(Sadler’s Wells, 23 December 2018)
Certain maturity, intensity of the production were lacking, although the modern (for the 1990s) twists were an improvement on the original narrative. The music was arranged and performed well. The imperfections of the dancers did not quite cohere with the ideal parts they were portraying.
25 December 2018
42nd Street
(Theatre Royal Drury Lane, 22 December 2018)
The 42nd Street is a solid musical with no dramatic depth, with underdeveloped narrative arc, and with no memorable musical numbers (possibly except for the one remembered by Mike Coupe right before his ITV interview). Tap dancing is good. The mood is cheerful.
Weimar-era paintings are rather gory. By contrast, the enduring flicks and musicals from the 1930s and the early 1940s are lighthearted and gay. Two such different recollections of misery may be at least in part due to the technological accident: the cheer of Berlin cabarets was ephemeral, whereas that of Hollywood motion pictures has happened to be preserved on film and then revived, onscreen and onstage. Thus, the streak of optimism that has entered the American DNA may have been accidental.
(Comparisons are delicate because movies and paintings address different audiences, just as movies and theatre do. American optimism is probably mostly due to the consistent inflow of talented, hard-working, and forward-looking immigrants.)
What has kickstarted the US economy after the Great Depression was purportedly the WWII. Later, the Silicon Valley flourished thanks to defence contracts. The challenge is to maintain state support for fundamental science and technology in the absence of the threat of war by betting not on technologies but on outcomes, such as colonising Mars.
The 42nd Street is a solid musical with no dramatic depth, with underdeveloped narrative arc, and with no memorable musical numbers (possibly except for the one remembered by Mike Coupe right before his ITV interview). Tap dancing is good. The mood is cheerful.
Weimar-era paintings are rather gory. By contrast, the enduring flicks and musicals from the 1930s and the early 1940s are lighthearted and gay. Two such different recollections of misery may be at least in part due to the technological accident: the cheer of Berlin cabarets was ephemeral, whereas that of Hollywood motion pictures has happened to be preserved on film and then revived, onscreen and onstage. Thus, the streak of optimism that has entered the American DNA may have been accidental.
(Comparisons are delicate because movies and paintings address different audiences, just as movies and theatre do. American optimism is probably mostly due to the consistent inflow of talented, hard-working, and forward-looking immigrants.)
What has kickstarted the US economy after the Great Depression was purportedly the WWII. Later, the Silicon Valley flourished thanks to defence contracts. The challenge is to maintain state support for fundamental science and technology in the absence of the threat of war by betting not on technologies but on outcomes, such as colonising Mars.
Tell-Tale Heart
(The National Theatre, 21 December 2018)
The play begins with a provocative assertion: art is created by the not very smart as a safe space for the not very smart; art normalises mediocrity. A visit to many a modern art gallery or an exhibition would appear to support this hypothesis. Plays are not immune to mediocrity either, although playwrights do have to pass a literacy test. (Some of the mediocrity one encounters, however, is accidental: the impressionist canon was purchased by Gustave Caillebotte, a patron and himself an artist, on the grounds that it was not good enough to appeal to regular collectors. Caillebotte later bequeathed this canon to the public, while some of the better works remained in private collections.)
Mediocrity in art has three redeeming features. The acceptance of mediocrity unsettles existing social hierarchies by helping a greater number of individuals discover a source of self-esteem. The exposure of the public to mediocrity also illustrates that good art is hard, liable to false starts, and relies on nurturing a flow of ideas, only a fraction of which end up having some merit. Acceptance of mediocre art, on balance, encourages more individuals to engage in art. To the extent that engagement in and with art promotes social cohesion, this sacrifice of quality for quantity is welcome.
Should the government be in the business of promoting mediocre art? Perhaps indirectly so, the way venture capitalists promote more bad entrepreneurs by virtue of promoting more entrepreneurs, (ex-post) good or bad. The case relies on the assumption that markets alone would not provide artists with the funding commensurate with the social benefit that artistic activity generates, and that this under-provision is more severe in art than in, say, biotech.
The government may do more for art by investing in infrastructure and growth-friendly policies than by directly investing in art.
The provocative opening line is the play's high-point. Does the play itself illustrate the value of mediocrity? Is it an NT-worthy failure? Not quite.
The play begins with a provocative assertion: art is created by the not very smart as a safe space for the not very smart; art normalises mediocrity. A visit to many a modern art gallery or an exhibition would appear to support this hypothesis. Plays are not immune to mediocrity either, although playwrights do have to pass a literacy test. (Some of the mediocrity one encounters, however, is accidental: the impressionist canon was purchased by Gustave Caillebotte, a patron and himself an artist, on the grounds that it was not good enough to appeal to regular collectors. Caillebotte later bequeathed this canon to the public, while some of the better works remained in private collections.)
Mediocrity in art has three redeeming features. The acceptance of mediocrity unsettles existing social hierarchies by helping a greater number of individuals discover a source of self-esteem. The exposure of the public to mediocrity also illustrates that good art is hard, liable to false starts, and relies on nurturing a flow of ideas, only a fraction of which end up having some merit. Acceptance of mediocre art, on balance, encourages more individuals to engage in art. To the extent that engagement in and with art promotes social cohesion, this sacrifice of quality for quantity is welcome.
Should the government be in the business of promoting mediocre art? Perhaps indirectly so, the way venture capitalists promote more bad entrepreneurs by virtue of promoting more entrepreneurs, (ex-post) good or bad. The case relies on the assumption that markets alone would not provide artists with the funding commensurate with the social benefit that artistic activity generates, and that this under-provision is more severe in art than in, say, biotech.
The government may do more for art by investing in infrastructure and growth-friendly policies than by directly investing in art.
The provocative opening line is the play's high-point. Does the play itself illustrate the value of mediocrity? Is it an NT-worthy failure? Not quite.
“Bad Blood” by John Carreyrou (2018)
One cannot short a startup. Therefore, before investing in a company, it is important to note not only who has aleady invested in it (and whether investors are likely to have performed due diligence), but also who has refrained from investing.
For success, wishful thinking is insufficient, although typically necessary. Charisma is neither necessary nor sufficient. Nor is dropping out of college. One of the essential skills that one learns in college is the ability to identify nonsensical discourse, even one's own.
The society will extrapolate one’s successes and failures onto similar others. One has no moral obligation to internalise this externality. By contrast, those who regard themselves as being in the business of social engineering may wish (but, again, have no moral obligation) to account for this externality. Lawyers do so when they seek a perfect victim to file a civil rights suit.
Countries have historically competed in military might, not in product markets. International law enforcement is weak. International mobility is costly. It is simpler to steal than to innovate.
Companies are not inherently different but are constrained by the state’s monopoly on violence. Even then, whenever not controlled by a mob, companies control armies of lawyers, media, and politicians.
Any remotely fair, efficient, and reliable mode of social organisation is likely have much redundancy, seek excessive compromise, and, so, be rather far from the first-best.
