Sugar

(Teatro de los Insurgentes, 26 October 2019)

In her "Walking Together" paper, Margaret Gilbert examines collective intentionality. What does it mean for two individuals to take a walk together, rather than to happen to be walking side by side? Without getting lost in epistemology, the behavioural definition must be that, while focusing on the execution of his or her own part, each individual is also conscious of the collective's overall goal, and adjusts his or her behaviour to correct for others' failings to work towards that goal.

In "Collective Intentions and Actions," John Searle gives an example that illustrates collective intentionality well. Adam Smith's "invisible hand" argument maintains that (under appropriate conditions) Alice's selfish behaviour advances efficiency. So does Bob's. Yet Alice and Bob do not collectively pursue efficiency as they pursue self interest. Indeed, should Bob fail to maximise his profit, Alice need not rush to mitigate the inefficiency of his error. Alice's behaviour is more primitive than that, which need not be morally wrong but may be boring to watch, at least onstage. Certain complexity is gratifying to the eye and the mind, which is one of the reasons cities fascinate and soothe so.

In Sugar, the cast do not just perform, they play, driven by a collective intention that makes the whole greater than the sum of its components. The collective goal is, perhaps, the most noble one of them all: to entertain and, in the process, to be entertained. (While the musical is meticulously directed and choreographed, one cannot shake off the feeling that the cast jam.) By contrast to Broadway and West End productions, which seek to minimise risk by maximising the resemblance of theatre actors to the stars in the movie on which the production is based, Sugar projects confidence by simply casting the actors who are suited well for the part.

Each member of the cast is indispensable and insuperable in their ability to inhabit the character. Clearly enjoying herself and (rightly) secure in her skills, Cassandra Sanchez Navarro betrays a smile, twice, in a nod to the power of the production. Ariel Miramontes underscores that the way to live one's life is to make the most of---to inhabit to the fullest---the character(s) one has been dealt to play. (Why choose?) Arath de la Torre's first teaches and then learns this lesson, too. And then there is the rest of the cast, and the many members of the company (including in the orchestra pit) who make appearance in the programme but do not make it onstage.

The piece is refreshingly apolitical. (Once sufficiently remote in time, traces of politics morph into history, which bifurcates into a story and a tool for national indoctrination, of which only one is a poison.) It sets the priorities right by beaming humanism.

Rochester Lindy Hop Reunion

(Rochester, 18–20 October 2019)

A thriving, resilient society is a patchwork of overlapping communities. Thriving comes from specialisation. Resilience comes from decentralisation.

Some communities are hierarchical. Others are flat. Some are competitive. Others are cooperative. Each one has a language. To flourish as an individual is to find a mix of communities—and solitude—that suits one best.

Dance and music are universal. So is silence. While the medium is not the message, the medium does define aesthetics, to which one is drawn at a visceral level.

Identity is the continuity of memories. Soundtracks glue memories together and, later, evoke them. Dance reveals the illusion of time. Past does not vanish. It all is one long conversation.

Some individuals are like music. They realise that, sometimes, in order to keep running, one must stay in place. They grow but do not age. They tie past, present, and future together. They tie people together. They facilitate the Conversation without ever attempting to dominate it.

"A Spy Among Friends" by Ben Macintyre (2015)

The characters are portrayed shallow, glib, flippant, and drunk, perhaps, because they were shallow, glib, flippant, and drunk. While (purportedly) clubby and class-conscious circles of British spies are of little amusement to the outsider, the dynamics of their antagonists are not explored at all. The book reads as a history of a friendship, not its story.

Joker (2019)

Respect, listening, and the unwisdom of crowds. Freedom and its price. And responsibility.

"The Spy and the Traitor" by Ben Macintyre (2018)

Up or out is good for morale, both for those who remain and thereby know that they belong, and for those who are dismissed and are thereby forced to look for a peer group in which they will not be reminded of their incorrigible inferiority and will not be tempted to sabotage their colleagues’ work out of bitterness.

A case could be made for a world with weak governments, whose weakness would protect their own citizens from accidental oppression by the rulers, and would protect the citizens of neighbouring countries from being occupied by force rather than on the occupying regime’s merits as measured by the welfare of its citizens. In practice, unilateral commitment to a weak government will only make an economically superior regime vulnerable to an inefficient takeover. As a result, powerful governments are bound to emerge and serve as periodically deployed peacock’s tails, indicators of a vital and viable economy.

Right and wrong, while not god-given, are not entirely relative either but solve a maximisation problem of a reasonably broad appeal.

"Something Deeply Hidden" by Sean Carroll (2019)

The book urges---science teaches--to go through life shedding prejudice, seeking a more convenient basis for one's representations, and deconstructing emergent phenomena into their constituent parts. Science (at least on fast forward and with Sean Carroll's voice at 1.25x) reads as a suspense story, which happens to be true, where "true" stands for "critically appraised."

Truth is not a necessary ingredient for entertainment; a certain amount of internal consistency is. One could imagine public support a theory (or a political candidate) on the false equivalence stemming from the sentiment evoked by good entertainment, a sense of poetry, a sense of mystery, the immensity of the starring phenomena, and a granting of trust.

The cast of the book's characters includes free will, volition attributed to a system that one can predict only imperfectly; Everett's many worlds, which ferry animate and inanimate observers along deterministic timelines; particles that do not really exist, in a space that is an emergent (pixelated?) at best; the initially modest entropy; and time, which can only be recovered from the readings of a clock hidden on each page of an indubitably real manuscript scattered all over the floor.

The surprise chapter 8, in the dialogue form, is a fantastic interlude, bound to be imitated, even by the classics.

"Talking to Strangers" by Malcolm Gladwell (2019)

The audiobook version is, on balance, a success. The narrator's---the author's---voice is pleasant and lively enough (at least at 1.25x). The voice actors do not act out episodes from a 2000s TV show. The occasional musical accompaniment (are these ambulance sirens on repeat?), ever so slightly audible but audible enough to niggle, fade into background when drowned in traffic noise of right proportions.

While not denying individual agency, the book invites the reader to critically assess the game before blindly blaming the player. Misfits is the norm. Conformism is the fiction marketed to bind audiences to mediocre TV. Virtue signalling through conformism is not worthy and is not worth the damage it inflicts on the society by muffling the critical discourse and dehumanising fellow travellers.

The suspension of disbelief---trust---is responsible for the success of modern societies. Allowing oneself to be occasionally deceived is a fair price for the majority of individuals to pay for this success. The residual minority are paid to be skeptical.