jason sent a link about a year ago to a david brin article in salon,
that's now in an expanded version on his website:
<http://www.davidbrin.com/tolkienarticle1.html>

i'd mentioned that i found several problems with it, but wouldn't get
around to actually formulating them for a while. so i guess a year
counts as a while.

heh!

--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


> This fits the very plot of "Lord of the Rings," in which
> the good guys strive to preserve and restore as much as
> they can of an older, graceful and "natural" hierarchy,
> against the disturbing, quasi-industrial and vaguely
> technological ambience of Mordor, with its smokestack
> imagery and manufactured power rings that can be used by
> anybody, not just an elite few.

A self-serving synopsis there, eh? First, they're not striving to
preserve the old hierarchy. They know that the old hierarchy is
passing. An entire stream of the story is that the old is passing away
(admittedly the feeling here is elegaic) -- but the good guys are the
ones making way for the new, the rule of man on earth, while the bad
guys are hanging on to the old hierarchy, the subjugative power for
wizard Sauron. What they're fighting is Sauron's evil power, not the
passing of the old order.

And there's nothing more "technological" about Sauron's Mordor than
about the Shire, whose hobbits love gadgetry but who don't use it to
destroy everyone. As for the rings, referring to them as
"manufactured" certainly fits Brin's technological point here rather
than referring to them as "conjured," which is the far more accurate
characterization.

Meanwhile, *can* this ring be used by just anybody? The point is that
it destroys everybody, even its wielder. As Simone Weil pointed out,
in talking about the Iliad,

           Force is as pitiless to the man who
           possesses it, or thinks he does, as
           it is to its victims;  the second it
           crushes, the first it intoxicates. The
           truth is, nobody really possesses it....
           Thus it happens that those who have
           force on loan from fate count on it
           too much and are destroyed.

  It's not just anyone who can truly use that ring: it was made by
Sauron for Sauron, and anyone else who "uses" it isn't really using it
to its fullest potential. It's the ultimate elite symbol, and that a
ragtag band of fellows, led by a simple hobbit, could upend this
hierarchy is the opposite type of message from what Brin interprets.

Brin, after all, refers to the rings incorrectly as "man-made"
(they're made by a sorcerer, not a man, a fact as important to the
story as it is important for him to gloss over in this essay). He
posits the moral of the Ringwraiths' corruption as, "Don't try putting
on the trappings or emblems or powers that rightfully belong to your
betters. Above all, don't try to decipher and redistribute mysteries."
Wrong again: the Ringwraiths became corrupt not because they were
trying to "usurp the rightful powers of their betters -- the High
Elves." The Elves' power wasn't rightful at all, as both Brin and
Tolkien acknowledge, but the one ring's very purpose was to subjugate
the Ringwraiths, *and* the Elves, to Sauron.


> Still, scientific/progressive society has been known to
> listen to its critics, and not just now and then. Name
> one feudal society whose leaders did that.

To name just one, England. What on earth does Brin think of the Magna
Carta?


> Were any orcs or "dark men" offered coalition positions
> in King Aragorn's cabinet, at the end of the War of the Ring?
> Was Mordor given a benign Marshall Plan?

Of course not: they weren't humans. Germans, nasty as their plan for
domination was, are human, as are Soviets, Chinese, Americans,
Mexicans, Brits -- we're all humans. We come together in coalitions,
even with those who are technically our enemies, just as the men in
Tolkien did: men of Gondor, Rohan, and so on. The other creatures
don't represent Nazis or the Yellow Peril. They represent Satan and
his demons, foes of all men.

The misplaced discussion of the dark creatures in Tolkien as being
"racist" is based on the fact that we see these creatures as men
rather than as demons. There *are* no good Orcs, just as there are no
good demons. Brin may not like the terms of Tolkien's fantasy, but he
can't just twiddle them around however he likes.


> Let me avow upfront that I share the more recent, upstart
> belief in universities, democratic accountability, science
> and human improvability -- one that questions the fated
> persistence of "eternal" stupidities. Above all, any
> "golden age" lies in our future. It has to. Or what are we
> striving for?
>
> Anyway, people with my view had better be right. Because
> if humanity is as obstinate as the cynics and Romantics
> believe, we shall surely go extinct quite soon.

