We are each other.
“If my story can remind you of anything, let it remind you that when you believe in someone, you can change their world,” Ortiz said.
The same is of course true if you don't believe in someone. This is how so much potential is lost, so many people ruined.
The ravens of night sweep the screen of the sky over the edge of the world.
It folds away in the ocean sway.
Darkness hides the waves and discovers the infinity of galaxies and stars,
A noiseless crashing of waves on the shore of your eyes.
The bright birds of morning recover the sky.
Light reveals the waves and hides the stars.
The whole time I was reading, I couldn't help but think of Kundera's superior "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." This is an imaginative, alternative, plausible history in which Nietzsche creates Freud's Talking Cure (Freud is a character in this book, but he never meets Nietzsche). The book is written by a psychotherapist, not a professional novelist. And that shows. He's not concerned with creating a work of literature as such. And that's the weakness of the book as a book. In Kundera, Nietzschean ideas are manifest in the very form of the book. They have an affecting role to play in the experience of "Eternal Return" (the most obvious example). This novel is in the realist tradition of the Victorian novel. It's interesting and thought provoking--though I will say the most interesting part to me was the Afterward, but one does have to read the entire novel to get the full effect out of that. Anyone with any interest in Nietzsche's life and thought and the whole, bizarre story, that connects Nietzsche to Freud via Lou Andreas Salome will find this story worth the time it takes to read it. The emphasis in the end is more on the Freudian legacy than the Nietzschean philosophy, which I find disappointing personally, for whatever that's worth. Still very glad I read the book. But if it's a choice between this or Kundera, read Kundera.
This may be the problem: In wealthy neighborhoods, the
buildings are clean, the flowerbeds are blooming, the sidewalks wide and well
maintained. In poor neighborhoods there are none of these simple signs. But
signs of what? If they effect of flowers is to make us happier, we must also
note that that effect has been commandeered by wealth via its mere sign value,
not its animal value. So there are two things going on. We have what is good.
We have what you don’t. We’re doing what’s good for us as animals. We’re
pounding our chests and thumbing our noses at you.
Foucault likes to turn our attention to the latter. For the
school of thought he represents, the other is nonexistent or not important
enough to notice. And indeed for the person walking down the street in the wealthy
neighborhood, feeling good, there’s no way to separate the “this is beautiful”
from the “these people are rich” response to the environment.
But both still must exist. Not every sign is “arbitrary.”
Not every sign can be swapped for every meaning.
History and reason reveal as clearly as they reveal anything that the only way for America to reduce gun violence is to control guns. At this point it's superfluous even to show that this is true--that all our measures to "harden" schools have done nothing, despite millions of dollars in investment that could have been used to enhance education--to reduce the frequency or the lethality of school shootings. Nothing. It is superfluous to point this out because every knows it. And everyone willing and capable of thinking through the question knows that owning a gun does not reduce your chances of becoming a victim of gun violence, but in fact increases them. Around 90% of Americans understand that, at the very least, we need stricter gun laws. Even those (most GOP) legislators in America who vote against these laws know that this is true.
And yet nothing changes.
This reveals a structural failure in American democracy. The system has worked itself out to the point where the rules created for the game no longer produce the envisioned play. The game we are playing is no longer the game the creators intended. They were unable to foresee how the players would manipulate play in such a way as to undermine the game itself.
It's time to change the rules.
Is God a Mathematician?
The short answer is “no.” But like all answers that imply a
binary set of definite possibilities, the short answer is more misleading than
leading. This is an excellent book. No one capable of understanding it would
fail to profit from reading it. So I’m not going to focus on its myriad
virtues, which you can easily find in other reviews, but on it’s few but
essential problems.
The principle question the book ask is this: Was math invented
or discovered? This translates to “Was the universe created (or better ‘is it governed’)
by mathematical principles that are ‘ideal’ in the Platonic sense?” Is there a
math that is outside the universe (in some sense not perfectly understood)
whose principles are the principles that makes the universe work as it does? Along
the way he also asks “Is math a language?”
The book’s slightly longer and somewhat more helpful answer
is “both.” Math itself is created, but what math reveals is discovered.
I say somewhat more
helpful answer because this answer maintains the uninvestigated distinction
between “invention” and “discovery” that, had it been investigated, would have
yielded a richer answer.
Mario Livio does not adequately define his terms. He assumes
we know what it means to be invented—like the microphone—or discovered—like a
new planet. The new planet was always there, but someone found it for the first
time. The microphone never existed before. Someone made it. This may seem as
obvious to you as it does to Livio, but even within his book, unnoticed
problems arise.
First problem: prime numbers, he says, were invented. Any
number of cultures had numbering systems, but most of the cultures did not have
a concept of prime numbers, and they got along fine with out them. Western
Mathematicians uniquely decided to invent this concept. That 9/3 = 3 was however discovered.
Second problem: No one, Livio says, would say that Shakespeare
“invented” Hamlet.
But that there are numbers that are only divisible by
themselves and one is true in any counting system. They exist even if
unnoticed. So do they really differ in a completely different way from the answer
to a problem of division? Does it really make sense, in this dualistic
thinking, to say that the concept of prime number has to be invented rather
than that it has to be recognized? It may be that either option can be
supported. And this brings into question the very distinction between invented
and discovered.
