purptuply

Philosophers have sometimes talked about a country of liars, but before James Morrow no one has imagined a City of Truth. This first-rate satire postulates the discovery of a way to condition humans so that even the prospect of telling a lie becomes unbearably painful. Then he adds a secret underground of fantasy-enthusiasts, a child with an incurable, terminal illness, & a father who believes that only lies can cure him. (It's to Morrow's credit that they don't.)

The reader would expect a novelist to come down in favor of fiction. This work, however, offers something more nuanced. "I don't love the lies...but I don't hate them either," is the father's final reflection. It is clear that, as in the abortion-satire film Citizen Ruth, both sides can easily be made ridiculous. Still, from an Aspergian point of view, it would be as wrong to place lying & truth-telling on the same level, as myths & scientific accounts of causality. Ours is a society of lies. One of them is that it believes in telling the truth. Another, that it is not even possible to know the truth. On the one hand, an ethics without probity is empty; on the other, an epistemology without axioms is nonsense.

Such paradoxes hardly perturb the majority of Cretans, who lie at every opportunity & whose constant mutual gazes demand lying in return.

"nocitura toga, nocitura petuntur
militia" --Juvenal, Satire X.8-9

change and tamper monkeys

(via amazon dot com)

It’s true that saktra is all too prone not only to revisit the same restaurant every time, but even to sit in the same chair at the same table, & order the exact same item on the menu. Nevertheless, this is more about an internal sense of the order of the world, than attachment to actual places or things. At odds with this intransigence, seemingly trivial, stands an army of agents of change: sheer randomness, entropic deterioration (resisting this is, alas, not even in favor, often enough, among neurotypicals, who you’d think would like to have their Great Machine run, if not elegantly, at least with unimpaired forward motion--), but most of all by the incessant compulsive activity of a small class of humans i will henceforward refer to as "tamper monkeys".

Their salient trait is an irritation with, not just the rules of the status quo, but its very arrangement. Now, saktra is in favor of any change, even a radical one, so long as it makes the situation better (--or is this just an INTJ trait?...must consider). But why spend hours moving furniture around in a room whose functions & contents will remain unaltered afterwards? Well, the itch will have been scratched. For the moment.

Saktra is apt to feel irrationally persecuted by such spasms. They occur in corporate contexts under the guise of “restructuring” & the like; when not a covert assault upon jobs, pay, or privileges, they often occur when someone who has been undeservedly empowered with such options starts moving colored squares around on a computer screen. Why they can’t be content with video games is beyond me. (Probably it comes from a subconscious realization of being otherwise useless.) Do tamper monkeys serve a real purpose in the scheme of things?

Yes. Because the people with good ideas are not going to be listened to, social evolution depends upon tamper-monkey innovation as the single motor of progress.

The Kludge

The word “kludge” originated in computer programming & remains a useful way of describing the typical company programs that long ago escaped the comprehension of their users, so many have been the hired tinkerers & so scanty has been the window of taking time to figure out the actual relations of every part. A kludge is like a patchwork quilt too big to see all of at once. Supremely inelegant, yet for the purpose supremely essential, even in this form, as long as it works.

It recently occurred to me that not only is the Law—our body of laws—a sort of super-kludge (one where no one understands it all, & the difference between what one lawyer knows & what another lawyer knows may equal defeat or victory), just about any human tradition is as well; & furthermore, that this is one of our core human characteristics (at least as neurotypicals). When a critic examines “The Novel” it is to the super-kludge of the majority of novel-like books written, that he refers. (No one has read them all.) An explosion of originality in one area may trigger unfathomable repercussions all over the entire network… And of course, each one is read, in part, for what it says in its place among the others.

But we seldom actually talk about about kludge-ness, instead of its icons. It would be to add a counter representing the unknown, to the counters in the game of knowns. Then saktra comes to the game, not only not knowing kludge-ness but expecting, what? Things to be done for a reason? You go & play the game according to your own lights. The result somehow doesn’t refer back enough. It needs some of those invisible tokens added.