A perfect example of the bankruptcy of a secular worldview. Everything
he says is a shadow, faithful to the shape but a shadow nonetheless,
of what a Christian would call truth. The striving for a better future
-- is it any coincidence that it comes from Christian Europe? The
Christian message, of a better day yet to arrive, and its vow to
remake the fallen world to closer resemble that day -- from "on earth
as it is in heaven" to "we shall build Jerusalem in England's green
and tender land" -- is the very source of progressivism, as its faith
in an ordered creation is the source of empirical science. But we're
striving for that better day as a means of preparing the way for it,
not building it. Human nature *is* obstinate, no matter what cynics
and Romantics believe. But, in secularist language, the Christian
worldview says that we *will* all go extinct, and that we will *never*
go extinct. The end of the world, as it is envisioned by a secular
mind, is a beast with two horns that the Christian mind escapes right
between. No, we won't just weave on forever, and, no, we won't just go
up in smoke.


> But things were different in kingdoms of old, where one
> official party line was promulgated and alternative
> sources of information got routinely squelched. And that's
> in every kingdom, mind you. Go ahead, name one where it
> didn't happen.

OK, to name just one: Israel. Israel! Has this guy ever even casually
flipped through Chronicles? Honestly, this is kind of fun, but if
you're going to be so chip-on-the-shoulder, ya better be sure of what
you're saying.


> Next time you reread LOTR, count the number of powerful
> beings who are vastly uglier than anybody with that kind
> of power would allow themselves to be. Why? How does being
> grotesquely ugly help you govern an empire?

But the real question is, once you've gotten enough power, why on
earth would you *bother* posing as an angel of light? Tolkien's point
here is obvious. No one in his right mind would envy Sauron's
bling-bling lifestyle as a bodiless eye surrounded by fuming waste,
but Sauron isn't in his right mind. That is yet another way in which
power corrupts. Does Donald Trump know how ugly he is? No face-lift or
hair job or tailor could ever give him what he's missing. Right?


> Enlightenment, science, democracy and equal opportunity
> are still the true rebels, reigning for just a few
> generations (and still imperfectly) in one or two corners
> of the Earth, after elite chiefs, romantic bards and
> magicians dominated our ancestors for maybe half a million
> years.
>
> Don't you think a little pride in that rebellion -- a
> radical revolution-in-progress, still fresh and incomplete
> -- might be called for?
>
> A rebellion that, among many other things, taught serfs
> like you to read so you can enjoy epic books and picture
> things differently than they are.... One that, for all its
> imperfections, gave you a better chance than in some
> peasant village of old.... this culture may not be as
> romantic as those old kingdoms. But isn't it better?
>
> You are heirs of the world's first true civilization,
> arising out of the first true revolution. Take some pride
> in it.

Finally, he sounds persuasive! But the flipside of that question is,
where *is* the poetry? Why *does* the only nondystopic future, Star
Trek, end up so saccharine, to use Brin's example? Maybe it's because
these stories really *aren't* going anywhere. That is to say that an
endless progress is no progress at all. The sword-and-sorcery tales,
to the suprise of their myopic fundamentalist critics, are essentially
Christian in that the progress eventually ends. That's why it is true
progress in the first place. These tales are not so much as a longing
for lost hierarchy -- who really wants to be a slave, even under King
Solomon? -- as a symbol of the ultimate hierarchy.

As is not often enough pointed out, America's experiments in democracy
were not inspired by Greek "democracy" or Roman republicanism, but
rather by the example, in Deuteronomy chapter 1, of a people who
freely chose their own leaders to lead them and whom they could hold
accountable, precisely because they *did* have a king, who they saw as
the real king, God himself. The later arguments about the divine right
of kings stemming from the kingship of God were self-serving and
wrongheaded. Samuel's conversation with God encapsulates the Biblical
Christian view, if not the traditional Euro-Christian view: that God
is the only king, period, and that human monarchy leads to dissolution
-- which in fact it did, as that flip through Chronicles shows us.

So our love for princes rescuing princesses from dragons and living
happily ever after answers a Christological longing, not a
hierarchical one. And it's right at the heart of Tolkien's tale;
without acknowledging that, Brin, for all his excellent analysis of
human history (purged though it is of its theological source), won't
make any progress at all.

I have taken the Meyers-Briggs and the DISC multiple times. I seem to get
different results each time I take one, based on my particular mood. Over time,
though, I have noticed certain tendencies in my responses, and the results are
generally accurate. All of this to say that a complex human being should not and
can not be defined by a narrow and objective test. My biggest problem is the
people who take these tests and let the results define them, rather than the
other way around. If used appropriately, they can provide insight into yourself
and others.

Check out "Please Understand Me II" by David Keirsey.

