(Teatro de la Danza, Centro Cultural del Bosque, 23 October 2016)
It is a scary sight: a cargo cult of art. It is the inefficiency that is scary, for it is a symptom of a faulty mechanism.
It is a fallacy to believe that the meaningful must be ugly, depressing, or incoherent. It is easy to veil the incoherent in mystery and to assert that the broken is profound. It is the solution that is hard and requires artistic genius.
Markets promote art (along with porn, Teslas, and laundromats). So do private donations and carefully designed government programmes (especially at early stages, when the means of expression is honed, not the message). If a product would not sell---if a prototype would only attract captive audience---it has no merit.
It is the shift of the focus away from problems and towards solutions that is a key to prosperity.
24 October 2016
21 August 2016
"The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature" by Steven Pinker (2002)
Refreshingly, Steven Pinker believes in the humanity's ability to cope with truth. The truth he focuses on is that the blank-slate hypothesis is absurd but compelling to whose who seek an easy way to justify or generate the latest fads in political correctness or incorrectness without risking the heavy lifting of rigorous thinking. Pinker argues that scientific truths, whatever they might be, carry no moral imperative. To think otherwise is the naturalistic fallacy. Nor should one confuse one's tastes with morality; to moralise tastes is to sanction violence (i.e., the gratuitous seizure of freedoms) against the individuals whose tastes differ.
Pinker summarises the commonalities between fascism and (the ideology of) Marxism. Both claim the necessity of a violent fight of "us" (Arians or the proletariat) against "them" in order to install the natural order (Social Darwinism or communism), with "us" at the top, thus allegedly maximising the social welfare function by exterminating the inferior others. Both ideologies err in putting the idea before the man. Both ideologies rely on the human tendency to partitions others into an ingroup and an outgroup, thereby courting a negative-sum game where a positive-sum game would have profited all. Marxism, in addition, appeals to the blank-slate hypothesis to justify the stability of the destination state.
At best, an ideology is a scientific theory based on a 300-year-old evidence. At worst, an ideology is a system of beliefs that, to many, feels good to hold and that subjugates those many for the gain of the scheming few. Ideologies feed on the social science that is not methodologically individualistic and whose tenets are thus hard to observe and disprove. Methodologically individualistic social science, by contrast, is easier to discipline by observation and to interface with other sciences, such as biology, neuroscience, and psychology.
Pinker's reasoning is beautiful. He seeks simple fundamental principles, and then tries to explain as much as he can by appealing to these principles. He is not scared of what reasoning may uncover.
Pinker summarises the commonalities between fascism and (the ideology of) Marxism. Both claim the necessity of a violent fight of "us" (Arians or the proletariat) against "them" in order to install the natural order (Social Darwinism or communism), with "us" at the top, thus allegedly maximising the social welfare function by exterminating the inferior others. Both ideologies err in putting the idea before the man. Both ideologies rely on the human tendency to partitions others into an ingroup and an outgroup, thereby courting a negative-sum game where a positive-sum game would have profited all. Marxism, in addition, appeals to the blank-slate hypothesis to justify the stability of the destination state.
At best, an ideology is a scientific theory based on a 300-year-old evidence. At worst, an ideology is a system of beliefs that, to many, feels good to hold and that subjugates those many for the gain of the scheming few. Ideologies feed on the social science that is not methodologically individualistic and whose tenets are thus hard to observe and disprove. Methodologically individualistic social science, by contrast, is easier to discipline by observation and to interface with other sciences, such as biology, neuroscience, and psychology.
Pinker's reasoning is beautiful. He seeks simple fundamental principles, and then tries to explain as much as he can by appealing to these principles. He is not scared of what reasoning may uncover.
17 July 2016
"Train Dreams" by Denis Johnson (2002)
It is not the best of all possible worlds---today or at any time or place in the past. But the world is good enough if permeated by mutual respect.
An individual has lived a happy life if he has been given one chance at everything.
It is better to be a misfit and free than a misfit and tamed. It is better to be a misfit than not to be at all.
Having been neither a child nor a parent to anyone in particular, one may take pride in having been a free droplet on the crest of the breaking wave of the civilisation rolling in the right direction.
An individual has lived a happy life if he has been given one chance at everything.
It is better to be a misfit and free than a misfit and tamed. It is better to be a misfit than not to be at all.
Having been neither a child nor a parent to anyone in particular, one may take pride in having been a free droplet on the crest of the breaking wave of the civilisation rolling in the right direction.
27 June 2016
The Spoils
(The Trafalgar Studios, 25 June 2016)
It is the engineering approach to art, and to life. Identify a problem. Seek a solution. Do not judge. This is also the Enlightenment approach. The Spoils adopts it.
