Question Marks

It’s funny that when it comes to actual cheese (this will be a mainly vegan post, unless you count the beef I have with a certain “artist”) the good stuff is rarely described as cheesy. You don’t have a cheesy cheese platter, or say, after biting into a nice Greek salad, “Oh, it’s really cheesy.” Instead you remark on the qualities of the cheese itself. The cheesiness of grilled cheese is obvious – if it’s a really fine grilled cheese, there are other things to say.

Okay, maybe you would happily describe a really cheesy Greek salad as cheesy. I won’t take this point too far. But anyway it is still true that it’s the happiness that’s important. You might say, for example, “It’s well seasoned, but a bit too cheesy.” (Most people who order Greek salads probably enjoy feta cheese, so this is probably a ridiculous hypothetical. I digress, twice over.)

The point, to get to it, is that I do not like Chihuly. In case you’re not familiar with the name, I’m no longer considering dairy products, but rather the mastermind behind the following:

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The question, then, is why we are so eager to accept earthquakes and other manifestions of our cooling planet’s turbulence as signals relayed to us – individually or as cultures or societies. My facebook news feed is littered at the moment by various interpretations of today’s earthquake on the east coast – most of these comments are casual, some are tongue-in-cheek, and only very few are serious or grave (probably largely because most of my friends on the coast are in New York, where the magnitude was negligible). Nevertheless, it seems to me that even those whose interpretations are jokes on one level or another (“Okay, I’ll go outside!”; “See, I can rattle from an earthquake, too,” says New York; “How could NY have an earthquake when I’m not there?!”) do not question the impulse to interpret the earthquake as a message to one or many humans. (People closer to the epicenter may have feared for their goods or even their lives, or complained about the train delays, or considered this or that nonsense prophecy. Though some people feared they were somehow feeling an aspect of a terrorist attack, this is a different kind of interpretive response than the one I am considering; interpreting what one falsely perceives as an explosion is different than interpreting what one knows to be an earthquake.)

It’s as natural a human impulse as there is – we are, after all, each uniquely affected by external events, even those that affect billions. I may have been too far from the epicenter to feel the ground so much as quiver, and yet I too am implicated – I know people who felt it; I received phone calls; I read facebook status updates and news/blog articles; and then there are all the unperceived co-arisings. But these latter aren’t really worth mentioning in this post, because the focus must be on aspects of experience we can and habitually do instantly interpret. I may think to myself that it might’ve been oddly fun to have felt the earth trembling lightly below my feet in my favorite city – I spent 23 years there and never felt such a thing. I may be grateful there was no major damage, and curious about the people I know who were closer to the center. However, as soon as I locate an intention within the tremors, as soon as I describe what I think the earth or “it” or God was trying to tell me or us, as soon as I wish for some other option to have been chosen than the events as they unfolded (I wish it had shaken more! Why wasn’t I there! It should have been a blackout instead!) – then I have moved beyond responding to an event, and have begun to interpret it.

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I am currently sitting in the Periodicals Room in Harvard’s largest library, Widener. It’s a nice place. Lots of books, & c. What struck me just now, as I was walking towards the comfy chairs by the window to read Book IV of Paradise Lost, was that there are various journals in here – Philosophy and Literature being the one that caught my eye – that I may gain in a number of senses from reading. Why don’t I spend one or two afternoons per week sitting in here just browsing through journal after journal? Why don’t I make it my business to read what is being written in current issues of publications that call themselves things such as Poetry? (I was in the P section, apparently. A lot of what I love and love reading (about) is in the vicinity of Poetry, in more senses than one.) I think, in fact, that I will try to do this. But I wonder about keeping myself to the task. I’m reading Milton now because it was voted upon and I expect to write about it when I’ve made it a little further in. (Speaking of which, I’ve decided that for future polls, if there is a clear second-place book, it will make it into the ensuing poll – in cases such as our first attempt, none of the poor contenders will return (yet).) I think I’ll just try and find a day that works – Monday or Tuesday perhaps – and make it my business to report on my reading for the day.  In the meantime, any journal suggestions? Any area of interest I should poke my nose into? I won’t make this an actual poll, not knowing what choices to put on offer, but I really would like any and all suggestions.

