position. In other words, her jumble of common sense is not the result of any second order choosing at all. I don’t understand Palin to give a whit about making choices and structuring her thoughts. The thoughts arise, and fall out! Her ‘cipheric’ transmission doesn’t, from the pre-ontological position, require any kind of advanced articulation, completeness, or complexity. In other words, her sense of what exists is just so, and not the result of actually trying to figure it, what’s real, out.

(If you asked Palin, “How do you mediate your thoughts?” I bet she’d ask you “what the heck you are you trying to ask me?”)

Another way to frame this is to sense she’s just being her instinctual (ID-driven,) self, just being who she is, and this unfolds with enthusiasm, even with some generosity. But, in observing this unfolding, it’s readily apparent she’s not deeply mediating herself, at all. She doesn’t think, ‘what did I just say?’

So, although it seems mildly crazed and naive (as a communication strategy,) my guess Palin simply feels she’s responding from the genuine moment, having fun, and, unlike the usual anxious idealogue striving to convince, her psychic investment doesn’t seem here to possess much anxiety.

She reminds me of a self-possessed 14 year old. When you meet a self-possessed 14 year old, usually this sort of unmediated and confident presentation is impressive. It’s out-sized too. However, thirty years later the same person issues the same kind of presentation and one thinks, ‘there’s a disconnect here.’

Much of Palin’s disconnect is concrete. She’s not of main street, is in no way a typical housewife, and, at the same time, her self-definition would have it be so. Her flux of identity and common sense is (to me) delightful and unremarkably odd.

I don’t think Palin is very attached to having to pull each and every person into her odd world. After all, as a screen for projection, she receives a ton of reinforcement. It’s not make-or-break for her. Still, a Katie Kouric or school teacher from Alaska seem to be, to Palin, somewhat alien creatures. Worth an attempt, but not worth much more! Palin doesn’t feel estranged from such creatures. She’s acting out being an emissary between tribes, as if this encounter is on a playground. As she mentioned after the encounter with Katie Couric, she had hoped they would have grounded the interview in their both being working mothers.

This was a telling reflection. Palin knows she gets it, and, seems to find it mildly weird others live in some other world where what she gets, isn’t obvious.

My sense is her internal response is along the lines of ‘Oh, well,’ ‘whatever.’ It’s not her problem people in this other world are strange, and I rather think she isn’t aggravated to any great degree that these same other people find her strange. Probably it’s much more aggravating to her that other people are wrong about the nature of the world.

Sarah Palin is, from the sweep of my speculations and biases, a very American type of psychological figure, the kind of type that understands their own self to be in a real world, where some others are in their own unreal world.

As a type, this type isn’t able to step back and see the real world as encompassing anything else besides a particular–to draw down to Palin’s point of focus and enthusiasm–common sense.

This is a mistake of consciousness, yet I find it to be a delicious aspect of our cultural moment.

Anima and Animus (S.Calhoun, 2010)

More ARK, albeit two frames here are layered and treated via software. (chosen, appropriated frames: using Dreamlines; hat tip to Leonardo Solaas)

This ARK art came together while I was revisiting original sources for understanding the concept of the Collective Unconscious in the Analytic Psychology. In other words: I went to confirm my sense was correct, and it was. It was as simple as I thought it was. (I was moved to do so by observing unnecessary elaboration and subsequent projection of this elaboration.) I did a little more scouring around the secondary literature, all the time keeping in mind the basic rock-bottom conception, the Collective Unconscious is that which is neither conscious, or, is “of” the personal unconscious.

Jung’s development of his psychology makes its sea change upon this concept. The Collective Unconscious is the source for the primordial patterns, the archetypes–and, well, so it went and goes. At the same time, the concept–taken as a proposition–is marvelously and completely circular. Most of Jung’s extrapolations made from his fundamental concept have been stripped away, yet, at the end of Jung’s day, this is the basis for his being a holist, a subjectivist, and, a meta-relativist. …sort of a Swiss William James; and given by this it can said Jung was a kind of proto-post-modernist too.

This is easily rendered: there is no knowledge not darkened and come to be provisional by virtue of its ground in the (evolutionary!) Collective Unconscious. One notes the implicit circularity implicit here.

