3/27/12

Farewell Frank Bruni and Chris Matthews

A Farewell to Newt - NYTimes.com:

No they are not going anywhere. I am riffing off of Bruni's imploring headline. Chris Matthews has also been panting for Newt to get out.

Both men speak nothing but put downs. Neither gives a concrete reason why Newt should leave.

Why should he?  He is a poster boy for the capacity of one billionaire to influence Presidential politics. He could debate President Obama. He hobbles the capacity of any candidate to get the delegates needed before Tampa. These reasons favor hanging in. And they are not gratuitous put-downs.

Matthews wants a Romney-Santorum mano a mano to make his show more interesting. Bruni appears to have difficulty producing substantive NYT op-ed columns. He is not alone.

If Newt leaves, it will not be because these worthies told him to.




Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

You say think beyond the bun. OK

    "Think beyond the bun."
                                           
When think beyond the bun is the most sagacious paradigm for a whole nation it is no wonder we are in trouble
Business lassitude is not merely that the gated community is the destination of choice and that we emulate commercials for lack of models
It is the fearsome necessity of having to have done with all we have made
With cars which are lethal instruments of alienation and mayhem
With the bullying-lite which is the discourse of the insecure male
With the notion of fixing up houses as a pursuit worth a candle
With the quashing of avenues that might open up genuine freedom of thought
I'll give you a good example of business lassitude
Let's take the late big primo business guy Mr. Apple
He proposes a slick new business park that looks a bit like what I have proposed forever
But on analysis it is just the old form in a new package
Not really car-free not residential not the model of a car free community

Function follows form in our society and we have not gotten beyond the highway sprawl form
We have not gotten beyond the stratification by race and class and income form
And until we do business lassitude will be the rule
(But of course today's recession is the index of resistance to buying what businesses are trying to sell
So the people are smarter than business with its defective thinking cap on askew)

Think beyond big oil and sprawl and stratification 
Think that form follows function
Just as much as function follows form
Think of realizing values like democracy,  helpfulness and tolerance not to mention non-idolatry
Then you will be on your the way to thinking beyond the bun

Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes


This is the system in which we live and move and have our being

Philanthropy is everything that claims or seeks to do good
It makes no difference whether private or public
Capitalism is everything that puts profit first
Regardless of what it may say about what it does
Philanthropy and capitalism are joined at the hip
Their hypocrisies and failures breathe the same air
Their claims egregious as they are are similar
For this is the system in which we live and move and have our being
And which by Abba's grace we'll overcome

For philanthropy is this globe's biggest failure
It embraces the failures of government and education and charity and health care
All efforts to do good
Wrapped in the ribbons of achievement
At year end telling us of its sad performance
The mothers who did not survive birth
The landmines that went uncleared
The children who never saw the inside of a museum
The young and female and weak who are excluded from survival
The acrid balls and other publicized celebrations of the rich good
To whom all media bow servile
Extracting their pay from the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table

And governance that noble engine of philanthropy
With its Assads and Annans
Its Putins and Obamas
Spends more time trumpeting and making excuses
Than it does rectifying its benign genocides
And its unspeakable massacres

The failure of these married elements
Of governance and philanthropy
Is the failure to properly identify crime
That would be capitalism (not by the way free enterprise)
Capitalism at root is a failure to grasp and live by proper values
Proper values place non-idolatry, helpfulness, tolerance and democracy
Ahead of profit
Proper values put profit in its place
Proper values
Underlie global democratic revolution
Proper values will overthrow
Philanthropy as it now is
Capitalism as it now is
Governance as it now it
Fallible people schooled in the values that lie at the core of all people
Will rule

And the first commandment will be
Thou shalt not boast

Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Pruning Extraneous Personal Metadata


Well my friends I have arrived at a damning conclusion. My writing is filled with extraneous personal metadata. Let me define this. It is text that tells the reader a lot that she may not want to know about your attitude, your prejudices and your opinions. Below is a piece I am preparing for a Kindle book  of thought starters about future society. Shorn for the most part of the metadata that it shocked me to perceive.

We Need a New Sociology

How about we divide society into three types and then concede that all three are parts of everyone? In other words, we start thinking of individuals as a spectrum and not in terms that limit their freedom to be what they can be. 

There is first the person who has no need of a physician, to use one of Jesus' phrases. Perhaps the largest bulk of humanity are those who function with a measure of responsibility, a measure of tolerance, a measure of helpfulness and a measure of democratic willingness to grant the same rights to all. 

Next is the person Jesus designates as a sinner. He does not use this as an invidious designation. It is more a matter of fact acknowledgement that some, for whatever reason, engage in conscious wrong-doing. Some are compelled to do wrong. Sex workers. Child soldiers. Others - everyone actually - just does it. 

Finally, there is the person who has power over others and misuses it, intentionally or not. 

A new sociology would begin with a universal understanding based on the above. In other words, it would begin by positing ontological values that are universal and then observing how people relate to these values. 

Take these as ontological values embedded in each person – non-idolatry, tolerance, democracy, helpfulness. The first sort above accepts these. The second sort will at least put on no airs, defer to others without judging, grant rights to all and offer a helping hand.  The third sort will regard all this with profound skepticism. Nihilism is necessary protective garb for the powerful. Penitence is seen as an absurd exercise. 

(Remember that at the start I said there is some of each of the three in all of us.)

The sociology that would rise from the above is simply an application of intelligent observation to the way things are. My own opinion is that Jesus provides the sociology we need to see things correctly and advance society.

Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Leave it to the GOP to dis-educate us



The GOP will tell you they're for enterprise
And that the Democrats are just for lassitude
But one day we will see the center rise
And cure the GOP of its false platitude 



Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Another visit to Dylan's Red River Shore

Bob Dylan - Red River Shore on Spotify

I play this a lot
Anyone who
had someone back then
that they cannot finally let go of
or
Who senses that they thenselves are
not fully who they are unless
they are merged with the Other
or
Who appreciates the deft and subtle touches
that lift a lyric to the sublime
will cotton to this




Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Everyone Should Support The Student Non-Discrimination Act (SNDA)

Does the Obama Administration Support SNDA?: "The Student Non-Discrimination Act would provide LGBT students, and those perceived to be, with long-overdue and much-needed explicit federal protections by establishing a comprehensive prohibition against discrimination and harassment in all public elementary and secondary schools across the country based on a student’s actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity."

'via Blog this'


Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Like saying I didn't know they served booze in a bar.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn Released on Bail - NYTimes.com: "His lawyer, Richard Malka, has argued that Mr. Strauss-Kahn did not know that the women in question were prostitutes hired by his hosts, including for evenings in Washington and Paris, and that he did not pay them."


Like saying I didn't know they served booze in a bar.





Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Fallibilism applies to both scientists and religionists



When a link to a Stanley Fish column appears on the NYT home page
You take notice
Fish could have said this all a bit more economically 
if he had evoked Charles Sanders Peirce
Pinker and Dawkins are exactly as Fish says
or as I say in four words -
half of a binary
Acknowledgement of fallibility all around
opens up the way to thinking in threes


Two Reasons America Could Entirely Repopulate



If coastal areas become uninhabitable 
due to rising sea levels  
If health care is shunted back to the states 
because the Supreme Court turns back Obamacare
The prospect of at least one of these happening
is worth considering
A repopulation or volkerwanderung might spur
the development of car-free sustainable communities
dense enough to enable viable local economies

The irony would be if everyone moved to Western Massachusetts


Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

RECCMENDATION Richard Gordon Quantum Touch

The Slow as Molasses Press