As for my particular thoughts underneath the willow: it turns out the world below the sky-life of The Jetsons is not a barren nuclear wasteland, but rather a patterned geography of rolling green hills and flat paved ground, the former of which houses birds that no longer fly around because of all the humans crowding the airways (and, presumably, other animals), the latter of which houses the foundations for the sky-scraping buildings we all know and love, and homeless people. The bird shows up in a season three episode, the homeless man in a season one episode. I had always imagined the Jetsons floating cheerily above a planet wrecked by human folly. It turns out to be even creepier: wealth moved up into the sky and left everything else, as it were, for the birds. The laziness of the Jetsons-culture’s lifestyle – three-day work weeks, three hours per day, mostly spent napping – is a vision of the utopia of wealth. Make enough money that you can build up and away from the planet and you know longer have to worry about whatever was left behind. The technology needed for the move is sufficient to take care of daily necessities. You don’t even need the human infrastructure of, say, More’s vision. Maybe I’m reading too much into this – but I think more likely I’m either not reading enough, or I’m just reading somewhat misguidedly. More thinking would have to be done on various specific questions – such as, what does one make of the very long hiatus between seasons 1 and 2 of The Jetsons? – and, more importantly, one would have to actually sit down and watch the whole series to get a better sense what it’s politics was. Etc. I’m not going to do this. Maybe someone already has. Or maybe there’s a dissertation here just waiting to be unleashed.

I like reading articles and essays by Sam Harris. I’ve met a fair number of people who don’t know who Sam Harris is, but also a fair number of people who are surprised (and something resembling upset) to find out that I actually like the guy’s work. There are exceptions, but most often people who recognize the name react with bulging of the eyes, raising of the eyebrows, or dropping open of the mouth. I am not really sure why Harris inspires the annoyance he does, but I must also admit that, a few years ago, when I first started reading his work, I found this an added bonus. It’s fun to confound people sometimes, no? And not just as, how could anyone like that guy?, but rather, What could it mean that you like that guy? But now that I have gotten rather used to being a Sam Harris defender (or, in other words, someone who defends my mode of interpreting Sam Harris’s work), I’ve found the novelty of surprising people has worn off. This is partly due to my increasing awareness over the years that many of the people who are positively annoyed with me for not dismissing the man have themselves not actually read a word he has written. This is annoying. Furthermore, in my opinion, when people do read what he’s written, they often simplify and dismiss his main arguments. E.g., in his latest project he argues that there can be a scientific basis for morality. This is quite an argument, and ought to (get it?) be taken seriously. I’m all for challenging it to the utmost, to keep it sharp and to find what’s valuable in it, etc. But often the response is, “Okay, Sam, given morally fraught situation X, what’s the right moral answer?” But – Harris has very clearly not claimed to possess a full and complete framework for scientifically answering every moral question. (Nor is he arguing that that would be possible.) He’s arguing for shifting attitudes, for beginning a project, for setting up a foundation. He does say some things are “patently” morally condemnable – but one of the fascinations about his work is to see the extent to which people are unwilling to say this about, e.g., certain practices of the Taliban. I grew to like Sam Harris, as one could suspect from some of my previous posts, due in part to his willingness to take a stand.

Here’s a recent article by him about “drugs.” Whether you’ve never heard of him or read his work, or have read and enjoyed or detested it, this is a worthwhile read. It’s a forthright, reasonable discussion of psychedelics, “spiritual” experience (which Harris takes to be an undeniable aspect of human being), and drug policy, among other related questions. Ordinarily I’d want to write more about this particular piece, or some way I’ve been thinking about its subject matter, or & c., but in this case I think I’ll just leave it at that. I’ve been reading Milton and quite enjoying it, but I’ll hold off commenting until I’m at least halfway through. Otherwise I’ve had no mind-ventures worth noting here, or, at least, none that I can think of at the moment. I guess I’m just curious to see how people respond to Harris’s article, and the fact of my posting it here.