(Harbourfront Centre, 8 October 2011)
Complete, intense, not asexual, but not about sex, "Verwoben" (choreographed by Robert Glumbek) is about being human, which consists in provoking oneself to be surprised by one's errors as one strives for an ideal. One's true self is what one is at one's best, least manipulated by the environment, but not insulated; autonomy and interaction are balanced by choosing an appropriate social circle.
Glumbek's dancers live. He has summarised everything there is to say. Fortunately, the summary is beautiful.
Restricting dancers to the classical ballet vocabulary would be as absurd as making pupils use Roman numerals in multiplication competitions, or making modern playwrights comply with Shakespeare's standards of gore and flippancy. The outcomes would be neither effective nor pretty. In "Pearline" (choreographed by Kevin O'Day), unconstrained, Mami Hata and Louis Laberge-Cote achieve an effect akin to the Fred Astaire Revolution.
ProArteDanza project intelligence. The perceived intelligence is the ability to engage---a dancer with a dancer, unburdened by, but not neglectful of, music. Each dancer's each move has an origin, a destination, and a purpose, and is transmitted from one dancer to another, with comforting inevitability. (Defined as engagement, intelligence is absent from a scenic sunset, but inhabits an iPhone.)
8 October 2011
6 October 2011
"On What Matters" by Derek Parfit (2011), "Selected Poems" by T.S. Eliot (1964)
With his sentences short and assured, Parfit may seem clearer than his predecessors, but since there is little substance per page to be clear about, the clarity's value is dubitable. Some of his predecessors at least wrote good literature. Surely, reading Partif shall provoke a thought, but efficient that literary provocation will be not. One comes to appreciate Wittgenstein, who thought much, wrote little, had the right ideal of mathematical precision to strive for, fell short of that ideal, and---because of that failure---is still read.
(The early Wittgenstein revealed the futility of traditional philosophic discourse in the scientific age. The late Wittgenstein pursued the only aspect of traditional philosophy to have retained any merit---the collective experience encoded into linguistic patterns---anthropology.)
Physics studies what is true, or approximately predictable. Mathematics studies what is possible, or logically consistent. Short of being a formal derivation of implications from premises, moral philosophy can only survive as an empirical study of what is willed for and by whom.
What matters is discovering facts (done by arts and sciences), discovering the logical implication of these facts (done by mathematics), and discovering the rules for discovering facts and their implications (undertaken by philosophy). It is not obvious that the latter kind of discovery needs a separate discipline and cannot be left to the evolution (of arts, sciences, and mathematics).
To a layman, one of the appeals of philosophy is in its pseudo-scientific nature. Religious doctrines promise understanding without the hard work of science and logic. A kin sense of understanding is evoked by philosophy when it fails to apply a systematic method. Genuine understanding is achieved by an argument with the precision of a computer code; it either executes correctly or it fails. Successful execution requires precise definitions of the objects beyond one's sensory experience; one cannot rely on the consensus innate understanding of such objects. Too often, philosophy borrows its definitions from the vernacular.
Another reason for the layman's enjoyment of philosophy is the seeming accessibility of the minds of philosophy's geniuses. If one reads a frontier philosopher working in the verbal tradition, one understands most of it, if the philosopher is any good. If one reads a frontier mathematician, one understands nothing.
Occasionally, a philosopher would raise a question that does not merit an answer---meaning that whether a particular statement is true has no bearing on how one should live one's life, how the society should be organised, and how scientific inquiry should be structured. Such a question may be infectious, like a mystery story. The inconsequential nature of the question does not imply that it should be dismissed, only that its importance should not be overestimated. Pondering such a question may be a satisfying diversion.
Philosophy that is not a diversion is a heuristic process that, by trial and error, through analogies and introspection, identifies what matters to individuals---i.e., what they appear to be curious about (even if no utilitarian application for that curiosity is yet evident) and what important questions are (even if the framework in which these questions can be addressed is yet unavailable). Such philosophy is perpetually immature.
What distinguishes philosophy from art is that philosophy seeks to establish a common interpretation, whereas art invites individual interpretations linked by family resemblance. Art is a technique that evokes thoughts and feelings, and nudges one towards reasoning, but does not supply reasons. Art is a well-designed distributed computing system. Art's beauty can be appreciated without any formal training; one only needs to have lived or to intend to live.
T.S. Eliot's poetry is a search for meaning that may not exist, a warm-up exercise for prose, a madness's dose, a pose, an irrational book to give the world a rational look, the spectre of an obsessive thought, deflated once articulated.
(The early Wittgenstein revealed the futility of traditional philosophic discourse in the scientific age. The late Wittgenstein pursued the only aspect of traditional philosophy to have retained any merit---the collective experience encoded into linguistic patterns---anthropology.)
Physics studies what is true, or approximately predictable. Mathematics studies what is possible, or logically consistent. Short of being a formal derivation of implications from premises, moral philosophy can only survive as an empirical study of what is willed for and by whom.
What matters is discovering facts (done by arts and sciences), discovering the logical implication of these facts (done by mathematics), and discovering the rules for discovering facts and their implications (undertaken by philosophy). It is not obvious that the latter kind of discovery needs a separate discipline and cannot be left to the evolution (of arts, sciences, and mathematics).
To a layman, one of the appeals of philosophy is in its pseudo-scientific nature. Religious doctrines promise understanding without the hard work of science and logic. A kin sense of understanding is evoked by philosophy when it fails to apply a systematic method. Genuine understanding is achieved by an argument with the precision of a computer code; it either executes correctly or it fails. Successful execution requires precise definitions of the objects beyond one's sensory experience; one cannot rely on the consensus innate understanding of such objects. Too often, philosophy borrows its definitions from the vernacular.
