Are we in the 'Age of the Feuilleton'?

Fragments taken from Hesse, Herman, 'The Glass bead game'

"... In the course of the aforementioned Age of the Feuilleton, men came to enjoy an incredible degree of intellectual freedom, more than they could stand...

We must confess that we cannot provide an unequivocal definition of those products from which the age takes its name, the feuilletons. They seem to have formed an uncommonly popular section of the daily newspapers, were produced by the millions, and were a major source of mental pebulum for the reader in want of culture. They reported on, or rather 'chatted' about, a thousand-and-one items of knowledge...

Among the favourite subjects of such essays were anecdotes taken from the lives or correspondence of famous men and women. They bore such titles as 'Friedrich Nietzsche and Women's Fashions of 1870', or 'The Composer Rossini's Great Courtesan's', or The Role of the Lapdog in the Lives of Great Courtesans', and so on...

We feel surprise that there should have been people who devoured such chitchat for their daily reading; but what astonishes us far more is that authors of repute and of decent education should have helped to 'service' this gigantic consumption of empty whimsies. Significantly, 'service' was the expression used; it was also the word denoting the relationship of man to the machine at the time...

The great majority, who seem to have been strikingly fond of reading, must have accepted all these grotesque things with credulous earnestness. If a famous painting changed owners, if a precious manuscript was sold at auction, if an old palace burned down, if the bearer of an aristocratic name was involved in a scandal, the readers of many thousands of feature articles at once learned of the facts. What is more, on that same day or by the next day at the latest they received an additional dose of anecdotal, historical, psychological, erotic, and other stuff on the catchword of the moment. A torrent of zealous scribbling poured out over every ephemeral incident, and in quality, assortment, and phraseology all this material bore the mark of mass goods rapidly and irresponsibly turned out."

Discuss.

Mediation

The avoidance of suffering through the suppression of those things we wish for is to capitulate to unhappiness...

To wish for things so ardently that we are unhappy when they are unfulfilled is to generate unhappiness...

To follow our hopes and dreams knowing that they won't all be fulfilled is to accept.

Population

Our Government still supports the policy to increase our population... I guess its an economically sound strategy based on numbers; Bigger markets are more competitive, more money can be made from them. Why worry about the standard of living or about a sustainable tomorrow...

I have some reading to do... perhaps I'll start here:

http://www.population.org.au/

A ladder to the sky

He heard it said, ‘mind your left side, what is held tight will eventually go, what is let free will hold.’

And he, as a young man, let go; he let things be as they were and built nothing, knowing a house of cards. He wandered wherever he may and came upon a field where a tall tree grew and rested under its branches. He thought he knew that since everything came from nothing only to later return again to nothing, holding possessions and building security was a vain project set to fail. So even though he acted responsibly for those he knew he took no personal responsibility preferring instead to dream.

But then one day, out of the blue vast empty sky, he spied a girl who could fly. And although the shade of the tree still blocked the heat of the sun and provided some degree of comfort, he all of a sudden wished he had built a ladder to the sky.

Is it right to eat meat?

While it sometimes seems natural to ask someone why they chose to be a vegetarian many would consider it strange to hear someone ask another ‘why do you choose to eat meat’?

In this culture it’s generally taken to be the norm that people will eat meat unless they choose otherwise. I think this is why I first found vegetarian products that imitate meat to be a bit bizarre. I saw them somehow as reaffirming the above idea that meat was taken as the norm, vegetarianism seen as a derivative.

In fact sometimes people who advocate meat eating argue that eating meat is 'natural' in such a way as to imply that not eating meat is unnatural. However this argument, when taken to this extent, seems flawed; All we have to do to question its validity is to ask ourselves can we imagine that there could be a society that survived and thrived wholly on vegetables and survived so successfully that no one living in that society remembered ever having eaten meat... If we can imagine this to be possible, and can imagine that this society could thrive and be sustainable, then it follows that eating meat is not necessarily the only natural way for a society to be. This is true even in the face of arguments aimed to convince us that eating meat was necessary during some part of humanities evolution. For even if this is true it doesn’t follow that meat eating is the primary natural state or that it 'should' be. At this point one can see that often the claim that eating meat is natural is actually a claim that people should eat meat.

It follows then that there are two questions that are of equal importance, firstly ‘why do you chose not to eat meat?’ and secondly ‘why do you chose to eat meat?’

All this said thus far, what is it about eating or not eating meat that makes this a moral question that requires reasons and/or justifications? The usual response involves something akin the sanctity of life and yet isn’t it true that we live in a world wherein life feeds on life? Isn't this natural phenomenon? If it is, if lions and tigers and bears exist, then suggesting that killing and eating living creatures is essentially wrong suggests that all carnivores are sinners, and if you also believe that existence was designed or created by a divine being, then they were made to be... ? Accordingly I don't thing this argument adds up and yet...

Certainly today’s mass production cannot be justified as 'natural.' In this culture the amount of meat that is consumed seems possible only due to the implementation of technology and production and ironically mass production, while bolstering the ability to slaughter and prepare more meat then ever before, also has the potential to make more vegetarian products easily available. So the question of whether the edifice of production causes unnecessary cruelty for nothing more than our culinary pleasure seems like a reasonable and imperative question to ask and this lends weight to the idea that as equally true that one should ask why they chose not to eat meat they should also ask why they do.

Revisiting faith and uncertainty

Why do people seem to be so afraid to accept that there might not be an ultimate answer, no capital T Truth, no fundamental purpose or meaning to life?

While it is comforting to believe that there is a divine plan, especially when times seem unfair and life makes no sense, believing that there must be a meaning which we don’t understand doesn’t make life any less uncertain.

If life does have a meaning it is still uncertain and if it doesn’t it is certainly uncertain.

If life doesn’t have an ultimate meaning this doesn’t mean that there’s no such thing as truth (little t truths), or beauty or suffering or for the need to try to understand what life is all about. Moreover this doesn’t dismiss the notion of faith for in the case of faith uncertainty is part and parcel of what it’s all about (we wouldn’t need faith if the meaning of life was certain and well understood).

No words

And so I write words, adding to the never ceasing avalanche of typeface spelt out in an unreal landscape, so many signs signifying, so many meanings lost in translation, and yet I add them… wondering why I am moved to participate? Perhaps it’s a longing for life which is contradictorily held at a distance? A longing to create something of value that will shine on and yet it seems that I can only add to the unceasing torrent of people with too much to say?
I really like cats; They speak yet they use no words.

A can of beans

Little biddy me
Dislikes rules of oppression
The laws that bind
Especially when its the religious kind
And the tides rise
It’s a circus out there
A veritable freak show
And a can of beans

Dissident America

Dissident America 

Dreaming the dream

You can't live in the present forever

Trading in flesh

Counting the cash

Like crawfish, back on out of it

It's a sad and beautiful World

Working for scratch

Out here in the garbage

A sad and beautiful World

(Influenced and 'cut-up' from Down by Law by Jim Jarmusch)

Are you a Cosmic Schmuck?

It sometimes amazes me how certain people are that their way of seeing is the right and only way. Again and again wars are fought and conflicts erupt and hardly ever do people pause and ask themselves what is actually going on. Everyone seems to suggest that they are compassionate yet it quickly follows that they are of course right, and never does it come to pass that the contradiction inherent in this is acknowledged.

For we’re right and they’re wrong they say, and that’s how it is, and it will never be any other way. 

Never is it suggested that they might be incorrect, or even more subtly that there might be things that they don't know. Even when it’s true that somebody is at fault, when it’s true that the bombing of innocents is unforgivable and abhorrent, never is it asked why and never is the actual fabric of the conflict addressed. Instead it seems people are more interested in being or projecting that they are right (see also Politicians). Yet the more they puff themselves up with self-righteousness the more fuel is thrown onto the fire. And when weapons of any type are introduced into the fray, whether they are conventional arms or diplomatic and economic sanctions, then the stakes only ever get higher, and the conflict becomes a raging torrent. And the worse it gets the more people feel the need to claim that they could never possibly have been wrong, for by this point it's all out of control, the sides are drawn, and never shall compromise be valued.

And as the dispute turns into a holy war it becomes apparent that those who try to compromise end up crushed under the wave of right and wrong, black and white, us and them. And the poor fools that suggest any other scheme, who claim that we could pause for a moment and reconsider, only end up powerless to make any difference at all. They are dubbed terrorists or sympathisers thereof...

And all the while people forget that it began with their own opinion, their own (or their society/cultures) point of view versus another that conflicted or was merely different.

It has been said over and over that the opinions you have are simply opinions, that "the map isn't the territory," (Map-territory relation) that we shouldn't be so judgemental and we should love our fellow human, that understanding can make a difference. Yet despite the voices of many these ideas are drowned out by the sheer volume of those who never doubt for a moment that they are right.

Is it simply about power? For taking the middle ground is a dangerous position. In recent times America, it seems, had to show its strength and couldn't possibly succumb to weakness against the ominous threat that it faced, for seeking understanding leaves the seeker vulnerable to being bludgeoned by the righteous opinion of others. Yet does it really follow that it’s simply better to take an absolute stance, to be uncompromising and forget about the idea of resolution?

How many people can admit that they don't know?

I am a 'Cosmic Schmuck' (see: Robert Anton Wilson). I'm not always right and I am sometimes in error. I even find it difficult to discern when I am and when I'm not.

Are You a Cosmic Schmuck?

To reassess the terrain by acknowledging that interpretations change, that opinions differ and that sometimes we are wrong doesn’t necessarily mean that we can’t have an opinion. In fact, it could be said that its impossible not to take a stance since taking the option of not deciding is itself a position and it clearly isn’t always the best one. Yet given this, acknowledging that your opinion is just an opinion means hopefully that one endeavours to make an informed decision. It also means that judgements are not made for the sake of judging but for the sake of understanding.

It is we who judge and we do so relative to what and who we are.

Knowing that we all hold opinions that we sometimes later disagree with, and that we never have the objective complete truth, hopefully means that we can make an effort to understand even more so. Not having an absolute answer doesn’t mean that we cannot have any understanding. For in many ways it’s not the answers, or judgements, or beliefs that matter but is instead the questions we ask that lead us to form them. Although, this being said, it is the answers, judgements and truths that we adhere to that form a scaffold around the process of making judgements, and if they are held rigidly then they also restrict the range of acceptable conclusions.

In the field of human conflict what this means is that we hopefully take the trouble to question what we believe about a person or culture and hopefully this leads to a better understanding of the conflict that has occurred. Sometimes it is necessary to take a firm line, yet it seems that often this is held due to a dedication to being right (or to avoiding being wrong) without realising that it’s probably more important to make a decision for the right reasons than for righteous ones. Yet, again and again, when it comes to conflict the need to be right overwhelms the need to do right. The propensity to judge becomes more necessary than the propensity to understand and things are only made worse when certainty becomes the primary goal and prize.

I am a cosmic schmuck.

“My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.”
- Robert Anton Wilson.