Anything You Want

[samagon]

Well okay, one more hint. I just rode a motorcycle onto the public sidewalk in front of a major local landmark, then plunged headlong into oncoming traffic for a blocklength, and nobody gave a damn. It was more efficient that way.

Americans really are a bunch of ninnies. We're the Brits of the 21st century. Just figured that I'd throw that out there to inform the next round of debates where aggressive cyclists are concerned.

got any pictures of your bike?

[lockmat]

No hints, except that I leave in three hours. Bye.

This comment made me feel like I'm reading a live account of Mission Impossible or a Borne movie. Made me crack up. I also enjoyed you follow up comment this morning.

[crunchtastic]

we love you long time

[TheNiche]

got any pictures of your bike?

Nope. It was borrowed.

[luciaphile]

How about:

If a place were approaching perfection, we would be able to say that there is something characteristically Texan about its urban form.

Such places will be neighborly without being nosy; dignified without being presentable; have a sense of spaciousness, density notwithstanding; what else will they be? What other qualities of Texans can we interpret and express, make tangible?

strickn posed a question that was sincere, though unrelated to the back-and-forth about which city's medical services district is "better."

None of those Texas virtues, real or imagined, are or ever were perceptible to me in Houston. You need hardly look to the past for anything, and it would suggest something less than full commitment to the future, and your fearsome industry, if you did. I was just looking at Swamplot, at the Brookings Institution's "Global Metro Monitor" rankings, in which Houston compares favorably with metropolitan economies in developing countries; it makes perfect sense.

I notice that the Houston Chronicle immediately drew the same lesson from the Census results -- accelerating population growth and the "mythology of Texas" are not compatible:

http://www.chron.com...sus-1589808.php

An A&M study a few years ago put it this way: by 2030 Texas will have added another DFW, another Houston metro area, another San Antonio metro area; and with the leftovers, another Corpus Christi (or Beaumont-Port Arthur, or Temple-Killeen-Fort Hood ...).

For me, a hard-to-wade-through and never-revisited book that is yet a must-have on any shelf of Texana is John Graves' "Goodbye to a River." {I really should like it given how I feel about dams, but his tone of world-weary boredom -- earned in the war, I know -- didn't engage: tell me how you really feel about taming the Brazos! And he dwelt a little heavily on the theme of how he alone hunts "for the right reasons" -- hunt or don't hunt, with less sanctimony.}

I read it expecting a gentle rumination on nature, Texas' "Sand County Almanac," but found instead it was more a scattershot catalog of the settlement of the river, with story after story of hotheads who came to Texas and their various violent ends and blood feuds.

But I do think he is on to an aspect of our Anglo (more especially Scots-Irish) Texas character, and years of reading historical markers has confirmed me in this view: they came to Texas because they couldn't get along back east, in close proximity with others.

This is a trait that must necessarily be extinct for cities like Houston to work, and I can't pretend it's admirable, though I seem to be a throwback.

Behind everything, there is always an idea or an ideology, even if people can't express it, or it was only crudely imbibed. I think, strickn, the people of Houston have already chosen what is "characteristic" about their "urban form." It was neither organic nor ordained.

[TheNiche]

strickn posed a question that was sincere, though unrelated to the back-and-forth about which city's medical services district is "better."

None of those Texas virtues, real or imagined, are or ever were perceptible to me in Houston. You need hardly look to the past for anything, and it would suggest something less than full commitment to the future, and your fearsome industry, if you did. I was just looking at Swamplot, at the Brookings Institution's "Global Metro Monitor" rankings, in which Houston compares favorably with metropolitan economies in developing countries; it makes perfect sense.

I notice that the Houston Chronicle immediately drew the same lesson from the Census results -- accelerating population growth and the "mythology of Texas" are not compatible:

http://www.chron.com...sus-1589808.php

An A&M study a few years ago put it this way: by 2030 Texas will have added another DFW, another Houston metro area, another San Antonio metro area; and with the leftovers, another Corpus Christi (or Beaumont-Port Arthur, or Temple-Killeen-Fort Hood ...).

