19 May 2011

On postmodernism:

Part 2

26 April 2011

Are you a civilized human being, and do you have a civilizing influence?

A Conversation with Bill Kim

Bill Kim: In school we study science, biology, all that stuff, right?  If you look at it altogether and look at it generally, there’s a common pattern.  For example:   the universe… the galaxy… planets… stars… human beings… plants… animals… all that.  They all have something in common:  they have a cycle.  The basic cycle would be:  live and die.  For example: galaxies.  What are the odds of having a galaxy where you could find a planet like Earth?

Grant Valdes: I don’t know.

Bk: As far as we know, according to the scientists, we haven’t seen any similar…

Gv: I think it’s entirely possible that we are alone in the universe.

Bk: Alone in the universe.  That’s like a Lotto ticket, right?  If we think of it as all numbers… I’ll give you an example.  Galaxies break up and make their own little stars.  They reproduce.  When they’re born, and they have their chemical reactions, they form interesting stars and all that.  Within the galaxy, there’s a star.  Even the stars, in their life cycle, always release some part of their elements.  As a result, they create a planet.  Just like a Lotto ticket, they created planet Earth.  Another result… another offspring.

Ultimately, what I’m trying to say is:  throughout all these different cycles, there seems to be at least one that’s perfect.  The winning Lotto ticket.  Right now, we see that Lotto ticket as planet Earth, because this is the only planet that can create life and sustain it.  My theory is, right now, that the ultimate animal would be the human being.

Gv: I agree.

Bk: They could pretty much kill every species if they wanted to.

Gv: We’re so far beyond the other animals that we really can’t relate to them anymore.

Bk: So if we are the ultimate cycle, what is our purpose?

Gv: I think what you’re getting at is the immense feeling of responsibility that comes with being human – a free human.  There are humans on this planet who are enslaved by various things.  But if you are a human with choice, and you realize that we are the ultimate species, on the ultimate planet, that we are not just the single group of observers in the universe, but we are the sole actors in the universe… it’s a lot of responsibility, I agree.  It’s a crushing responsibility for a lot of people.

“Anatomy Is Destiny”

National punch-line Gary Coleman is dead.  Although Mr. Coleman experienced a raft of public miseries and indignities in his life, it never seemed to erode his memeworthiness:

I am reminded of my late six-pound Shi-Tzu, Little Arfin’ Annie III. She was an adorable, wall-eyed runt.  She was antsy and would bite people, yes, but we thought it was cute when she did so, since half of her teeth were missing. It turns out, though, that Annie was suffering from an eye disorder that had been giving her the equivalent of a migrane headache for five years running.  Her agitation was due to her pain.  Even after we learned of this health issue (which the vets did resolve), it was impossible, looking at that goofy face, to appreciate her suffering.

What the hell is wrong with my generation?  Even in death, Gary Coleman is mocked.  We cannot see him as a real man.  In related news, HealthDayNews reported today that U.S. college students “are about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts of 20 or 30 years ago, as measured by standard tests of this personality trait.”  I was exposed to violent video games; I use social networking sites; I’m about as “self-centered, narcissistic, competitive, confident and individualistic” as they come, but I would still never reduce another man’s existence to a cute internet meme, as so many have done to Mr. Coleman.  I may have done so to a Shi-Tzu for the above photograph, but I wouldn’t do so today, even to a toy dog.

The connection between an individual’s level of suffering and his ability to empathize is well-known.  I must conclude that my generation, or at least its college-going stratum, has not yet suffered enough.

Erosion of the Will: Praise

It can be objectively said that American popular culture is godless.  That is, it is not generally agreed that our every action is being judged by a jealous and all-seeing God.  This does not mean we freely do as we please, however:  our every action is instead judged by jealous and all-seeing peers.  What don’t we do for the heaven of praise?

Particularly on the internet, nearly every statement seems to invite the approval of others, regardless of the author’s intent.  His will to truth is eroded when he finds himself writing only “likable” Facebook updates…

…publishing the kinds of YouTube videos that most viewers will find to be worthy of five stars….

…or even, if he’s a feature filmmaker, refraining from making the kind of bold, divisive film that will “average out” into apparent mediocrity:

Of course, the notion that one should act in the hope of winning praise predates the internet:

Negative criticism provokes reflection, anger, resistance, and growth.  It is praise that erodes the will.  If we find ourselves able to discount a critic’s fault-finding as under-informed and irrelevant, we should also, then, discount that critic’s praise on the same grounds.  Has your life been lured from its proper course by the voice of praise?  Just because the crowd laughed at your joke doesn’t mean you should have told it it:

Just because people said you rocked doesn’t mean you shouldn’t release an album of piano improvisations:

Just because someone said you were good at role playing a Senator in high school doesn’t mean you should enter politics:

We know these things, but if our will is eroded, can we really believe them?  Picture the once-beloved high school quarterback who seems slightly stilted and maladapted by the time of the ten year reunion.  His will was eroded at a crucial age by an excess of praise, which assured him, “This is whom you are.”  Throw the pigskin, get a biscuit.  One might call the accumulated effect of such praise “Pavlovian servitude.”  The character Frank the Tank in Old School was never living well – he simply received years praise from foolish people for his foolish behavior.