(Among my gleanings was a fine paper by George Hogenson, The Baldwin effect: a neglected influence on C.G. Jung’s evolutionary thinking. Journal of Analytical Psychology; 48:2001)

For a certain type of intellectual mediocrity characterized by enlightened rationalism, a scientific theory that simplifies matters is a very good means of defence because of the tremendous faith modern man has in anything which bears the label “scientific.” Such a label sets your mind at rest immediately, almost as well as Roma locuta causa finita: “Rome has spoken, the matter is settled.” In itself any scientific theory, no matter how subtle, has, I think, less value from the standpoint of psychological truth than religious dogma, for the simple reason that a theory is necessarily highly abstract and exclusively rational, whereas dogma expresses an irrational whole by means of imagery. This guarantees a far better rendering of an irrational fact like the psyche. Moreover, dogma owes its continued existence and its form on the one hand to so-called “revealed” or immediate experiences of the “Gnosis” for instance, the God-man, the Cross, the Virgin Birth, the Immaculate Conception, the Trinity, and so on, and on the other hand to the ceaseless collaboration of many minds over many centuries. It may not be quite clear why I call certain dogmas “immediate experiences’ since in itself a dogma is the very thing that precludes immediate experience. Yet the Christian images I have mentioned are not peculiar to Christianity alone (although in Christianity they have undergone a development and intensification of meaning not to be found in any other religion). They occur just as often in pagan religions, and besides that they can reappear spontaneously in all sorts of variations as psychic phenomena, just as in the remote past they originated in visions, dreams, or trances. Ideas like these are never invented. They came into being before man had learned to use his mind purposively. Before man learned to produce thoughts, thoughts came to him. He did not think he perceived his mind functioning. Dogma is like a dream, reflecting the spontaneous and autonomous activity of the objective psyche, the unconscious. Such an expression of the unconscious is a much more efficient means of defence against further immediate experiences than any scientific theory.The theory has to disregard the emotional values of the experience. The dogma, on the other hand, is extremely eloquent injust this respect. One scientific theory is soon superseded by another. Dogma lasts for untold centuries. The suffering God-Man may be at least five thousand years old and the Trinity is probably even older. (C.G. Jung; Psychology of Religion East and West; pp45-46)

Harvey Pekar, Cleveland literary illuminary – October 8, 1939 – July 12, 2010

I first noted Harvey retrospectively, after he visited the record store I worked at, when my boss identified him as Harvey Pekar, with, something along the lines of, ‘notable crank and local jazz freak.’ At this, I realized I had seen Harvey a bunch of times, at DISC Records downtown, and on Coventry, the bohemian culture capital of Cleveland circa 1968-1974. In other words, he was a familiar face to me. Later, I asked my friend and blues mentor Bill about Harvey. He filled in a few notable details, such as, he was a world class jazz hipster, diffident, and, proudly working class.

As it transpired, Harvey was the main force that set my course as a jazz head. He filled my sails over the course of three encounters at Music Madness on Lee Road in Cleveland Heights between 1973 and 1974. I doubt the three encounters lasted more than a total of ten minutes. I wish I could remember the verbatim exchanges. I can’t, but here’s my actively imagined recollection.

Some background is necessary. At the time I was assistant manager of a record store in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. I was 19, very long-haired, and very observant but also callow. The store itself focused on the hippie and prog music of the day. We maintained one row of jazz records. However, since I started working there in 1971, the co-owner–my boss–had exposed me to a few choice records, and foremost among these several classics was Miles Davis’s In A Silent Way and Tribute to Jack Johnson. Still, I knew not much more than zero about jazz. At the time, the paragons of virtuosity in my expanding musical world were Earl Scruggs, Duane Allman, Sneaky Pete Kleinow, Clarence White, and, B.B. King.

Well, You Needn’t – No. 1 (probably happened in the Winter 1973)

Harvey came into the store infrequently. There really wasn’t much of a reason for a jazzer to come into the store. However, on this visit he plucked an Audio Fidelity reissue of a Black Lion Monk session out of the single row of records and walked it up to the counter. I was familiar with Monk from a promo in our listening rack.

Me: Ahh, Monk, I like Monk.

Harvey: Yeah, well this is late Monk. Past his prime. But, Monk is worth investigating every last note.

Me: I’ll check it out.

Harvey: Sure. It’s too bad his Blue Notes come in and out of print. You know I’ve got good connections and hear what’s going on because I’m a writer and write about jazz. I hear that Capitol is preparing to reissue some of the classic Blue Note sides…

Me: Blue Note?