For me, a hard-to-wade-through and never-revisited book that is yet a must-have on any shelf of Texana is John Graves' "Goodbye to a River." {I really should like it given how I feel about dams, but his tone of world-weary boredom -- earned in the war, I know -- didn't engage: tell me how you really feel about taming the Brazos! And he dwelt a little heavily on the theme of how he alone hunts "for the right reasons" -- hunt or don't hunt, with less sanctimony.}

I read it expecting a gentle rumination on nature, Texas' "Sand County Almanac," but found instead it was more a scattershot catalog of the settlement of the river, with story after story of hotheads who came to Texas and their various violent ends and blood feuds.

But I do think he is on to an aspect of our Anglo (more especially Scots-Irish) Texas character, and years of reading historical markers has confirmed me in this view: they came to Texas because they couldn't get along back east, in close proximity with others.

This is a trait that must necessarily be extinct for cities like Houston to work, and I can't pretend it's admirable, though I seem to be a throwback.

Behind everything, there is always an idea or an ideology, even if people can't express it, or it was only crudely imbibed. I think, strickn, the people of Houston have already chosen what is "characteristic" about their "urban form." It was neither organic nor ordained.

I find your conclusion as to the motivations underlying Texas emigration to be of personal interest: "because they couldn't get along back east." Sure. That's the boiled down essence of why I've impulsively left Houston for a sometimes lawless post-Communistic third world nation, without business prospects, unable to speak the language or drink the water (which is okay, it turns out, because beer is cheap).

Proximity was not a consideration for me, however. Proximity is simultaneously an amenity and a curse; Texans have always had to weigh town and country, one against the other, within the scope of their means and their desires and the marketplace. I shall do the same here and see what happens. I would suggest that the emigres into Texas might have been a little disgusted at the culture of a settled people, however: absent-minded, unimaginative, and tame. Perhaps they had listened to their fathers' stories about the way that the east had been a generation or two back, and perhaps they felt like they had missed out on something grand and novel.

Add, for myself, that the settled peoples of a 21st century Texas are tethered to a bleak decidedly American existence, to their debts, to the 'American Dream', to constructed material desires mistaken for fulfillment, to an insidious slavery, to a system of banking so tied to government that you cannot tell where the one ends and the other begins. It is as near to a sustainable form of communism as I could ever imagine being achieved in the history of human civilization. And so rather than that they work to live, they live to work. And they work. They needn't even ask why, or for whom. They work.

I have fled that, exchanged it for chaos, for unbridled capitalism (a form of which the most ardent Libertarian cannot fathom, and that they would shirk if they understood its implications), for swindlers and hustlers, for simple earthy pleasures, for excitement, for an occasional sampling of terror.

Texas will get along just fine without me, but even the Texas that my father knew is long gone; and that Texan culture that my ancestors knew eight generations ago, it was erased by annexation, a civil war, the New Deal, WW2, and electronic media. The open range has been fenced and cross-fenced, the rivers dammed; the culture similarly hemmed-in, safe, comfortable, blind, and docile.

[Ross]

Enjoy expat life, Niche, it's a thrill a minute. So far, I've spent over 12 years overseas, and enjoyed every experience. From being a teen in early 70's London, to being a "left behind" when all but 4 of us were evacuated during civil unrest in West Africa, to being somewhat awed by the sheer opulence of the Persian Gulf countries, it was all good. The Pyramids, Macchu Picchu, the Acropolis, all those sights, and someone else paid the bill. Having said that, Texas was always home, the place I returned to. The Eagles were wrong in Hotel California, Texas is where you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

[TheNiche]

I should add for the sake of honest and because I don't have any particular need to care:

If physical anthropology taught me one thing worth knowing, it was that my Texan ancestors sought out the 'strange', resulting in some unofficial bloodlines. (You can tell from the shape of one's teeth.) The fruit doesn't fall far from the tree.

