(Cambridge Arts Theatre, 8 June 2019)
Attempting to correct one injustice with the converse injustice does not automatically add up to justice.
The diversity in individual choices of how to compartmentalise the society (if at all) the way one finds most interesting (e.g., intelligence, looks, the country of origin) helps the society not to overlook each other's valuable characteristics. The pursuit of such diversity in attitudes is also consistent with the belief that the democratic process is liable to uncover socially valuable truths.
It is beneficial for one's long-term wellbeing to adhere to logically coherent beliefs, whether such beliefs are fashionable or not. One learns faster if one thinks and acts consistently; the social feedback is then clearer.
Diversity has immediate value that does not merely amount to the warm glow that the historically dominant group experiences by acknowledging underrepresented groups. It promotes social cohesion to recognise such benefits and to speak about them openly.
The entire cast shines.
9 June 2019
7 April 2019
Motley Hue
(NYC, 29–31 March 2019)
Humans speak a multitude of languages but are rarely fluent in any one of them. As a result, one may have to invoke multiple languages to get the intended message across. By contrast, committing to but one language helps live a story with just enough ambiguity to engage its narrators, as long as for each narrator the story remains interesting. One should then refrain from rewriting the story by volunteering a translation ex-post.
The affirming sadness of New York.
Humans speak a multitude of languages but are rarely fluent in any one of them. As a result, one may have to invoke multiple languages to get the intended message across. By contrast, committing to but one language helps live a story with just enough ambiguity to engage its narrators, as long as for each narrator the story remains interesting. One should then refrain from rewriting the story by volunteering a translation ex-post.
The affirming sadness of New York.
Burn This
(Hudson Theatre, 30 March 2019)
The production is first and foremost a showcase for its leads, Kerri Russell and Adam Driver, both appropriately ageless. The plot is driven by events and personalities more than by each character's character (at least while in previews), perhaps, because two hours is insufficient to thoroughly set up each character, or doing so would be too risky in 2010s, or would require to sacrifice too many Wildesque repartees. While movies have not destroyed destroyed theatre, TV shows, unleashed, just might.
The events are set in the safely distant era that is either pre-woke (1980s) or post-woke (2020s), lest the positive be mistaken for the normative. The narrative gets deeper as the play progresses. The seemingly accidental churning of words, people, and events emerges as the play's philosophy: talk, reevaluate, or else you run the risk of being left behind your better self.
The production is first and foremost a showcase for its leads, Kerri Russell and Adam Driver, both appropriately ageless. The plot is driven by events and personalities more than by each character's character (at least while in previews), perhaps, because two hours is insufficient to thoroughly set up each character, or doing so would be too risky in 2010s, or would require to sacrifice too many Wildesque repartees. While movies have not destroyed destroyed theatre, TV shows, unleashed, just might.
The events are set in the safely distant era that is either pre-woke (1980s) or post-woke (2020s), lest the positive be mistaken for the normative. The narrative gets deeper as the play progresses. The seemingly accidental churning of words, people, and events emerges as the play's philosophy: talk, reevaluate, or else you run the risk of being left behind your better self.
9 January 2019
"Nations and Nationalism" by Ernest Gellner (1983)
Gellner's thesis flatters the educator: A nation state is not a monopolist on violence. A nation state is a monopolist in setting general-education standards.
A nation is a labour market. A nation state is the entity that supports this market by supplying the public good that enables it: general education. With this interpretation, one can construct nonesensical sentences (typically referring to pre-industrial or post-industrial societies), for instance, to imply that mathematicians are a nation. Whenever such a sentence reads nonsensical, replace "nation" with "identity." The mathematician is an identity.
Another, equivalent, interpretation of Gellner is that a nation is a language, which circumscribes the labour market in a modern economy.
Cambridgeshire is not a nation state because the success of Cambridge University relies on the pool of applicants and the set of employment opportunities that transcend the boundaries of Cambridgeshire.
Gellner asserts that unique to a nation state is the culture that is shared across all social classes, instead of a collection of cultures, one for the ruler and many for the ruled. A test of a common culture is incidence of jokes, whether humour travels across class and ethnic boundaries, and whether there is humour at all.
A nation is a labour market. A nation state is the entity that supports this market by supplying the public good that enables it: general education. With this interpretation, one can construct nonesensical sentences (typically referring to pre-industrial or post-industrial societies), for instance, to imply that mathematicians are a nation. Whenever such a sentence reads nonsensical, replace "nation" with "identity." The mathematician is an identity.
Another, equivalent, interpretation of Gellner is that a nation is a language, which circumscribes the labour market in a modern economy.
Cambridgeshire is not a nation state because the success of Cambridge University relies on the pool of applicants and the set of employment opportunities that transcend the boundaries of Cambridgeshire.
Gellner asserts that unique to a nation state is the culture that is shared across all social classes, instead of a collection of cultures, one for the ruler and many for the ruled. A test of a common culture is incidence of jokes, whether humour travels across class and ethnic boundaries, and whether there is humour at all.
4 January 2019
Ainars Mielavs
(Mūzikas nams Daile, 30 December 2018)
The band is excellent. They actually know how to play (rock, rockabilly, country) and, true to the spirit of their art, appear to harbour no suicidal tendencies (at least not on stage, not by boredom). The vocalist, continental, is just the right mixture of parochial and worldly to please the small-town unprovincial urbanites in attendance.
The urbanites in question are the southerners of the north, not the northerners of the south.
Kurt Vonnegut’s observation (recalled by Mielavs) that, if left to themselves, individuals live out their lives as stories is by now experimentally confirmed and has both a positive and a normative appeal. While one should enjoy many a moment the way one enjoys a good meal, for its instantaneous gratification, when a meal is unwelcome or inaccessible, a good story (or its anticipation or its memory) is a valuable diversion, if not a lesson.
It is unclear whether individuals devote excessive or insufficient effort to writing their life stories. On the one hand, a good story nourishes many and serves as a prologue for future stories. On the other hand, one can overindulge in Instagramable storytelling at the expense of living, the same way that one can overindulge in eating.
Vonnegut also opines that countries, in contrast to individuals, most certainly should not pursue story telling. Vonnegut is right. Good institutions would encourage both the government and private citizens to undertake long-term investments that would coalesce in a non-trivial narrative, a good story. But this story would be a byproduct of good institutions, not an extrinsic goal imposed by the country’s rulers. If a country needs a narrative on which to bring up its citizens, it will do better by inventing this narrative rather than by putting generations of its citizens through living it.
When at loss, one can crowdsource one’s storyline by drastically changing one’s environment. Repeat.
The band is excellent. They actually know how to play (rock, rockabilly, country) and, true to the spirit of their art, appear to harbour no suicidal tendencies (at least not on stage, not by boredom). The vocalist, continental, is just the right mixture of parochial and worldly to please the small-town unprovincial urbanites in attendance.
The urbanites in question are the southerners of the north, not the northerners of the south.
Kurt Vonnegut’s observation (recalled by Mielavs) that, if left to themselves, individuals live out their lives as stories is by now experimentally confirmed and has both a positive and a normative appeal. While one should enjoy many a moment the way one enjoys a good meal, for its instantaneous gratification, when a meal is unwelcome or inaccessible, a good story (or its anticipation or its memory) is a valuable diversion, if not a lesson.
It is unclear whether individuals devote excessive or insufficient effort to writing their life stories. On the one hand, a good story nourishes many and serves as a prologue for future stories. On the other hand, one can overindulge in Instagramable storytelling at the expense of living, the same way that one can overindulge in eating.
Vonnegut also opines that countries, in contrast to individuals, most certainly should not pursue story telling. Vonnegut is right. Good institutions would encourage both the government and private citizens to undertake long-term investments that would coalesce in a non-trivial narrative, a good story. But this story would be a byproduct of good institutions, not an extrinsic goal imposed by the country’s rulers. If a country needs a narrative on which to bring up its citizens, it will do better by inventing this narrative rather than by putting generations of its citizens through living it.
When at loss, one can crowdsource one’s storyline by drastically changing one’s environment. Repeat.
25 December 2018
The Swan Lake
(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.
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.
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.
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