He Dreams of a Post-Partisan World
In the TV miniseries adaptation of the play Angels in America, the city law-clerk protagonist at one point pronounces that politics have transplanted religion in America, and in fact have replaced it. He says this with zeal, as if it were emancipation.
It pains me to think about that, but pains me more to consider just how correct (if depressing) an observation it is.
Lines have not been drawn, but cut into the tree bark of North American society as if with a pocket knife. You are either one thing or another – you cannot be a third; this is a very American pronouncement. The United States has traditionally always been about distilling conflict into two polarized Hatfield/McCoy entities. You are either Democrat or Republican. You are either a capitalist or a socialist. But this language, particularly over the last few years, has seeped into Canadian political (and trickled down to social) culture. Partisan hackery, demagoguery, journalists berated by right-wing think-tanks into believing that they suffer from left-wing bias, and the left ineffective as ever at conveying any sort of unified idea of what the hell it’s trying to say.
During the last federal election, our Prime Minister commented that “ordinary Canadians” couldn’t sympathize with pleas for restored funding from arts communities when said artists were, as he put it, always seen celebrating at taxpayer-funded galas. There was a brilliance in this (bald lie of an) accusation, as it was obviously never intended to promote discussion. There was no debate intended to be had; the intent was to rile the artists, causing them to get angry and speak-out publicly, with the consequence being that “ordinary Canadians” (ie. supporters of Harper or those already on the political fence) who saw this behaviour had their suspicions confirmed: artists are ungrateful. Art is a drain on national resources. How dare they ask for more of our hard-earned money (which “ordinary Canadians” spend liberally on movies, music, televisions…). The nerve.
This is a perfect example of how the dark science of politics have usurped the dark magic of religion. You are either a follower of the ministry or you are a shameless sinner. A “neo-con” or a “fiberal”. The role of partisan perversion in the distortion of ideas and communication is to conquer the citizenry through division. Demagoguery is an alien-sounding word which, used as an accusation, elicits shrugged shoulders from the general public nowadays. And yet, it perfectly describes what politics have devolved into.
I do not hate religion in itself, nor do I hate politics. Rather it is those treacherous, self-interested few who have the most to gain from either of these pursuits that I do not like and whom I will fight against (if only philosophically) so that they will not achieve power.
Photo: City Hall #2
Miscellany: November 18, 2008
- Ingrid is approaching world domination. Her plaudit-winning reinterpretation of the cover for Cormac McCarthy’s The Road has not only received international online acclaim (Bookninja, The Guardian, Boston Globe), but her work was featured in Sunday’s New York (bloody) Times Book Review. Print and online editions (with the unfortunate misspelling of her last name in the print edition – needless to say this took a little of the shine off of the accolade. They will, however be printing a correction in an upcoming edition and the online version has her name spelled correctly).
- I’ve sent the first revised draft of my novel to a few selected readers. Unofficially looking for feedback and consensus that what I’m doing is worthwhile. Nervous. Anxious. Perhaps as a result of this and other things, I’ve been struck by some interesting what-if’s regarding a new book idea. I must be a masochist. At least it doesn’t hurt.
- I turned 38 on Saturday. I share that day with Ed Asner and Tilda Swinton (they were not in New York, unfortunately – I tried).
- Two films I worked on opened within two weeks of each other. One is a franchise horror film (of the “moral error leads to violent suffering” kind) which traditionally draws massive audiences and box office gold (if not good reviews). The other is (wait for it) a gore-Goth rock opera which is only receiving an eight-theatre release (if not good reviews). They represent what I’ve been working on for the last twelve months. Working in film/TV is “what I do for money”, a distinction I wish I didn’t have to make, save for the fact that the quality stuff (often Canadian) doesn’t pay my rent. It’s a quandary punctuated by background horror-movie funhouse screams.
Gone Fishing…
About The White Squirrel…
It’s funny how you can get used to something as unorthodox as a pure white squirrel.
I had heard of this beast in whispered conversation, but had never seen it until about a year ago. I stopped in my tracks. What. The. Hell…?