An individual does not choose many of his traits: how tall he is, how handsome (at his ideal weight) he is, and most of his tastes. Different individuals face different costs of trying to suppress in themselves the traits they find undesirable, such as pugnaciousness, impatience, or a blatant disregard for others' wellbeing. As a result, the question often is not how to reform an individual, but how to integrate him into the society, how to learn to live with him or to avoid him. This is the engineering problem in the play.
The proposed solution operationalises the principle voiced by Sarah (played by Katie Brayben): "And even though I don't know if you deserve to hear this, I think the world will be a better place if you do." This principle's compelling operationalisation is to reward desirable traits, behaviours and attitudes, instead of punishing undesirable individuals. An individual is a complex vehicle for traits. He ought not to be extinguished if one---or, indeed, most---of his traits offend. To reward a trait is to give the individual another chance.
Jesse Eisenberg's writing is intelligent. So are his characters. This intelligence is deployed to set up a problem that is nontrivial.
Scott Elliott's direction is impeccable. Each character is alive and is dying to live.
One of the reasons theatre remains commercially viable is that self-censorship in cinema (to secure ratings) remains profitable.
It is the engineering approach to art, and to life. Identify a problem. Seek a solution. Do not judge. This is also the Enlightenment approach. The Spoils adopts it.
An individual does not choose many of his traits: how tall he is, how handsome (at his ideal weight) he is, and most of his tastes. Different individuals face different costs of trying to suppress in themselves the traits they find undesirable, such as pugnaciousness, impatience, or a blatant disregard for others' wellbeing. As a result, the question often is not how to reform an individual, but how to integrate him into the society, how to learn to live with him or to avoid him. This is the engineering problem in the play.
The proposed solution operationalises the principle voiced by Sarah (played by Katie Brayben): "And even though I don't know if you deserve to hear this, I think the world will be a better place if you do." This principle's compelling operationalisation is to reward desirable traits, behaviours and attitudes, instead of punishing undesirable individuals. An individual is a complex vehicle for traits. He ought not to be extinguished if one---or, indeed, most---of his traits offend. To reward a trait is to give the individual another chance.
Jesse Eisenberg's writing is intelligent. So are his characters. This intelligence is deployed to set up a problem that is nontrivial.
Scott Elliott's direction is impeccable. Each character is alive and is dying to live.
One of the reasons theatre remains commercially viable is that self-censorship in cinema (to secure ratings) remains profitable.
BP Portrait Award 2016
(The National Portrait Gallery, 25 June 2016)
People prefer to see the world in terms of the units they have evolved to understand best: other people. Thus, the primitive people identified the forces of nature with the wills of anthropomorphic gods. Later, somewhat less primitive people conferred human characteristics on ethnicities and nation states and then dedicated their lives to serving the super-human narrative. Today, methodological individualism---the belief that the best way to understand how individuals act as a group is to understand how individuals act individually---is the methodology of choice in the (better) social sciences. (The rather compelling selfish-gene alternative is acknowledged.)
The captivation with the individual is the theme of the Exhibition. The most interesting subject is the one caught in the mid-narrative of his own life or about to disrupt the viewer's life (typical for a portrait), preferably a future life (e.g., Joshua LaRock's Laura In Black or Fiona Graham-Mackay's Sir Andrew Motion) but possibly a past one (Martin Yeoman's Laurie Weedon's D-Day Glider Pilot or Laura Guoke's Petras), or in the mid of a social narrative (typical for candid photography). Intelligence (conveyed by the tentative, sceptical look) and beauty (in the gene of the beholder and conveyed by the countenance of one's beautiful wife, ugly wife, a child, or oneself) evoke the presumption of a narrative.
The London art scene is a single conversation whose goal is to understand the world a little better and nudge it a little forward.
People prefer to see the world in terms of the units they have evolved to understand best: other people. Thus, the primitive people identified the forces of nature with the wills of anthropomorphic gods. Later, somewhat less primitive people conferred human characteristics on ethnicities and nation states and then dedicated their lives to serving the super-human narrative. Today, methodological individualism---the belief that the best way to understand how individuals act as a group is to understand how individuals act individually---is the methodology of choice in the (better) social sciences. (The rather compelling selfish-gene alternative is acknowledged.)
The captivation with the individual is the theme of the Exhibition. The most interesting subject is the one caught in the mid-narrative of his own life or about to disrupt the viewer's life (typical for a portrait), preferably a future life (e.g., Joshua LaRock's Laura In Black or Fiona Graham-Mackay's Sir Andrew Motion) but possibly a past one (Martin Yeoman's Laurie Weedon's D-Day Glider Pilot or Laura Guoke's Petras), or in the mid of a social narrative (typical for candid photography). Intelligence (conveyed by the tentative, sceptical look) and beauty (in the gene of the beholder and conveyed by the countenance of one's beautiful wife, ugly wife, a child, or oneself) evoke the presumption of a narrative.