[TheNiche]

The Eagles were wrong in Hotel California, Texas is where you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

I know. I'll come back eventually, but only when I am content to be docile. America is a good place to be docile. It'll be a while, I think.

[luciaphile]

I find your conclusion as to the motivations underlying Texas emigration to be of personal interest: "because they couldn't get along back east." Sure. That's the boiled down essence of why I've impulsively left Houston for a sometimes lawless post-Communistic third world nation, without business prospects, unable to speak the language or drink the water (which is okay, it turns out, because beer is cheap).

Well, water will rust your pipes anyway; it was the pop music that I thought might potentially be a dealbreaker.

I should add for the sake of honest and because I don't have any particular need to care:

If physical anthropology taught me one thing worth knowing, it was that my Texan ancestors sought out the 'strange', resulting in some unofficial bloodlines. (You can tell from the shape of one's teeth.) The fruit doesn't fall far from the tree.

Is that a tacit concession to #1983? You are almost certain to return a less free man than when you left ...

If the blandness of your DNA bothers you ("It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me...") go ahead -- tell yourself a story about your teeth. Everybody wants a tincture -- just enough -- of the Other. Like my grandmother, who grew up in the West not all that long after it closed (and no sooner were the Indians gone (or corralled) than people began to romanticize them -- "We miss you!"). All her life she attributed her long silky jet-black hair (which turned snow white in a fever in her early twenties, so we had to take her word on this) to her "Indian blood." Everyone else was content to let her dreamily equivocate on this favorite theme, but with the natural rudeness of a child I tried to pin her down: "Was it your great-grandmother? Great-great-grandmother then? And which tribe? One of the horse cultures you admire -- Comanche maybe?"

Her answer never wavered: she was fairly certain it was the Cherokee...

Of course! The Civilized Tribe -- the upper limit to her exoticism. I only wish I could see it in my cheekbones.

Proximity was not a consideration for me, however. Proximity is simultaneously an amenity and a curse; Texans have always had to weigh town and country, one against the other, within the scope of their means and their desires and the marketplace. I shall do the same here and see what happens. I would suggest that the emigres into Texas might have been a little disgusted at the culture of a settled people, however: absent-minded, unimaginative, and tame. Perhaps they had listened to their fathers' stories about the way that the east had been a generation or two back, and perhaps they felt like they had missed out on something grand and novel.

Add, for myself, that the settled peoples of a 21st century Texas are tethered to a bleak decidedly American existence, to their debts, to the 'American Dream', to constructed material desires mistaken for fulfillment, to an insidious slavery, to a system of banking so tied to government that you cannot tell where the one ends and the other begins. It is as near to a sustainable form of communism as I could ever imagine being achieved in the history of human civilization. And so rather than that they work to live, they live to work. And they work. They needn't even ask why, or for whom. They work....

Texas will get along just fine without me, but even the Texas that my father knew is long gone; and that Texan culture that my ancestors knew eight generations ago, it was erased by annexation, a civil war, the New Deal, WW2, and electronic media. The open range has been fenced and cross-fenced, the rivers dammed; the culture similarly hemmed-in, safe, comfortable, blind, and docile.

"Witness to the total demolition and reconstruction of their environment" is a phrase I read by chance a moment ago. It happened that the writer was referring to the Stalinization of eastern Europe. I don't say it's comparable in kind or degree; it's nothing whatever to do with it, so skip the lecture -- but the words in a different sense express how psychologically jarring I find what has happened to Texas even in my lifetime, and I wonder why others don't find it so. I'm left to conclude there is some flaw in my makeup, that I'm not very adaptable.

And i do know how very fortunate i am, and one thing I am grateful for is that I'm not a man trying to figure out a place in the modern economy. I derailed early, found a guy that I knew -- with the pure cunning of a woman -- would take care of me the rest of my life; so I didn't have to feel I was participating in something I didn't understand. I work half-time in a clerical way merely to ease his mind, in case something should happen to him -- to demonstrate "Look at me! I'm totally employable!" Yeah, right.

