The people’s guitarist

rory gallagher

Lovely article on the backdrop to Rory Gallagher’s legendary Irish Tour ’74. I have a sense that there has been a recent resurgence in Rory.

Rory was at pains to point out he wasn’t active in any sense politically. But he felt very strongly that he should be allowed to play in Northern Ireland and the Republic . . . it is impossible to find anyone with a cross word for Gallagher. The shy, thoughtful, gently spoken man who turned into the most dynamic performer onstage was hardly the archetypal guitar god.

Also it’s really worth checking out Ghost Blues — The Story Of Rory Gallagher which of course I’ve already previously posted — but one can’t get enough of this special and thoroughly decent being. If anyone literally came alive on stage, it was Rory. The man’s existential commitment to his craft is palpable — and unlike many, it never left him and he never relied on the circus and bread mentality that others descended to. If you don’t know Rory’s work, here is a knowledgeable run down on some classic tracks.

Cigar packaging idiocy

cigars

City Cigar reports (with source document) on the Canadian Government’s white paper “Potential measures for regulating the appearance, shape and size of tobacco packages and of tobacco products.” (Can you imagine a box of Behike 52s in plain wrapping? — it’s absolute fucking nonsense). While I’m no fan of ubiquitous marketing and branding tripe, these proposed measures are unduly irrelevant and consequently oppressive. This is yet another instantiation of regressive rationalistic bureaucratic overreach fuckwittery, a clear cut case of bad faith. Just because cigar smokers are, in the scheme of things, a small constituency and are typically of a docile and contemplative disposition, the bureaucraps are going after this soft target. Of course, this absolves them from dealing with more serious (actual and pressing) problems. Next thing ya know scotch (and other spirits) will be generically packaged a la Soviet style. Let’s face it, the booze (and especially the cigar) stores themselves in Canada are pretty much faceless entities now anyway. As a state monopoly the government liquor stores have no incentive to stock a decent range of single malts, bourbons and rums. Moreover, one of my cigar dealers has a poster of Churchill in classic cigar pose — except the cigar has been airbrushed out — and this is in the friggin shop.

Winston-Churchill

Luck and Learning to Make the Most of It

vernon smith

Here is Vernon Smith on Fortuna. Vernon very kindly wrote the preface to Propriety and Prosperity: New Studies on the Philosophy of Adam Smith.

Some call it luck, others call it Providence, and that points to the mystery of the forces that shape us and that we shape—forces well beyond our comprehension.d4fae836d28d592e3c4dfe45383b4e36

 

Walker Percy Wednesday 96

walker percy

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Take Christians. I am surrounded by Christians. They are generally speaking a pleasant and agreeable lot, not noticeably different from other people—even though they, the Christians of the South, the U.S.A., the Western world have killed off more people in recent centuries than all other people put together. Yet I cannot be sure they don’t have the truth. But if they have the truth, why is it the case that they are repellent precisely to the degree that they embrace and advertise that truth? One might even become a Christian if there were few if any Christians around. Have you ever lived in the midst of fifteen million Southern Baptists? (Of course you have. You’re from Alabama.) No doubt the same might be said of Irish Catholics and Miami Jews. The main virtue of Episcopalians is their gift for reticence. Seldom can an Episcopalian (or an Anglican) be taken for a Christian. Perhaps that is what I like about them. A mystery: If the good news is true, why is not one pleased to hear it? And if the good news is true; why are its public proclaimers such assholes and the proclamation itself such a weary used-up thing?

If the good news is true, the God of the good news must be a very devious fellow indeed, fond of playing tricks.

But perhaps two can play at that game.

As unacceptable as believers are, unbelievers are even worse, not because of the unacceptability of unbelief but because of the nature of the unbelievers themselves who in the profession and practice of their unbelief are even greater assholes than the Christians.

The present-day unbeliever is a greater asshole than the present-day Christian because of the fatuity, blandness, incoherence, fakery, and fatheadedness of his unbelief. He is in fact an insane person. If God does in fact exist, the present-day unbeliever will no doubt be forgiven because of his manifest madness.

The present-day Christian is either half-assed, nominal, lukewarm, hypocritical, sinful, or, if fervent, generally offensive and fanatical. But he is not crazy.

The present-day unbeliever is crazy as well as being an asshole—which is why I say he is a bigger asshole than the Christian because a crazy asshole is worse than a sane asshole.

The present-day unbeliever is crazy because he finds himself born into a world of endless wonders, having no notion how he got here, a world in which he eats, sleeps, shits, fucks, works, grows old, gets sick, and dies, and is quite content to have it so. Not once in his entire life does it cross his mind to say to himself that his situation is preposterous, that an explanation is due him and to demand such an explanation and to refuse to play out another act of the farce until an explanation is forthcoming. No, he takes his comfort and ease, plays along with the game, watches TV, drinks his drink, laughs, curses politicians, and now and again to relieve the boredom and the farce (of which he is dimly aware) goes off to war to shoot other people—for all the world as if his prostate were not growing cancerous, his arteries turning to chalk, his brain cells dying off by the millions, as if the worms were not going to have him in no time at all.