And as for Shakespeare, one person who would have said that
Shakespeare invented Hamlet was Shakespeare. “I’ll give you a verse to this
note that I made yesterday in despite of my invention,” says Jaques in As You Like It to show how clever he is
before having to make something up. In fact any educated person would have said
so. That is what the word meant in Shakespeare’s day. What Shakespeare would never
have said was that he created Hamlet.
Of course we can say that words change their meaning. So
this doesn’t count against Livio.
It’s true that words change their meaning. They do so when
the concepts that they supported in their previous meanings are no longer
supportable. The very “invent/discover” distinction which we tend to believe is
too obvious to need strict definition is one that Shakespeare would not immediately
wrap his mind around. The corollary for us, who profit so much from reading
Livio’s book, is that we too may need to rethink our very distinction between
invention and discovery.
To come at this from another angle, Is God a Mathematician is a book build on two conundrums: if math
is invented how can it predict facts about the universe that were not even
suspected at the time the math was invented? How can the mathematical theory of
knots, useless the purpose for which it was invented, explain the structure of molecules?
The conundrum will go along way toward taking care of itself when we understand
that discovery and invention do not describe two sets without common elements—a
fact that this book needs to maintain that within the sent of “invented” things
is a member called math, in which there are things that were discovered. If we
have to have it both ways, or one way at one moment and another way at another,
then the problem is certainly in the question or the model that gives rise to
the question and not in the thing the question is posed to explain.
The second conundrum, which the book brings up several times
but is not deeply interested in is this: Is Math a language? Livio will tell us
it sort of is and sort of isn’t. He doesn’t believe much depends on a rigorous
answer to this question, and he does not give one. This makes sense given the
structure of thought in which the book operates. When it gets to the point
where something can be or not be a language at the same time, it closes the
door and goes better lighted hallways.
It does seem like a troublesome question not admitting of
easy answer. If math is a language, how come small children, who are so good at
acquiring languages have such trouble learning math? On the other hand, it is a
symbolic structure made of signs representing concepts. It works by rules of
syntax and grammar.
The problem however is only an apparent one, like a knot
that is just a tangle that disappears with a tug. Math is not a language. Math
is something we do in language. When I do math, I do it in English. When a
French person does math, they do it in French. Math appears at first glance to
be a language only because we use the same representations, the same words with
the same spelling to represent the same concepts “2” is two in English and deux
in French and er in Mandarin, but we all spell that concept as 2 when we do
math. (A side note, Livio’s short but illuminating excursions into the history
of math leave out the essential observation of the indebtedness of math to Arabic
numerals.) Why do children have trouble with math? For the same reason they have
trouble with logic (which no one calls a language) and with diplomacy and with
any of the more complicated functions we do in language. What children acquire
easily is vocabulary and syntax. Whatever it is they are capable of expressing
they easily learn to express from one natural language to another.
Finally then my point is that Livio’s question about the
discover v. invention of math is of the same type as his question of whether math
is or is not a language. If a better vocabulary for thinking about math is
developed (and I’m sure it has already been developed, though I can’t point to
it at the moment), then the problem itself goes away. At least I suspect that
is so.
All that said, this is a terrific book. For someone who gave
up on math after three semesters of calculus it makes me re-think my choice. What
I do not know because I did not get into higher mathematics is a field of
wonder that I would love to explore. But life only allows us so many loves. And
this peek at what I cannot explore further was infinitely worth the time I
spent in the doorway.
As the legend says, if the story holds
About 15 billion years ago
On a Sunday morning, before the sun
Nothing exploded and nothing was done.
Everyone wave, everyone wave.
Nothing is lost and everything’s saved.
Everything’s free and all is contrived.
And isn’t it something to be alive?
History is not a pristine record of past events. It is the raw material out of which we construct the story we choose to be part of.
The government’s authority to mandate vaccinations follows
exactly the same logic as the government’s authority to set speed limits on
public roads. You might say this is a matter of freedom, that you have a right
to go as fast as you like. You might be willing to take on the personal risks
of high speeds. You might even argue that going fast is not inherently criminal.
It is, however, the government’s job to protect its citizens from all threats
foreign and domestic. And exercising your “freedom,” your “right to go fast”
puts not just you but everyone else on the road in obvious, mortal danger. For
this reason very few people question the authority of the government to
regulate such behavior on public roads. Vaccines are like speed limits. You may
believe you have the right to decide whether you wish to take the risk of
remaining unvaccinated. Refusing medicine is not an inherently criminal act.
But your refusal puts not just yourself but everyone you come into contact with
in obvious, mortal danger. The government therefore has the authority to tell
you you must get the vaccine or stay out of pubic spaces. Businesses have the right
to tell you you have to be vaccinated or stay out of their own private spaces.
This is a public good. This is at the heart of the mission of good government,
and is in fact included in the our government’s mission statement, the preamble
to the Constitution, which includes the directive: “to promote the general
welfare.”