Another reason for the layman's enjoyment of philosophy is the seeming accessibility of the minds of philosophy's geniuses. If one reads a frontier philosopher working in the verbal tradition, one understands most of it, if the philosopher is any good. If one reads a frontier mathematician, one understands nothing.
Occasionally, a philosopher would raise a question that does not merit an answer---meaning that whether a particular statement is true has no bearing on how one should live one's life, how the society should be organised, and how scientific inquiry should be structured. Such a question may be infectious, like a mystery story. The inconsequential nature of the question does not imply that it should be dismissed, only that its importance should not be overestimated. Pondering such a question may be a satisfying diversion.
Philosophy that is not a diversion is a heuristic process that, by trial and error, through analogies and introspection, identifies what matters to individuals---i.e., what they appear to be curious about (even if no utilitarian application for that curiosity is yet evident) and what important questions are (even if the framework in which these questions can be addressed is yet unavailable). Such philosophy is perpetually immature.
What distinguishes philosophy from art is that philosophy seeks to establish a common interpretation, whereas art invites individual interpretations linked by family resemblance. Art is a technique that evokes thoughts and feelings, and nudges one towards reasoning, but does not supply reasons. Art is a well-designed distributed computing system. Art's beauty can be appreciated without any formal training; one only needs to have lived or to intend to live.
T.S. Eliot's poetry is a search for meaning that may not exist, a warm-up exercise for prose, a madness's dose, a pose, an irrational book to give the world a rational look, the spectre of an obsessive thought, deflated once articulated.
"Time on the Cross" by Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman (1974)
For centuries, the abolition of slavery had seemed both politically infeasible and economically calamitous. Reason, gods, and violence had been employed by vested interests in order to defend the status quo. The present-day institutional details that may seem unjust and inefficient in a hundred years from now may be the inter-personal inequality in the consumption of material goods (apparently required to motivate heterogeneously-endowed individuals to work) and the voters' differential regard for the welfare of their compatriots and of foreign citizens.
Today, sufficient individual incentives are provided by avoiding the threats of death and hunger. In future, even better incentives could be provided if an individual's desire to differentiate himself from others is channelled into pursuits more productive than material consumption. The acknowledgement of the equal worth of domestic and foreign citizens would require deeper arguments justifying the tolerance of cross-country consumption inequality than the present-day implicit appeals to entitlement.
The book's distinction is that it focuses on correlations, not exceptions. Using exceptions, a reader can decorate his pet theory, and deceive himself and others. The cultivation of exceptions also makes it easier for a writer to differentiate himself from his competitors. An eye for correlations distinguishes a scientist.
The authors refrain from an anthropomorphic theory ascribing the qualities of an eccentric individual to a social class. Instead, they explore individual incentives. Then, at a class level, under appropriate conditions, individual eccentricities cancel out; behavioural regularities emerge.
The slaves' better-than-free-labour and better-than-freedman material conditions need not distract from the injustice of exploitation, measured by the slaves' superior productivity, but mostly unmeasured. Liberty comes from respect for individual idiosyncrasies. Even if slavery had been comfortable for most, it would have nonetheless been inadmissible because insufferable for few.
Today, sufficient individual incentives are provided by avoiding the threats of death and hunger. In future, even better incentives could be provided if an individual's desire to differentiate himself from others is channelled into pursuits more productive than material consumption. The acknowledgement of the equal worth of domestic and foreign citizens would require deeper arguments justifying the tolerance of cross-country consumption inequality than the present-day implicit appeals to entitlement.
The book's distinction is that it focuses on correlations, not exceptions. Using exceptions, a reader can decorate his pet theory, and deceive himself and others. The cultivation of exceptions also makes it easier for a writer to differentiate himself from his competitors. An eye for correlations distinguishes a scientist.
The authors refrain from an anthropomorphic theory ascribing the qualities of an eccentric individual to a social class. Instead, they explore individual incentives. Then, at a class level, under appropriate conditions, individual eccentricities cancel out; behavioural regularities emerge.
The slaves' better-than-free-labour and better-than-freedman material conditions need not distract from the injustice of exploitation, measured by the slaves' superior productivity, but mostly unmeasured. Liberty comes from respect for individual idiosyncrasies. Even if slavery had been comfortable for most, it would have nonetheless been inadmissible because insufferable for few.
1 October 2011
"Brandeburgs," "The Uncommitted," and "Piazzolla Caldera" by Paul Taylor
(Wadsworth Auditorium, 1 October 2011)
"Brandenburgs": solipsistic, narcissistic, baroque, literal, routine.
"The Uncommitted": formulaic, expressive, sartorially wronged.
"Piazzolla Caldera:" well-engineered, light, musical, accordant.
The dancers, competent, play not, but are being played. Unrefined, the men cannot give class to the women, but do succeed in the same-sex duo in "Piazzolla Caldera"---the dance that most betrays the choreographer's talent.
Modern ballet resembles modernist poetry in its lack of externally imposed structure. The audience may mistake form for the promise of substance. Without reliable grammar, the choreographer may end up with an amorphous product. The talented are liberated; the mediocre are encouraged and multiply.
"Brandenburgs": solipsistic, narcissistic, baroque, literal, routine.
"The Uncommitted": formulaic, expressive, sartorially wronged.
"Piazzolla Caldera:" well-engineered, light, musical, accordant.
The dancers, competent, play not, but are being played. Unrefined, the men cannot give class to the women, but do succeed in the same-sex duo in "Piazzolla Caldera"---the dance that most betrays the choreographer's talent.
Modern ballet resembles modernist poetry in its lack of externally imposed structure. The audience may mistake form for the promise of substance. Without reliable grammar, the choreographer may end up with an amorphous product. The talented are liberated; the mediocre are encouraged and multiply.
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