Wake Up Call for Democrats

I think it's time Democrats woke up and realized fully a fundamental political truth in this country. And that is that the demographics of the House, and to a lesser extent the Senate, are likely to make the presidential race in 2016 all but irrelevant. Clinton, or Warren, or whoever ends up running, may well get elected, but she (or he) will be unable to govern in the FDR or Johnson-in-1964 manner, with real policy progress, because there is almost no way we can win back the House (and possibly not even the Senate), without the most massive popular movement and organization in more than a generation. And every day that goes by that this isn't happening means that Democratic policies are less likely to become national policy any time soon. Where is the leadership? Where are the street demonstrations for economic justice, endorsed and even joined in by Democratic pols? Where, even, is the clear and coherent Progressive platform, that declares once and for all that the era of coddling Wall Street and being no better than Republican lite, is OVER?

Nous sommes tous Charlie Hebdo

The targeted assassination in Paris yesterday by Jihadist Fundamentalists of journalists and, in particular, political cartoonists, has of course shocked the World. While it is important to remember that for all its awfulness and terrible symbolism, this kind of terrorism is not an existential threat to Western societies, and should not be overreacted to in the way that the US, it is now clear, overreacted to 9/11. 

Having said that, there is a serious issue here. We wink and nod at Saudi Arabia, because of its huge oil reserves, despite the fact that it is a nation that fosters and harbors violent fundamentalists, arising from its foundation in the extremist Wahabi cult. We falsely compare the violence of these terrorists to Fundamentalists of other religions, when, in fact, while some Bible Thumpers in the US may literally believe in the Bible, for the most part they do not raid the homes of people who disagree with them, and drag out and stone their non-virginal daughters. 

The fact is that radical Islamist cults are fostered and harbored by Muslim communities both in the Middle East and in Europe (less in the USA). Islam never underwent a Reformation, and consequently, Muslim cultures are, it is a simple fact, far more misogynist and repressive than Western societies. But if so-called moderate Muslims, as people like Reza Aslan are always telling us are the majority, seriously want to be treated with respect and not be lumped together with the violent intolerance of people like these assassins, they need to do more than wring their hands. They need to make clear, in their mosques, in their newspapers and media, in the actions of their supposedly moderate governments, that these people will not be tolerated. That when someone's relative is making bombs and attending meetings of extremist cells... and you can't tell me people in these communities don't often know that this is going on... they must report it just as they would report anyone contemplating murder. And the sad truth is, out of misplaced loyalty to their supposed co-religionists, there is all too much looking the other way.

There will be a reaction to this awful terrorism. Marie LePen's Nationalist party will benefit. French people will tend to regard even ordinary Muslims with suspicion. This is just the way it is. And if moderate Muslims, who want to live in peace as part of a pluralistic society, want to avoid being tarred with the same brush as is applied to the Jihadists, they must stand against them, clearly and forthrightly, and declare their support for freedom of expression, even when it is directed against their sacred cows. Muslim societies must eradicate this violent intolerance root and branch, or it will parasitize their entire culture and destroy them.

Every time a Jihadist steals the life of someone for the "crime" of disagreeing with their Medieval attitude towards faith and freedom, the violence is confined in space and time, but the response, the "meme" of revulsion and such acts, grows and spreads. 12 are killed, and a few Jihadist extremists celebrate, but 10,000 gather in the Place de la Republique and chant "Je suis Charlie," and the world condemns the terrorists. In the long run, the reality is that they weaken their religion; people inevitably negatively associate their professed religion with them and their evil acts. Rather than avenging their "prophet," they are besmirching his name and lessening his influence in the future.

Musing on the Ultimate

I think the pendulum that, early in the 20th cent. led to Social Darwinism (summed up in the idiotic phrase "might makes right"), had swung so far in the direction of man's animal nature, may now be well into its swing back to the concept that the evolution of the symbolic processing mind of human beings really is "so like an angel," i.e., qualitatively different from the minds even of our close relatives, such as chimps and bonobos. Precisely because we can make the unlimited mental chains and networks of concept, idea, image, emotion... and escape the bonds of the merely biologically imperative. 