Hello, my father, I’m so glad to meet you
I will be with you the rest of your years
I am the child you called to the earth
I am your bucket of tears
the present you've opened before you are ready
a fugitive something you won’t understand
I’ll consume all your love, your wealth, and your wisdom,
your pearl of great price that you’ll lose in the end
I am the gate on the dark road to heaven
there is no other way there but this
these are the tears and this is the losing
and here in the darkness the way you will miss.
The Germans have that much right, I said. A new concept is just a string of old concepts mortared together. A rule is a long word. Any formula repeated word for word is essentially the same as a word with its semic string of syllables. The ten commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance, any cliché or platitude you can pull out for the purpose of denying the particularity of the moment. This is a problem. All words are generalizations, all names imply and promote a continuity that exceeds the reality. I’ve sinned several times already in this paragraph. The only other option is not to use words at all, live like dogs and cattle. The fence around this pen cannot be surmounted or undermined or gotten around. And there is no gate.
Poetry cannot shed its last atom of optimism. Beckett knew
this. All artists know this, though many are unaware that they do. It’s
inherent in all forms, all language, all manifestations of art. It has to be. Even
to eat is to have faith in the future, or hope, always at least a morsel of
optimism. How could art escape this? I’m going to make this; I’m going to show
it to you, ask you to read it, see it, hear it, eat it. It’s going to deny, try
to destroy, the absolute uniqueness and unrepeatability of this unique and
unrepeatable moment. (Nietzsche could not have been more wrong.)
To write—to create, even just to live with words, pictures, art—is
to assent to the belief that there exists a key to unlock the gate of this pen
that has no gate and therefore no lock. If I just say it right, you will gain
the insight that makes sense, perhaps only just a little sense, of this senseless
dream. What good could it possibly do to construct another fence inside the
fence that has no gate? Is it a quest for the delusion of Wordsworth: that
blessed mood, In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the
weary weight Of all this unintelligible world, Is lightened? If so, then delusion is better than truth.
But who’s to say it’s not? To say it is or it’s not is to pretend to have
jumped the unjumpable fence, is to join in the delusion.
Daniel Kahneman structures the problem of thinking--of reacting and reflecting--in a productive way. That said, there's something in every chapter I have an issue with, often with the author making the same mistakes he's warning us against--i.e. not considering a broad enough context to answer a question. In fairness, he admits that no one is immune from the problems of slow thinking's aggressiveness/fast thinking's passiveness (not his terminology). So any failure is evidence that that is right, but that doesn't let him off the hook. I'm also not impressed with the epithet "lazy" for "slow thinking." That's a moral judgment and unfair--though rhetorically useful. Else where he calls the "slow thinking" self the "I," the self we claim as our true self. If so, we are in our essence lazy. That may be. But the fact that we don't exert effort when there seems to be no reward for the effort sufficient to the effort could be called prudent or cautious. The sweeping moral judgment of "lazy" is lazy.
Imagine Monsanto had developed an herbicide (which, for all I know, they may have done) that was 100% effective in killing weeds but won't kill flowers or vegetables, as long as it is used properly. If misused it kills lots of things--grasses, trees and other vegetation, insects and animals, anything that gets in its way. It is a significant danger to microclimates and water supplies. And although it doesn't kill vegetables, it does poison them, so it can't be used on them or the food will become toxic to whatever eats it. Nonetheless, though powerful and deadly, it is safe to use in flower beds.
Should it be allowed on the market?
Let's be clear, in case of deliberate misuse, accident, or negligence people will die, possibly a lot of people. If an unscrupulous gardener uses this on his tomatoes and sells them at a farmer's market, his customers will die. Not immediately of course. It may take a few years. Their deaths may be hard to trace to the bulging ripe tomatoes they bought at the farmers' market three years before. And in the case of accidental spillage or incorrect mixture, the ground water will be polluted, and people and animals will die and insects will die. The ground will become infertile--but just in patches and just for a while.
Of course we can't guarantee everyone who buys this herbicide will use it properly. In fact we can guarantee that some won't. That's just how people are. Someone will spill it. Some will be tempted by the potential sale of ripe tomatoes. Some will neglect to read the directions thoroughly. If we market this product, people will die--that's a guarantee. There will be little pockets of corpses in various places where the product was misused.
Let's add to the mix that nobody needs this product. It has its uses, but there are other ways to grow flowers.
Should we ban the sale? Is it too dangerous? Or should we at least heavily regulate it to reduce the risk? Or should we just pop it on the shelves of Agway and Home Depot and your local garden center for anyone to buy at any time for any reason?
Now let's think about guns.
I am going
to the store. I go
to the store nearly every
Saturday. I went
to the store last
Saturday even though I had gone
to the store on Friday;
Sunday was
the day I would run out
of butter,
so I went
again Saturday. I would have gone
on Sunday, but I had had
a headache the
previous three Sundays and was
afraid that that would be
my new Sunday thing.
I will go
again tomorrow,
however, just to see. I will have gone
to the store before
Church starts at eleven. This is
my story. I have been working
on it for ten minutes.
It is told.
I have spoken.
I will be 60 in 19 days.
I keep asking myself, am I learning yet?What are you saving it for
if you can’t give it to the snow now