“How to Be Parisian wherever You Are” by Caroline de Maigret, Anne Berest, Audrey Diwan, and Sophie Mas (2014)
Being a Parisianne is making most of one’s circumstances, which, here, are Paris: high-density urban living, among benevolent snobs and a handful of friends; small apartments; and a subtle equilibrium in "what we do with what is done to us” (Sartre's definition of freedom).
Sometimes, in order to be X, one must not be born X. It is only by consciously deciding to be X that one can confidently inhabit X.
Why would one want to be a Parisian wherever one is? One may naturally be a Parisian to begin with, and it is reassuring to know one is not alone in one's constructed world. One may also wish, if not to be someone else for a while, then at least to be aware of alternative ways of being.
Sometimes, in order to be X, one must not be born X. It is only by consciously deciding to be X that one can confidently inhabit X.
Why would one want to be a Parisian wherever one is? One may naturally be a Parisian to begin with, and it is reassuring to know one is not alone in one's constructed world. One may also wish, if not to be someone else for a while, then at least to be aware of alternative ways of being.
15 December 2018
Twin Peaks: the Return (2017), Revisited
Twin Peaks is a shared dream.
Everyone lives in a dream, his own world, most of the time. On few occasions, individuals meet to share the dream. There's often music in the air on such occasions.
Everyone lives in a dream, his own world, most of the time. On few occasions, individuals meet to share the dream. There's often music in the air on such occasions.
A conversation is a dance. The dance reduces the conversation to its essence. It removes the middle-man, the macguffin, the plot, the purported meaning. Twin Peaks, like a dance, dismisses the middleman.
Most of the time, one is in the Black Lodge, the waiting room. What is remembered, is the finite time outside, on earth. One should make most of it.
Most of the time, one is in the Black Lodge, the waiting room. What is remembered, is the finite time outside, on earth. One should make most of it.
Today, characters are no longer developed in the legacy world but online. Relationships are cultivated online. What will the movies set in the present look like? Will action ever be spectacular again?
"Autofagia" by Arturo Rivera
(El Claustro de Sor Juana, 17 November 2018)
Rivera cures pain by conjuring up beauty, which he distills from pain itself and from freedom.
Rivera cures pain by conjuring up beauty, which he distills from pain itself and from freedom.
Brodsky/Baryshnikov
(Kultuurikatel, 13 December 2018)
In Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit blurs the logical distinction between one's selves, past and future, and others. With identity interrupted, it is as appropriate to say goodbye to one's selves as it is to say goodbye to others' selves, repeatedly. Or one can choose not to look back and to inhabit instead the present self the best one can. Alvis Hermanis's play explores the former.
One gets much practice dying. In the process, one learns to attach oneself to something bigger than oneself. One outlines one's shadows with a marker in the memories of fellow travellers, present and future. If one does so skilfully, such memories are welcome.
Baryshnikov reads poetry well. He dances it well. His moves defy age. The emergent language is universal.
Poetry and dance are the only artistic media that demand the artist to be completely naked.
In Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit blurs the logical distinction between one's selves, past and future, and others. With identity interrupted, it is as appropriate to say goodbye to one's selves as it is to say goodbye to others' selves, repeatedly. Or one can choose not to look back and to inhabit instead the present self the best one can. Alvis Hermanis's play explores the former.
One gets much practice dying. In the process, one learns to attach oneself to something bigger than oneself. One outlines one's shadows with a marker in the memories of fellow travellers, present and future. If one does so skilfully, such memories are welcome.
Baryshnikov reads poetry well. He dances it well. His moves defy age. The emergent language is universal.
Poetry and dance are the only artistic media that demand the artist to be completely naked.
12 December 2018
“Stubborn Attachments” by Tyler Cowen (2018)
1.
Cowen’s book makes a case for, and traces out the consequences of, a low discount rate for the welfare of future generations.
Suppose time machines were freely available and cheap. Then we would pretty much know the (assume, immutable) time horizon allotted to our civilisation the way we know the boundaries of the continents. Just as we do not discount the lives of the people who live by the sea, we would be loathe to discount the lives of the people who live close to the time horizon. It is true that those living close to the time horizon would have less rewarding lives because they cannot savour the bright futures of their progeny. This reduction in welfare affects the horizon people directly, however; there is no reason to double-count this reduction by explicitly discounting their welfare. Similarly, while the lives of the horizon people will not be remembered fondly by post-horizon people (of which there won’t be any), this omission is already accounted for in the (nonexistent) utilities of the post-horizon people.
The book makes three heroic assumptions: values cannot be derived from preferences, human rights are irreducible concepts, and faith is indispensable. All three are unnecessary for the book’s thesis.
Why assume that values do not come from preferences? One can justify many an atrocity by simply postulating that it is good for you. Furthermore, certainly the philosopher who postulates values has preferences over values. Why deny a nonphilosopher the right to nominate his values?
Rights (e.g., the right of a born baby to live or the right of the old to be taken care of) can be derived from incentive considerations, incentives to trust each other and cooperate toward the betterment of the world included. Of course, rights can be useful approximations, rules of thumb that capture robust properties of the maximisation of some grand objective. But, in this case, rights are not irreducible; their relative merits can be analysed rigorously.
What’s faith? Even if one were to accept the book’s assertion that one should have faith (or, at any rate, stupid people should have it, for, allegedly, they cannot motivate themselves to care enough about future generations by the power of rational thought alone), what is this faith? And who is in charge of it? The same philosopher who is in charge of values? And who is this philosopher accountable to? If we take a coherent mathematical argument and then suppress all equations, we do not call it “faith”; we call it Keynes’s General Theory. The reader is free to trust Keynes, be skeptical of Keynes’s reasoning, or scrutinise and challenge his reasoning. While trust in Keynes, as trust in any expert, is acceptable, blind faith damages the society in the long term.
Book’s occasional departures from consequentialism are puzzling. If an urn has red and blue balls, and we do not know how many of each, then we might admit to having no good argument for betting on one colour over the other in a fair bet. But if a dog gets its leg broken if you bet on red but not on blue, perhaps it is better to bet on blue. Ditto when being torn while deciding which beach to send the attacking troops to. All this ambiguity can make it harder to choose, but to acknowledge ambiguity does not require one to abandon consequentialism.
2.
Putting future generations on equal footing with present generations (which is the right thing to do unless future generations resemble octopi and superintelligent robots more than they resemble us) not only introduces certain moral obligations toward those generations but also justifies our taxing them. We want the future generations to be rich, so that we could tax them more. One way to tax future generations is to bequeath them the riddles (such as the climate change) that we find too costly to think about in return for bequeathing them the tools (such as a larger and better educated population and a larger body of scientific knowledge) to tackle these riddles.
3.