Harvey: Blue Note is a jazz label, past its prime too. It’s a goldmine. You should do your self a favor and keep an eye out for Monk’s Blue Note sides. Forties, nineteen forties. Essential. Bop some would say, but listening to Monk in the forties is listening to the first genius to move beyond bebop. You know bebop, right?

Me: Sure, Charlie Parker, Dizzy.

Harvey: Gotta go.

(note–I would have discovered Monk eventually, yet Harvey’s hot tip zeroed in on music that would comprise my top most desert island selection. In fact, when the Blue Notes were reissued, as Harvey said it would happen, in 1976, I listened to the twofer’s LP over and over and over. Monk came to be my top guy, comes to be the only religion I’m affiliated with.)

The Real Shit – No. 2 (definitely in the early Spring, 1974)

(Kind of Blue is playing on the turntable. Harvey walks in. He fingers the jazz rack, walks over.)

Harvey: Miles Davis. I’m going to tell you something.

Me: Miles, man, I love this stuff.

Harvey: You like this, huh?

Me: Yeah. I like Jack Johnson the best.

Harvey: Oh. Too bad you can’t really check the real shit.

Me: What?

Harvey: Kind of Blue has the reputation. Best jazz record ever? It’s not even the best Miles. Well, it’s not my favorite Miles. You know Coltrane?

Me: Yup.

Harvey: I dunno. Kind of Blue. No, it’s the Prestige records starting in 1955; Coltrane, Garland, Chambers, Philly Joe Jones. You don’t know those guys, right.

Me: Well,

Harvey: Besides Coltrane. They do a song, in 1957, Diane. Oh, it’s all brilliant.

Me: The store should get some.

Harvey: Those sides are being reissued soon. I’ll help you out, get them all.

(He walks over to the jazz bin and pulls out a Trip reissue of Max Roach and Clifford Brown.)

Harvey: You need to realize the history of jazz goes back to before the twenties. Everything has its heritage. Miles Davis, Clifford Brown, and then you have to go back and dig Fats Navarro, and, back to Eldridge. and back to Armstrong. And, then you have to cover people nobody knows about like Shorty Baker.

(He stops, mildly shakes his head.)

Me: I get what you’re saying.

Harvey: You’ll get it, sometime, after you put the time in.

Point Omega – No. 3 (definitely in the late Spring, 1974)

(Harvey walks in and heads to the jazz rack, fingers through it part way, and then notices a record displayed on the pegboard. He lifts it up and out of its holder and walks over to the counter.

Harvey: This is incredible.

Me: What?

Harvey: You have no idea how rare these sides are. This record isn’t rare.

Me: Huh?

Harvey: I mean this LP contains really rare music from Art Pepper. Until now you;d have to hunt for them and probably you wouldn’t find them.

Me: Okay!

Harvey: You don’t know Art Pepper. I don’t even know why this record is here. Art Pepper is an alto saxophonist–is this white cat with a ton of soul. He sort of takes off from Yardbird, You don’t know Pres, Lester Young.

Me: No.

Harvey: hmmph. Anyway, it’s useless to sound just like somebody else. Art found his own sound and, man, all his great records are collector’s items. This is a goldmine, this one right here. Ring me up. How much?

Less than a month later a holdup dude walked into the store and shot me in the back while I lay on the floor of the rear office. I escaped to Vermont, yet I held onto Harvey’s advisories. Sure enough, and soon enough, those Prestige and Blue Note twofers came rolling into my hands and life. All those rare Pepper’s ended up reissued and not so rare. They’re glorious. And, I spent the next fifteen years playing catch-up to all that glowing history.

A history, about which, Harvey was on the money.

There’s a funny last encounter to tell about. I returned to Cleveland in 1992, and by 2000 I was once again managing a record store in Cleveland Heights. Harvey never walked into the store, however I did happen upon him at the local post office. This was probably in 2000, so this moment came 26 years after Point Omega.

He was leaving and I was coming. I recognized him and turned around and curved my head around his shoulder. He wouldn’t stop walking after I announced,

“Harvey Pekar, I know you from what you told me years ago in a record store near here.”

“I don’t know you. What record store?”

“It was called Music Madness. It was next to the old post office.”

I’m still walking with him as we go through the front door, out toward the parking lot.

“Umm, yeah, I remember a record store there, but I don’t remember you.”

At which point I broke away, chuckling.