We are the Earth's great experiment. Either we will survive our troubled youth and become Old Ones, who dwell among the stars and foster life and love far and wide, or we will surely die out, dust on the husk of our formerly living world (because we now know that life has perhaps 500 million years or so to go before the Earth exits stage hot). It's up to us, and we may very well be living in the cusp time when the future will be decided.

New Year's Resolutions

What are New Year's Resolutions if not glimmers from the depths of our own minds of the need for mindfulness? For a little reality check? For a chance to develop some good habits to supplant some of our bad ones? For, after all, mindfulness is nothing other than examination of our own minds. The unexamined life not worth living and all that. I've never been much for resolutions, but here goes, anyway. I resolve to keep it simple. I have been fortunate enough to have received some mind training from Buddhist teachers (most of which, I'm sorry to say, failed to 'take'), but I really believe that these simple ideas are true, irrespective of what spiritual tradition or lack thereof they may bubble up from. These are resolutions for people like me; ordinary people whose minds are conflicted and agitated most of the time, but who have a desire, and some means to hand, to do a little something about it. I realized some time ago that I'm not quite cut out to be a Spiritual Warrior, which is what Buddhism is really all about, but as an ordinary person who wants to be happy, like all living beings, I recognize that there are some simple techniques that help.

RESOLUTIONS

1.  I will resolve to, at least once each day, intentionally practice mindfulness for a brief period. Something as simple as calming the mind and focusing the attention on the breath. Being aware of the present moment, even for just a few moments, has a very strong positive effect on your mental outlook all the rest of the time. Whether you call this meditation or not, that's what it is, and countless generations of human beings have found that it works best sitting upright, without distractions such as noise or activity around you, to whatever extent possible. Eyes closed or slightly open. 10 minutes is enough to make a difference.

2.  I will resolve to spend each day at least a few moments deliberately and consciously practicing what Buddhists call the Four Sublime Virtues, or "immeasurables" (Brahma-Viharas), with specific reference to other people in my life, or just in general. (Again, this is hardly unique to Buddhism; it's just common sense, and something very like it is taught in all significant spiritual traditions). If you form a habit of thinking of others with these as templates, your attitudes will change. These "immeasurables" are: Lovingkindness (Maitri). (Think how you wish for another or others to be happy). Compassion (Karuna) (Think how you wish that the causes of suffering in others will stop). Those two are directed towards the present moment and actions affecting the future. The other two are directed towards what has led to the present moment: Empathetic Joy (Mudita). Give your mind a tiny push (that's what's referred to as "Free Will")-- to feel joy at another's or others' happiness, and their achievements. It is actually possible to induce joy in your mind, just by deciding to do it. The last is Equanimity (Upeksha) This one is a little more subtle. You realize that your own mind cannot govern the whole world; others will have their happiness and suffering (according to their own karma, if you prefer to think of it that way), but you can maintain an outlook encompassing kindness and compassion, and remain unperturbed. There is no value in mental agitation, grasping, obsessiveness, regret, etc. These mental states cause suffering, in yourself and others. Keep a calm and happy mind. Forming the intention to do this helps make it so; and when you are calm, others are likely to pick up on that and also be calmer and happier. Try to extend mindfulness to the point where before you speak or act, these "immeasurable" habits of mind inform what you say or do. I've been lousy at this, but it can work: you just stop for a fraction of a second before you say that mean thing, and say something else or nothing. You examine, just for a moment, your motives before taking actions, and try to let the immeasurables in. It can become a habit.

3.  I resolve to spend at least a few moments each day intentionally cultivating wisdom. When you look out over the surface of the sea with the sun low in the sky, and see a complicated pattern of reflected light, you have the certain knowledge that the patterns are no more than just that: they are not intrinsic to the water; soon they will be as nothing. Wisdom comes from realizing that on different scales and in different media, all reality is like that: it is just the play of pattern, and our experience of it is not inherently real, it is merely the motions of our mind. Our lives, and even things like the form of the mountains we see out our window, are just shifting and impermanent patterns in the vast energies of which all reality consists; they have no intrinsic reality, and nothing is permanent. Even our perception that we are the same person we were yesterday is mostly illusory. This pattern of mental awareness is the first glimmer of realization of Emptiness, in its simplest approximation, and it helps us to let go of our self-importance. Even on this simplest level, realizing this, and absorbing its truth, will make it easier to live a life that causes less suffering in yourself and others, and comes a little closer to the spiritual ideal we all would prefer for ourselves and others.

So that's it, and Happy New Year one and all.

Space Opera, with some restrictions

When younger I was a major fan of Space Opera type science fiction. Jack Vance (died in 2014) was my favorite in this genre, but I read Asimov (of course), Niven, Clarke, Heinlein, Herbert, Fred Pohl, even somewhat lesser (IMO) lights like Poul Anderson, Fred Saberhagen (who, like Vance, also wrote "Fantasy"), Greg Bear, David Brin, and Greg Benford (the latter still writing). To name a few. I really liked, more recently, Iain Banks, who also died in 2014, at 60, of ravaging cancer. Banks also wrote middling-interest mainstream novels, and was part of a little school of Scottish writers, including Charles Stross and Ken McLeod, although, in my estimation, he was far and away the best of them. George RR Martin, Ursula Leguin, Anne McCaffrey, C. J. Cherryh... well, not so much. For the most part, this kind of fiction requires you to suspend incredulousness a bit... most call for adopting the view that FTL (Faster than Light travel) will be possible, or at least that you have to assume its possibility for purposes of the story.

I admire the kind of Science Fiction that makes no assumptions about reality that don't make physical sense (for reasons I've tried to explain on here, FTL does NOT make physical sense; search for "FTL."). Benford, for example, as tried to write in this vein, and there was some fiction in the "golden age" that stuck to those kinds of strictures. But, in truth, science fiction without galaxy spanning spaceships tends to be a little dull, especially since the genre as a whole has always been a little weak in the vivid character and compelling dramatic situation department.

But I admit there is always a nagging annoyance in the back of my mind. For reasons I've also tried to explore on the Gyromantic, if some version of the "Star Trek" or "Star Wars" universes were real, or really possible, it is highly unlikely that we, here on Planet Earth, would have remained unmolested by galactic visitors for lo these billions of years. Which every indication is that our planet has been. Unmolested, that is. There is no evidence at all, still less credible evidence, that the Earth has ever been visited by extraterrestrials. (It isn't impossible, but there is no evidence for it).

So fiction where there are dozens or hundreds of spacefaring civilizations invading, trading, colonizing, etc. all over the Galaxy is actually totally preposterous, even if it is entertaining. Let me be clear on this point. The Galaxy is big, but not Vast, in the sense of the Vastness of Borges's Great Library. There are billions of worlds. Maybe even billions of life bearing worlds. But if you had the ability to travel arbitrarily faster than light, and a desire to explore, a civilization would take no more than a few hundred thousand, at most a few million, years to visit every single star in the Galaxy. And the same would be true of every other Galaxy in the universe, which are all roughly the same age, over ten billion years old. So the notion that for some appreciable fraction of the last few hundred million years, during which the universe has, by and large, looked much the same as it does now, there have been Galaxy Spanning supercivilizations arising, warring with one another, trading with one another, exploring, searching for suitable stars for colonizing, etc.... is just not plausible. (Not to mention that if you really think about it it makes no economic or any other kind of sense to go around searching for planets to live on... if you had that kind of technology you could just use resources to construct habitats in space, as many science fiction writers, notably Banks and Niven, have explored in considerable detail).

But the reality that the universe if most likely full of life, that other worlds do in fact exist and most likely intelligent life as well, even if very far away, remains speculative (except for the other worlds part, which is now fact), but the whole picture seems more and more likely as time goes on. So there really is a fantastic reality which may eventually be the stage for the next chapters of human history, including, very possibly, the story of contact with other intelligent beings.

So that's the real challenge for science fiction: to tell stories set in a plausible universe, where strange and wonderful things that actually are, or at least could conceivably be, possible,  occur. Writers may posit new physics and strange structures to the universe to make seemingly miraculous things happen, but, to satisfy this niggling objection of mine, they need to somehow account for what is: namely we live on a world where there has been no space visitation (that we know of) for billions of years, and when we look out into the Great Dark, we see no evidence of others or their constructions. Where are they? And how might they exist and yet so far have left no sign?

I would like to try my hand at a story line that attempts to plot a course through this narrow strait, and still tell a story of wonders, including civilizations who have also arisen in this vast universe, and with whom now unknown means may be found to make contact, for better or worse.

Dennett addresses fundamentalists of all stripes

Perhaps not the most Christmasy message I could come up with, but I just finished Daniel Dennett's now over 20 year old book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, and I was struck by this really quite eloquent quote, the second half of which is actually addressed to fundamentalists of whatever kind:

“We should not expect … respect to be satisfactory to those who wholeheartedly embody the memes we honor with our attentive — but not worshipful — scholarship. On the contrary, many of them will view anything other than enthusiastic conversion to their own views as a threat, even an intolerable threat. We must not underestimate the suffering such confrontations cause. To watch, to have to participate in, the contraction or evaporation of beloved features of one’s heritage is a pain only our species can experience, and surely few pains could be more terrible. But we have no reasonable alternative, and those whose vision dictates that they cannot peacefully coexist with the rest of us we will have to quarantine as best we can, minimizing the pain and damage, trying always to leave open a path to that may come to seem acceptable.

“If you want to teach your children that they are the tools of God, you had better not teach them that they are God’s rifles, or we will have to stand firmly opposed to you: your doctrine has no glory, no special rights, no intrinsic and inalienable merit. If you insist on teaching your children falsehoods — that the Earth is flat, that ‘Man’ is not the product of evolution by natural selection — then you must expect, at the very least, that those of us who have freedom of speech will feel free to describe your teachings as the spreading of falsehoods, and will attempt to demonstrate this to your children at our earliest opportunity. Our future well-being — the well-being of all of us on this planet — depends on the education of our descendants.”

This, I think, is the crux of the matter. Traditional beliefs, cultural institutions, societal traditions — whatever —are not valueless, and must be afforded the respect we afford any human being and his or her legitimacy as such. But where they interfere with the ability of others to have their own self-determination, and to live in a society where some reasonable consensus of the common good is seen as the pilot for policy, well then, they simply must give way.

Warren is our best hope

See this. 

I love her remark re: CitiGroup:
"I agree with you - Dodd-Frank isn't perfect. It should have broken you into pieces."

•  Warren is my hero. I respect that it's her decision whether or not she should run for president, but I think she actually could easily do so and still stay in the Senate if the "inevitable" outcome of the Primary process did in fact result in Candidate Clinton. And if she were to go that route, it would help consolidate the Democratic party around a more Progressive policy stance. And, as I've been saying since 1996, for crying out loud, it is strong Democratic principles, clearly and charismatically articulated, that win elections, not trying to be all things to all people! I am convinced the main reason the Delusional Right party does well in elections is that the Accommodationist Party is seen as weak, and people, both men and women, tend to be repelled by perceived weakness in those who would be leaders.

No rationalizations on torture

I've been harping to friends lately that the attitude of Rightists towards science, i.e. chopping off their noses to spite their faces on climate change, is, in actual fact, a mass mental illness. You know, delusion resulting in self-destructive behavior. But I think this bothers me even more. Republicans of Dwight Eisenhower's era would NEVER condone torture, or suggest that it could be overlooked. Even Obama refers to "mistakes." These were not mistakes. It was systematic, state sponsored crime, which treaty obligations of the United States, to say nothing of ordinary human decency, compel the government to prosecute.

I just cannot abide any rationalization that suggests otherwise.

We don't expect countries that have never developed a tradition of democracy to enforce laws which actually uphold the high principles of civilization that were proclaimed as universal in the aftermath of World War II. The irony that we saw to it that Germans and Japanese government officials were prosecuted, even executed, for presiding over regimes of torture, but we turn away when faced with the same history in our own country, speaks loudly of a sad, sad decline in the institutions of the first modern republic. We cannot survive as a democracy if we do not uphold our own principles. Can there be any doubt how Jefferson or Lincoln would have viewed this development? That they would have viewed the the the officials who condoned and authorized these acts, and not just those who actually carried them out, as criminals who should be in prison, not touting the virtues of torture all over the Right Wing media? 

Homophobia all too robust in America

A friend recently posted on Facebook a piece showing that female professors consistently get lower evaluations than men, and that in blind tests, when an online course was taught by women but the students were told they were men, they got better evaluations than the control group of "out" women. Demonstrating quite nicely that sexism is alive and revoltingly robust in America, even among the elite. 

This shows, in a rather different way, that the same is true of homophobia. In the unlikely event that anyone had any doubt.

Some Personal Comments on the Beethoven Sonatas

Charles Rosen, in his lovely book on the Beethoven piano sonatas, quotes a passage from Proust where the narrator talks about his grandmother’s good taste; in courtesy, cuisine, and playing the Beethoven sonatas. “‘Elle peut avoir beaucoup de doigts que moi, mais elle manque de gout en jouant avec tant d’emphase cet andante si simple…’” (the grandmother is quoted as saying. (“She may have more technique than I, but she lacks taste, playing such a simple andante so grandiloquently”)). This got me thinking about the sonatas, from my own perspective, as an adult amateur with a relatively rudimentary keyboard technique. Over the years, I have looked at every single one of the 32, and have evaluated them, I will readily admit, from the point of view that a was actually quite common in Beethoven’s day, and was probably the primary concern of his publishers, namely, can an amateur with limited ability possibly play this, or at least approximate it?

Of the sonatas, there are a good number that Beethoven obviously wrote with complete abandon to the creative muse, meaning he gave no thought for the poor player (in two senses of “poor;” i.e., 'unfortunate,' and 'unskilled'). The late sonatas, Opp. 101, 106, 109, 110, and 111, all fall in this category, and are scarcely approachable by the pianist of modest skill (Op. 101 being the only possible exception, and it is a very beautiful sonata that would reward the effort). Some of the most famous sonatas, Opp. 53 (“Waldstein”), 57 (“Appasionnata”), and 81a (“Les Adieux”) are also realistically beyond that level of skill. While Opp. 22, 27(No. 1), 28 and 31 (Nos. 1-3) are all by no means easy, they are perhaps somewhat more approachable. Both Op. 27, No. 2, and Op. 13 (“Pathétique”) have individual movements which, taken alone, are the two most famous of all the sonatas, but both of these sonatas have very brilliant and difficult finales, which make them a challenge, although not on the order of Op. 57, perhaps. (Op. 13’s achingly beautiful, songlike slow movement and the dreamy first movement of the “Moonlight,” Op. 27, No. 2, are often played alone by young students and amateurs of even quite modest ability).  

As for the three sonatas of Op. 2, the very lengthy Grande Sonate, Op. 7, and the three of Op. 10, there are varying levels of difficulty, but none is “impossible;” here, the reality is that these sonatas, while all are fine and worthwhile, are not quite of the sublime level of the majority of Beethoven’s sonatas. They reward the effort to learn them, but not to the same degree as the later works. The same would apply to Op. 49 (both), which are the easiest of Beethoven’s canonical sonatas, but also the least musically interesting. Op. 79, which Beethoven (or the publisher) titled a “sonatina,” is, in fact, quite brilliant and unexpectedly tricky to play. Op. 78, apart from the remote key of F# major, is approachable, and intensely lyrical. Op. 54 is one of Beethoven’s least played sonatas, but it is a very worthy piece, and is not easy, but it, too, is approachable.

The two sonatas of Op. 14 are, though quite different, both quite Haydnesqe. Both also very much reward the effort to learn them, although, again, they are not quite on the sublime level of the sonatas written after 1800.

This leaves a couple of real gems for the somewhat technically challenged amateur (who, after all, will resemble the people for whom these sonatas were probably written). They can really get their teeth into the lovely “suite” sonata in A-flat (with famous funeral march), Op. 26, and the short (two-movement) E-minor sonata, Op. 90 which lies somewhere between the “middle” and “late” period (1810), and has a dramatic contrast between its E-minor first movement and the lyrical Allegretto (“nicht zu geschwind”) rondo which pairs with it. Op. 90 is as difficult as Op. 31, perhaps, or Op. 78, but it is a great sonata, and it is entirely playable.

Join Bernie Sanders

I just posted this on Facebook.

If you, like me, find yourself virtually always agreeing with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in his posts here and elsewhere, why not register your support by going to Berniesanders.com and registering your e-mail and zip code. We need (Finally) to create a real, and effective Progressive grassroots movement, and Bernie is a clear leader in this effort.  Thank you.