Knowledge as Status

This kind of thing frustrates me:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303901504577460770904124192.html

Click the link and it'll take you to an article called "A House to Look Smart In: Old-School Reading Rooms Stage Grand Return; No Books? Firms Will Pick, Style"

It's an article about hedge-fund managers, Hollywood moguls, and technology executives spending a bunch of money to have someone design and stock old-fashioned reading rooms and libraries in their sparkling new houses. By a bunch I mean anything from $30,000 to $150,000 or more, even upwards of $20 million.

Here's my beef: It's openly and only a status symbol. One that suggests the presence of knowledge because it bears the accoutrements of knowledge.

It's a celebration of money and knowledge coming together, where Knowledge qua Knowledge is simply an ornament, or an affirmation of monetary success. Typically I'm all about affirmations. I love affirming things, especially difficult things like death and diversity of opinion.

This type of affirmation, however, burns me. My skin physically heats to the point of sweating, even in an air-conditioned building on a cool day.

And it's because of several things:

1. The clientele
2. The vendors (or rather, the enablers) 
3. It continues the same misunderstanding that's been rampant in quasi-intellectual society since that disastrous Cartesian Moment (I think therefore I am / Cogito ergo sum).

Allow me to explain these, in reverse order.

3.) The Cartesian Moment, a topic which Michel Foucault addresses in his 1981 lectures on the Hermeneutics of the Subject, is a relic of 17th Century Moralism (or Rationalism, I'm not sure of the real genre). To steal Foucault's argument - which, if self-reflection achieves what it's supposed to, we would see is both true and rampantly ignored - the "Cartesian moment" obliterated the personal spiritual meaning of the "Delphic prescription of gnōthi seauton" or, rather "Know yourself." Foucault argues that "Know yourself" had two inherent meanings, both of which the Greeks understood, and which through the centuries came to mean less and less, until Descartes successfully eradicated the second. They are:

• Know who you are
• Care for who you are

By focusing only on "Knowing" who they are, people eventually come to rely on basic emotional responses to life events to inform their self-reflexive awareness. They become passionately attuned to fleeting social movements (a sense of belonging), aggressively invested in economic wealth (a sense of personal security), and catastrophically defensive when their ideas of happiness and security are challenged (a sense of longing accompanied by unhappiness). Those are my observations. I haven't read enough of Hermeneutics to know whether Foucault identifies similar traits, and I admit they are grossly over-generalized but that does not dismiss them. I call upon the reader to recall moments where he or she has encountered such people as above, and then recall whether or not that person 1.) had an emotional breakdown and 2.) learned from that emotional breakdown.

So, in other words, when people become obsessed with Knowledge qua Knowledge, they tend to ignore the more important and esoteric trait that comes from investigating, analyzing, and finding insight apart from knowledge: Wisdom. 

Their love of Knowledge dismisses the more difficult task of learning from it.

2.) The vendors, or rather the designers, thinkers and architects who specialize in providing these services. I'm angry at them out of a sense of loyalty. These people are supposed to uphold what they profess, and if they profess art, learning, insight, literature or even the belief that appearances reflect intentions, they should know better than to sell mere gestures to those things. 

Because to me, as I both admit and ignore the limitations of my authority, these libraries are simply gestures. They're suggestions. Decorations. Vestigial limbs of a neo-canonical past. They're the beacon of intent, looking to the fruits of emotional labor and relegating them to the loathsome position of the Artist in Supplication: begging for the approval of the rich and famous. They're the standing ovation to a one-way street where contemporary wealth deems itself entitled to share in legacies of greatness while forgoing the labors that founded those legacies.

An artist, philosopher, or artist-philosopher would know this, and would do one of the following three things, respectively: 

1. Reject it in form
2. Argue against it in prose
3. Both of the above, with varying degrees of success, usually posthumous

These vendors, as far as I can tell, do none of these things. They may find their work fulfilling, and for that I congratulate them. But I do not want to share their company. They are at least aware enough that they may, one day, want to share mine - and for that I also congratulate them - but the flattery will not be returned.