Dub Collision mix, Blues for Harvey Pekar, available at nogutsnoglorystudios. Here’s a taster.

Metabiogenesis (S.Calhoun 2010) click for large version

Metacosmogenesis (S.Calhoun 2010) click for large version

(chosen, appropriated frames, using Dreamlines; hat tip to Leonardo Solaas)

Give your mind to the true reasoning I have to unfold. A new fact is battling strenuously for access to your ears. A new aspect of the universe is striving to reveal itself. But no fact is so simple that it is not harder to believe than to doubt at first presentation. Equally, there is nothing so mighty or so marvel- lous that the wonder it evokes does not tend to diminish in time. Take first the pure and undimmed luster of the sky and all that it enshrines: the stars that roam across its surface, the moon and the surpassing splendour of the sunlight. If all these sights were now displayed to mortal view for the first time by a swift unforeseen revelation, what miracle could be recounted greater than this? What would men before the revelation have been less prone to conceive as possible? (Lucretius)

If we could bring ourselves to accept the fact that no theory about the nature of Man or Society or Rationality, or anything else, is going to synthesize Nietzsche with Marx or Heidegger with Habermas, we could begin to think of the relation between writers on autonomy and writers on justice as being like the relation between two kinds of tools – as little in need of synthesis as are paintbrushes and crowbars. One sort of writer lets us realize that the social virtues are not the only virtues, that some people have actually succeeded in re-creating themselves. We thereby become aware of our own half-articulate need to become a new person, one whom we as yet lack words to describe. The other sort reminds us of the failure of our institutions and practices to live up to the convictions to which we are already committed by the public, shared vocabulary we use in daily life. The one tells us that we need not speak only the language of the tribe, that we may find our own words, that we may have a responsibility to ourselves to find them. The other tells us that that responsibility is not the only one we have. Both are right, but there is no way to make both speak a single language. (Richard Rorty, from the Introduction, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity)

My iPod is chock full of hippie classics, jazz, African music, and, lots of lectures, conference presentations, in philosophy, psychology, anthropology. Between deep resources such as learnoutloud, and freebees at iTunes, when I’m not drifting on waves of psychedelic nostalgia, I’m in the school I can create for myself.

I happened upon conference presentations about the philosophy of Richard Rorty, while trolling for curriculum contents for my ongoing rolling (as in: learning while driving in Coltrane, my 2000 Honda Civic, and classroom-on-wheels,) self-education. Rorty’s philosophy is somewhat the old friend, although it had been many years since I last engaged with his distinctively American pragmatic post-modernism. So it was I spent four plus hours with mostly knotty presentations from four ‘Rortyians.’

Rorty is an anti-essentialist: he does not think things are essentially physical and only accidentally of aesthetic, moral, or economic value, and he does not think things are essentially mental or spiritual either. This is because he denies that there is any ultimate context of the sort required to make sense of the assertion that one way of describing a thing is more fundamental or essential to it than all others. There are only limited contexts set by changing circumstances and purposes; as Dewey once put it, ‘Anything is “essential” which is indispensible to a given inquiry and anything is “accidental” which is superfluous’ (Dewey 1938: 138). (James Tartaglia, Rorty and the Mirror of Nature)

Eventually I thought to myself, “I’m, like, half a Rortyian.” I recognize by way of my longstanding bias, I’ll usually be in sympathy with the smart arguments of anti-foundationalists and subtle relativists. On the other hand, the anti-representationalism central to Rorty’s mature philosophy, to me, is arch and a bit too posed as being foundational!

The four presentations are excellent. I especially enjoyed the self-effacing Bjorn Ramberg, For the sake of his own generation: Rorty on destruction, and, edification, and, Albrecht Wellmer, Rereading Rorty. Although one gets tossed right into the deep end–Rorty’s philosophy may be formulated around Pragmatism, but it’s knotty–I became acclimated and soon enough enthralled. One hook could be: if you’re interested in how moderation and flexibility in conceptualizing, language use, proposition definition, qualifies (best!) the discussion of problems, these resources are a good ‘surface’ to dive into and through.

Four presentations about the philosophy of Richard Rorty

Richard Rorty: “Dewey and Posner on Pragmatism and Moral Progress”

Michael Krasny streaming interview with Richard Rorty

Tempus II from Philip Heron on Vimeo.

