Inquiries

[jhavelikes]

“Meat eaters face dissonance whether it results from inconsistency (“I eat meat; I don’t like to hurt animals”), aversive consequences (“I eat meat; eating meat harms animals”), or threats to self image (“I eat meat; compassionate people don’t hurt animals”). The present work proposes that there are a number of strategies that omnivores adopt to reduce this dissonance including avoidance, dissociation, perceived behavioral change, denial of animal pain, denial of animal mind, pro-meat justifications, reducing perceived choice, and actual behavioral change.”

Efforts to overcome vegetarian-induced dissonance among meat eaters | http://ift.tt/1q1mZER | November 12, 2015 at 10:41PM (via jhavelikes)

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The Cultural Appropriation of a Chinese Masterpiece

“It is interesting to realize the level of confusion in the West surrounding the famous Chinese author Wéikèduō Yǔguǒ [维克多雨果] (known in the West as Victor Hugo) and his most famous work, known in the West as “Les Miserables”. There appears to be a widespread belief that he was French and that the text originally described events in the city of Paris.

It was in fact originally set in the early stages of the White Lotus Rebellion, a Chinese anti-Manchu uprising that occurred during the Qing Dynasty.

The massacre of young soldiers described in the musical originally described the systematic program of pacification after the Lotus Rebellion in Wéikèduō’s text.

“Bugaoxing ren,” considered a Chinese classic, if an obscure one, was discovered by the French and closely translated as a French text describing that country’s revolution following the ransack of the Summer Palace in 1860 by a joint French and English force during the Second Opium War. The text was discovered and taken back to France by the French general Charles Cousin-Montauban, count of Palikao, after being alerted to the text’s value by his Chinese porter.

In the words of Wéikèduō Yǔguǒ following the pillage of the Summer Palace and reworking of his text, “I hope that a day will come when France, delivered and cleansed, will return this booty to despoiled China. Meanwhile, there is a theft and two thieves.”

The Summer Palace is long destroyed and sits in ruins as a monument to the humiliation the Chinese people faced in the 19th century. But perhaps we can remember Wéikèduō Yǔguǒ as a true Chinese patriot, rather than placing him among the greatest enemies of his people, who stole his work and humiliated his homeland.”

[protigone-blog]

The origin of the word ‘gullible’

Did you know that the word gullible comes from the British General Zachary Gullible? While fighting Napoleonic forces in Spain, General Gullible captured what appeared to be a French scout, who promptly revealed the whereabouts of his country’s main force in the region. The location was, of course a trap. Most of General Gullible’s men were killed and he was captured. When the news got back to Britain, the press reaction was scathing. The name Gullible became synonymous with ‘one who is easily fooled.’

[protigone-blog]

Liberty as self-definition

One of my favorite lines from any American court case:

“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

– Planned Parenthood v. Casey

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I am naturally oriented toward my world, ignoring myself. I only know that by experience I can think the past; my memory is not known to me by being seized directly as an operation. My reference to the past is not my work. I receive certain memories that are given to me. I am therefore not a spirit who dominates and deploys time, but a spirit at the disposition of some powers, the nature of which it does not know. I never know what I deserve, whether I am just or unjust. There is a way that I am simply given to myself, and not a principle of myself.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

[protigone-blog]

Different persons growing up in the same language are like different bushes trimmed and trained to take the shape of identical elephants. The anatomical details of twigs and branches will fulfill the elephantine form differently from bush to bush, but the overall outward results are alike.

W.V.O. Quine, Word and Object

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Meta-book recommendations

Book recommendations if you find yourself inside a book with nothing to read:

The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, by Emmanuel Goldstein

A General History of Labyrinths, by Silas Haslam

Robber Baron: The Rise of the Thunder Family from Terror of the North to the Kingdom's Most Respected Barony, by Deacon Dick Thunder

Heavy Game in the Western Himalayas, by Colonel Sebastian Moran

The Tales of Qi, a Chinese classic

Analysis of History by Bronso of Ix

Walking in the Koom Valley, by Eric Wheelbrace

I-I, an I-Novel, by Jiko Yasutani

Advanced Ocular Science, by Dr. Georgina Orwell

The Collected Poems of William Ashbless

The Emperor Over the Sea, by C.S. Lewis

The Torture Commissioned by the Emperor for the Good of the People by Anna Comnena

You and Your Planets, by Gail Andrews

Wales - Birth of a Republic, by Zephania Jones

[protigone-blog]

“That Action Concerns Me”

In the past 5 minutes, about 1,251 people were born. Of those, 231 wereborn in India, 158 were born in China, 64 were born in Nigeria, 43 wereborn in Pakistan, 42 were born in Indonesia and 41 were born in the United States.