On the contrary. The more intelligent he is, the crazier he is and the bigger an asshole he is. He becomes a professor and forms an interdisciplinary group. He reads Dante for its mythic structure. He joins the A.C.L.U. and concerns himself with the freedom of the individual and does not once exercise his own freedom to inquire into how in God’s name he should find himself in such a ludicrous situation as being born in Brooklyn, living in Manhattan, and being buried in Queens. He is as insane as a French intellectual. It has taken me all these years to make the simplest discovery: that I am surrounded by two classes of maniacs. The first are the believers, who think they know the reason why we find ourselves in this ludicrous predicament yet act for all the world as if they don’t. The second are the unbelievers, who don’t know the reason and don’t care if they don’t.

The rest of my life, which will be short, shall be devoted to a search for the third alternative, a tertium quid—if there is one. If not, we are stuck with the two alternatives: (1) believers, who are intolerable, and (2) unbelievers who are insane.

I may be a member of the second class, the unbelievers, and no doubt an even greater asshole than they since they generally perform good works, help niggers, pore whites, etc., but at least I’m not crazy.

Unlike them I demand an explanation and at last have contrived a way of determining either what it is or that there is none.

For some time I had believed that the Jews were a sign, a clue to the mystery, a telltale bent twig, a blazed sapling in an “otherwise riotous senseless jungle.

But now it appears the Jews may have not left North Carolina after all, and in fact are making porno flicks and building condos and villas in Highlands, enjoying the leaves, and in general behaving like everyone else. There goes the last sign.

Granted then that the situation is unacceptable, that both parties, the believers and unbelievers, are not only equally repulsive but also equally unpersuasive, what is one to do?

To the best of my knowledge, only one man in history ever made a practical proposal, that is, a proposal of which the rare sane unbeliever could at least make a modicum of sense. That was the famous wager of Pascal, who was the last French intellectual who was not insane. Though it has never been taken seriously, it does after all make sense. One makes the bet that God exists, though one doesn’t know for sure. One could just as well bet that he does not exist. But it is better to bet that he does because if he does, the bettor wins and picks up all the marbles. If God does not exist, the bettor has lost nothing. He has everything to win and nothing to lose. If he bets against God, he has everything to lose and nothing to win.

But it is after all ludicrous to reduce the question to a crapshoot at Vegas.

My father knew all about this, about believers and unbelievers and Pascal’s bettor. What he said was I’m having no part of any of you. Excuse me but I won’t have it. Good day, gentlemen.

That’s one way. The trouble with Pascal’s wager is its frivolity.

The trouble with my father’s exit is that it yields no answers. It doesn’t even ask a question.

I’ve discovered a better way, a more scientific method, in fact an experiment. If I’m going to spatter my brains around the Great Smokies, it will happen because my question was not answered, not because it wasn’t asked. And I will not pull the trigger. And my beneficiary will be assured of receiving his million from Prudential.

There is an extra pleasure in killing two birds with one stone: solving the so-called mystery of life and beating the Rock at the same time.

My project is the first scientific experiment in history to settle once and for all the question of God’s existence. As things presently stand, there may be signs of his existence but they point both ways and are therefore ambiguous and so prove nothing. For example, the wonders of the universe “do not convince those most conversant with the wonders, the scientists themselves. Whether or not this testifies to the stupidity of scientists or to God’s success at concealing himself doesn’t matter.

The peculiar history of the Jews may be a sign but no one sees it as such except possibly the Jews themselves. But if the Jews have stayed in North Carolina (I must verify this) and not returned to Israel, their staying is no more a sign than the blacks leaving for the North or the blacks returning to the South.

But what if one should devise a situation in which one’s death would occur if and only if God did not manifest himself, did not give a sign clearly and unambiguously, once and for all?

Would not the outcome of such an experiment be a clear yes or a clear no, with no maybes?
Unless I am mistaken, I’ve hit on the perfect, “the definitive experiment—as definitive as the famous Michelson-Morley experiment which asked a question about the nature of space which could only be answered by a yes or a no, no maybes allowed.

We have had five thousand years of maybes and that is enough.
Can you discover a single flaw in this logic?
I’ve got him!
No more tricks!
No more deus absconditus!
Come out, come out, wherever you are, the game’s over.
No, I do not mean to joke. What I am doing is asking God with the utmost respect to break his silence.
No, not asking. Requiring.

Didn’t Jacob, a Jew, require an answer of God by hanging on to him, rassling him until God got fed up with this Jew (what have I done to have picked out such a nagging stiff-necked people?) and gave him what he wanted. How odd of God to choose the Jews.

God no longer makes appearances as a rassler, but I have my own way of getting at him.
I shall do this by waiting him out.

My experiment is simply this: I shall go to a desert place and wait for God to give a sign. If no sign is forthcoming I shall die. But people will know why I died: because there is no sign. The cause of my death will be either his nonexistence or his refusal to manifest himself, which comes to the same thing as far as we are concerned. Only you know the nature of the experiment. I give you permission to publish the results in a scientific journal of your choice.

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Court decision on Kafka’s estate

Kafka

In final twist of long-running dispute, court rejects appeal of heirs of writer Max Brod, Kafka’s friend and biographer, that the estate belongs to them.

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Michael Oakeshott and the Postulates of Individuality

michael oakeshott

A newly published paper by Andrew Norris in Political Theory

Michael Oakeshott’s political philosophy is the most sophisticated and compelling liberal alternative to the progressive, state-centered liberalism of John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas. Oakeshott’s version of liberalism as the civil association of individuals underwrites more ideological positions (usually characterized as libertarian or conservative) that play a decisive role in contemporary American, British, and Australian politics; and his views regarding individuality are widely shared by many who are inspired by less rigorous thinkers such as Ayn Rand (e.g., Alan Greenspan and Paul Ryan). Though Oakeshott’s work aims to be non-ideological and analytic rather than normative, in its own style it presents the best case for the currently popular view that individual liberty flourishes only when the domestic activity of the state is radically curtailed and it refrains from the pursuit of a supposed common good, such as the institutionalization of universal health care. On this view, as deplorable as the current state of many inner-city and rural public schools may be, it would be a violation of the “morality of individualism” for the state to attempt to significantly improve them if this involved significant taxation as opposed to privatization and marketization; for extensive tax-funded state projects require the coerced appropriation of private property for ends not directly chosen by individual tax payers. In so far as Oakeshott gives the best account of such an argument and its grounds and implications, the careful study and evaluation of his views presents an opportunity to reflect upon the character and promise of our current political life.

Because of the difficulty of Oakeshott’s work, much of the scholarly commentary upon it has been expository; that that is not has tended to be either laudatory or partisanly critical of Oakeshott’s failure to pursue ideas that he rejects as pernicious or meaningless (e.g., popular sovereignty, republicanism, egalitarianism). In this essay, I attempt an immanent critique of Oakeshott’s understanding of the proper relation between the individual and the state, one that demonstrates that Oakeshott’s categorical position on the limits of state power is inconsistent with his other philosophical commitments. I develop the argument in five stages. I begin by summarizing Oakeshott’s views on individuality and civil association, indicating their importance and where I will question them. I then explicate Oakeshott’s conception of philosophy as the open-ended investigation of the postulates or conditions of phenomena. Turning to Oakeshott’s account of modernity, I consider his account of the emergence and moral status of modern individuality in both its proper and improper forms. I argue that though Oakeshott does not acknowledge it, his philosophical methodology commits him to the investigation of the postulates of both modes of individuality; that an extensive education is a central postulate of individuality; and that Oakeshott’s own writings on education confirm this. I conclude by suggesting that there is a strong case that the required education can only be guaranteed by a more robust state than that favored by Oakeshott, and that we cannot dismiss this possibility on principle, as he suggests. This is not an attempt to directly derive public policy from Oakeshott’s philosophy, but to clarify the postulates and implications of what he calls the “morality of individuality.”

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What Is Happening to Our Country? How Psychology Can Respond to Political Polarization, Incivility and Intolerance

Jonathan Haidt

APA keynote delivered by the one and the only Jonathon Haidt.

The Desecularization of Descartes

Descartes

John Cottingham’s discussion of Descartes has resonance to the way Locke has been treated in the academy. I was astounded going back some 30 years that Locke could be so blithely discussed on a political philosophy course (UCL) with no mention of the vital role God has in his system of ideas — The Reasonableness of Christianity. Is the dispensing of God what is meant by rational reconstruction?

Most philosophers would agree that attempting to teach Aquinas’s philosophy without attending to the centrality of God in his thought would create impossible distortions. I want in this paper to explore some of the ways in which this is also true of Descartes.

Descartes_Groninger

Missa Solemnis

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missa-autographPerhaps this rates (see video below) as the greatest musical performance that I’ve ever witnessed — crikey, has it really been almost 30 years? (12th Sep, 1986). That year I think I attended some 30 concerts as a promenader but still never made it into the hard core club (not even close). Read the very excellent Peter Gutmann’s (no, not this equally excellent PG) illuminating article on the piece.

Was he or wasn’t he? (Religious, that is.) One of the most intriguing questions raised by Ludwig van Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis is the extent to which it reflects the composer’s own religious feelings. On the one hand, he insisted that his nephew receive religious instruction and took the last sacrament himself (although, on the verge of death, he may have been too weak to protest). Yet biographers generally consider him a non-observant Catholic who was fascinated by other religions – they note that he had Persian aphorisms framed on his wall, leaned toward pantheism and felt no need for explanation by intermediaries of the unfathomable mysteries of life. Indeed, Beethoven shunned ritual and was in touch with Johann Michael Sailer, a theologian who rejected mechanical observance in favor of an individual believer’s interior experience of spirituality, a philosophy which resonated with Beethoven’s personal Enlightenment-derived conviction in freedom and reason.

Willy Hess characterized the Missa Solemnis as “an avalanche released by a speck of dust.”