Charles Darwin

Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.
Abraham Lincoln

via blublu.org

Spring (S.Calhoun 2010)

The kitsch keeps on rollin’. I’m wandering around trying to coin an appropriate acronym. Maybe ‘Appropriated Random Kitsch’ might suffice, or ARK.

(chosen, appropriated frames: using Dreamlines; hat tip to Leonardo Solaas)

Mozart’s body of work has endured for three centuries and counting. Say what you will about forlorn Cleveland sports fans, the city’s orchestra plays this body of work and those of other all-time musical all-stars better than anybody else. So, if you’re into unadulterated-by-callowness virtuosity, Cleveland is a good place to be–is a second-to-none place to be.

Meanwhile, after weeks of reading on hoops blogs about backwater Cleveland, and hearing its basketball team’s supporting cast get trashed, I am actually sanguine about getting back to basics without any royalty around. The fact is seemingly this, starting in game three of the Celtics series, the self-acclaimed Great One got distracted by his grandiose dream and has since managed to ride the absurd philosophy of ‘winning is everything’ into ignominy. Now, he could have announced his decision in a much more empathetic, inspired, and grown-up way. Yet, it seems absolutely grooved that LeBron unconsciously played out–innocently–the Shakespearean arc, in which he gets what he wants and looses the worthy heart, tosses away the depth that is the fundamental chord of any decent victory.

No big news bulletin: yup, a twenty-something celebrity sports star happens also to be ignorant and unworldly and unwise. LeBrons’ ESPN special was the worst off ‘field’ move since Tiger’s harem was outed, and will soon enough be followed by some other kid’s version of more of the same.

Consider the obvious: there won’t any sports star from any sport celebrated for his or her body of work three hundred years from this same talent (or team’s) last comet-like show. Luckily, here in Cleveland, one can set aside–if need be–the cathexis of fandom’s perennial local misery to sit in Severance Hall enraptured, and hear profoundly all-time greats get the royal treatment at a level available nowhere else,one, two, three, four, or five hundred years after these stars “played.” Bach, Gershwin, et al? …a different league.

“Thou hath the candle singed the moth.” (Portia, The Merchant of Venice)

Don´t forget your history nor your destiny. (Bob Marley)

Susan and I saw our first Patriot Day fireworks together:

There’s something comforting about leaving the TV on and tuned to the World Cup and hearing the vuvuzela peek through the sonic ambience of the house. When I first heard the singular drone, I commented, “I like that, it sounds like a whale song.” As it is with anything capable of plying a drone, I want one.

In the middle of June I posted a wide-ranging mix of South African music on the nogutsnoglory studios blog. Git it.

South Africa is large in my musical cosmos. It’s probably where music, in effect, started many tens of thousands of years ago.

I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy. (Thomas Paine. The Age of Reason 1794)

restored scene from the musical 1776.

via Crooks and Liars, hat tip to Susie Madrak: ’1776′ Revisited: The Conservatives Are Still ‘Cool, Cool Considerate Men’

This clip is aces, but you’ll have to click over to the original posting for the background.

On the cusp of July 4th, I’m reminded of how much entertainment value is available through observing what’s going on on the right side of the battle lines drawn by the Tea Party patriot movement. The way I look at it, or, rather, one way I look at it, is there is an array of half baked sentiments purporting to represent a true vision of what America is, and this vision is claimed against all others and all other comers, by an overwhelmingly white, baby boomer movement. In turn this movement has its long-ago roots in the silent majority given by Nixon’s Vice President Spiro Agnew during the campaign of 1972. Note, however, that the silent majority then was comprised of the parents of the silent majority of today.

All those ‘others’ are characterized in ways which are veritably time honored by Conservatives of all stripes: socialists, progressives, minorities, the professoriat, liberals, secularists, educated elitists, those with empathy, humanists, evolutionists, relativists, Marxists, cosmopolitans, utilitarians, collectivists, Ivy Leaguers. As a lumpen classification, all of the above are those who don’t get what America is about–so it is claimed.

It would be fair enough for the Tea Partyistas to stop there, because it’s the appropriation of historical facts, and their subsequent revision and mangling, that casts the entire movement over the edge. For laughs I sometimes listen to Glenn Beck during my fifteen minute commute. He can’t astonish me with his claim of well-read expertise when he seems to think Thomas Paine was the revolutionary era’s version of Newt Gingrich. On the other hand, that someone so blatently ignorant is a multi-millionaire and has the ears of millions does support the notion America is a great country for the entrepreneurial gas bagger, and self-avowed Libertarian friend of liberty.