The London art scene is a single conversation whose goal is to understand the world a little better and nudge it a little forward.
The Threepenny Opera
(The National Theatre, 25 June 2016)
“It is good of you to come back. You did not have to, you know? You could has been outside instead, enjoying this wonderful new country we now have,” said Mack the Knife when opening the second act. The words came an act too late and were met with lukewarm applause. Pandering to the parochial, the play is set at an indeterminate time in London, during coronation. Would not have the audience been able to imagine the 1920s Berlin, the opera's original setting? Should have Shakespeare set Hamlet in Cornwall?
The programme and poster graphic designs project disdain for expertise (or is that the language of condescension towards the plebeian tastes of the working man?), the very disdain that has been feeding the demagogues of late and is partly responsible for the topicality of the second act’s opening lines. The programme is written by the commentators whose myopic ethics of envy give socialism and Marxism bad names. This ethics maintains that there is something moral in dividing humanity into “them” and “us.”
The disdain for expertise does not infect acting. Nick Holder’s performance (as Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum) lives up to his high heels, make-up, and the wig. Rory Kinnear (as Mack the Knife) is duly solemn, precise, and tragic. His is an everyman Mack the Knife, with no outside option in modelling business.
Rufus Norris’s direction is timid, however. Brutality is there, but the zest and abandon of cabaret are missing. The play takes itself a notch too seriously.
The play portrays a Hegelian—in many ways pre-Englightenment—Weltanschauung, wherein the world spirit shuffles around individuals: his pawns, the victims of circumstances.
“It is good of you to come back. You did not have to, you know? You could has been outside instead, enjoying this wonderful new country we now have,” said Mack the Knife when opening the second act. The words came an act too late and were met with lukewarm applause. Pandering to the parochial, the play is set at an indeterminate time in London, during coronation. Would not have the audience been able to imagine the 1920s Berlin, the opera's original setting? Should have Shakespeare set Hamlet in Cornwall?
The programme and poster graphic designs project disdain for expertise (or is that the language of condescension towards the plebeian tastes of the working man?), the very disdain that has been feeding the demagogues of late and is partly responsible for the topicality of the second act’s opening lines. The programme is written by the commentators whose myopic ethics of envy give socialism and Marxism bad names. This ethics maintains that there is something moral in dividing humanity into “them” and “us.”
The disdain for expertise does not infect acting. Nick Holder’s performance (as Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum) lives up to his high heels, make-up, and the wig. Rory Kinnear (as Mack the Knife) is duly solemn, precise, and tragic. His is an everyman Mack the Knife, with no outside option in modelling business.
Rufus Norris’s direction is timid, however. Brutality is there, but the zest and abandon of cabaret are missing. The play takes itself a notch too seriously.
The play portrays a Hegelian—in many ways pre-Englightenment—Weltanschauung, wherein the world spirit shuffles around individuals: his pawns, the victims of circumstances.
24 June 2016
The Play that Goes Wrong
(The Duchess Theatre, 23 June 2016)
The play makes up in physical farce what it lacks in verbal dexterity. The farce errs on the side of violence, which, on occasion, is gratuitous and does not serve to advance the characterisation.
When individuals are surprised, they either find it scary or funny. If the surprise is threatening or inexplicable, one is scary. If the surprise is pleasant or reveals a hitherto neglected regularity, one finds it funny. The individuals who have a taste for, and are good at, discovering patterns and regularities are those who appreciate, and are capable of, humour most. A society that is open to nonconformist ways of thinking is also a society that is most receptive to humour. A society that seeks to circumscribe the acceptable modes of thinking promotes the scary in art and customs, to project the dangers of thinking outside the received paradigm.
Art, just as science, is a language of hope.
The play makes up in physical farce what it lacks in verbal dexterity. The farce errs on the side of violence, which, on occasion, is gratuitous and does not serve to advance the characterisation.
When individuals are surprised, they either find it scary or funny. If the surprise is threatening or inexplicable, one is scary. If the surprise is pleasant or reveals a hitherto neglected regularity, one finds it funny. The individuals who have a taste for, and are good at, discovering patterns and regularities are those who appreciate, and are capable of, humour most. A society that is open to nonconformist ways of thinking is also a society that is most receptive to humour. A society that seeks to circumscribe the acceptable modes of thinking promotes the scary in art and customs, to project the dangers of thinking outside the received paradigm.
Art, just as science, is a language of hope.
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