Sunday, October 29, 2006

Pret a Porte(r)

Progeny

Monday, October 23, 2006

A(n un)rrested Development?


The addiction to sports, therefore, in a peculiar degree marks an arrested development in man's moral nature”
--Thorstein Veblen

While I expect that quote to be unpopular, I must confess to thinking a lot lately about the function of sports in society. I have been contemplating the ways that the rules of sports reflect the values of society, especially in terms of looking at the variations in rules that one sees in similar games across a wide variety of cultures. Surely these differences in rules reflect the conceptions of "fairness" for each particular region and in some ways echo and reinforce the sense of what is just within a particular culture or sub-culture. (Why do Australian "football" players wear no pads and have no off-sides rules? Why do American "football" players play in lines and wear body armor? Think of the ceremony and extreme gravity of Japanese Sumo "judges"



versus the earthy quality of American wrestling (not to even mention TV wrestling.)



I do not know the full context of Veblen's statement above, but I suspect for him it represents some kind of masculine ritual for determining superiority within a physical context. This is the sentiment that resonated with me, and yet to give sports and their fan(atic)s their due, one might also view sports themselves as representing a codification of rules rather than supportive of a nuanced ethical system and thus a stagnation in terms of "moral" (ethical) development.

Friday, October 20, 2006

Theories/Practices of Blogging: Why I Blog

"Only reason can convince us of those three funda- mental truths without a recog- nition of which there can be no effective liberty: that what we believe is not necessarily true; that what we like is not necessarily good; and that all questions are open." -- Clive Bell



I begin my musing with the question of what makes a web-log different from a standard diary or journal and how the essence of what is produced might differ from such items.

As with journals, there are definitely different types of blogs. While many seem to be daily notations thrown up for the satisfaction of their writers and perhaps a few of their friends, it is interesting to look at some of the more far-reaching creations and think a bit about how the use of the computer interface affects style and especially content.

Certainly hand-written journaling has a long history and there have always been less or more adept, less or more interesting writers, less and more public access to these “writings”. Journals can and have also been more than just written chronicles often including drawings, paintings, and sundry memorabilia (ticket stubs, pressed flowers, locks of hair.)

What makes web-logging different from previous written journals is perhaps the immediate access of these mixed media to a large public and the possibility for that public to interact with the writer/artist. I have noticed also that the majority of blogs that seem to have philosophical and critical content are produced by teachers or academics of one sort or another.

Perhaps this is not so surprising since, schools and universities have been quick to jump on computer bandwagons and tend to stay on top of technical innovations. I think however that there is at least one other additional reason for this coincidence.

In my own personal opinion, the most interesting blogs combine the elements of memoir (being focused thoughtful or emotional considerations of events or people) with the opportunities of modern technology – the possibilities of instantaneous public interaction. They work as a forum that allows for support and intercourse for those working in intellectually or artistically exploratory areas. In this respect, they may well offer an antidote to a problem that I have been observing for some time now – the increasing isolation and splintering off of the individual from the group (and particularly of the creative and intellectual individual). This may seem like a tangent at first but be patient with my argument as it is being built.

As universities and colleges have become more and more democratized, the community of artists and scholars has become more and more dispersed and the belief in the values of their work has been diminished. This occurs from a desire to make the world and our communities a better place. It is a natural progression that as one seeks to improve the education of the masses, that the expectations of what a University or College prep degree will offer will change. When the university was a place for the elite to school the elect, (and produce the well-rounded individual in the form of Castiglione’s Renaissance “man”, the Courtier) then it was possible to have institutions that supported education in the things that made the culture great. These days, as we introduce more and more people who do not have guaranteed or preplanned roles in state and the professions to the ideas of academia, the question for those individuals becomes not what does it mean to be a well-rounded individual, but how is (any of) this going to help me with my future life – how is this going to help me with a job.

Academia, while having done a good job of insisting that education is important and should be available to all, has done a poor job of publicising the importance of the ability to think flexibly, of the value of knowing about history and philosophy and of having an appreciation for the arts (despite the fact that all of these things make for a more versatile person who is a better worker and world citizen.) This means that it has attracted more and more students, become larger and larger and lost one of its very important foci, that of creating communities for scholars and artists that preserve and critique the bases of culture.

Academies have grown and introduced new “more practical” curricula, hiring a diverse variety of lecturers and professors and thus the once small supportive ivory tower communities became diluted with nursing, management, and technical area staff. To differentiate oneself from the droves of other faculty (as the numbers of attendees increased), it became necessary for teachers to become authorities in a particular field and with so many others in the field, it became necessary to specialize in increasingly ridiculous and narrow areas. Teachers went from studying broad fields of understanding to immersing themselves in highly technical and specialized ones. The model of the Renaissance “man” was all but lost to the academy along with the ability to interact with and find others with similar issues and interests.

In short, thinkers find it harder and harder to find each other and find meaningful interaction with others.

The web-log offers the possibility of those intellectually isolated artists and thinkers to explore broader areas and find others who have similar interests or who have interests in taking up the discussion of such interests. This of course goes for other groups who are feeling isolated too. On a broader level, what we see in the weblog is the possibility of a kind of intentional community – solving the problem of Marshall McLuhan’s global village a bit, by offering (two-way) communication that is instantaneous in bridging space and time and gratifying. In short I blog because I have the opportunity to send out ideas and interact with others about them in a wide variety of media and areas. As an intellectual loner I have been given for the first time the opportunity to become a member of a meaningful community.

For other responses to the question of why one blogs please visit:



"What mankind have long possessed they have often examined and compared, and if they persist to value the possession, it is because frequent comparisons have confirmed opinion in its favour. As among the works of nature no man can properly call a river deep or a mountain high, without the knowledge of many mountains and many rivers; so in the productions of genius, nothing can be stiled excellent till it has been compared with other works of the same kind."
--- Samuel Johnson

Thursday, October 19, 2006

That's What I Want!



Humpty Dumpty says he makes words mean what he wants them to mean. Thank you semiotics. Here's to images that mean what we want them to mean! Or perhaps to mean images that we want!

Mean, mean, mien, mean, mean, mean!

What does the facial expression intend to connote in its cruel, average quality?

Friday, October 13, 2006

Wormhole



"Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what was going to happen next."

Charles Dodgson/Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Monday, October 09, 2006

Precisely!

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Absence



Sometimes absence makes the heart grow melancholy. I've been away on holiday and enjoying the mysteries of the natural world. Now that I'm back at my flat, the thrill is gone. I have to go back to work, deal with unpleasant people again, withstand those trivializing details, surround myself with the imaginationless and insensate.

Ay, in the very temple of delight
Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous
tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

John Keats

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