Foregoing the primacy of individual preferences in moral philosophy handicaps our ability to reason about the following question, raised towards the end of the book: Why care about nondomesticated animals and to what extent? (The emphasis on the nondomesticated betrays the limits of the author’s commitment not to derive morality from preferences.) One may further wonder: If we ought to care more about smarter animals, should we also care more about humans with a higher IQ? And should we care even more about superhuman silicon-based intelligence? Maybe. Maybe not. In the absence of a compelling theory, we should just rely on individual preferences, aggregated in some manner. It is true that this approach is inherently speciest because it is grounded in consulting human preferences, not animal preferences. But then any theory that humans will ever construct will be speciest in this (tautological) sense of having originated with humans; there is no escape.
One may also ask whether one ought to expect common interspecies morality, say, between humans and octopi. That is, should we expect humans to put the same relative weights on the welfare of humans and octopi as octopi do? If not, should we be compelled to conclude that either humans or octopi, or both, are immoral? And if it is not immoral for humans to overweigh the welfare of humans and for octopi to overweight the welfare of octopi, is it then perfectly moral for short people to overweigh the welfare of short people, and for tall people to overweight the welfare of tall people? In politics, we can confort ourselves by believing that Conservatives advocate a conservative agenda not because they believe that the interests of Conservatives should come first but because they believe that the Conservative agenda is more correct. With short and tall people, it is hard to tell the same story.
Cowen’s book makes a case for, and traces out the consequences of, a low discount rate for the welfare of future generations.
Suppose time machines were freely available and cheap. Then we would pretty much know the (assume, immutable) time horizon allotted to our civilisation the way we know the boundaries of the continents. Just as we do not discount the lives of the people who live by the sea, we would be loathe to discount the lives of the people who live close to the time horizon. It is true that those living close to the time horizon would have less rewarding lives because they cannot savour the bright futures of their progeny. This reduction in welfare affects the horizon people directly, however; there is no reason to double-count this reduction by explicitly discounting their welfare. Similarly, while the lives of the horizon people will not be remembered fondly by post-horizon people (of which there won’t be any), this omission is already accounted for in the (nonexistent) utilities of the post-horizon people.
The book makes three heroic assumptions: values cannot be derived from preferences, human rights are irreducible concepts, and faith is indispensable. All three are unnecessary for the book’s thesis.
Why assume that values do not come from preferences? One can justify many an atrocity by simply postulating that it is good for you. Furthermore, certainly the philosopher who postulates values has preferences over values. Why deny a nonphilosopher the right to nominate his values?
Rights (e.g., the right of a born baby to live or the right of the old to be taken care of) can be derived from incentive considerations, incentives to trust each other and cooperate toward the betterment of the world included. Of course, rights can be useful approximations, rules of thumb that capture robust properties of the maximisation of some grand objective. But, in this case, rights are not irreducible; their relative merits can be analysed rigorously.
What’s faith? Even if one were to accept the book’s assertion that one should have faith (or, at any rate, stupid people should have it, for, allegedly, they cannot motivate themselves to care enough about future generations by the power of rational thought alone), what is this faith? And who is in charge of it? The same philosopher who is in charge of values? And who is this philosopher accountable to? If we take a coherent mathematical argument and then suppress all equations, we do not call it “faith”; we call it Keynes’s General Theory. The reader is free to trust Keynes, be skeptical of Keynes’s reasoning, or scrutinise and challenge his reasoning. While trust in Keynes, as trust in any expert, is acceptable, blind faith damages the society in the long term.
Book’s occasional departures from consequentialism are puzzling. If an urn has red and blue balls, and we do not know how many of each, then we might admit to having no good argument for betting on one colour over the other in a fair bet. But if a dog gets its leg broken if you bet on red but not on blue, perhaps it is better to bet on blue. Ditto when being torn while deciding which beach to send the attacking troops to. All this ambiguity can make it harder to choose, but to acknowledge ambiguity does not require one to abandon consequentialism.
2.
Putting future generations on equal footing with present generations (which is the right thing to do unless future generations resemble octopi and superintelligent robots more than they resemble us) not only introduces certain moral obligations toward those generations but also justifies our taxing them. We want the future generations to be rich, so that we could tax them more. One way to tax future generations is to bequeath them the riddles (such as the climate change) that we find too costly to think about in return for bequeathing them the tools (such as a larger and better educated population and a larger body of scientific knowledge) to tackle these riddles.
3.
Foregoing the primacy of individual preferences in moral philosophy handicaps our ability to reason about the following question, raised towards the end of the book: Why care about nondomesticated animals and to what extent? (The emphasis on the nondomesticated betrays the limits of the author’s commitment not to derive morality from preferences.) One may further wonder: If we ought to care more about smarter animals, should we also care more about humans with a higher IQ? And should we care even more about superhuman silicon-based intelligence? Maybe. Maybe not. In the absence of a compelling theory, we should just rely on individual preferences, aggregated in some manner. It is true that this approach is inherently speciest because it is grounded in consulting human preferences, not animal preferences. But then any theory that humans will ever construct will be speciest in this (tautological) sense of having originated with humans; there is no escape.
One may also ask whether one ought to expect common interspecies morality, say, between humans and octopi. That is, should we expect humans to put the same relative weights on the welfare of humans and octopi as octopi do? If not, should we be compelled to conclude that either humans or octopi, or both, are immoral? And if it is not immoral for humans to overweigh the welfare of humans and for octopi to overweight the welfare of octopi, is it then perfectly moral for short people to overweigh the welfare of short people, and for tall people to overweight the welfare of tall people? In politics, we can confort ourselves by believing that Conservatives advocate a conservative agenda not because they believe that the interests of Conservatives should come first but because they believe that the Conservative agenda is more correct. With short and tall people, it is hard to tell the same story.
8 December 2018
While You Were Sleeping (1995)
It is a perfect picture: Each dialogue is broken up into musical phrases each of which ends with a joke. Characters are worldly enough not to laugh at their own jokes. Screen time is apportioned according to merit. The plot is not propped up by characters' stupid decisions. Instead, everyone who gets a hand at controlling the plot acts responsibly. The movie does not solicit donations.
28 November 2018
Alexander McQueen (2018)
As any genius, McQueen was on the technological frontier, not just the conceptual one. He lived his vision and paid others with the honour of being a part of it. He also was others’ vision. He lived a supercritical life, condensed. He was fortunate to know and live by his obsession.
5 October 2018
La Bohème
(The Metropolitan Opera, 29 September 2018)
Some things change. Others don’t. Individuals crave both. Opera belongs to the latter kind.
Change is a tree, not a path. Having some recollection of the past helps one retrace one's steps back to a less wrong position, if necessary. A memory of the past shared by individuals in disparate presents furnishes a shared vocabulary that helps debate a more promising future.
Some things change. Others don’t. Individuals crave both. Opera belongs to the latter kind.
Change is a tree, not a path. Having some recollection of the past helps one retrace one's steps back to a less wrong position, if necessary. A memory of the past shared by individuals in disparate presents furnishes a shared vocabulary that helps debate a more promising future.