Just my thoughts.
dc

On Wednesday, September 15, 2004, at 09:11AM, barry brake <barry@...>
wrote:

>
><http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/09/12/against_types?mode=\
PF>
>
>i'd be interested in your responses to the above -- an article that
>talks about critics of testing, from rorshach to myers-briggs. in
>particular, rich, you've mentioned that the mmpi, uncannily, works;
>and i myself have taken a pop version of the myers-briggs, and found
>the resulting paragraph to be an unnervingly accurate description of
>me! just anecdotal evidence to be sure, but perhaps more valuable than
>a fortune cookie!
>
>--
>
>barry
>. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

I happen to be a believer in these kinds of tests- to a limited degree.
I was on staff at a wilderness camp years ago and our small staff of 13
went through a test (can't remember the name of the test, but it
categorized by the letters D, I, S, and C). In the end, we got to know
the other staff members much better and had a deeper understanding of
ourselves. I really helped us relate to each other and showed us how to
relate to certain people.

But

They can obviously be taken too far. We have a friend who has the
Meyers-Briggs classifications down cold, to the point that she can
pigeonhole a new person within a few minutes. It's uncanny, but can
result in some reductionist thinking. ("Oh, this person is an INTJ, I
need to treat him this way, or I shouldn't say such-and-such"). The
initials are a starting point, not a destination.

Jason


On Sep 15, 2004, at 9:10 AM, barry brake wrote:

>
> <http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/09/12/
> against_types?mode=PF>
>
> i'd be interested in your responses to the above -- an article that
> talks about critics of testing, from rorshach to myers-briggs. in
> particular, rich, you've mentioned that the mmpi, uncannily, works;
> and i myself have taken a pop version of the myers-briggs, and found
> the resulting paragraph to be an unnervingly accurate description of
> me! just anecdotal evidence to be sure, but perhaps more valuable than
> a fortune cookie!
>
> --
>
> barry
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

<http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/09/12/against_types?mode=P\
F>

i'd be interested in your responses to the above -- an article that
talks about critics of testing, from rorshach to myers-briggs. in
particular, rich, you've mentioned that the mmpi, uncannily, works;
and i myself have taken a pop version of the myers-briggs, and found
the resulting paragraph to be an unnervingly accurate description of
me! just anecdotal evidence to be sure, but perhaps more valuable than
a fortune cookie!

--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

here's an article about the phenomenon of lurid sadness in children's
books. i've often joked with catherine about the "newbery death
books," but she doesn't seem to agree -- this article, though,
mentions newbery's notoriety in that area.

interestingly, one of the authors decrying that phenomenon is lemony
snicket, the impish author of the "series of unfortunate events" books
-- a series which dwells unrelentingly on the horrid events in the
baudelaire orphans' lives. can't quite put my finger on how to
reconcile this, though i have inchoate suspicions.

any thoughts?

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/22/books/review/22MILLERL.html?8bu>

--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

i was thinking about faith cary and hope middleton at our church --
all we need is a girl named charity, and you'd have it all.

if you ever wondered where the american penchant for naming people
after Abstract Qualities comes from, the Puritans apparently got it
from the Geneva Bible, the quite slantedly protestant translation that
they brought over on the mayflower.

here's nicolson, in one of the funniest things i've ever read about
the puritans.

--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Some Puritans maintained that the names of the great figures in the
scriptures, all of which signify something -- Adam meant 'Red Earth',
Timothy 'Fear-God' -- should be translated. The Geneva Bible, which
was an encyclopaedia of Calvinist thought, ... had a list of those
meanings at the back and, in imitation of those signifying names,
Puritans ... had taken to naming their children after moral qualities.
Ben Jonson included characters called Tribulation Wholesome,
Zeal-of-the-Land Busy and Win-the-fight Littlewit [in his works], and
Bancroft himself had written about the absurdity of calling your
children 'The Lord-is-near, More-trial, Reformation, More-fruit, Dust,
and many other such-like'.

These were not invented. Puritan children at Warbleton in Sussex, the
heartland of the practice, laboured under the names of Eschew-evil,
Lament, No-merit, Sorry-for-sin, Learn-wisdom, Faint-not, Give-thanks,
and, the most popular, Sin-deny, which was landed on ten children
baptised in the parish between 1586 and 1596. One family, the children
of the curate Thomas Hely, would have been introduced by their proud
father as Much-mercy Hely, Increased Hely, Sin-deny Hely, Fear-not
Hely, and sweet little Constance Hely.