1.) The clientele. As far as the two former arguments have prepared you for my attack on the clientele, I'll say only this: By turning knowledge and wisdom into a status symbol, they respond to contemporary artists, philosophers and artist-philosophers in the best way they can: economically.

They have money, which means they have power. And when that power is applied to things like this, it convinces the broader public that you must have one to have the other.

It exhausts me to say it and so I say it wearily, but this is not the case.

Revelations and epiphanies - real ones - are not a privilege afforded to "wealth." They can come from anywhere and everywhere, and they usually come from gestures to something even broader than knowledge. 

They come from gestures toward Love. Real, undefinable love. It surprises and terrifies, comforts and admonishes. But it is constant, ethereal. It is, in almost every instance, the driving force behind the pages hidden in these libraries. 

I say that because I've learned to say it. And I've learned to say it because I've observed its interactions among the people whom I say I love. And when I write things like this, I see many of their faces behind my own words. 

It is because I love them that I write, so if they read my words and they take offense to them, I ask them to remember this, my exhortation:

gnōthi seauton

There is truth in these words. It does not come easily. Neither does Love. If you would fight for the love of another, fight for the love of yourself as well, and you will know truth.

-M.N. Shiplet

**Note:
For a great example of someone who understands both aspects of gnōthi seauton, see Anne-Marie Slaughter's recent article in The Atlantic, "Why Women Still Can't Have It All". Particularly her wholesome support for the finding in Bronnie Ware's book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, in which the most frequent regret was: "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me."


This, of course, on top of her adamant belief that leaving Washington for her family was the right choice, a choice for which I have the deepest admiration.

What pettiness is this?
What miscommunication?
I said my peace clearly,
And believed it was understood.

But a political decoy appeared:
Attacked from within the party,
using a superior's name as its fire.

What motive is this?
What goal to be achieved?

Make an example of me --
Defensive cowardice, I see it.
I beat it with a worded glance:
To make a point.

I wish it weren't necessary
Maybe I could help?
As if I weren't helping in the first place.

The conversation was rigged,
But I knew your weakness.
It was simple:
You forgot to look for mine.

If you had, you'd have seen
A simple futility in the moment that occurred --
The wedding airstrike --

I want to be the best,
And I'll bend the rules to make it happen.
Flimsy as they are.

This is my public confession.
Because I have nothing to lose.
My hands are my own.
They were given to me:
I asked boldly for what I already had.
I couldn't see it by myself,
So it was given to me.
There is always more, some unknown depth.

I don't hold my fate.
It plays into too many other hands.
I can shape it.
I can stop asking why.
I can leave it on a sidewalk.

Without too much to bear,
The deeds become themselves:
Freely formed and left to float
As trust upon the breeze.
The treetops envious.
They see up close,
What I can choose to see from above.
There is death in this vision.

So I confess:
I cannot say what would show
That which cannot be told.
The rhythm is too subtle.
The language too diverse.

Simplicity is eternity.
A binary system that makes us choose.
Laughing because it knows death cares about the journey too.
Which is why I say it and it isn't beautiful.
There are no Greeks. No French, Germans or Irish.
No sexes. No sexualities. Races or bigotries.
This is only my confession.
It was given to me.

Selective Memory 

My imperfect mind pushes you into abstraction. 

To think of you as you were then as how

You are now strains my grasp on what is. 

My senses betray my feelings as I 

Grope for an image of you that can 

Be placed in the past with gladness

Instead of regret. And I make 

Amends with myself as I 

Remember as I choose. 

But this morning something 

Slipped through the sieve. 

I stood by my window and 

Watched the midsummer 

Sunrise shine life over the 

Earth and my thoughts were

Only of You. 

Insights from the Trail

Went for a run in the woods this morning. Here’s what I saw:

It’s possible to step lightly and quickly enough to leave no trace, in dirt and sand, even when they’re wet.