Hazmat Modine
(Terra Blues, 29 September 2018)
One should take care to live, not merely survive. It helps if one enjoys doing what one is doing---or at least enjoys the company of the fellow travellers---as one is trying to climb aboard. It is a jungle. The winners deserve their victory, but so do many losers. The net beneficiaries are the tourists, who are not required to fight on the turf whose fruits they consume. Everyone is a tourist tasting the fruits of the frustrations of past generations.
The band has perfected the blues and then has taken it two steps further. The timing is impeccable. The passion is genuine. The anger is genuine.
One should take care to live, not merely survive. It helps if one enjoys doing what one is doing---or at least enjoys the company of the fellow travellers---as one is trying to climb aboard. It is a jungle. The winners deserve their victory, but so do many losers. The net beneficiaries are the tourists, who are not required to fight on the turf whose fruits they consume. Everyone is a tourist tasting the fruits of the frustrations of past generations.
The band has perfected the blues and then has taken it two steps further. The timing is impeccable. The passion is genuine. The anger is genuine.
4 October 2018
"21st Century Choreographers I" by the New York City Ballet
(David H. Koch Theater, 28 September 2018)
In Vento (by Mauro Bigonzetti):
Individuals seek patterns, even in chaos, even if spurious. This quest is common to all (even digital) life, which seeks to encode and navigate the world. Discovered patterns knit the society together by helping its members coordinate with each other.
Art is the experience of being alone together with those who have long died, those who will live long after, and strangers, distant or near---all those who share the compulsion to create, if only vicariously. Art is a shared hallucination, a model of reality, the reality itself.
Judah (by Gianna Reisen):
Individuals find comfort in synchrony with others only to express autonomy by breaking free to syncopate, outperform, and improvise.
One way social science contributes is by isolating and naming phenomena. (Names don't explain, of course, just catalogue.) Art functions similarly but gives more expressive names.
The Runaway (by Kyle Abraham, with NYCB):
For some, a good life obtains if pleasure prevails over pain. For others, a good life is a good story. For some, a society worth imitating is healthy, sated, and entertained. For others, a society worth imitating is one that promises adventure.
In Vento (by Mauro Bigonzetti):
Individuals seek patterns, even in chaos, even if spurious. This quest is common to all (even digital) life, which seeks to encode and navigate the world. Discovered patterns knit the society together by helping its members coordinate with each other.
Art is the experience of being alone together with those who have long died, those who will live long after, and strangers, distant or near---all those who share the compulsion to create, if only vicariously. Art is a shared hallucination, a model of reality, the reality itself.
Individuals find comfort in synchrony with others only to express autonomy by breaking free to syncopate, outperform, and improvise.
One way social science contributes is by isolating and naming phenomena. (Names don't explain, of course, just catalogue.) Art functions similarly but gives more expressive names.
The Runaway (by Kyle Abraham, with NYCB):
For some, a good life obtains if pleasure prevails over pain. For others, a good life is a good story. For some, a society worth imitating is healthy, sated, and entertained. For others, a society worth imitating is one that promises adventure.
20 September 2018
"Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment" by Francis Fukuyama (2018)
There is a succinct essay somewhere in there, fighting to escape.
Each individual is endowed with a vector of characteristics. Markets convert this vector into a scalar—wealth—and rank everyone according to this scalar. Marxists defend the interests of, and aim to redistribute resources toward, those with low values of the scalar. Marxism is a priory “anonymous” (in the sense that it uses a rather coarse aggregate of individual characteristics) and, therefore, relatively inclusive. There is a limit to Marxism’s drive to redistribute, for a capitalist sufficiently impoverished becomes a proletarian and, so, a Marxist’s constituent. There is no such safety valve built into identity politics.
Identity politics emerged when Marxism ran out of steam as the working class began to prosper and identify with the middle class. So, the fight for the equality of the scalar has been replaced by the fight for the equality of dignity derived from identity.
An identity politician refuses to aggregate individual characteristics. He denies the existence of any objective way to do so. Any aggregator would presume that at least some vectors have a higher worth than others. An identity politician fails to compare not just individuals but also societies. This failure hampers the competition of ideas and ideologies. An identity politician circumvents competition and chooses to act directly on the school syllabi. The lack of competition, besides the obvious misguided focus on identities to begin with, is liable to neglect those identities advocating which would deliver the highest social return.
Identity politics focuses on the recognition of priors, not on cultivating belief-updating rules. Identity politics exalts immutable characteristics, not ideas that can be moulded, improved upon, and shared extensively; it is reactionary. The incomparability of identities hinders social mobility and, so, dampens competition.
Nationalism was adequate when it united parochial interests. Today, we can do better than that by promoting an ever-expanding identity, not a collection of narrow ones. This new identity ought to be rooted in ideas, not biological characteristics.
While Fukuyama correctly identifies the decease, his solutions are dubitable, twentieth century–ish.
Fukuyama claims that, in modern liberal democracies, citizens give too little to their country. He forgets about the taxes that support the welfare states. Fukuyama imagines a universal civil service as a bonding, nation-building experience. Why not a military one? Don’t the joys of the Greek army compensate for the humiliation of the 40 percent youth unemployment? A universal participation in markets—and in labour markets in particular—would be a better bonding experience than the army or civil service, for it would reflect the ideology that makes modern societies succeed.
Fukuyama opposes multilingual education at schools, as if America needed less diversity of perspectives, not more. If taking classes in French or Chinese radicalises, don’t mathematics and computer science, the gateway drugs into the supranational? Do not rally around the English language alone, which is by no means unique to successful liberal democracies; today, every half-educated punk is fluent in English. Instead, rally around a great product: a Tesla, a Big Mac, an iPhone, the philosophy of the exchange-instigated betterment and of liberty and equality for all. Should Canada, Argentina, or South Africa come up with a better product, we should all move there, instead of sticking to a failing ideology or language. Fukuyama decries the tyranny of contemporary identity politics and political correctness, and yet he maintains that patriotic brainwashing—not critical thinking—would somehow turn out to be more noble. The international fame of Taylor Swift and Elon Musk are likely to do more for American self-esteem than any number of recitations of the American anthem.
The problem with identity politics is the same as with protectionism. Maybe, one could cleverly fine-tune tariffs and make a country a little better off. It is more likely, however, that one would get the tariffs badly wrong, to the detriment of all, start a trade war, and witness the entire tariff-setting apparatus succumb to special interests. Don’t try it at home.
Each individual is endowed with a vector of characteristics. Markets convert this vector into a scalar—wealth—and rank everyone according to this scalar. Marxists defend the interests of, and aim to redistribute resources toward, those with low values of the scalar. Marxism is a priory “anonymous” (in the sense that it uses a rather coarse aggregate of individual characteristics) and, therefore, relatively inclusive. There is a limit to Marxism’s drive to redistribute, for a capitalist sufficiently impoverished becomes a proletarian and, so, a Marxist’s constituent. There is no such safety valve built into identity politics.
Identity politics emerged when Marxism ran out of steam as the working class began to prosper and identify with the middle class. So, the fight for the equality of the scalar has been replaced by the fight for the equality of dignity derived from identity.
An identity politician refuses to aggregate individual characteristics. He denies the existence of any objective way to do so. Any aggregator would presume that at least some vectors have a higher worth than others. An identity politician fails to compare not just individuals but also societies. This failure hampers the competition of ideas and ideologies. An identity politician circumvents competition and chooses to act directly on the school syllabi. The lack of competition, besides the obvious misguided focus on identities to begin with, is liable to neglect those identities advocating which would deliver the highest social return.
Identity politics focuses on the recognition of priors, not on cultivating belief-updating rules. Identity politics exalts immutable characteristics, not ideas that can be moulded, improved upon, and shared extensively; it is reactionary. The incomparability of identities hinders social mobility and, so, dampens competition.
Nationalism was adequate when it united parochial interests. Today, we can do better than that by promoting an ever-expanding identity, not a collection of narrow ones. This new identity ought to be rooted in ideas, not biological characteristics.
While Fukuyama correctly identifies the decease, his solutions are dubitable, twentieth century–ish.
Fukuyama claims that, in modern liberal democracies, citizens give too little to their country. He forgets about the taxes that support the welfare states. Fukuyama imagines a universal civil service as a bonding, nation-building experience. Why not a military one? Don’t the joys of the Greek army compensate for the humiliation of the 40 percent youth unemployment? A universal participation in markets—and in labour markets in particular—would be a better bonding experience than the army or civil service, for it would reflect the ideology that makes modern societies succeed.
Fukuyama opposes multilingual education at schools, as if America needed less diversity of perspectives, not more. If taking classes in French or Chinese radicalises, don’t mathematics and computer science, the gateway drugs into the supranational? Do not rally around the English language alone, which is by no means unique to successful liberal democracies; today, every half-educated punk is fluent in English. Instead, rally around a great product: a Tesla, a Big Mac, an iPhone, the philosophy of the exchange-instigated betterment and of liberty and equality for all. Should Canada, Argentina, or South Africa come up with a better product, we should all move there, instead of sticking to a failing ideology or language. Fukuyama decries the tyranny of contemporary identity politics and political correctness, and yet he maintains that patriotic brainwashing—not critical thinking—would somehow turn out to be more noble. The international fame of Taylor Swift and Elon Musk are likely to do more for American self-esteem than any number of recitations of the American anthem.
The problem with identity politics is the same as with protectionism. Maybe, one could cleverly fine-tune tariffs and make a country a little better off. It is more likely, however, that one would get the tariffs badly wrong, to the detriment of all, start a trade war, and witness the entire tariff-setting apparatus succumb to special interests. Don’t try it at home.
11 August 2018
Cuba Vibra! Lizt Alfonso Dance Cuba
(Auditorio Nacional, 9 August 2018)
One gets the sense of the New World in the U.S., London, and Buenos Aires. (Buenos Aires is not so new as parallel.) In the DNA of each of these places is to dare to reimagine.
The Lizt Alfonso Dance Cuba company encapsulates yet another world: the world of dance that has not ossified into gymnastics (the dancers actually hear, and contribute to, the music); the world of dance that could have been Broadway, Matthew Bourne, or classical, but has chosen to be something subtly different; the world of music that is as rich, or richer, than jazz, with its complex and multiple rhythms, upbeat and dreamy at the same time; the world of music that is home to the racing, dancing thought, or two, or three; the world of colours that just match; the world of dresses that bloom; the world whose all elements cohere into a poem.
Lizt Alfonso builds and then inhabits a world whose truths are beautiful.
One gets the sense of the New World in the U.S., London, and Buenos Aires. (Buenos Aires is not so new as parallel.) In the DNA of each of these places is to dare to reimagine.
The Lizt Alfonso Dance Cuba company encapsulates yet another world: the world of dance that has not ossified into gymnastics (the dancers actually hear, and contribute to, the music); the world of dance that could have been Broadway, Matthew Bourne, or classical, but has chosen to be something subtly different; the world of music that is as rich, or richer, than jazz, with its complex and multiple rhythms, upbeat and dreamy at the same time; the world of music that is home to the racing, dancing thought, or two, or three; the world of colours that just match; the world of dresses that bloom; the world whose all elements cohere into a poem.
Lizt Alfonso builds and then inhabits a world whose truths are beautiful.
21 July 2018
"Quantum Computing since Democritus" by Scott Aaronson (2013)
1.
Roger Penrose asserts that humans have access to truth that is beyond that which is accessible to computers, which run algorithms. That not all truth is accessible to algorithms is an implication of Kurt Gödel s incompleteness theorem, which---as long as one is capable of imagining a computer---follows from Alan Turning’s halting problem.
Imagine a computer (or, rather, a Turing machine, with infinite memory). Turing’s claim is that there exists no programme P that, for any programme Q capable of taking itself as an input, returns P(Q)=‘halts’ if Q(Q) halts in finite time and returns P(Q)=‘loops’ if Q(Q) runs forever. (Instead of executing Q(Q), P analyses the code of Q in order to determine whether Q(Q) would terminate in finite time. By assumption, P performs this analysis in finite time.)
Suppose, by contradiction, that the described programme P can be written. Define the programme R such that, for any programme Q capable of taking itself as an input, R(Q) runs forever if P(Q)=‘halts,’ and R(Q) halts if P(Q)=‘loops.’ Given P, R is an elementary programme to write.
Now, take R as an input for itself. By the definition of R, R(R) runs forever if P(R)=‘halts.’ Repeat: R(R) runs forever if R(R) halts (i.e., does not run forever). This is a contradiction. Hence, the hypothesised code analyser P cannot exist.
Gödel’s impossibility says that there exists no consistent, computable system (i.e., a computer equipped with a programming language) such that any statement made in the language of this system can be either proved or disproved within that system. Turing’s halting problem proves the claim.
Indeed, for an arbitrary programme X, take the statement “X halts.” Well, X either halts or it does not. A brute force way to prove or disprove the statement is to write a programme, call it P, that runs through all possible proofs and thereby either finds a proof or a disproof of the statement “X halts.” That is, P determines whether X halts. For any X. But we have just argued, from Turing's halting problem, that no such P exists. Thus, one can construct a statement (here, “X halts,” for some X) such that the entire set of proofs contains neither a proof nor a disproof of that statement. Q.E.D.
To summarise, as shown by Gödel and Turing, even most advanced computers cannot prove certain truths. Penrose postulates that men can; they have access to insight about these truths, probably thanks to some hitherto unexamined quantum mechanism processes in human brain (which are also responsible for the freedom---or at least unpredictability---of one's will). This inaccessible-to-the-computer insight is the essence of consciousness (according to Penrose). What does this direct insight feel like? It feels like understanding a mathematical result as opposed to understanding its proof. One can understand a proof without really understanding the result; alternatively, one can be convinced of the truth of the result while still groping for a proof.