Bancroft, and this royal translation of the Bible, could give no
credit to that half-mad denial of tradition. It was one that travelled
to America with the Pilgrim Fathers. Among William Brewster's own
children, landing at Plymouth Rock, were Fear, Love, Patience, and
Wrestling.

i'm reading a fascinating book on the making of the king james bible.

the author, adam nicolson, is one of those historians who has become
so familiar with the time he's studying that he can see implied
statements and pull out their entire meaning for us who are so removed
from jacobean society.

in one place, he discusses the various rules by which the translators
will operate. each rule comes under close scrutiny, with miraculously
revealing results.

his overall view is that not only is the kjv the greatest translation
(not the most accurate or most current but the greatest) of the bible,
but it is also the greatest thing ever written in english, period. and
on top of that, he considers it england's greatest accomplishment, of
any kind, in that age. a tall thesis, but he defends it so well that
i'm now inclined to agree. definitely some absorbing reading to pick
up.

--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

[asterisks signify italics]


The Bible was to become part of the new royal ideology. Elizabeth had
portrayed herself as a Protestant champion against the powers of Rome
and Spain. That was now out of date. James, *Rex Pacifus*, was to make
the Bible part of the large-scale redefinition of England. It had the
potential to become, in the beautiful phrase of the time, an
"*irenicon*", a thing of peace, a means by which the divisions of the
church, and of the country as a whole, could be encompassed in one
unifying fabric  founded on the divine authority of the king.

---

[rule 6:] Noe marginal notes att all to be affixed, but only for ye
explanation of ye Hebrew or Greeke Words, which cannot without some
circumlocution soe breifly and fitly be expressed in ye Text.

There were to be no marginal notes 'att all', not even those which
might conform to the ideology of the established Jacobean church. The
text, as all good Protestants might require, was to be presented clean
and sufficient of itself, except where the actual words of the
original were so opaque that a 'circumlocution' might not explain them
within the text. 'Circumlocution' did not mean then quite what it
means now. Thomas Wilson in *The arte of rhetorique*, published in
1553 and in use throughout the sixteenth century, had described
circumlocution as 'a large description either to sett forth a thyng
more gorgeouslie, or else to hyde it'. The words of this translation,
then, could embrace both gorgeousness and ambiguity, did not have to
settle into a single doctrinal mode but could embrace different
meanings, either within the text itself or in the margins. This is the
heart of the new Bible as an irenicon, an organism that absorbed and
integrated difference, that included ambiguity and by doing so
established peace. It is the central mechanism of the translation, one
of immense lexical subtlety, a deliberate carrying of multiple
meanings beneath the surface of a single text. This single rule lies
behind the feeling which the King James Bible has always given its
readers that the words are somehow extraordinarily freighted, with a
richness which few other texts have ever equalled. Again and again,
the Jacobean Translators chose a word not for its clarified
straightforwardness (which had been Tyndale's focus in the 1520s and
'30s, and the Geneva Calvinists' in the 1550s) but for its richness,
its suggestiveness, its harmonic resonances. That is the heart of the
irenicon: divergence held within a singularity, James's Arcadian
vision made word.

heheheeeeeeee! next sing act: kicking a possum to death in stony
silence. probably fiji, right? only they could muster the intensity.

heh!!

say, your birthday is right around this time, no? i've already got
your present.

btw, i'm an art and decor expert: "Name the era, and you can name
every artist from it. You've got an eye for design and a knack for
feng shui. Color schemes, architecture, and objt d'art - these are all
your forts. What people love: You're the perfect person to shop with.
What people hate: They have to clean their house whenever you come
over."

and i noticed that you've become a documentary watcher. TELL me you've
seen "spellbound."

--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

LOL! Just the mental image was enough to make me choke on my Earl Grey.
Thanks.
(kick, kick)

On Aug 5, 2004, at 9:41 AM, barry brake wrote:

> from an article critiquing a sociologist's book on high schools:
>
>> Not that I mean to be rude, but does any other discipline
>> depend so much on vaunting its own
>> methodology—especially when it's being used to confirm
>> the obvious? As he shares the results of his painstaking
>> investigations (adolescents seem to care a lot about
>> clothes), Milner doesn't want anyone to be confused by his
>> subject's arcana. Cheerleading, he explains, "usually
>> involve[s] a mixture of verbal phrases and routinized
>> physical movement," and you wonder: Usually? What in
>> hell do the exceptions do—kick a possum to death in stony
>> silence? (And by the way, does their team win?)
>
> --
>
> barry
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>

from an article critiquing a sociologist's book on high schools:

> Not that I mean to be rude, but does any other discipline
> depend so much on vaunting its own
> methodology—especially when it's being used to confirm
> the obvious? As he shares the results of his painstaking
> investigations (adolescents seem to care a lot about
> clothes), Milner doesn't want anyone to be confused by his
> subject's arcana. Cheerleading, he explains, "usually
> involve[s] a mixture of verbal phrases and routinized
> physical movement," and you wonder: Usually? What in
> hell do the exceptions do—kick a possum to death in stony
> silence? (And by the way, does their team win?)

