France

I would never have made it in a 19th century French novel. From Stendhal's Scarlet and Black.

He flew up the ladder, he tapped at the shutter; a second or two later Mathilde heard him; she tried to open the shutter, but the ladder was in the way. Julien clung to the iron hook placed there to keep the window open, and, at the risk of coming hurtling down time and time again, gave the ladder a violent shake and shifted it a little. Mathilde was able to open the shutter.

He flung himself into the room more dead than alive.

'So its you, my dear!' she said, rushing into his arms.

Painting, I was never comfortable enough on the ladders to perform this maneuver. I would have either had to climb down and reposition the ladder from the ground (not romantic), or I would have tried to move the ladder while on it and fallen to my death (also not romantic). Luckily, my friend who is moving to France has more talent up on the ladder.

sinners

Slavoj Zizek writes this in the Sublime Object of Ideology"Society is not prevented from achieving its full identity because of Jews: it is prevented by its own antagonistic nature, by its own immanent blockage, and it 'projects' this internal negativity into the figure of the 'Jew.'" He was writing about anti-Semitism, but the same logic applies to the figure of the radical Muslim, the illegal immigrant, etc...

And in the church? Perhaps what happens there isn't so much a negative type in response to an internal problem or blockage, but the creation of a positive type whose non-existence or absence can always be posited as an explanation for why things are falling apart. Zizek talks about how, in anti-Semitism, perceived counter-evidence is absorbed as evidence for anti-Semitism: "The fact that this Jew doesn't seem xyz just demonstrates how dangerous they actually are." And sin works similarly in the church: "...this shows just how deceptive sin is..."

fitzroya cupressoides

While walking through Edinburgh's botanical gardens with my friends, I happened across this plant, the fitzroya cupressoides. Considering that I had just read Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, I had the captain of the Beagle, Robert Fitzroy, on my brain. The right name from the right place. And I felt like I saw it at the right place (the city where Darwin went to school) at the right time ("the Darwin Year," and when I was in the middle of reading, thinking, and writing Darwin). So I took this picture to remind myself to look it up later.

Well it turns out I was right, that the fitzroya cupressoides was named after Robert Fitzroy. It ends up being an interesting plant, a giant tree that is the only species in its genus. In the late '90s, one tree was found that was over 3000 years old...

mechanics

What I've come to be wary of is any idea that can move from from place to place with losing or gaining anything. This is the trouble I have with activisms and fundamentalisms of all kinds, with protests and campaigns.

Karl Popper makes a similar point when he tries to demarcate between science and non-science, where he says that what is perceived as the strengths of Marxism and Freudian psychoanalysis is actually their weakness, namely their ability to absorb and explain all new data. Zizek, I think, makes a better point (though still one about weaknesses perceived as strengths) when he writes in the Parallax View, "In other words, the fact that sexuality can spill over and function as a metaphorical content of every (other) human activity is not a sign of its power but, on the contrary, a sign of its impotence, failure, inherent blockage." But, here Zizek is talking about content moving from form to form, molded into different shapes, and what I'm interested in here is the same form moving from content to content without ever bending or changing shape.

In Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche writes about idealism in this way: “All idealists imagine that the causes they serve are significantly better than the other causes in the world; they do not want to believe that if their cause is to flourish at all, it needs exactly the same foul-smelling manure that all other human undertakings require." And, actually, I would think this goes both ways: not only making use of the foul-smelling manure but at the same time creating it, constant reworking.

flak

A few days ago, a bus in New York crashed bad. So far 15 of the 31 passengers are dead, and there are some accusations that the bus driver fell asleep at the wheel. Apparently the company he worked for has been flagged for problems with fatigued drivers, which reminded me of a section from Marx's Das Kapital.

Marx writes about a railway accident that occurred when some railway workers fell asleep on the job, resulting in the deaths of hundreds. But, “Everyone knows the consequences that may occur if the driver and foreman of a locomotive engine are not continually on the lookout. How can that be expected from a man who has been at work for 29 or 30 hours, exposed to the weather, and without rest?”

The workers were charged with manslaughter but, of course, there were no consequences for their employers.

finishing up

I've been finishing a lot of books lately, including a few that I've been reading since summer. Today I finished reading The Challenge of Jesus by NT Wright. Here are the 4 main things I thought were interesting:

1. Wright insists that the parables are to be read, and were delivered, as stories about the nation of Israel, rather than about individuals.

2. Truth, not as "a set of doctrines or theories but as a person and as persons indwelt by that person."

3. One of the huge dividing lines in the church, one of the real ones, is in the distribution of weight between the crucifixion and the resurrection. Most Christians I know put all the weight on the crucifixion, and read the scriptures that way. Wright argues that every early Christian theology was focused around the resurrection, and that a bodily resurrection.

4. Did Jesus know himself to be God? "It was in short the knowledge that characterizes vocation. As I have put it elsewhere: 'As part of his human vocation, grasped in faith, sustained in prayer, tested in confrontation, agonized over in further prayer and doubt and implemented in action, he believed he had to do and be, for Israel and the world, that which according to scripture only YHWH himself could do and be."

retrograde

After talking about rejecting metaphysical ideas, especially theological ones like original sin and salvation, Nietzsche puts this forward: "Then, however, a retrograde movement is necessary: he must understand both the historical and psychological justification in metaphysical ideas. He must recognize how mankind's greatest advancement came from them and how, if one did not take this retrograde step, one would rob himself of mankind's finest accomplishments to date."

I'm not against metaphysics to the extent that Nietzsche is, but I do think there is something very important here in terms of ideas and how they are approached. What I find boring about much of philosophy, theology, and even history, is that first movement that Nietzsche talks about, where energy goes towards assent or rejection, proof or disproof. What I find more interesting is asking the question of why an idea is valuable and powerful, how it functions, and what it has done. I may not believe in substitutionary atonement, but I still find it to be fascinating for just these reasons. Not to mention, arguments centering around assent and rejection are unlikely to change anyone's minds, but arguments focused around function can be much more revealing.

Where I also get bored of philosophy and theology is the treatment of ideas as fixed forms, as stable entities, and as essences. I'm not sure that ideas ever reach a fixed state, in spite of various attempts to construct or identify stable systems of thought and how each part of the system works together. The history of an idea isn't just about how an idea passed through time, or even how it changed through time, but also how the manipulation and multiplicity of a single idea is necessary for it to function.