Month: August 2011

by Zoë Pollock

Mark Vernon questions the merits of Buddhism as interpreted by the West:

[I]n meditation, Buddhism offers a therapy that tackles the hyper-individualism of today by stressing the instability and dissolution of the self. Only, it seems to me that is not true. Whilst it may be very hard to say what an ‘I’ is – and it is surely multiple and porous – it is foolish to rush to concluding there’s no ‘I’ at all. It is less reactionary, surely, to rest with the notion that we are something of a mystery to ourselves – a mystery deepened in meditative analysis, not dissolved in it.

As a Jew who joined the Buddhist/meditation club in college for the cute boy who chaired it and the free retreat to Cape Cod, I'm not qualified to speak to the religious aspect. But Josh Rothman, summarizing philosopher Owen Flanagan's book The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized, does a good job refuting Vernon:

In the Buddhist world, materialism and determinism can be morally informative. First, they suggest that we aren't as important or permanent as we think we are — that, in a fundamental sense, our selves or souls don't really exist in any lasting way (a conclusion, incidentally, shared by Western philosophers like John Locke and Derek Parfit). This, in turn, suggests that satisfying our own personal needs and wants shouldn't be our number-one priority; instead, we should focus on projects that benefit everyone, and work to become more kind and generous to our fellow human beings.

Some behaviors that appear selfish can make us better in and to the world.

(Image: From Mantras & Meditations by Meg Hitchcock, who describes her work, "I may cut up a passage from the Old Testament of the Bible and reassemble it as a passage from the Bhagavad Gita, or I may use type from the Torah to recreate an ancient Tantric text. A continuous line of text forms the words and sentences in a run-on manner, without spaces or punctuation, creating a visual mantra of devotion.")

by Zack Beauchamp

Joel Marks answers in the affirmative:

I had thought I was a secularist because I conceived of right and wrong as standing on their own two feet, without prop or crutch from God. We should do the right thing because it is the right thing to do, period. But this was a God too. It was the Godless God of secular morality, which commanded without commander – whose ways were thus even more mysterious than the God I did not believe in, who at least had the intelligible motive of rewarding us for doing what He wanted.

Maybe I'm just dense, but I have literally no clue what skeptical argument Marks is trying to advance here. Is it that we have no reason to obey moral rules without someone to punish us for violationg them? No, he makes clear – he's trying to get us to rubbish moral categories altogether rather than simply concluding they're unimportant:

I was not merely skeptical or agnostic about [morality]; I had come to believe, and do still, that these things are not wrong. But neither are they right; nor are they permissible. The entire set of moral attributions is out the window. Think of this analogy: A tribe of people lives on an isolated island. They have no formal governmental institutions of any kind. In particular they have no legislature. Therefore in that society it would make no sense to say that someone had done something “illegal.” But neither would anything be “legal.” The entire set of legal categories would be inapplicable. In just this way I now view moral categories.

But that doesn't follow – at all – from the God analogy. The first argument is about whether we ought to follow moral rules, and the second argument is about whether moral rules exist at all. Neither argument is particularly well justified, so I'm not particularly sure how to go about criticizing the argument. For compelling defenses of moral truth, I would look to the Humean common morality tradition or Kantian rationalism. J.L. Mackie is a classic critic.

by Zoë Pollock

That's how talent scout Henry Willson found and named Rock Hudson, among others. Anne Helen Petersen recounts why Rock appealed to every housewife in America:

In [Pillow Talk and two quasi-sequels], Hudson and Doris Day play the most flirtatious asexuals in the world: They talk about around the fact of sex, meaning that they flirt but are never sexual. They dance, they kiss, it’s cute, but they’re never actually even close to hot. But for many women, the perfect relationship isn’t about sex.  It’s about cuteness, a little cha-cha in a nicely tailored suit, and non-consummation. In other words, the perfect relationship is the relationship with your best gay friend. And, of course, that’s what these films were about were: skillful flirtations between a saccharinely sweet, virginal female star and her closeted gay co-star.

by Zoë Pollock

Alexander Chee conjures up his love affair with tarot:

I became obsessed with knowing how a relationship would turn out. Was X boyfriend really over Y ex-boyfriend? Where was he the other night when he didn’t want to come over? I might take the cards out to be reassured, but midnight, when you think your boyfriend is cheating, is, shall we say, a bad time to draw cards. …My interest, I can see now, was in whether I could know answers without asking questions regarding my own insecurities. Instead of conducting some basic relationship emotional hygiene—“Is this working for you? Is this working for me?”—I went to the cards and returned with a mind full of fictions.

by Zoë Pollock

Improv Everywhere, the New York City-based "prank collective," opted for an operation they couldn't really control. Megan Greenwell explains:

The group set a wooden lectern in bustling Union Square one afternoon and set a megaphone on top. The setup included a small plaque with three words: "Say something nice." … "Have a good day, everybody," one man begins. From there, it's a steady stream of people following instructions. One woman compliments a stranger's umbrella. One guy shouts out "You are all wonderful!" A few break into song or beat-boxing rhythms. One toddler, Buzz Lightyear doll in tow, exclaims "To infinity and beyond!" The overall effect is awe-inspiring.

The singing ladies at the end clinch it for me. I'm surprised only one guy sarcastically said "something nice."

by Zoë Pollock

John Lingan charts our polar reactions towards porn:

Fittingly for an industry built on the enactment of adolescent fantasies, porn seems to have entered its own awkward developmental phase: still controversial enough to warrant persistent public outcry, it’s also mainstream enough to convey barely a fraction of the inherent illicitness it once had. Decreasingly effective as an aphrodisiac, porn now functions as a kind of dwarf star at the heart of our current culture war, encompassing a great many of our society’s unsolvable moral disagreements, involving religion, liberty, economics, federal regulation and public health.

by Chris Bodenner

Untitled, from the tumblr "Fuck Yeah Menswear":

    “We have your family” 
    That was 23 hours ago.
    22 hours since I stormed out the Polizia’s HQ.
    15 hours since I capped a fucking snitch.
    1 hour since I decided there was only one way
    this would end.
    It might already be too late.
    Found this burner shoved in my ticket pocket.
    Ransom note wrapped round it.
    Letters cut from back issues of Leon.
    “Cooperate or we put them in RTW”
    Those sick fucks.
    Kidnapped.
    by RL Stevenson Black Label.
    Got my kin held down.
    Got my fam tied up.
    G’s trapped in triangles.
    Fighting the Stockholm syndrome.
    Hostages laced in H&M.
    God forbid.

Continued here.

by Maisie Allison

n+1 reflects on conversation in the world of Gchat:

[D]istraction is endemic to daytime Gchatting, especially at work. The medium creates the illusion of intimacy—of giving and receiving undivided attention—when in fact our attention is quite literally divided, apportioned among up to six small boxes at a time. The boxes contain staccato, telegraphic exchanges, with which we are partially and intermittently engaged. Together the many chats divert us from work, speeding up time—yet look closely and you see time break down and stop. The clusters of text are followed by time-stamps, which Google inserts whenever the conversation lags. For David Hume, increased conversation between men and women corresponded to “an increase of humanity, from the very habit of conversing together.” But Hume didn’t know about Gchat, which offers us so many opportunities for conversation that conversation becomes impossible. We are distracted from chatting by chatting itself.

by Zack Beauchamp

Modern Daedalus:

by Zoë Pollock

David McCullough traces the journey of Samuel Morse from unsuccessful painter to inventor of the telegraph, which changed communication for all time.