--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

sobering and excellent thoughts here from a thoughtful conservative ...
we'd all like to say "that's not really us," but the facts always tell
otherwise.

continuing to enjoy thailand -- please continue to pray for traveling
mercies!

--
barry

---------------------------------------
By Philip Kennicott
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 5, 2004; Page C01


Among the corrosive lies a nation at war tells itself is that the glory -- =
=


the lofty goals announced beforehand, the victories, the liberation of the =

=


oppressed -- belongs to the country as a whole; but the failure -- the
accidents, the uncounted civilian dead, the crimes and atrocities -- is
always exceptional. Noble goals flow naturally from a noble people; the
occasional act of barbarity is always the work of individuals,
unaccountable, confusing and indigestible to the national conscience.

This kind of thinking was widely in evidence among military and political
leaders after the emergence of pictures documenting American abuse of
Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison. These photographs do not capture
the soul of America, they argued. They are aberrant.

This belief, that the photographs are distortions, despite their
authenticity, is indistinguishable from propaganda. Tyrants censor;
democracies self-censor. Tyrants concoct propaganda in ministries of
information; democracies produce it through habits of thought so
ingrained that a basic lie of war -- only the good is our doing -- becomes =

=


self-propagating.

But now we have photos that have gone to the ends of the Earth, and
painted brilliantly and indelibly, an image of America that could remain
with us for years, perhaps decades. An Army investigative report reveals
that we have stripped young men (whom we purported to liberate) of
their clothing and their dignity; we have forced them to make pyramids
of flesh, as if they were children; we have made them masturbate in
front of their captors and cameras; forced them to simulate sexual acts;
threatened prisoners with rape and sodomized at least one; beaten
them; and turned dogs upon them.

There are now images of men in the Muslim world looking at these
images. On the streets of Cairo, men pore over a newspaper. An icon
appears on the front page: a hooded man, in a rug-like poncho,
standing with his arms out like Christ, wires attached to the hands. He is =

=


faceless. This is now the image of the war. In this country, perhaps it
will have some competition from the statue of Saddam Hussein being
toppled. Everywhere else, everywhere America is hated (and that's a
very large part of this globe), the hooded, wired, faceless man of Abu
Ghraib is this war's new mascot.

The American leaders' response is a mixture of public disgust and a
good deal of resentment that they have, through these images, lost
control of the ultimate image of the war. All the right people have
pronounced themselves sickened, outraged, speechless. But listen more
closely. "And it's really a shame that just a handful can besmirch maybe
the reputations of hundreds of thousands of our soldiers and sailors,
airmen and Marines. . . . " said Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff on Sunday.

Reputation, image, perception. The problem, it seems, isn't so much the
abuse of the prisoners, because we will get to the bottom of that and, of
course, we're not really like that. The problem is our reputation. Our
soldiers' reputations. Our national self-image. These photos, we insist,
are not us.

But these photos are us. Yes, they are the acts of individuals (though the =

=


scandal widens, as scandals almost inevitably do, and the military's own
internal report calls the abuse "systemic"). But armies are made of
individuals. Nations are made up of individuals. Great national crimes
begin with the acts of misguided individuals; and no matter how many
people are held directly accountable for these crimes, we are,
collectively, responsible for what these individuals have done. We live in =

=


a democracy. Every errant smart bomb, every dead civilian, every
sodomized prisoner, is ours.

And more. Perhaps this is just a little cancer that crept into the culture =
=


of the people running Abu Ghraib prison. But stand back. Look at the
history. Open up to the hard facts of human nature, the lessons of the
past, the warning signs of future abuses.

These photos show us what we may become, as occupation continues,
anger and resentment grows and costs spiral. There's nothing surprising
in this. These pictures are pictures of colonial behavior, the demeaning
of occupied people, the insult to local tradition, the humiliation of the
vanquished. They are unexceptional. In different forms, they could be
pictures of the Dutch brutalizing the Indonesians; the French brutalizing
the Algerians; the Belgians brutalizing the people of the Congo.