And knowing that you work—even as an artist in isolation—within a context that will be perceived as the evolving kludge: not saying so, says something you may or may not intend. Something that for many, at first, will be the only thing they hear in it.

bringing in the sheaves

(via via metafilter)

      "A Pavane for Grothendieck

Gray sheaves, their zodiac;
red mathoms from Cathay.

Or a place beyond words
they almost remember.

Hesitant counting stilb
even with the cloud plague.

Nothing from this charade
durable: all is sand.

Incest as cicala
emitting in a jar

Change paths; theremin vugg
keeps watch like a grackle

"Climate science is our Napoleon at Jena, not the world spirit on horseback, but the biospheric totality via comsat. If there is a short list of things calling us to a timely rather than a hesitant thought, then surely it is on that list."

"He showed Malgoire a 200-liter oil drum filled with cinders and estimated he had destroyed a total of 25,000 pages.."

crazy

It seems pejoratives never simply condemn (except in Lojban, which has MABLA, otherwise semantically-empty), but have to map out a culture’s shadow-obsessions, whether excremental or sexual, adscititiously. So now we are starting to talk about “the R-word” (analogous to "N-") 'retarded' --& looking askance at such perennials as 'stupid' (JMIBLE 'understand-weak'—which is not pejorative in Lojban) & 'insane' (FENKI--ditto) as well. Though that may make it problematic, in the heat of the moment, to have to actually think about what it is you are condemning, I say that that is a good thing.

In politics, for example, which is another kind of team sports, I am angered by—what, the opposing team behaving like they always do? (We need a verb for this--. JIKPRO?) Them acting out their fantasies about how the world works (XLALI 'bad' by standard of x3: FATCI 'the facts')? Their hypocrisy? (PALCI 'immoral' covers this--.) Their refusal to acknowledge what I consider to be the real problems? (Something with 'refuse' CPAPRO. 'Problem' NABMI, probably.) These can all be specified, & when they are, I am a bit closer to understanding the motives of my enemy. (And maybe, after all, there might be something they have in common with me.)

Other typical human behaviors, I might as well call: ignorant (TOLDJUNO), denialist, selfish (SEZYSE’U), malicious, materialistic, foolish BEBNA (which is making bad choices that are known to be bad), short-sighted, or mistaken TOLDRA in some other way (causality, anyone?)… If somebody nearly hits me in traffic, I can say they’re not paying enough attention to other cars, or else maybe they expect me to get out of their way (this—entitlemented—accounts for a lot of things that aggravate me). (DUSLEBNA 'excessively-take'?)

Somehow when we want to be extremely condemnatory, or dismissive, it’s always the thinking-ability of the other that is called into question. –Not, say: the poorly chosen assumptions/ misleading worldview/ lazy application of reasoning which might have led to this debacle. It’s like I don’t want to argue, because they won’t be capable of hearing it anyway. The problem, not between two humans, but removed to a location inside the head of one of them.

But if I am turning this interpersonal disagreement into a matter which my very own culture regards as definitely not something blameworthy--indeed, a defense to its highest condemnation, the charge of murder--, isn’t this making my assigning-blame into an empty gesture? What I would want to have said, rather, is more like: "You should be prevented from doing that, even by coercive means if necessary." Because that’s what we do with crazy people: we disregard their words.

Mirrored by the other side, who also disregard these words.

On believing & disbelieving

Part one. To believe is not in neurotypicals intellectual assent so much as it is an affirmation of solidarity with other believers; in this sense even to consider the question of "proofs" would already be impolitic. (For saktra the feeling of solidarity--sobernost--has no compelling force, thus it hardly matters whether anyone else is "onboard" with them or not.) So the fact of tribes of believers itself is important to human society; the putative content of dogmas of belief is not. The former, however, defines itself as "not-politics" in order to nullify the effect of dissent, for no one but unbelievers will pay heed to those arguments (however conclusive). The history of atheism is a story that ever repeats; & ever accomplishes nothing. (Except maybe: establishing a brand.)

Part two. The word "God" is used for an abstract idea comprising various superlatives, an agent without observable activity, a feeling with unspecific antecedents, but most of all as the subject of predicates that are meant to sound loud. It is quite feasible to discuss any aspect of existing religious practices without having recourse to such blurry words (or "fnords"--good only for muddying the discourse), but the greatest incitement to their retention must be simple nostalgia for the tradition of similar arguments. It is one of those venerable games that only those fascinated by the game are still playing. Unfortunately a core part of their conception of the game is that everyone else should be compelled to play.