It’s also possible to come within a few inches of a foraging robin, simply by running barefoot (if you’re both quick and silent).

Stone could teach us a hefty lesson in stubbornness, only to turn around and astonish us with its volatility. Between grip and slip, in situ and in-molten-flight, stone has us beat (until we demand it be self-aware).

A 45-foot tall tree, with a trunk 4 feet in diameter, is not only impressive, but tragic. Its strength is obvious, but its stability is hidden and therefore forgotten. These trees stand ageless and serene, but only until they become an obstacle and their wood deemed less desirable than a tree of similar stature from across the country.

A freight train may shake and scar the earth as it passes, but a hawk’s shadow through the canopy sends fearful chills of admiration down my spine.

In less technologically “developed” countries, one must be either very powerful or very stupid to care as little about leaving a trail as mountain-bikers.

Nature has mastered the art of tension between silence and cataclysm. Humanity has mastered the art of drowning out those tensions in favor of numbing itself to those cataclysms. 

That’s all for now. It was only a 4 mile run.

“Survival, with honor, that outmoded and all-important word, is as difficult as ever and as all-important to a writer. Those who do not last are always more beloved since no one has to see them in their long, dull, unrelenting, no-quarter-given-and-no-quarter-received, fights that they make to do something as they believe it should be done before they die. Those who die or quit early and easy and with every good reason are preferred because they are understandable and human. Failure and well-disguised cowardice are more human and more beloved.”

—	Ernest Hemingway, via The Paris Review, The Art of Fiction No. 21 (1958) These particularly haunting words would become even more so three years later when Hemingway takes his own life, like his father before him.

From a Work in Progress

…And so the window shatters, and our eyes downturned, we hear the twinkling glass and we see the still-rocking stone, and we come to a stop, whispering a curse to the breeze for its chill…

Idiosyncratic Writerly Complaint: The Hanging Preposition

Doubtless encountered by anyone who’s ever thought of ending a sentence with “with” or “in” or “at,” and typically met with the pontific response, “It’s improper to end a sentence with a preposition,” this rule has persisted through nearly 4 centuries of English prose with firm, though somewhat elitist, authority. 

That is, until Henry Hitchings conducted exhaustive research into the formation and evolution of the language and in one swift revelation showed the rule to be nothing more than an unchallenged quirk. The progenitor? 

John Dryden.

To some this may be nothing new. In the linked Wikipedia page above it even marks him as the first man in English to object to the hanging preposition, but claims he gave no rationale to his preference. Hitchings found that rationale.

Dryden, like Milton before him, worked fastidiously to ensure his language was not only influenced by, but also mimetic of the Latin constructions he learned in grade school. In his mind, the more easily and accurately a text could transition between English and Latin translations, losing as little of its original meaning as possible, the better. 

In the 1670s this was a powerful claim, and one Dryden did not take lightly. In fact, he aimed the brunt of his attacks at rival poet and playwright Ben Jonson’s frequent habit of ending his lines prepositionally. And thanks to Dryden’s tremendous influence over the literary community of the day, none challenged him, even as Latin was already fading from its place as the language of the elite, the informed.

The fact that it’s held fast till today, however, is completely anachronistic. Granted, in daily speech it’s rare to find someone who still holds to the convention, but in writing it’s prolific (likely due to grammarians who teach it without knowing where it came from). It stands out less on the page, simply because the ways we speak and the ways we write have become so disconnected that it’s a real achievement to have written something that reads well in both.

But as soon as you hear someone’s rigid adherence to Dryden’s dictum, as soon as it’s spoken, one word pops to mind: Archaic.

It’s safe to say that English has progressed beyond the need to measure up to Latin for people to take it seriously, which means it’s also progressed beyond the need for such outdated conventions.

Don’t believe me? Try these on for size:

- “The world in which we live is a great place in which to learn.”

- “The world we live in is a great place to learn.”