Look at these images closely and you realize that they can't just be the
random accidents of war, or the strange, inexplicable perversity of a few
bad seeds. First of all, they exist. Soldiers who allow themselves to be
photographed humiliating prisoners clearly don't believe this behavior is
unpalatable. Second, the soldiers didn't just reach into a grab bag of
things they thought would humiliate young Iraqi men. They chose sexual
humiliation, which may recall to outsiders the rape scandal at the Air
Force Academy, Tailhook and past killings of gay sailors and soldiers.

Is it an accident that these images feel so very much like the kind of
home made porn that is traded every day on the Internet? That they
capture exactly the quality and feel of the casual sexual decadence that
so much of the world deplores in us?

Is it an accident that the man in the hood, arms held out as if on a
cross, looks so uncannily like something out of the Spanish Inquisition?
That they have the feel of history in them, a long, buried, ugly history of=
=


religious aggression and discrimination?

Perhaps both are accidents, meaningless accidents of photographs that
should never have seen the light of day. But they will not be perceived
as such elsewhere in the world.

World editorial reaction is vehement. We are under the suspicion of the
International Red Cross and Amnesty International. "US military power
will be seen for what it is, a behemoth with the response speed of a
muscle-bound ox and the limited understanding of a mouse," said Saudi
Arabia's English language Arab News.

We reduce Iraqis to hapless victims of a cheap porn flick; they reduce
our cherished, respected military to a hybrid beast, big, stupid,
senseless.

Last year, Joel Turnipseed published "Baghdad Express," a memoir of
the first Gulf War. In it, he remembers an encounter with Iraqi
prisoners. A staff sergeant is explaining to the men the rules of the
Geneva Convention.

" . . . What that means, in plain English, is 'Don't feed the animals'
and 'Don't put your hand in the cage.' "

And then, the author explains, the soldiers proceed to break the rules.
The ox thinks like a mouse.

"My vanquished were now vanquishing me," wrote Turnipseed,
heartsick.

Not quite 50 years ago, Aime Cesaire, a poet and writer from
Martinique, wrote in his "Discourse on Colonialism": "First we must
study how colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him =

=


in the true sense of the word, to degrade him, to awaken him to buried
instincts, to covetousness, violence, race hatred, and moral relativism."

Are we decivilized yet? Are we brutes yet? Of course not, say our
leaders.

posted at:
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2040-2004May4?
language=printer>

© 2004 The Washington Post Company

ever hear any of edvard grieg's piano renditions of norwegian folk
tunes? here's a remarkable recording of them, with a traditional
fiddler playing the originals, and then a classical pianist delivering
the grieg version. beautiful!

<http://barryland.com/grieg/>

--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

here's an interesting article about a researcher who devised a test
for your 'autism quotient.'

<http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/02/22/the_autism_quotient?\
mode=PF>

the test itself is here:
<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aqtest.html>

take it and share your thoughts. (i'd be especially interested to hear
from those who know a bit about brain studies about this article.)
--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

richard florida is coming under attack for his theory of the "creative
class," which i mentioned here a couple of years ago. read about the
various points of view:

<http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/02/29/the_road_to_riches/>

--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

by the way, has anyone seen mel gibson's 'passion?' i saw it on
opening night, and came away with a number of expected and unexpected
impressions. what are your thoughts?

--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

favorite quotes:

jason y passes on this link -- i'd read it when it was published a few
weeks ago. it's an article by alex ross, critic at large, talking
about the lord of the rings and wagner's ring cycle, and the music in
them.

<http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/?031222crat_atlarge>

seriously, if you haven't seen the ring cycle, do yourself a favor.
get it from the library, set aside a week of evenings (or an evening a
week) and play it on a nice big tv at full volume. it's a pinnacle of
western civilization, and well worth it.

actually, we've got several ring veterans on this list, some as
gung-ho as i am, some less so. what are people's impressions?



favorite quotes from the article:
<<When Wotan steals the ring for his own godly purposes, Alberich
places a curse upon it, and in so doing he speaks of “the lord of the
ring as the slave of the ring.” Such details make it hard to believe
Tolkien’s disavowals. Admit it, J.R.R., you used to run around
brandishing a walking stick and singing “Nothung! Nothung!” like every
other besotted Oxford lad.>>

<<When Tolkien stole Wagner’s ring, he discarded its most significant
property—that it can be forged only by one who has forsworn love.
(Presumably, Sauron gave up carnal pleasures when he became an
all-seeing eye at the top of a tower, but it’s hard to say for
certain. Maybe he gets a kick out of the all-seeing bit.)>>

<<It is the little ring that brings out the lust in men and in
hobbits. And what, honestly, do people want in it? Are they envious of
Sauron’s bling-bling life style up on top of Barad-dûr?>>

...has alex ross been having lunch with anthony lane recently?