Part three. Cosmopolitanism was a brief, unstable construct at the best of times. One can hope it is not yet completely over. In fact the vast majority of each tribe of believers does not yearn for global victory so much as for local peace. Nor are most of the people who insist on having a non-secular vocabulary, inherently intolerant. I imagine we would not have arrived at the present revival of internecine warfare without the simultaneous conditions of overpopulation, resource depletion, & general weather contrariness. (America's latter-day imperialist blunders being only the match to that tinderbox.) It does not bode well either for sustained rational discourse or disciplined problem-solving, for the great strength of religious tribal formations has always been their relative indifference to the survival of individual members.

Cosmopolitanism must offer something more than the mere absence of persecution; in order to prevail, it needs to hold on to the humane vision of a world in which everyone, equally, matters. And equality (NU PREDUNLI) is something they should all have been able to agree on, if they but read their book.

the impotence of being earnest

Feeling that one is outside (BARTU) the process & should be, somehow, included; the desire to be helpful; even, imagining you can fix (CIKRE) something (whether or not it actually can be fixed)--these are illusions or impulses saktra is prone to, & suffers from. Which is not the same as reciprocity. Thus, one philosophizes: when admonishment received would have better served.

A haggard kind of hipster grace inheres in bystanderness. Among, but not belonging to. The cool that is attained, not attributed. Fulcanelli (attributing it to Zoroaster, bad Latin & all) names the Sphingid powers as: scire 'to know', potere [=posse] 'to be able' (oft altered to "velle"--to will--per Uncle Aleister), audere 'to dare', tacere 'to keep silent'--which suggests Joyce's "silence, exile, cunning"-- these saktra mostly purely can imagine. How often must one bite one's tongue, or (most usually) risk the exposure of a ridiculous blurt...

DJUNO, KAKNE, VIRNU, SMAJI. Alchemy doesn't travel.

the loneliest number

I would not say that saktra never feels loneliness, but that they experience both solitude & communion in a uniquely different way. Nirshsaktra-communion is based on a constant flow of subtle agreement-signals. Saktra communion can be triggered by as little as a single agreement (rated on a scale according to how significant the thing agreed-upon may be). If a space alien KESFANGE were also a chess player, i would count them kin.

Solitude for the one is default, as communion is for the other. Thus, as there is a word for the undesirable-solitude ("loneliness") of nirshsaktra, there should be a word for the undesirable-communion ("overcrowding" doesn't quite get it) of saktra. MALKANSA in Lojban, or even 'chaotic being-with' KALSA KANSA.

A principle which the two share: harmony (Lojban: KA SARXE). Even harmony, however, is defined in different ways. For saktra it is non-interference. For nirshsaktra it is single purpose. A group in which each member is in competition with the rest may seem to be defined by their mutual disconnection, but actually they all serve the same end, which is maximizing one's share (compare with a goal of only just having enough for each member).

Struggles for territory (TUTRA TE DAMBA), though often bloody, are universally considered an unalterable state of affairs--in an age of many dispersed groups ("blixen") this takes the form of policing membership-definitions; more radical, & therefore more threatening, is a heresy that questions the basis of the group (SE GIRZU). Here is where authority-basis-principles ("abskrelg" or TE CATNI JICMU) enter in. One can dispute the succession of a lineage-authority, the veracity of a leader-authority, the accuracy of an empirical-authority, or the worthiness of the beloved.

These heresiarchs, therefore, comprise the loneliest of nirshsaktra; & nothing can matter to them more, than to acquire followers. Saktra, adhering to the maxim "Neither a follower nor a leader be," often misunderstands this whole dynamic as a question of ascertaining the "truth." It is nothing of the sort. it is only the intolerable extremity of nirshsaktra in saktra's shoes. --Si eppur muove.

untruthiness & his friends

(pic by Robin Danar via Julee Cruise via Don Stitt via Brian Clements on Fb)

"What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer." --Francis Bacon

As in so many things, considering the Lojban expression of this reveals a hidden nuance. JETNU contains two arguments: 'x1 is true according to x2' is the whole of its meaning. Usually we think in terms of so-called "objective" (JETNU RODA, or 'true according to everyone') and "subjective" (JETNU DA, or 'true according to someone') truth, assigning one to hard sciences or other dogma, and the other to the arts or the man in the street. When one does not partake of the assumptions (hidden and overt) belonging to the group, one is liable to have a clearer sense of the truth, even as an individual of emotions and other biases, simply by virtue of having removed the sway of the others (the part which I am happy to now have the word "truthiness" for): this tendency to agree which is imperative in neurotypicals, and absent (or even contradicted) in aspergarians. Actually, of course, there is no mooting this RODA, there is only a ZU'I ('the usual') in that JETNU place; one might even say that 'the usual' consists of LO SIMSA PRENU, 'similar persons' who not only override the otherwise opinions of LO NARSIMSA PRENU JA NARPRE ('persons who are different, plus nonpersons'), they enjoy the privilege of not having to imagine whether these opinions exist.

One can still hope for a science that is JETNU ZI'O--true without regard to viewpoint--but that will hardly come about by the efforts of groupthink, nor by a more inclusive politics that carefully validates minority views without having to answer them. This is not to say that only saktra desires truth, but that the truth they desire resides in insight as well as systematic reasoning, nor does the result of mere reasoning force them to accept a truth they might well have reasons for knowing otherwise. Thus aspergian research--in the arts also, by the way--sometimes fails to be acknowledged (even as attempt) because it does not proceed from the body of established practice. It is not a answer to the questions everyone has been asking; it does not take part in the conversation, except to say: look at this. Hear me out.

It may take hundreds of years for that to happen. I suppose truthiness can accrue, little by little, as the air of strangeness that surrounds an unmooted truth slowly yields to familiarity. Looking back then, we wonder why so many people fought for so long not to acknowledge what seems obvious to us today. We wonder, that is, if we are not among those whose simple insights fall on deaf ears in the perpetual present of JETNU ZU'I.

on the Myers-Briggs (again)

(via cnn dot com)

at least the Jungian system has some ideas behind it. unfortunately, he was also overly fond of quaternities as an intellectual icon. that sort of handicaps the empirical side of post-Jungian typology. there have to be exactly four functions, & two have to be opposites of the other two. and of course, a person has to be this way consistently (if not invariably), so that it can make sense to talk about psychological types as if they were phenotypes. not to mention what factors one's personal history can contribute. none of this is entailed by consideration of the functions themselves, as a scientific theory would require. in that sense it's an ideology.

      i think used with flexibility & a fair bit of intuition, they can help make sense of the infinite complexity of human personality. the truth is, it does have regularities. and i believe it is not only possible to recognize some of these particular patterns in individuals, the patterns even appear in fictional characters. unfortunately the use of this mapping-system has been taken over almost exclusively by a bunch of literal-minded people who think that to pigeonhole is to understand, & a lot more who never even bother to read the books before they start flinging the jargon around. maybe one day a more sensitive mapping (i like to say: "256 personality-types") will be devised, & that too will be a service to humanity--just as long as it isn't built into an app that types everyone you point your camera-phone at!

word-hoard

(pic by Ilene Meyer)

So they may have found Shakespeare's own dictionary. I know he used a lot of words, & even though the English language was probably at its peak then, there's a list of over 1700 words he either coined or was the first recorded user of. This set me to thinking how in writing classes nowadays, they tend to discourage writing with words the average reader might not know. They're going to just skip over them, we're told. I myself have always been willing to look words up, & in fact habitually try to use any new word the next chance i get. I learned whole pages of new words when i read Proust & Pynchon, for example; among poets probably Hart Crane or Auden most (with a special nod to Loy).

While neologizing has split off into a genre & a subculture of its own (one step removed from conlangs), & advertizers vie with scifi writers to see who can disrupt standard English vocabulary more, the poets have mostly not kept up. Two contemporary poets who have are Lissa Wolsak & Kristin Ryling; while Australian phenomenon Javant Biarujia spans the gamut from langue close to macaronics with a special emphasis on Joycean puns.

How many words does a writer need? Besides an unknown number of haphazardly assembled foreign-language dictionaries, from Albanian to Maori, I have as my main resource two unabridged dictionaries, Webster's Second (1934) & Webster's Third (1961), because each has words not found in the other. I've always wanted one of the multi-volume, regularsize-print OEDs--but have never had the money when i ever ran across one (e.g. $1000). The trouble with the latter, however, is its infusion of monkey randomness: it seems like every variant spelling of the centuries between, say, Chaucer & Johnson, has bloated the number of entries to the point where, as in Finnegans Wake, the distinction between word & not-a-word has vanished completely.

When the Internet spawned Google, nobody was gunning for encyclopedias & dictionaries; they just lost out in the info-melee that followed. So if you want to know about a word now, you maybe get an equal number of right answers & wrong answers, with only your reader's intuition to choose between them. Pre-Johnson days, again; & poignant that our store should hap upon a pricey replica of Noah's very own, 1828-vintage, just at this hour (i imagine a sect of dictionary-fundamentalists who hold this as their holy book, & refer to none besides). "But 'spite of thy hap, Hap hath well happed" (Wyatt). The Primordial Soup beckons.

in response to a diagram about different levels of abstract knowledge

what we can map are our ideas about knowledge, not knowledge itself. and our ideas are hierarchical. i remember when i was a kid i wanted to map part of a local park that had a creek running through it. after i had drawn it roughly all over, i kept going back & refining the shapes i drew, ever more closely to the shapes i could perceive. but i got to a point where i realized i could only continue the process on another piece of paper & a smaller scale... but what was i doing really? generating a certain line out of a three dimensional edge. following a cycle of look-judge-record, over & over. was my first map, or a master-map on the largest possible scale, more real than one of the small maps? was it somehow above them? was it necessarily a good thing that i could talk as if i had been over much of that space, when i had actually only traversed a small, narrow portion of it? --and was this knowledge of the park, or was it knowledge of myself in a measuring mood? it was the product of a dance between them. when the dance ended, i carried beyond it a sense of familiarity, perhaps enough to remember it later. what we like to call knowledge is mostly a very complicated set of interlocking topics: because what we want above all, is to be able to keep on talking about things as if we knew them, could know them & keep them by making maps of them. i think it is because we know deep down we will lose them, & that our very selves are nothing but another kind of map, drawn upon a momentary portion of the melting & solidifying earth.

I see dead people on Facebook

(via National Geographic)

I see dead people on Facebook. Sometimes they still post. It bothers me when i realize that i haven't been thinking of them very much. Then i think that one day my own Facebook page will be going on without me. Perhaps someone will happen upon that, & go back & read my living words.

one thing pretending to be another

(via Gwyneth Jones)

"Because every man is a biped, fifty men are not a centipede." --Chesterton

My wife alerted me to an unsuspected backlash to the Jared Leto Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club: from those in the trans community who resent the fact that this character was played by a cis-man. Some even comparing it to "blackface"... Now ordinarily i would say, Let a thousand ressentiments bloom; it's not like there's never any reason to feel oppressed there. But i would think, today, why not be more celebratory, what with even Texas on the road to marriage equality (it seems)--a place whose former motto might well have been: "Uganda, with Tacos." That was very much a sympathetic character. Remember Freebie and the Bean?

This puts me in mind of those who take umbrage at the increasing visibility of autistics in popular culture. They say: why not hire autistic actors, to do it right? I submit that there are two separate issues getting mixed up, to the detriment of both. One is job opportunities. I really think, in acting as in any other field, let anyone play any part. Sarah Bernhardt played Hamlet, James Earl Jones played Lear (magnificently), any number of gay actors have been hetero heartthrobs in the Golden Age of Hollywood & after: simply remove the barriers that exist because of prejudice, & let talent prevail. It might even be considered more of a challenge to persuade when coming from a position of non-experience. Michael Douglas as Liberace? He was practically a poster child for straight male privilege--.

The other part is the war of images. A good case can be made that there is usually a sequence of increasingly realistic depictions of any minority, with what passes for convincing portrayal becoming seen as stereotypically demeaning to a later era. This does not mean that the pioneers' efforts were wasted. They were, after all, out there. Personally i do not feel that any onscreen character, even if it directly purports to show something that is part of my regular experience, is really about me or anyone else; it's a commercial product, & it's a fictive creation, in a genre-galaxy of other fictive creations. But many people do use these commercial products to form their ideas about the world, so therefore they are important facts, to be negotiated. Ending stereotypes won't end prejudice, yet when prejudice lessens, using them turns unfashionable. That's how progress is made.

Meanwhile I am looking at the words. If white playing African-American is "blackface" & white playing Native American is "redface" (yes, people do use the term), is cis playing trans "trans-face"? neurotypical playing autistic "aut-face"?--I could get out my collection of exonyms for this-- gay playing straight "straight-face"...? And what's the contrary of that--"true-face"? I have said before that reality television isn't reality, it's amateur acting. Being your real self comes from a long apprenticeship, an askesis, even, in which the self-lies of socialization are progressively removed. This has nothing to do with art, except for the artist's asymptotic journey toward more perfect expression.

"Shadow, not light, is the language of the sun." --George Murray, Glimpse (2010)

abavus niger

(Krull via darklyeuphoric on tumblr)

     "Nor do I care e'en to know an thou be white or be black."

               --Catullus (tr Richard Burton)

As a present for my birthday, one of my wife's best friends (Michelle R.) used her genealogical website memberships to do some research on my own ancestry. She has discovered that, on my mother's side of the family (from Louisiana), i have a great-great-grandfather (the Romans had a word for this: abavus) who was "a black man married to a mulatto"--though their daughter listed on the census as white. Which is funny to me, seeing as how i have so much Scandinavian ancestry (pure Norwegian on my father's side) & i sunburn very easily. But i really would be more surprised if anyone from Louisiana (or the Deep South generally) didn't turn out to have "mixed" ancestors somewhere.

Of course, the concept of race itself, as we now know (or ought to) has zero scientific basis. There are only traits. Still, because i am a word-junkie, i observe that the language contains terms for the various pseudo-mathematical combinations of "black" & "white", leftovers from when that mattered. I thought i would find out what the designation for 1/16ths black would be, & add "sesqui-" (1 1/2), for my 3/32nds... (The official Latin expression for this is: vncia & dimidia sextila & scripvlvm, according to the Latin fraction generator website. Not a useful locution, though they did provide a set of symbols, which i can't reproduce here.) Now i can--8/20--:)

                                    (via)

That proved no easy thing. There was a French writer of the 18c.: Médéric-Louis-Élie Moreau de Saint-Méry (thanx, Lauren!), & he apparently invented a racial taxonomy that differentiated combinations down to 1/128ths (over 7 generations), in his travel book on the pre-Haiti/Dominican Republic (the French western half of Hispaniola) (volume one here). The "free people of color" have an interesting history (written about by Anne Rice, among others, e.g. The Feast of All Saints) & include such writers as M. P. Shiel. An article on Wikipedia covers hypodescent, where i also learned that the 1/16th African (Moreau's "mamalouque" which he defines as ranging from 8 to 12/128ths black) was called mustefino or quintroon (i won't even consider hexadecaroon--). Which gives: sesquiquintroon. Nice reduplication there.

I see that these arcane topics are still wrixling some brows.

The deeper significance of this is twofold. First, Négritude--in the broadest sense, would be to acknowledge the Other in one's artistic practice, as much for Language poets to respect Cowboy poetry as for Caribbean francophone poets to adapt Surrealism to their post-colonial experience. And, though you may identify with one particular quartering of the rainbow, there will always be Others whose experience can enrich & enliven yours. Then, the concept of "passing" which exists in autism as well. --Undeniably useful, but is it right? For to benefit from privilege is to sanction the discrimination which is privilege's other face. Perhaps that day will come when the question whether one is neurotypical or autistic, & to what degree (counted in hemidemisemiquavers), will seem as ridiculous as to discriminate on the basis of ear length (long my favorite comparison).

Meanwhile...

lecture on the khazars