social

The trouble implicit in the last post plagues comments and blogging. Plenty of truthful things are asocial, and harmful, and would go more nearly unsaid, or better cloaked, if there were not such an easy and asocial form of publication. But of course I expect nobody to read this.

polity

I have an antipathy towards the merely intellegent. I think it is earned, but it is there regardless of justification, and certainly not due to justification. It is a matter of aesthetics. What's repellent is the failure -- probably the incapacity -- to be either effortlessly human or rationally actualized. Aside from being repellent, I find it tempts me towards manipulation, and that's another reason for the antipathy: one does not like those whose characteristics are so tempting towards one's personal lusts towards evil.

mighty square

Google earth shows Mandalay from above and what we see is this magnificent square moat about the royal compound. Burma is the country that subtlety forgot, and Shwedagon Pagoda and Bagan are the usual proof. But that moat is more sublime to a modern eye.

extraterrestrials

The discovery of nonhuman intelligent life elsewhere - or here - would matter only to the extent of reciprocity. Without reciprocity, the discovery would be informational, perhaps disinfect a few stubborn falsehoods, and certainly spawn a few new ones. In short, it would hardly matter. Reciprocity, if minimal or sporadic (or perhaps if localized), would matter in a manner that would track responsible theology. That would be a happy circumstance, in that it would render useful some of the best developed bodies of higher human effort, which religious theologies are. And it would be a happy circumstance, too, in that it would almost certainly elevate a sense of humanity and good action, in the manner of a religious awakening. There would be a (human) Jonathan Edwards. By 'in the manner' I mean that the elevation would be uneven and largely temporary, but with detectable leavening effects that would carry forward many generations with a utility comparable to Puritanism in New England. Whether the interaction was, in itself, good or bad, happy or unhappy, of course, is a matter of particulars. (That Puritanism's tenets were not so did not prevent Puritanism from being greatly useful, on balance. The thought that a mistaken or fraudulent minimal extraterrestrial reciprocity might be similarly useful, on balance, although not genuine, is interesting, but too risky to wish for because the fraudster could not be counted on to do the faking in a manner meant for the common good. Among the differences between cult founders and the beginnings of the higher religions is simply that cult foundings are reliably too deliberate and intended to be useful outcroppings for human development to encrust.)

Now, if the interaction were sustained and general, the effect would not be theological, but simply the end of what we have been, and the beginning of something as new as what we became upon gaining language.

It doesn't matter that, in actuality, all of this is surpassingly unlikely. The thought is itself interesting, since it considers one of the few really important alterations that could occur that is not annihilation or a functional equivalent.

Another, and more likely, important alteration would be a plague that very greatly reduced the human population. Such a plague would be more likely to benefit mankind after a too-terrible interval, than it would be to harm it. But the middle passage, and the not-too-unlikely alternative, that we would be worse off, perhaps worse off indefinitely, makes such a plague repugnant even as a thought experiment.

Yet another, and less likely, important alteration would be a sundering of humankind into parts that did not communicate, or that hardly communicated. This would almost surely be bad. Even that may be understating it -- this would be bad, absent very special, narrow and odd conditions. One of the most complete blunders of the Hebrew (and Christian) scriptures is the tower of Babel story, which casts segregation as the cure. There are ample examples in history of linguistic segregation and desegregation, and the results of such segregation are almost always bad, sometimes very bad, and of desegregation are almost always good, often very good.

The Babel story is one of the most factually falsifiable portions of the Bible. But that falsifiability should not overshadow the additional (not the only additional) defect I have just sketched: that the scattering "cure" is in fact a poor one. It is not even a corrective (good) punishment, only a cruel one, because calamitous and indecipherable.

Which brings insight to the extraterrestrial line of thought: the generalized good of ongoing interaction with extraterrestrials, were there any, would really be that of a sort of desegregation. That is why one can say that such interaction would be more likely to be good than bad without having to posit whether we or they are virtuous or vicious, brilliant or stupid, wise or shallow.

a worldly one

His Nobel speech turns out to have been excellent, remarkable, and really the first noteworthy speech he's given in office. It ranks in the upper second tier of state papers (with the Four Freedoms but below the Second Inaugural) and given the context it could not have ranked higher.

This is despite the fact that the actual choice of recipient was absurd (for many years, anyhow), and the political context could not have been more treacherous. Obama, as a person in power, is honorable, thoughtful, too young, basically moderate. His political characteristics are more interesting: he continues to be one of the great line-skippers of human history (Alexander the Great being even more audacious, and the biblical Jacob comes to mind as a sort of type). Just as important, Obama is his best when cornered. That's interesting.

He also has that sine qua non of political characteristics in common with our last president, and, really, most very successful politicians I can think of: somehow he has a quality that makes people absolutely clamor to help him. What was it that made George H.W. Bush different from his more able brother Jeb, in the end? It was that George H.W. was someone people, very unusual people like Rice, Cheney, Rove and for that matter Laura really, really wanted to help, when any number of other callow sons of privilege attract no such coterie. Obama has this same quality. It is this ability to attract and hold, as if by spiritual force, the support and labour of the best and brightest that makes, ultimately, a president. It is what Hilary lacked and Bill had. It is what Obama has and McCain didn't. The mysterious ability to entrance and employ the best and make them yours. It is a Davidic quality: kingly, really. Needless to say, I do not mean that this quality it is good or bad in itself. I figure Mao had it, too.

Of course, it is usually ambiguous, morally, even when it is undeniable as an intensely possessed quality: Trudeau, Churchill, De Gaulle. People who had this: both Roosevelts, neither Adams, both Bushes, not Nixon or Carter; Obama and Reagan, Truman in part, Eisenhower in spades; not Gingrich but Hastert, Johnson but not Lincoln; Washington above all, Madison of the founders first behind, Jefferson to a degree, Wilson without doubt. McArthur to McClellan to a very dangerous degree, Marshall and Powell, in a militarily useful measure. Greenspan had it to our hurt, Bernanke lacks it to our benefit.

humanist?

Humanist is a word for what I am, but it implies something grander than is true. Maybe I should feel, certainly I would like to be thought of as feeling for all of humanity. But if I do anything on that scale, it is sometimes to think, but not to feel. I can feel fellowship only on a garden's scale. Put me into a stadium and I am only a mob's atom, not a person, a self, or me.

dark ages

Retired athletes have a long way down. I get it. Particular human excllences or capacities are of limited use, limited value, out of all proportion to the immense drain on devotion and effort entailed and the inflamed expectations engendered. Exceptions are exactly that. That is the attraction of money: neither ability nor anything else works so well across so many applications. Money is a middling attribute, but the best possible platform for a really fine attribute.

not me

This full sense that others are what one's self is: fragile, needful. For this we tell good lies of fellowship, give false hopes of national progress, and fight right wars. For this, and to lessen bloodshed. This pair polarizes the human world: the same strain that enables the good and fine holds taut the net between. This is more worthy than personal integrity, individual dignity.

da capo

I doubt greed is good or bad, although I am sure it is dangerous. Put a fence around it. I suppose it is more bad than good, if splayed onto a scaled and measured once. But that is to little point. What I'm sure of is that I am greedy, and that the management of greed is the driving of a wonderful little engine, that propels, or spits fumes, or some mix of both, depending on my care in managing it. To have good digestion and not grow consumptive: that's the beginning. And to look out at the world and drink in: that is the core. And to allow the osmotic transformations that come from selective permeation of within and without: that is the end.