What, then, is a better standard for judging a person than the amount of praise he receives?  How can you know that you’re living well?  As a starting point, I would point you towards the work of any respected thinker from any place and any period of time other than the United States in 2010.

Erosion of the Will: Introduction

Erosion of the Will: Billboards

Erosion of the Will: Architecture

Erosion of the Will: Horoscopes

Erosion of the Will: Video Games

“Congratulations! You’re Living the Dream in the Dead Heart of the Control Machine”

My view of the late night turf war, recorded, appropriately enough, very late at night:

“I Won’t Leave You ‘Fine’”

Under normal circumstances, I would not have seen Twilight, but I’m glad I did.   It’s good to leave one’s cultural comfort zone (and it doesn’t take a trip around the world to do so).  Originally published at Empire of Doubt:

This age has tried without success to shut down the romantic.  We claim to value human life, despite poisoning and firebombing it on an epic scale, and perhaps we really are quite fond of having it around.  But do we exalt it?  Do we tremble before human accomplishment? Do we believe our own species can navigate these historical waters, not by transcending or abandoning humanity, but by tapping into humanity’s very strengths – its ingenuity, devotion, and discipline?  No, our society tells the youngster that there is no frontier of the human heart, that victory is external, that the best one can do is to score in the 99th percentile or become President.  This dull, corporatist definition of human accomplishment has dominated for decades and decades, since at least the reign of World War I’s droll rats.  What a relief, then, to see romanticism bubbling rightly back to the surface with the success of films like Twilight.

Twilight is a film enthralled with its characters, be they vampires or everyday folks. Their humanity fills the frame, and it is enough. This naturally appeals to teenage girls, who understand, for example, that high school events are a huge deal and can shape one’s destiny;  it will leave cold those wishing to see the “fate of the world” decided by a well-choreographed boat chase (for the action here is poorly executed and irrelevant).  Like any decent fiction, Twilight asks what makes for the good life, and offers a compelling answer.

How would you live if you were to live interminably?  You might read the canon, compose music, love passionately, be steadfast to your family, dress stylishly and take care of your body.  This is how the Cullens, the Übermensch vampire family at the center of the movie, choose to live.  Questions of mortality (or immortality) focus the mind on priorities, and so these characters embody romantic author Stephenie Meyer’s values.

These heroic vampires are portrayed not as aberrant but as more fully human than their small-town counterparts.  They are more loyal, they appreciate art more deeply, and their jokes are more inventive.  While they have stronger animalistic urges as well, their self-restraint is more than up to the task.  Frivolity and self-deprecation may be foreign to them, but for the romantic such token weaknesses are not defining human traits.  The romantic work portrays an ideal and declares it possible; mediocrity-fanning slogans like “dude, where’s my car?” and “I think I love my wife” are impossible in such a world.

It may look at first a dour landscape, this world of Forks, Washington (home to the events of Twilight and my father’s side of my family).  Where’s the ironic detachment?  Where’s the academic indecision?  This aesthetic seduces with a rare aroma: sincerity.  Sincerity is not always serious. The scene in which heart-throbs Bella Swan and Edward Cullen meet in a biology classroom is hilariously overwrought – brimming with sleazy guitar solos, windswept hairdo’s and bit lips – but these effects are not detached kitsch.  The scene is funny because the director is brazenly showing how these teens in heat really do feel.

This generation is sick and tired of heroes who are sick and tired.  It’s seen what the neurotic, over-psychoanalyzed boomers left us – cities choked in the haze of entropy.  Twilight is one example of a broader aesthetic on the wax, one that values excellence, not inside jokes; lasting beauty, not the Pitchfork rating system; bravery and not apologetic slackerism.  Romanticism belongs to no medium or era, so long as its philosophy inspires.  Meaningfully, the three artists featured most prominently in Twilight’s soundtrack are Claude Debussy, Radiohead and Muse – all, to some degree, musical romantics.

Am I saying that Twilight is a great film?  No.  But has it deserved to be panned in the cynical way it has been panned by cynical writers who can’t get past the “teenage vampire” thing? Certainly not.