<<The Met lacks a Heldentenor who looks even a little bit like Viggo
Mortensen. ...in the opera house you sometimes notice a discrepancy
between what you hear in the libretto and music and what you see
onstage...>>

so true. in the met video of 'valkyrie' you see the twins looking at
each other and saying, "it's like looking in a mirror! i feel i'm
gazing at my own self!" the twins are played by gary lakes and jessye
norman, a bushy-bearded anglo-saxon and a doe-eyed african-american.
the only thing they have in common is the enormousness that makes it
impossible for them to hug and kiss at the same time. heheheeeeee!


--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Well, Barry, glad to see you are firing off missiles once again to you
constituency! I'll read the George Will piece and comment later.
Your Cousin,
Tim

Market Street Inn
Greenleaf Inn
141 State Street
Newburyport, MA 01950
t 978-465-5816
f 978-463-8640
www.furnished-rentals.com
www.thegreenleafinn.com

by the sometimes redoubtable george f will: can we make iraq
democratic?

<http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_1_can_we_make_iraq.html>

i'd be interested in your responses to this! i can't find much wrong
with it at all. he's right, as a conservative, to criticize the
essentially liberal -- and disastrous -- actions bush has taken in
iraq.


--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

>but i think his point in the article was that it's dangerous
to forgive some things.

Therein lies one of the differences between relious groups, possibly.
My belief is that we're told to forgive people, not things. Forgiving
the person does not mean the thing was ok to do, and does not
mean you will or should let it happen again. This difference
in perspective may drive some of the difference in how forgiveness
is taught and handled.

>btw, we have a rotten record on that count -- we keep saying
... we'll never let something like that ever happen again, but
our actions over the past half-century have shown that we're
quite willing to stand by and watch genocide after genocide.

Yes, and when we do intervene we're accused of bullying and/or
of doing it for wrong reasons (e.g., "no war for oil") ...

rich writes:
<<So in Wiesenthal's story, the act of forgiving the Nazi would not
have
absolved the Nazi of his sins - that would be between him and God. >>

that's what rung false about the person who said, "let him die
unshriven." it's true that you sometimes go to a priest (or one of
maria's medieval ancestors, who had it as a profession, like chaucer's
pardoner), for the shriving ceremony, but the real forgiveness comes
from god. whether i forgive you, as you said, is a human issue and
matters on the interpersonal plane.


<<forgiving would have been an act
that would have affected Wiesenthal's heart, as he let go of anger and

hatred toward the Nazis. >>

but i think his point in the article was that it's dangerous to
forgive some things. i disagree, because i think that whether you
forgive the nazis or not is a separate issue from whether you remain
vigilant against injustice in the future. but at least that's the
reasoning.

btw, we have a rotten record on that count -- we keep saying with our
mouths that we'll 'never forget' the holocaust and that we'll never
let something like that ever happen again, but our actions over the
past half-century have shown that we're quite willing to stand by and
watch genocide after genocide.

--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I think there is a difference in types of forgiveness, which muddies the
discussion of religious perspectives on forgiveness. There is the type in
which God forgives our sins. Only he can do that, and it doesn't necessarily
mean that we will not suffer earthly consequences of those sins; rather, it
means that he no longer holds them against us when accounting for our
salvation.

Then there is the type of forgiveness that we are called to practice and to
give one another in the world. To me, the function of this forgiveness is to
do something for me rather than for the one I forgive. When Jesus told the
disciples to forgive "seventy times seven," I think he meant to go beyond
what seems reasonable, or to stop trying to quantify forgiveness. He knew
that the act of forgiving does good for the forgiver, allowing him to avoid
being dominated and emotionally consummed by anger and hatred. One of my
favorite quotes says, "Holding onto bitterness and resentment is like
swallowing poison and expecting the other person to die." Forgiving allows
us to let go of the anger and resentment we hold for others, which hurts us
more than them and interferes with our ability to revel in our worship and
relationship with God. It also facilites our becoming emotionally healthy.
Forgiveness is different from reconciliation; sometimes it is better for
people to not reconcile or ever be around each other again, but for his own
good the one wronged could forgive and move on. When I work on forgiveness
with clients, we talk about knowing you've truly forgiven when you can
honestly wish the other person well rather than having negative feelings
evoked upon seeing or hearing of them.