Those 41 will have incredible privilege over the 538 children mentioned above (not to mention many of the other 713 children born in the last five minutes). They must not be raised to think that this good fortune is something they earned that these other children didn’t. They must see fixing the world as their obligation.

When I hear people talk about taking care of their own first and letting the rest of the world take care of itself, I wonder if these people see the world as 41 children besieged in a castle, with 1,210 trying to storm the gates to save themselves. These people fail to understand that, as John Donne said, whenever a child is born, “that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which is my head too, and ingraffed into that body, whereof I am a member,” the body being the whole of humanity.

You cannot hide inside castle walls with your 41 children because you are part of mankind. It is as if you are on both sides of the wall and, whatever is happening on the other side, it is happening to you.

This doesn’t mean we give up everything we have, for we owe obligations to ourselves as well. But we have to recognize that we can’t draw a line in the sand and pretend that the people on the other side don’t exist. When genocide occurs, it is as if it is happening to you. When famine occurs, your children are starving. When criminal gangs are threatening the lives of children in San Pedro Sula, it is as if they were in your city, threatening your family.

What would you do to save your child from a criminal gang? To save your sister from being caught up in a genocide in Africa? Are the people who we fail to help any less people?

[protigone-blog]

Spinoza, Bayle, and Tragic Absurdity

Pierre Bayle, the French philosopher, mocked Baruch Spinoza’s belief that there was a fundamental unity to all creatures within the whole of God, suggesting that Spinoza’s metaphysical system would turn the statement that “The Germans have killed ten thousand Turks” into the statement that “God modified into Germans has killed God modified into ten thousand Turks.”

I think Spinoza would agree completely with Bayle‘s understanding of his system. But I find it strange that Bayle thinks that this undermines Spinoza. If anything, it highlights the tragedy and absurdity of one person deciding to needlessly take the life of another. Because such an action is based in a terrible misunderstanding of what we are and of our relation to the whole.

When Thomas Jefferson keeps slaves at Monticello, he enslaves himself. When Donald Trump rails against Syrian refugees, he leaves himself to languish as a small child in a refugee camp. When FDR turns back the SS St. Louis from our nation’s shores, he sends himself back to die as a Jew in Poland.

This system doesn’t mean that we should never act with violence. One should stop another person who needlessly acts to harm others, with force if need be. But in doing so, you should recognize that you act against a being that you share an identity with in a very real way; you act against yourself to save yourself. Such a principle might make people think twice before harming another person through action or inaction, even if at the end of the day it is deemed necessary.

[protigone-blog]

The Land of Oz and Gender Theory

*spoiler alert*

It’s somewhat odd how little thought has been given by modern gender theorists to L. Frank Baum’s 1904 book The Land of Oz, in which a young boy goes out into the world to find the missing Princess Ozma and discovers that he *is* in fact the Princess Ozma, transformed by magic.

A passage from the ending:

“At this exquisite vision Tip’s old comrades stared in wonder for the space of a full minute, and then every head bent low in honest admiration of the lovely Princess Ozma. The girl herself cast one look into Glinda’s bright face, which glowed with pleasure and satisfaction, and then turned upon the others. Speaking the words with sweet diffidence, she said:

‘I hope none of you will care less for me than you did before. I’m just the same Tip, you know; only—only—’

“Only you’re different!” said the Pumpkinhead; and everyone thought it was the wisest speech he had ever made.”

[protigone-blog]

Schopenhauer’s Failure

The story of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer is, as regards the Jewish people, a story of profound failure to measure up to his own ideals. The same man who wrote this:

“This thou art! Whoever is able to say this to himself, with regard to every being with whom he comes in contact, with clear knowledge and firm inward conviction, is certain of all virtue and blessedness, and is on the direct road to salvation.”

also wrote this:

“Ahasverus the Wandering Jew is the personification of the whole Jewish race…nowhere at home and nowhere strangers…asserting its Jewish nationality with unprecedented stubbornness, living parasitically on other nations…The best way to end the tragic comedy is by intermarriage between Jew and gentile…Ahasverus will be buried and…in a century, the chosen people will not know where their abode was…They are and remain a foreign, oriental race.”

So ‘This thou art!’ … unless ‘this’ is a Jew. It’s a shame that a person can have such a beautiful thought and fail to apply it in such a thoughtless, ignorant way.