Unfortunately, one is often wrong; one’s conjectures are often false. How should one then interpret the faulty “insight”? Is consciousness to blame for the faulty “understanding” of the result? Perhaps, only the brilliant people, such as Penrose, who are rarely wrong, can postulate the superiority of human brain over the Turing machine and believe that human consciousness equals the insight minus the proof, equals the difference between the noncomputable brain and the computable machine.
There is no evidence that human brain is anything more than a computer. (Sometimes, it computes astonishingly fast, but only because evolution has already been computing for 3.8 billion years.) It probably is a computer, but there is no dispositive evidence to this effect. So, what should one believe? If one is an active scientist, one may toss a coin: the diversity of beliefs and research directions in science is commendable. If one is a layman, one, too, has a choice. The belief that one is but a computer may be conducive to "better" morality, which leads to cooperative societal outcomes. Indeed, if one’s standards are low enough to grant consciousness to an advanced computer, then the chances are that these standards will also be low enough to grant consciousness to one’s political opponent, to a person of a different ethnicity, and to a mentally ill individual. This sense of shared humanity is likely to lead to a cooperative ethos that would make life better for all. Alternatively, one may choose to believe that humans are special. I see no profit in such a belief except that, to some, it may feel good.
2.
Turing’s imitation game (from his 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence") provides a working definition of being human. First, being human is not about the physical form itself but about how this form can be distilled into a tweet, a blog post, an email conversation, a screenplay, or a book. (This idea has become the essence of the entire human rights movement.) Second, human intelligence generates surprising (to another human) insights. Third, there is nothing sacred about human imperfection. (If there were, we would have castigated geniuses instead of worshiping them. Freeman Dyson’s definition “God is what mind becomes when it passes beyond the scale of our comprehension” applies equally well to a brilliant scientist as it does to a choreographer, a film director, a soccer player, or a computer.) Fourth, a property of a creative mind (possessed only by a “smallish proportion” of humans, according to Turing) is supercriticality. The analogy here is with a nuclear chain reaction. A supercritical mind (as opposed to a subcritical one) responds to an idea with another idea, maybe with two, or maybe with an entire theory.
Presciently, Turing warns against fetishising consciousness. Or else, one may go all the way to assuming that the only way to ascertain that A is thinking is to be A and experience it for oneself. This new convention would not be useful: “Instead of arguing continually over this point it is usual to have the polite convention that everyone thinks.”
Turing contemplates a variation of the imitation game in which the machine imitates someone other than a human, say, another machine. Or, let us say, a cat. If the machine succeeds to cat’s satisfaction, then we shall have to grant the machine its catness, just as the cat has done. Then, if the machine is accepted as its own by various species, it should pass for a rather universal kind of God.
Instead of picking a fight with the religious dogma, Turing points out that machine intelligence is not inconsistent with it: “In attempting to construct such machines we should not be irreverently usurping His [God’s] power of creating souls, any more than we are in the procreation of children: rather we are, in either case, instruments of His will providing mansions for the souls that He creates.”
Turing’s paper is a master class in writing: “The reader will have anticipated that I have no very convincing arguments of a positive nature to support my views. If I had I should not have taken such pains to point out the fallacies in contrary views.” Or “I do not think that this argument is sufficiently substantial to require refutation. Consolation would be more appropriate: perhaps this should be sought in the transmigration of souls.”
3.
The hypothesis P≠NP asserts that a problem whose solution can be verified in polynomial time (a problem in NP) need not be solvable in polynomial time (a problem in P). That is, solutions to some problems are easy to see when presented but are hard to find. The hypothesis appears to be self-evident from one's quotidian experience but its formal proof has been illusive. Because any problem in P is also in NP, to prove P≠NP one must come up with an example of a problem in NP that is not in P.
Now, it turns out that proving P=NP could also be accomplished by an example (instead of showing that every problem in NP is also in P). It has been shown that many a problem in NP is hard in the sense that all problems in NP can be efficiently reduced to it. So, in the unlikely event that one could efficiently solve any of the many well-known hard (so-called NP-complete) problems in NP, one would have efficiently solved them all. That is, one example of an NP-complete problem that is also in P would have sufficed both to show P=NP and to provide an algorithm for solving all problems in NP. Thus, even though the odds are against P=NP, the stakes are high (and the spectre is looming tall).
We choose to live in the physical world instead of living in our own minds because our minds compute slowly. The physical world computes the models that we are interested in fast. Without cognitive limitations, we all would have lived in our heads, each of us simulating a world of his liking. Now that technology rather successfully aids one living in one’s head, we shall need the outside world less. That may mean peace. In the meantime, the complex, incomprehensible world requires trust and simple rules of conduct.
Roger Penrose asserts that humans have access to truth that is beyond that which is accessible to computers, which run algorithms. That not all truth is accessible to algorithms is an implication of Kurt Gödel s incompleteness theorem, which---as long as one is capable of imagining a computer---follows from Alan Turning’s halting problem.
Imagine a computer (or, rather, a Turing machine, with infinite memory). Turing’s claim is that there exists no programme P that, for any programme Q capable of taking itself as an input, returns P(Q)=‘halts’ if Q(Q) halts in finite time and returns P(Q)=‘loops’ if Q(Q) runs forever. (Instead of executing Q(Q), P analyses the code of Q in order to determine whether Q(Q) would terminate in finite time. By assumption, P performs this analysis in finite time.)
Suppose, by contradiction, that the described programme P can be written. Define the programme R such that, for any programme Q capable of taking itself as an input, R(Q) runs forever if P(Q)=‘halts,’ and R(Q) halts if P(Q)=‘loops.’ Given P, R is an elementary programme to write.
Now, take R as an input for itself. By the definition of R, R(R) runs forever if P(R)=‘halts.’ Repeat: R(R) runs forever if R(R) halts (i.e., does not run forever). This is a contradiction. Hence, the hypothesised code analyser P cannot exist.
Gödel’s impossibility says that there exists no consistent, computable system (i.e., a computer equipped with a programming language) such that any statement made in the language of this system can be either proved or disproved within that system. Turing’s halting problem proves the claim.
Indeed, for an arbitrary programme X, take the statement “X halts.” Well, X either halts or it does not. A brute force way to prove or disprove the statement is to write a programme, call it P, that runs through all possible proofs and thereby either finds a proof or a disproof of the statement “X halts.” That is, P determines whether X halts. For any X. But we have just argued, from Turing's halting problem, that no such P exists. Thus, one can construct a statement (here, “X halts,” for some X) such that the entire set of proofs contains neither a proof nor a disproof of that statement. Q.E.D.
To summarise, as shown by Gödel and Turing, even most advanced computers cannot prove certain truths. Penrose postulates that men can; they have access to insight about these truths, probably thanks to some hitherto unexamined quantum mechanism processes in human brain (which are also responsible for the freedom---or at least unpredictability---of one's will). This inaccessible-to-the-computer insight is the essence of consciousness (according to Penrose). What does this direct insight feel like? It feels like understanding a mathematical result as opposed to understanding its proof. One can understand a proof without really understanding the result; alternatively, one can be convinced of the truth of the result while still groping for a proof.
Unfortunately, one is often wrong; one’s conjectures are often false. How should one then interpret the faulty “insight”? Is consciousness to blame for the faulty “understanding” of the result? Perhaps, only the brilliant people, such as Penrose, who are rarely wrong, can postulate the superiority of human brain over the Turing machine and believe that human consciousness equals the insight minus the proof, equals the difference between the noncomputable brain and the computable machine.
There is no evidence that human brain is anything more than a computer. (Sometimes, it computes astonishingly fast, but only because evolution has already been computing for 3.8 billion years.) It probably is a computer, but there is no dispositive evidence to this effect. So, what should one believe? If one is an active scientist, one may toss a coin: the diversity of beliefs and research directions in science is commendable. If one is a layman, one, too, has a choice. The belief that one is but a computer may be conducive to "better" morality, which leads to cooperative societal outcomes. Indeed, if one’s standards are low enough to grant consciousness to an advanced computer, then the chances are that these standards will also be low enough to grant consciousness to one’s political opponent, to a person of a different ethnicity, and to a mentally ill individual. This sense of shared humanity is likely to lead to a cooperative ethos that would make life better for all. Alternatively, one may choose to believe that humans are special. I see no profit in such a belief except that, to some, it may feel good.
2.
Turing’s imitation game (from his 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence") provides a working definition of being human. First, being human is not about the physical form itself but about how this form can be distilled into a tweet, a blog post, an email conversation, a screenplay, or a book. (This idea has become the essence of the entire human rights movement.) Second, human intelligence generates surprising (to another human) insights. Third, there is nothing sacred about human imperfection. (If there were, we would have castigated geniuses instead of worshiping them. Freeman Dyson’s definition “God is what mind becomes when it passes beyond the scale of our comprehension” applies equally well to a brilliant scientist as it does to a choreographer, a film director, a soccer player, or a computer.) Fourth, a property of a creative mind (possessed only by a “smallish proportion” of humans, according to Turing) is supercriticality. The analogy here is with a nuclear chain reaction. A supercritical mind (as opposed to a subcritical one) responds to an idea with another idea, maybe with two, or maybe with an entire theory.
Presciently, Turing warns against fetishising consciousness. Or else, one may go all the way to assuming that the only way to ascertain that A is thinking is to be A and experience it for oneself. This new convention would not be useful: “Instead of arguing continually over this point it is usual to have the polite convention that everyone thinks.”
Turing contemplates a variation of the imitation game in which the machine imitates someone other than a human, say, another machine. Or, let us say, a cat. If the machine succeeds to cat’s satisfaction, then we shall have to grant the machine its catness, just as the cat has done. Then, if the machine is accepted as its own by various species, it should pass for a rather universal kind of God.
Instead of picking a fight with the religious dogma, Turing points out that machine intelligence is not inconsistent with it: “In attempting to construct such machines we should not be irreverently usurping His [God’s] power of creating souls, any more than we are in the procreation of children: rather we are, in either case, instruments of His will providing mansions for the souls that He creates.”
Turing’s paper is a master class in writing: “The reader will have anticipated that I have no very convincing arguments of a positive nature to support my views. If I had I should not have taken such pains to point out the fallacies in contrary views.” Or “I do not think that this argument is sufficiently substantial to require refutation. Consolation would be more appropriate: perhaps this should be sought in the transmigration of souls.”
3.
The hypothesis P≠NP asserts that a problem whose solution can be verified in polynomial time (a problem in NP) need not be solvable in polynomial time (a problem in P). That is, solutions to some problems are easy to see when presented but are hard to find. The hypothesis appears to be self-evident from one's quotidian experience but its formal proof has been illusive. Because any problem in P is also in NP, to prove P≠NP one must come up with an example of a problem in NP that is not in P.
Now, it turns out that proving P=NP could also be accomplished by an example (instead of showing that every problem in NP is also in P). It has been shown that many a problem in NP is hard in the sense that all problems in NP can be efficiently reduced to it. So, in the unlikely event that one could efficiently solve any of the many well-known hard (so-called NP-complete) problems in NP, one would have efficiently solved them all. That is, one example of an NP-complete problem that is also in P would have sufficed both to show P=NP and to provide an algorithm for solving all problems in NP. Thus, even though the odds are against P=NP, the stakes are high (and the spectre is looming tall).
We choose to live in the physical world instead of living in our own minds because our minds compute slowly. The physical world computes the models that we are interested in fast. Without cognitive limitations, we all would have lived in our heads, each of us simulating a world of his liking. Now that technology rather successfully aids one living in one’s head, we shall need the outside world less. That may mean peace. In the meantime, the complex, incomprehensible world requires trust and simple rules of conduct.
13 July 2018
"Room to Dream" by David Lynch and Kristine McKenna (2018)
One should attempt to devote one’s life to what one enjoys most and should not fight one’s nature---as long as doing so enables one to earn enough to maintain a decent lifestyle.
Being an artist is a decease, an obsession. The artist can be poor; he does not create for money. (A failure liberates unless it impoverishes.) Or the artist can be rich, owing to his obsessive work ethics.
Art deserves a life of its own.
Life’s narrative is nonlinear. Any linearity is imaginary; it emerges as one observes the world and cherry-picks facts and frames to make up stories. Reading history is a much saner enterprise than following the news because history has been pre-digested by historians, whereas the news is a madman’s nightmare.
(Similarly, one's train of thought is typically nonlinear and rarely adds up to a logically consistent system, unless one sets out to produce a mathematical model. Hence, it is nonsensical to ask, say: "What did John Rawls really mean?" He did not.)
Improvisation is ultimate art: mould the circumstances, do not get attached to what was supposed to be. The best directors and choreographers improvise off of their actors’ and dancers’ idiosyncratic skills. (Ballet trustees canonise the letter and neglect the spirit of the work, thereby euthanising it.)
Life is complete without answers.
Lynch is an inherently kind man and does not resist the impulse of kindness. But each has his own driver of creativity. Not all drivers are so benevolent, towards the creator as well as his collaborators.
Being an artist is a decease, an obsession. The artist can be poor; he does not create for money. (A failure liberates unless it impoverishes.) Or the artist can be rich, owing to his obsessive work ethics.
Art deserves a life of its own.
Life’s narrative is nonlinear. Any linearity is imaginary; it emerges as one observes the world and cherry-picks facts and frames to make up stories. Reading history is a much saner enterprise than following the news because history has been pre-digested by historians, whereas the news is a madman’s nightmare.
(Similarly, one's train of thought is typically nonlinear and rarely adds up to a logically consistent system, unless one sets out to produce a mathematical model. Hence, it is nonsensical to ask, say: "What did John Rawls really mean?" He did not.)
Improvisation is ultimate art: mould the circumstances, do not get attached to what was supposed to be. The best directors and choreographers improvise off of their actors’ and dancers’ idiosyncratic skills. (Ballet trustees canonise the letter and neglect the spirit of the work, thereby euthanising it.)
Life is complete without answers.
Lynch is an inherently kind man and does not resist the impulse of kindness. But each has his own driver of creativity. Not all drivers are so benevolent, towards the creator as well as his collaborators.
1 July 2018
"The Americans" (2015–2018, seasons 3–6)
Philip loved America even as he was failing there---perhaps, even more so because of that. Henry was different; though him, Philip had accomplished his American dream. He had given his son the gift of an American life, which differed from a Soviet life in that it offered an individual more than one chance to succeed.
What is the point of Jennings' escape? A duty to the kids. Professionalism, for it is all that they had left to live for. A commonsensical acceptance of a gift of (at least) one more life.
One can live for a certain ethos and values that one associates with a country, but living for these is ultimately living for oneself, not the country. A diplomat either identifies with his mission or resigns. Friendship transcends national boundaries and trumps national loyalty, rulers' tool to manipulate the masses. Friendship also teaches one to empathise broadly; nationalism does not. While everyone being true to his own values may hamper co-operation, it safeguards against the nation's patriotic sentiment being hijacked. In The Americans, the Centre did not even want their own spies married to each other to be friends.
All kill. Some sit on bureaucratic committees. Some grade negligently, teach halfheartedly, govern foolishly, serve lazily, work to rule, cure inexpertly, or just sit and do nothing. Indeed, those who kill for living (e.g., the active military) may be more acutely aware of the deleterious effects of their actions than those who simply sit back and promote inefficiency.
The American Dream is not about America. It is about being free: being the first one to go to the Iguazú jungle and settle in a hut or to build a startup in a friend's garage. Philip might as well have another chance at this dream.
What is the point of Jennings' escape? A duty to the kids. Professionalism, for it is all that they had left to live for. A commonsensical acceptance of a gift of (at least) one more life.
One can live for a certain ethos and values that one associates with a country, but living for these is ultimately living for oneself, not the country. A diplomat either identifies with his mission or resigns. Friendship transcends national boundaries and trumps national loyalty, rulers' tool to manipulate the masses. Friendship also teaches one to empathise broadly; nationalism does not. While everyone being true to his own values may hamper co-operation, it safeguards against the nation's patriotic sentiment being hijacked. In The Americans, the Centre did not even want their own spies married to each other to be friends.
All kill. Some sit on bureaucratic committees. Some grade negligently, teach halfheartedly, govern foolishly, serve lazily, work to rule, cure inexpertly, or just sit and do nothing. Indeed, those who kill for living (e.g., the active military) may be more acutely aware of the deleterious effects of their actions than those who simply sit back and promote inefficiency.
The American Dream is not about America. It is about being free: being the first one to go to the Iguazú jungle and settle in a hut or to build a startup in a friend's garage. Philip might as well have another chance at this dream.
23 April 2018
1 April 2018
Absinthe
(Caesars Palace, 25 March 2018)
The beauty one admires is born out of violence, competition, and (at least in the popular sense of the term) injustice. It is not only the outcome of competition that some admire but also the act of competing itself. The jungle births beauty while feeling no compulsion to maximise happiness, except for that of the well-heeled tourist to the jungle. Even the macroscopic natural beauty is an outcome of the competition of what would have been regarded as sentient organisms had history been viewed through time-lapse glasses.
Behind each beautiful performer there are tens of thousands of hours of pain and sacrifice. There are also scores of those who had no shortage of dedication but discovered that they lacked raw talent.
The risks that the performers take make the performance intimate. The risk is not only to oneself but also the audience, seated close enough to the stage to cushion the fall of a chair or a performer or to send a gliding roller skater's leg off course. One simultaneously empathises with the performers' sense of responsibility and admires their confidence.
With everyone seated close to the stage, the show has the intimacy of a jazz performance. Some members of the audience would occasionally be selected for a test in zero political correctness and carpe diemism; everyone would pass. All jokes are in poor taste, which only serves to emphasise that hard work is the only taste there is.
The beauty one admires is born out of violence, competition, and (at least in the popular sense of the term) injustice. It is not only the outcome of competition that some admire but also the act of competing itself. The jungle births beauty while feeling no compulsion to maximise happiness, except for that of the well-heeled tourist to the jungle. Even the macroscopic natural beauty is an outcome of the competition of what would have been regarded as sentient organisms had history been viewed through time-lapse glasses.
Behind each beautiful performer there are tens of thousands of hours of pain and sacrifice. There are also scores of those who had no shortage of dedication but discovered that they lacked raw talent.
The risks that the performers take make the performance intimate. The risk is not only to oneself but also the audience, seated close enough to the stage to cushion the fall of a chair or a performer or to send a gliding roller skater's leg off course. One simultaneously empathises with the performers' sense of responsibility and admires their confidence.
With everyone seated close to the stage, the show has the intimacy of a jazz performance. Some members of the audience would occasionally be selected for a test in zero political correctness and carpe diemism; everyone would pass. All jokes are in poor taste, which only serves to emphasise that hard work is the only taste there is.
11 February 2018
ZONAMACO
(Hipódromo de las Américas, 10 February 2018)
The exhibition is a city. No individual exhibitor excels. Yet, taken together, the galleries, their visitors, and keepers comprise a metropolis that is greater than the sum of its parts. The galleries are not captive to any single curator’s madness. Instead, it is Starbucks coffee and the customer plastic that run through the galleries’ veins and force them to remain relevant.
Art is a job done well.
The exhibition is a city. No individual exhibitor excels. Yet, taken together, the galleries, their visitors, and keepers comprise a metropolis that is greater than the sum of its parts. The galleries are not captive to any single curator’s madness. Instead, it is Starbucks coffee and the customer plastic that run through the galleries’ veins and force them to remain relevant.
Art is a job done well.
11 January 2018
The Philadelphia Academy of Arts
(5 January 2018)
Loneliness wakens existence. To survive, one must learn to manufacture one’s own oxygen, in order to justify existence, each time from the first principles.
The Philadelphia downtown is nobly dead. It is a city in exile. The people in the streets do not seem to want to be there, at least not in that frigid weather, a reminder that nature wants you dead, or at least is indifferent about your existence.
A city in exile gives you the gift of time. One may find its indifference excruciating. Or one may reflect and create. Time does not ask to conform or compete. It encourages discovery and experimentation.
Loneliness wakens existence. To survive, one must learn to manufacture one’s own oxygen, in order to justify existence, each time from the first principles.
The Philadelphia downtown is nobly dead. It is a city in exile. The people in the streets do not seem to want to be there, at least not in that frigid weather, a reminder that nature wants you dead, or at least is indifferent about your existence.
A city in exile gives you the gift of time. One may find its indifference excruciating. Or one may reflect and create. Time does not ask to conform or compete. It encourages discovery and experimentation.
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