So in Wiesenthal's story, the act of forgiving the Nazi would not have
absolved the Nazi of his sins - that would be between him and God. Gaining a
person's forgiveness would have helped the Nazi feel better on a human
level, and could be looked at as a step toward acknowledging a wrong and
making retribution. But more than that, forgiving would have been an act
that would have affected Wiesenthal's heart, as he let go of anger and
hatred toward the Nazis. To me, that would be nearly impossible to do during
the actual imprisonment.

Rich

a fascinating article on the subject of forgiveness, and how the
theology of christians and jews is so different on this essential
topic.

<http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0302/articles/soloveichik.html>

an excerpt:

During my regular weekly coffees with my friend Fr. Jim White, an
Episcopal priest, there was one issue to which our conversation would
incessantly turn, and one on which we could never agree: Is an
utterly evil man — Hitler, Stalin, Osama bin Laden — deserving of a
theist's love? I could never stomach such a notion, while Fr. Jim
would argue passionately in favor of the proposition. Judaism, I
would argue, does demand love for our fellow human beings, but only
to an extent. "Hate" is not always synonymous with the terribly
sinful. While Moses commanded us "not to hate our brother in our
hearts," a man's immoral actions can serve to sever the bonds of
brotherhood between himself and humanity. Regarding a rasha, a Hebrew
term for the hopelessly wicked, the Talmud clearly states: mitzvah
lisnoso — one is obligated to hate him.


he goes on to picture this as a schismatic difference: christianity
is all about being utterly sinful and utterly forgiven, something
that seems sloppy to judaism, which is all about striving to be
righteous and rational.

i tend to agree with his assessment: the issue of forgiveness is one
of the central differences between practicing jews and practicing
christians.

i guess my only question is, where would such a 'rational' person,
striving for human righteousness (or, in secular terms, common
decency), draw the line? in christianity, the line is drawn far above
even the best of us: billy graham and mother teresa are morally
equivalent to hitler and pol pot as they stand before a perfect and
unblemished almighty. but obviously, both judaism and secularism draw
the line much lower. where? not merely with murder, surely?
interesting question.

Great article, Barry. Thanks for sending.

on 5/16/03 4:36 AM, bbbbarry at barry@... hath scrawled:

> a thought-provoking article on warriors and their sense of honor
> throughout history.
>
> <http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i28/28b00701.htm>
>
>
> sooooo, in your opinion,  what *is* the difference between a warrior
> with honor and a terrorist? this writer made her students --
> midshipmen -- write about the distinction.....
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>

a thought-provoking article on warriors and their sense of honor
throughout history.

<http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i28/28b00701.htm>


sooooo, in your opinion,  what *is* the difference between a warrior
with honor and a terrorist? this writer made her students --
midshipmen -- write about the distinction.....

In a message dated 5/5/03 3:17:35 AM, barry@... writes:

<< ever hear of the concept of the food desert? picture lawrence of

arabia tromping through potato chips? >>

Barry:
Happy to see you tackling the really big issues again. This means that you
must be feeling chipper (pardon pun).
Love from you Cuz

Market Street Inn
Greenleaf Inn
141 State Street
Newburyport, MA 01950
ph: 978-465-5816
fx: 978-463-8640
www.furnished-rentals.com
www.thegreenleafinn.com

ever hear of the concept of the food desert? picture lawrence of
arabia tromping through potato chips?

well, the idea is that even in wealthy countries there are patches of
desert in the midst of plenty, places, usually in the inner cities,
where there are far fewer supermarkets and they offer a smaller
variety of fresh, good food, at greatly inflated prices.

enter the redoubtable theodore dalrymple, no stranger to this list:
he writes an article criticizing the entire idea, and suggests that
the deserts are a creation of paucity of demand, rather than supply.
compelling stuff for anyone who thinks about the growing disparities
between rich and poor. i'd be interested to hear some criticisms of
his criticism....

<http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_4_oh_to_be.html>


barry

Piracy seems to be the working theory:

http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,5857411%255E662,00.htm\
l

Interestingly, the captain and first mate's cell phones continue to work. The
daughter of one of the crewmen reported hearing Karaoke music in the background
when she called one of them:

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/0,6119,2-10_1308695,00.html

The piracy theory has enough cachet that the Taiwanese government has issued a
piracy warning:

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2003/01/19/191556

No word on the crew yet that I've been able to discover.

Sean

what say ye to a game of sorts? let's have an info-race to see who can
find out the most the first about the mystery ship the "high aim,"
found off the coast of australia last month. first person to report
the mystery solved is shipped one package of extra-special turkish
delight courtesy of me.

--

barry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .