Right now:
Slowly drowning in Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid , just finished Dave Mckean's Cages and Mallarmé's Divagations, re-reading Akutagawa Ryunosuke's Rashomon. Desperatly waiting for my copy of Alan Moore's Voice of the Fire, which may well turn into the case that will convert me to net shopping: almost 2 months waiting and the shop still havn't received it !
On another notice: with all the recommendations I've seen for Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, I'm now more than eager to read the book, but remembering Neil Gaiman's comment on its Englishness, I'm wondering if it would be fit for a tonal death self-taught english reader ?
Or should I just wait for a (hopefully) good translation to come ?
Xopher, after reading your translation, I can only say that, against all odds and expectations, your english appears to be far better than mine.-_^
To Andy Perrin: I just SO love those tranlation softwares ! Thanks you by the way, you just helped me realise the obvious: they probably fail to their task more because of grammatical multivalence than polysemy.
I can't resist the pleasure of posting a link to the babelizer, althought I'm pretty sure everyone around these parts must know this already.
Patrick Nielsen Hayden:
"What I keep wanting to fight back toward is a discourse in which "liberal" and "conservative" aren't ignorant armies that clash by night, but rather "turns of mind" that each have value to bring to a discourse."
Whether you're a rightist or a leftist , you're hemiplegic, to misquote Raymond Aron.
All this talk about defining republicans and democrats reminds me of the problem the French "liberté, égalité, fraternité" posed me when I first came to France. Liberty and equality taken at extreme values just don't belong together, thus the need for fraternity, to glue both.
Except here it's the contrary: I can spot no reason for republicanism and democratism not to work complementarily, yet they seem totally unable to connect. The million dollar question being, whether or not, one reason can be spotted whose correction would allow for a mending of the fracture...
Time for me to go swoon like a schoolgirl over the "beautiful French comment".
For Xopher:
"There's something funny, the way a white clown is funny, about seeing accused of fanatism someone whose moral greatness is justified in one unique abscence of concessions: that of taking the duty of both tolerance and partisanship, without ever bending."
Awful translation, I know. But then, I guess it was doubly rude of me to leave it just that way. So, sorry.
I could bet it's a riff on someone else's sentence, yet I can't seem to remember which one.
Yonmei's point actually makes a good job of resuming all my teacher's general views of the American political scene, which had led me to believe it was the general conscencus.
Il y a quelque chose d'un comique de clown blanc à voir taxé de fanatisme quelqu'un dont la grandeur morale se trouve justifiée dans une unique absence de concessions, celle de se donner comme devoir d'être et tolérant et partisant, sans jamais ployer.
Sorry, don't know how to translate that exactly in english, so I'll keep that first occuring thought of mine upon reading this post that way. Plus Reimer Behrends addressed the point much better than I could. Anyhow, I can't but smile when the people whose good example had me acknowledge and (well, at least try to) correct my own secular induced sense of superiority are branded "Secular leftist fanatics". Have I really been that tonal deaf to the nuances of the english language ?
Or maybe the rules of respectful behavior toward religion are drastically different from place to place ?
Mmmmm... where did I read that exact same advice ? It's in a japanese text manual from the Genroku era, or emulating it at least, but I can't remember wich one... Probably the Kyoraïshô or the Sanzôshi.
A very good advice, not easy, nor pleasant. But good.
The photos have been confirmation for those who believed in the "evil" of the US in the rest of the world. They have allowed those who really knew something to finally be heard. They've made the neutral majority slide slowly into the silent opposition. They have made actual defense of the US harder for those who deem such a thing still worth doing. And yes, they have degraded the image of the US in a lot of people mind's eye... not that it was generally flattering to begin with, of course, but at least, it still used to keep an allure of strength, and aeven at worst.
Just give people some time Mr Nielsen Hayden, just one person addressing the thread in the wrong direction, even on multiple occasion, doesn't invalidate everyone else's worth of interest comments.
Xopher, I totally agree with the use of shock against bourgeois self-censorship and apathy as a good tool... the trouble is to know when and how to use it properly. Too much of it, or repeated poorly aimed use of it, and people will grow anesthetized or, even worse, complacent.
About "épater", I think "to shock" is strangely stretching a translation, at least in modern french. Too bad I don't have an etymological dictionary here to check the exact sense it might have had for Baudelaire. First bland translation coming to my mind would be "impress"...
Oh... I know just go there. Should do it.
First thing this whole affair did is call back cumming's "Humanity i love you" poem from my memory bank to my fore-mind, and leave it there playing in repeat mode.
I feel appalled by the lack of intelligent coverage, and the almost anecdodotal coloration, these events mostly seem to get in my country. As if the unspoken logic behind the articles was "We're neither executioners, nor victims; we'll make news of this only as long as it pleases the event-driven lecturing pleasure of our readers".
I've seen people laugh.
Thanks Terry, it was a great post.
For that matter, why do people start talking?
Switching to pseudo-philosophical mode (get close to te fireplace, enjoy the warmth while holding your head "my hat's two size too small and my brother's pulling it off" style):
Remember the original cogito ergo sum ? "I think, and as long as I think, I know that I am" ? Well since reality on the personal level is more of a convention than a perception, talking is the first and foremost tool one uses to assert one's existence and place in reality.
There's a reason why imposed isolation is considered a form of torture.
End of pseudo-philosophical mode, you may now enjoy reading again. Careful with those hands, though You've left marks on your forehead.
Can't help but envision a book of blog aphorisms, koans and tales now...
That insistance on logic in matters of faith sounds strange to me. To the best of my (limited) knowledge, logic hasn't been proven. The law of identity hasn't been proven. Belief in logic could therefore be pressured as being yet another act of faith, even if it's one who bears fruit in daily routine applications.
Personally, I think faith don't need to be logical, whether it was imposed by background settings or chosen through personal (?) reflexions.
We don't need to be nicer to people of any other belief, religious, political or whatsoever, so that they are nice to us back in return. We need to be just, which with luck will earn us the respect of some of these people, the ones we can, and may, work with toward a common goal. This implies stating divergence of opininons, bringing to light abusive positions of any party and struggling against when needed. It implies also giving credits and paying respect where dues.
This may appear childish to the rogish political mind, but in this I believe.
First: my apologies if I contributed in any way to the heartsickning. Maybe there's no reason for me to present them, I'm not sure, but my natural paranoïa (and egocentrism ?) incline me to believe so. In any case I hope the wound will close soon enough...
Which strangely put me that Oscar Wilde verse in mind:
"How else but through a broken heart
May Lord Christ enter in?"
It may not be fitting, but still its beautiful. And as such, well needed.
Avram - My, thanks. :)
Xopher - Thanks for actually telling what I should have. I always thought it was a pure marvel how well the shinto-buddhist syncretism had worked out (if you exclude the attempt of power to use religion as a shaping mold), given how incompatible they both were in the first place. This kind of things gives me high hopes.
I'd answer the disenvoweled post, but there are still some words missing. Sigh.
Religious polls are always interesting in that they give strange mind boggling numbers. Without going as far as Japan, in wich the population more than doubles if you add together all the declarations of faith, I think you can assume without that much risks a good part of the population isn't exactly monotheistic... (or that it follows various creeds for the one same god).
Furthermore I doubts the way those polls are made: I remember one of those whose questions were asked to the familly as a whole, but the numbers were labelled as if individuals had been answering.
Rich Puchalsky -I had noticed that also but thought of it as some reference to a previous evenement left unexplained... You're right, the question should have been raised though, to clear any and all misunderstanding on the situation. But shouldn't we leave people the benefice of doubt till they have explained themselves ?
My attempt at translating the Pierre Desproges quote I had made:
"Can we laugh of anything ? Can we laugh with anyone ?
To the first question I'll answer yes without hesitation. If it's true that humor is the courtesy of despair, if it's true that the sacrilege blasphemous laughter the prejudiced of all confessions charge with vulgarity and bad taste, if it's true that this one laughter can sometime deconsecrate stupidity, exorcise true grief and cast away mortal anghish, then yes we can laugh of anything, we must laugh of anything.[...]
To the second question, can we laugh with anyone ? I'll answer: it's hard."
A definition of religion ? A set of beliefs and rules backed up by a more or less elaborate set of rituals, aiming at transcendence and enabling the sublimation of the particular into the collective.
I know that definition is somewhat lacking, and could accept as "religion" lots of things that aren't necessarily considered so. But I do think even with some of these it would still work. I do think the french Third Republic was as much a religious system as it was a political one, if it helps get things clearer.
One thing that keeps me thinking: why is it that there is no form of humour offensive to secularism the way there is to other religious positions ?
Sorry about the use of "Mr" if it hurt. A bad habit of mine.
Remembered some interesting reading on the matter of soul attribution, or denial, can be found in lots of jesuit's journals of the renaissance period. Don't know where to point at for english materials, sadly.
Anticorium: sorry for the name choice trouble.
All right spent evening talking about this with people from the french INALCO, and it seems that to most of the students, whatever country they were from, the image of the US righ wing being mildly to deeply religious, and its left wing in majority ranging from agnostic to atheist seems deeply rooted.
I think there IS a deep rooted image problem to fight off.
As for humour at the expense of religion, I'd say as long as it's not done in order to harm I'm all for it. I'd like to properly quote Pierre Desproges on the subject, but I'm not good enough for a good english translation, so I'll leave it in french for now and try to deliver an english version later:
"Peut-on rire de tout ? Peut-on rire avec tout le monde ?
A la première question, je répondrai oui sans hésiter. S’il est vrai que l’humour est la politesse du désespoir, s’il est vrai que le rire sacrilège blasphématoire que les bigots de toutes les chapelles taxent de vulgarité et de mauvais goût, s’il est vrai que ce rire-là peut parfois désacraliser la bêtise, exorciser les chagrins véritables et fustiger les angoisses mortelles, alors oui, on peut rire de tout, on doit rire de tout. [...]
A la deuxième question, peut-on rire avec tout le monde ? Je répondrai : c’est dur."
Looking at the situation, from both countries and perspective, I notice a disquieting increase in the pattern of community compartmentalization, or at least that's the way I perceive it.
Talking about proselitism: isn't anti-religious humour a twisted form of non-religious proselitism itself ? At its lowest point.
Maybe not everytime.
Sometimes I fear there's a kind of distrust, even contempt, ingrained in environmental non-religiosity. As if religion was felt a barbarous thing of the past best left forgotten.
I shared with a friend the address to Making Light. He enjoyed and respected the place until he read the Things I believe thread, at which point he told me he hadn't realized Ms Hayden was a religious person. It was not that much the comtempt in his voice as much as the realization I had had analogous, if far less violent, feelings that hurt me.
There's also the "Gros bon ange" and "Ti bon ange" in Voodoo as far as having two ouls is concerned (I was about to use the word dual, then realised how unfitting it was).
Thanks for the Slate article Mr Muncey, it made fascinating reading.
Of women and souls
One of the soulless mythos I had trouble to track down and figure in my youth... Now the net made it real easy to find pertinent info on the matter...
Disturbed by the name "Fraternal Order of Police
Pennsylvania State Lodge" while reading the article, I couldn't but picture a secret society of some kind, I went to check their site
Now don't know why, but(scroll down svp)that NO DONUTS: Culinary Cops book project really makes me feel an awkward prescient glimpse of world domination conspiracies...
And there's no doubt in my mind that, with the Almighty's blessings and hard work, that we will succeed in our mission.
Is that only strange for me that he's waiting for god to actually do the hard work ?
Mr Kleiman, sorry if it was taken the wrong way, it was just a shameless attempt at wallowing in attention, and well, a sort of joke... I'm no good at this seems.
Speaking of anti-US prejudice among Europeans, well, what can I say, the problem is all too real. Just an hour ago I had a quarrel with, of all people, my parents because they just wouldn't admit their view on the subject was not only a mish-mash of easy clichés which couldn't withstand the confrontation whith facts, but also an insult to intelligence in general... After re-reading Orwell's "Notes on Nationalism", following your advice, I can only say I felt very depressed. It's strange the way things have developed here, the speed at wich the post 9/11 general love tuned upside down on the old hatred substratum. Not that the thing became universal, but it's certainly become general, polluting a lot of venues that had been doing good, or at least benn going smooth, until then.
Another reason for which I resent the neocons' policies. And the political situation in my own country, which is not really helping, let's face it.
Mr Leader, about Vietnam... Well, we hadn't done that much better in Indochine just before... Don't know if I have to, or even can, add "thankfully".
Can't believe I had forgotten about Henry V ! Will have to go at the library tomorrow.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 22 |
Total: 22 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Electrolite by MDČ:
Show all comments by MDČ.