 Let’s remember why we write things down. If it’s for posterity, then for the sake of the people who wrote it, let’s read it. If it’s to bend the conventions of language to your aesthetic will (cough*Dryden*cough), then show the same initiative, and break those conventions in an informed way.

Also, check out Hitchings’ book. It’s a great read, even if it may be a bit dry.

The Language Wars: A History of Proper English

To Suffer and To Savor

Sing of Passion 

Almost unquenchable flame 

That I follow to the earth’s ends

With returns ever diminishing. 

For you I yearn but your heat 

Sears to the touch or you

Crumble into ash. 

The pursuit has been the only prize. 

Sing of Bliss. 

Cool fountain from the mountain dell

Flowing crisply across ageless stone

Dwelling for a time under 

Outstretched arms of pine and poplar. 

You let me wallow in your waters and 

I share you, eagerly, with the world. 

Passion and Bliss. 

Betwixt are my emotions. 

Behind are my dreams. 

"Self-terrorized, fear-haunted, alert at every hand to meet and battle back the anticipated aggressions of his environment, which are primarily the reflections of the uncontrollable impulses to acquisition within himself, the giant of self-achieved independence is the world's messenger of disaster, even though, in his mind, he may entertain himself with humane intentions." - Joseph Campbell (1949)

No change or advance in technology can truly alter humanity's crisis with itself.

From the days up to and surrounding Homer, the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Saxons, Anglo-Normans and Anglo-Saxons, and Biblical events; from the Chaucerian colloquial schism, to the Renaissance, Reformation and Post-Reformation England, the Enlightenment, the Romantics, Transcendentalists, Realists, Modernists, Gothic Revivalists, Post-Modernists, Surrealists, and Post-Colonialists (however loosely those terms apply) - All of them, to some degree or another, have dealt with what Faulkner so acutely characterized in his Nobel Banquet speech as “the human heart in conflict with itself.”

In every technological revolution in recent human history there have been forces of acceptance and resistance: the former claiming progress and broadened audiences as a vehicle for good, and the latter claiming a love of tradition and preservation of the current standards of excellence as the same. Either way, the technological advance occurred and, in a way, both forces were preserved by it. How else should we know that either existed at all?

As a fine example take the Oral Tradition, a mode of artistic communication shared by all societies which participate in Art as a cultural entity (at least to the extent that my experience has shown me). Even as those communities belabor the death of this tradition with the advent of writing, they nonetheless continue it, in whatever diminished form they accept, by reading these stories aloud. Or, as is the case for the most dedicated preservationists, outright mastery of that ancient art, which in their time, relative to when the work was originally produced, will largely say more about the ability to memorize and perform (or their pompousness) than the work of art itself. Such is the Bard’s tale - not of his stories, but of himself. He is the livery of his art.

So, back to today, what of the shift to digital media? What would happen if, in a purely digital world, a cataclysmic electromagnetic pulse were to wipe out all stored knowledge?  I’m sure the societies that decided to put their works on paper felt the same about fire. And they were certain of the destructive powers of fire. They dealt with it every day. It was necessary for their survival. In that respect, how many of us can claim to have experienced an electromagnetic pulse? How many of us can be certain that a cataclysmic EMP is anything other than theoretical? Or at the very least, require something so catastrophic that we would decide, as a species, not to pursue our own annihilation? Rather, just leave it to the heavens - the Sun - to blast us with a gigantic solar flare. If we’re lucky, someone will have developed a technology that allows us to survive it.

So, really, without trying to sound callous - why worry? Why not embrace whatever new audiences these emergent technologies provide and leave the consequences to a history that’s being written with each word, graphic, infographic, tweet, instagram, Something Drawn, blog post, tumblr update, ebook, or for those lucky few, Printed Page that hits the market? We write our future just as fervently as we preserve our past - so long as the act is carried out it will be preserved, or else bear itself and its creator forward in the attempt. 

Of course, these views can be seen as idealistic, which for some may even discredit them. Such is their privilege. At least the conversation shall continue.