It’s also delicious and ironic to watch the Club For Growth types and corporate ‘country club’ Republicans grapple with how to co-opt, for example, tenth Amendment tea baggers.
Say what you will about the ideological aesthetics of privatizing profits and socializing risks, those goals can’t be served by watering the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots; reverting to states’ rights; or elimination Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. If you remember, back during the wave of Tea Party protests, there were signs reading, “Government Hands Off My Medicare!” Well, this is concerning of course! People other than my own getting benefits!

Still, a central tenet of Tea Partyism is that the socialization of persons’ risks, risks other than your own–see itemization above–is downright evil. As Nevada candidate Sharon Angle says, in an echo of Reagan era rhetoric Cadillac-driving welfare queens, ‘unemployment is a disincentive to work.’ President Obama, while campaigning, was pithy, “Yeah, the ownership society means you’re on your own.” There is an individualist, utopian, construct at work here in the idea that everybody is better off working on their own to realize their individual aspirations. But, this is a radically anti-conservative construct. Given a coherent, traditionalist cast, Conservatism is dead set against self-creation on individualized, ‘Libertarian’ terms. Duh!

This is why it is fascinating to observe the proponents of collectivist corporatism and corporate welfarism, (upon which the socialization of risk depends,) jockeying to reel in the inchoate and angry, sentimental, utopian collectives of the Tea Party movement. I believe it’s safe to say neither group would enjoy pursuing happiness in whatever utopia could be fashioned between their contradictory ideologies. Still…

Because the Tea Partyista, evidently, is unable to make sense of the differences rendered between Paine, Hamilton, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, et al, I’d recommend each take a gander at:

Equity Strategy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances. Citigroup Research; Kapur, MacLeod, Singh; October 5, 2005 DL). This document was brought to my attention by Michael Moore in his film, Capitalism: A Love Story. Written by analysts working for Citigroup, it specifies context and advice for sustaining holdings and wealth creation if one is a plutonomist; is super-rich citizen in a plutonomy–an economy configured for, and dominated by, the super-rich.
.

What’s it about? It’s about how the super wealthy can protect themselves and their assets from the rabble of all the have-nots; have-nots defined here as everybody but themselves. It identifies an obstacle:

Could the plutonomies die because the dream is dead, because enough of society does not believe they can participate? The answer is of course yes. But we suspect this is a threat more clearly felt during recessions, and periods of falling wealth, than when average citizens feel that they are better off. There are signs around the world that society is unhappy with plutonomy – judging by how tight electoral races are. But as yet, there seems little political fight being born out on this battleground.

A related threat comes from the backlash to “Robber-baron” economies. The population at large might still endorse the concept of plutonomy but feel they have lost out to unfair rules. In a sense, this backlash has been epitomized by the media coverage and actual prosecution of high-profile ex-CEOs who presided over financial misappropriation. This “backlash” seems to be something that comes with bull markets and their subsequent collapse. To this end, the cleaning up of business practice, by high profile champions of fair play, might actually prolong plutonomy.

Our overall conclusion is that a backlash against plutonomy is probable at some point. However, that point is not now. So long as economies continue to grow, and enough of the electorates feel that they are benefiting and getting rich in absolute terms, even if they are less well off in relative terms, there is little threat to Plutonomy in the U.S., UK, etc.

But the balance of power between right (generally pro-plutonomy) and left (generally pro-equality) is on a knife-edge in many countries. Just witness how close the U.S. election was last year, [2004] or how close the results of the German election were. A collapse in wealth in the plutonomies, felt by the masses, and/or prolonged recession could easily raise the prospects of anti-plutonomy policy.

These two lines go bumpety-bump, back and forth, over many decades. I’m not sure what the Tea Party’s economic wishes for themselves are, but I reckon they’re not concerned with those chomping to become their bedfellows so as to depress the bottom line a bit more.

This speaks for itself. I’d like to add it a curve reflecting increase and decrease of the number of Union members. I continue to be amazed when I hear ditto heads decry Unions as socialist–this in the context of cartelism, corporate welfare and subsidies, and, corporate and financial collectives. The problem as I see it isn’t super wealthy people, it’s what happens when super wealth is to be preserved, but at the cost of 80% of the household’s economic hopes become mostly flattened, and some percent becoming doomed.