Then, last week, I decided to take advantage of the warmer-than-usual weather in Toronto and went to my favourite park to sit and read a book (and eat a croissant). In my peripheral vision, I saw something furry and white moving around the autumn leaves. It was the squirrel. It was foraging just a few feet away from my park bench.
I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
I started thinking: how does a pure white (not Albino, I’m told) squirrel survive? Surely it’s a fatal genetic inheritance which dogs and hawks have naturally preyed upon.
And yet, the white squirrel continued foraging. In fact, it took interest in my croissant and at one point crept below my feet looking for crumbs. I didn’t move: it’s the choice you make when you see something like this. You don’t want to spoil the moment reaching for your cellphone camera.
I posted the photos on my Facebook profile and suddenly people started commenting or sending me messages, some amazed, some shocked. Was this a joke? A missing evolutionary link? Am I that good with Photoshop?
There’s not much I can say. It’s a white squirrel. It lives by its own rules. All I know is that when I went back to the same spot the next day, expecting it to have moved in nomadic squirrel fashion to another part of the park, it was still there.
I wanted to ask it whether it knew what happened to the unicorns or the manticores. It was busy foraging however, so I left it to live its fascinatingly precarious life.
Photo: The White Squirrel of Trinity Bellwoods Park
Photo: A Midnight Speech in November
Photo: Billboard #2
Book Review: Unended Quest, by Karl Popper
“Pfuel was one of those theorists who so love their theory that they forget the purpose of the theory – its application in practice; in his love for theory, he hated everything practical and did not want to know about it. He was even glad of failure, because failure, proceeding from departures from theory in practice, only proved to him the correctness of his theory.”
– Leo Tolstoy, War & Peace, Vol. III, Pt. 1, Chpt. X
My self-guided study in philosophy brought me to Karl Popper this past summer. Yes, another 20th century Austrian (seeing as the last philosopher’s book I reviewed was Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico Philosophicus). Another logician as well, but what’s compelling about Popper is that he did not limit himself to one particular field of study (in his case, science). He was just as passionate and knowledgeable about social dynamics, art, and politics.
Popper approached the long-held observational scientific method with distrust; rather than prove a theory to be correct with empirical evidence, he took inspiration from Einstein’s openness to critique (when he released his theories on relativity) and insisted that falsification was a better method (ie. allowing one’s theory to be refuted by opening it up to the community-at-large for inspection from more angles). This, he argued, protected the world from the success of pseudoscientific “pet theories”. His inspiration for this came from his disenchantment with social and academic institutions of the day which rigidly held the works of Marx and Freud in high esteem.
Allow me to stop here and say the following: there is no way in hell I can sufficiently (to my own or anyone else’s satisfaction) and clearly lay-out the man’s theories, justifications, and *how* he came about his all in what I always hope and aim to be a succinct blog entry. It has taken me a day to revise the above paragraph and I’m still not particularly happy with it.
That said, I found Unended Quest to be a fascinating portrait of a great mind who refuses to stop questioning. His way of thinking about the underpinnings of logic and about systemic, ingrained assumptions in society is nothing short of radical. Under Popper’s means of demarcation such seemingly scientific pursuits as economics, climatology, and even dietetics are left looking like…well, not quackery, but certainly not anything approaching science.
So, yes, feet get stomped on, lines get drawn…and this brings me to what makes a great philosophical treatise: it forces you, whether you like it or not, to recalibrate your assumptions about society. Even if you have fundamental disagreements, you are forced to work hard to justify them. In other words, it’s the perfect way to give your brain a shake (perhaps even your foundations of understanding).
Unended Quest is full of ideas and strong opinions, with the socio-political history of the 20th century as its backdrop. This is a man who lived through two World Wars, whose early experiences as a social worker with neglected children made him fundamentally question the learning process, and who ended up being on a first-name basis with some of the greatest minds of the then-burdgeoning realm of quantum physics (Einstein, Schrödinger, Bohr).
That’s it. That’s all I can write without this becoming a term paper. All I can add to this is that I aim to re-read this book on a yearly basis, which is perhaps the best complement I can pay to an author.
Unended Quest (ISBN: 978-0-415-28590-2), by Karl Popper is available at an independent bookstore near you, or online at any number of vendors.