(For me, unlike you, too damn many people -- always a curse, never an amenity -- is a major part of it ... I mean, what was the point of all those pills and "procedures"? If we'd known that the void we created was going to be so thoroughly filled -- well, hell -- I want my dead babies back! It's so quiet here, and there's a long road winding in front of me ... Sorry -- too honest? I don't have "any particular need to care," either.)

I have fled that, exchanged it for chaos, for unbridled capitalism (a form of which the most ardent Libertarian cannot fathom, and that they would shirk if they understood its implications), for swindlers and hustlers, for simple earthy pleasures, for excitement, for an occasional sampling of terror.

If you want chaos, and "may you live in interesting times," try America in a few years -- this is 5th century Rome right here.

I know. I'll come back eventually, but only when I am content to be docile. America is a good place to be docile. It'll be a while, I think.

... and where, in time, the creature comforts will come in! They have a frightening power to take the edge off life when you've totally lost your edge: warm beverages, one after another; fancy little shelf-stable foods; footrubs, I-feel-a-draft so I'm going to go choose among five different weights of throw blankets for just the right one... Docility is not without its rewards.

[samagon]

If you want chaos, and "may you live in interesting times," try America in a few years -- this is 5th century Rome right here.

I think considering the climate change we all have to look forward to, living anywhere in will be interesting, not just America.

I'd rather not get into a discussion about the causes of the current changes in our climate, but considering the signs that show the climate scientists predictions and models foretelling our long term climate outlook are coming true, we're in for a wild ride.

[TheNiche]

"Witness to the total demolition and reconstruction of their environment" is a phrase I read by chance a moment ago. It happened that the writer was referring to the Stalinization of eastern Europe. I don't say it's comparable in kind or degree; it's nothing whatever to do with it, so skip the lecture -- but the words in a different sense express how psychologically jarring I find what has happened to Texas even in my lifetime, and I wonder why others don't find it so. I'm left to conclude there is some flaw in my makeup, that I'm not very adaptable.

Is it that you are less adaptable, or perhaps society has adapted to your ilk?

I was born at the brink of the "Stalinization" of Texas. I think that the manifest insanity of the oil boom and the looming reality of an oil bust began to set in by about 1981 or 1982. You can hear it in ZZ Top records if you listen to them in a chronological sequence. And then, with the S&L bust, the hard money was gone and the soft money--the "American Dream" money--took hold. The people shall never again be free, not from the banks, and not from themselves. It is their desires, their greed, and a mechanism that fulfills it; that is what makes the American form of communism feasible is the peoples' implicit consent. We fought a revolution and then a civil war over something more straightforward and less ugly; but we will not do so again over what we have become. We don't even know what we are.

And i do know how very fortunate i am, and one thing I am grateful for is that I'm not a man trying to figure out a place in the modern economy. I derailed early, found a guy that I knew -- with the pure cunning of a woman -- would take care of me the rest of my life; so I didn't have to feel I was participating in something I didn't understand. I work half-time in a clerical way merely to ease his mind, in case something should happen to him -- to demonstrate "Look at me! I'm totally employable!" Yeah, right.

(For me, unlike you, too damn many people -- always a curse, never an amenity -- is a major part of it ... I mean, what was the point of all those pills and "procedures"? If we'd known that the void we created was going to be so thoroughly filled -- well, hell -- I want my dead babies back! It's so quiet here, and there's a long road winding in front of me ... Sorry -- too honest? I don't have "any particular need to care," either.)

One of the lessons that has never been forgotten by the third world, which could never be extinguished by traditional communism, is that children are a more reliable form of social security than is any government. They will tend to one's social needs, but only if they are also responsible for one's fiscal needs. The latter begets an interest in the former.

Other lessons, more pertinent to an architecture forum, are that motorcycles (not bicycles) are a worthwhile solution to America's infrastructure constraints, that entire bathrooms can exist within shower enclosures, and that the only built-in fixture needed within a kitchen is a sink.

If you want chaos, and "may you live in interesting times," try America in a few years -- this is 5th century Rome right here.

No, I don't see it that way, not unless Al Qaeda and Somali pirates are construed to be our Visigoths, our Huns, or our Vandals. Rome had something worth fearing, and it did not fear them enough; Americans have very little worth fearing, yet we are excessively fearful. The biggest threat on our radar would be a naval conflict with China in the South China Sea, which would draw in the Philippines (and its ally, America), Vietnam (and its investment partner, India), and then possibly Malaysia, Taiwan, and Japan. You infer a prelude to a 21st-century dark age: that's how we get there.

But I don't see it happening.

... and where, in time, the creature comforts will come in! They have a frightening power to take the edge off life when you've totally lost your edge: warm beverages, one after another; fancy little shelf-stable foods; footrubs, I-feel-a-draft so I'm going to go choose among five different weights of throw blankets for just the right one... Docility is not without its rewards.

No, no, no. Those things are readily available. I've never lived so well on some days (or so poorly on other days) for so little money.

Docility is not material in nature. One can be poor and docile as easily as one might be a millionaire and also be docile. One can be docile in the third world, too. It is the comfort of one's own kind, the safety that is implied by that circumstance. It is a false sense of security, but perception is reality enough for most people. And then it is a willingness to invest in a community of like individuals, of being manipulated into an insidious entrapment scenario. That is what it means to be docile. If you work hard and try not to break the law, you'll be forever on the cusp of being well-off enough; and never beyond that threshold, because success in that regard would only reset the location of that threshold.

[luciaphile]

I think considering the climate change we all have to look forward to, living anywhere in will be interesting, not just America.

I'd rather not get into a discussion about the causes of the current changes in our climate, but considering the signs that show the climate scientists predictions and models foretelling our long term climate outlook are coming true, we're in for a wild ride.

You are so right, samagon. Nature is destiny and these effects will be much more profound than any of the shifts about which The Niche and I talk past one other (though these things are not unconnected: in particular, America's self-imposed loss of standing in the world and the collapse of our values down to the naked singularity of the almighty dollar, means we must sit on the sidelines of a process we might once have influenced). Only, the result will be a continuing loss of species diversity, thus a less interesting world. But yes, if I am pursued by a tornado that has a personal vendetta against me, that will be interesting.

Hasn't it been unseasonably warm lately? Here, we had not a drop of rain in November for the first time since 1897. A little cold front comes Tuesday.

Of course, some of the manifold climate models project more severe winters, as part of greater overall turbulence, I guess; but more heat trapped in the atmosphere=warmer weather really doesn't seem all that implausible.

[samagon]

You are so right, samagon. Nature is destiny and these effects will be much more profound than any of the shifts about which The Niche and I talk past one other (though these things are not unconnected: in particular, America's self-imposed loss of standing in the world and the collapse of our values down to the naked singularity of the almighty dollar, means we must sit on the sidelines of a process we might once have influenced). Only, the result will be a continuing loss of species diversity, thus a less interesting world. But yes, if I am pursued by a tornado that has a personal vendetta against me, that will be interesting.

Hasn't it been unseasonably warm lately? Here, we had not a drop of rain in November for the first time since 1897. A little cold front comes Tuesday.

Of course, some of the manifold climate models project more severe winters, as part of greater overall turbulence, I guess; but more heat trapped in the atmosphere=warmer weather really doesn't seem all that implausible.

I think the most concerning thing isn't necessarily being chased by a tornado (although when I was a kid I had dreams about being chased by a tornado), but sea level rise. based on current data that has been collected (not just models predicting what will happen, but actual data about what is happening), the climate scientists were wrong. Sea levels are rising at a rate much faster than they had anticipated.

This was released last month:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/nov/28/us-coastal-cities-sea-level-rise

The crux of the article:

Satellite measurements over the last two decades found global sea levels rising 60% faster than the computer projections issued only a few years ago by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

They have some odd numbers, just in that (actually, when I presented the article for my friend who actually is a climate scientist to review, he said the numbers were odd, but the point is accurate), this was his commentary:

IPCC4 in 2007 predicted .6m to 1m sea level rise by 2100, that would be 6mm to10mm/year, current research is saying it is faster than the 2007 predictions at a range of 10-16mm/year so 1-1.6m/century. the old models did not properly compensate for deep cold water convection, the majority of the sea level rise predicted for the next century is actually from thermal expansion not melting ice, about 60%, turns out both have been underestimated. There is more melting, particularly in permafrost and more thermal expansion due to marginally warmer waters being subducted into lower levels in the ocean leaving a marginally steeper temp gradient with the up welled cold water than expected making the energy transfer a bit more efficient than expected.

Then there's stuff like this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/dec/03/climate-change-compensation-doha-talks

basic gist is that some low lying countries that will be adversely affected by sea level rise are wanting compensation from countries like USA. My own commentary on that was that we should send them some FEMA trailers left over from Katrina and call it good

I think we'll be luckier here than in other countries, but we're in for a hell of a ride no matter what.

[TheNiche]

You are so right, samagon. Nature is destiny and these effects will be much more profound than any of the shifts about which The Niche and I talk past one other (though these things are not unconnected: in particular, America's self-imposed loss of standing in the world and the collapse of our values down to the naked singularity of the almighty dollar, means we must sit on the sidelines of a process we might once have influenced). Only, the result will be a continuing loss of species diversity, thus a less interesting world. But yes, if I am pursued by a tornado that has a personal vendetta against me, that will be interesting.

Hasn't it been unseasonably warm lately? Here, we had not a drop of rain in November for the first time since 1897. A little cold front comes Tuesday.

Of course, some of the manifold climate models project more severe winters, as part of greater overall turbulence, I guess; but more heat trapped in the atmosphere=warmer weather really doesn't seem all that implausible.

Nah, I don't really care about climate change. Warmer weather typically aids in building up species diversity, but it's the pattern of rainfall that is the real kicker. Some regions win and some regions lose. Whatever the anthropogenic contribution to climate change, the climate has been changing in absolute terms since the beginning of geologic history. Sometimes it is warmer, sometimes it is cooler, sometimes Texas is under water. That is our geologic heritage, which begat our economic heritage and the climate change that you seem to abhor. Concern over it just seems so senseless in the scope of geologic time. Everything is so new; what is worth preserving? Perhaps our civic architects should preserve construction sites in mid-course if every event and activity is so precious, if we are so self-important.

[luciaphile]

Nah, I don't really care about climate change. Warmer weather typically aids in building up species diversity, but it's the pattern of rainfall that is the real kicker. Some regions win and some regions lose. Whatever the anthropogenic contribution to climate change, the climate has been changing in absolute terms since the beginning of geologic history. Sometimes it is warmer, sometimes it is cooler, sometimes Texas is under water. That is our geologic heritage, which begat our economic heritage and the climate change that you seem to abhor. Concern over it just seems so senseless in the scope of geologic time. Everything is so new; what is worth preserving? Perhaps our civic architects should preserve construction sites in mid-course if every event and activity is so precious, if we are so self-important.

You're in a combative mood, pen pal. Is Dodge City not agreeing with you today? I know we're of two minds on this subject -- I've heard you expatiate on growing citrus in Siberia, was it? -- but if you think I only "seem to abhor" climate change I apologize for my own lack of clarity. Of course I regard yours as the extreme and not the common-sense view; much like someone I heard "lecture" once twenty years ago, who reassured us that there was no such thing as pollution, since it was all just a re-shuffling of chemicals in the environment. But leaving aside whether or not it is desirable: for people to deliberately, unidirectionally, and radically alter the atmosphere in a couple of centuries has to be classed as humanism run amok. It's your side that has no self-esteem problem.

Our other topic interests me more, but I'm very distracted and will have to revisit it later, sorry.

Edited December 7, 2012 by luciaphile

[TheNiche]

If ever my views should fall within the spectrum of common sense, then they would not be worth expressing.

In this matter,my conflicting sense of humanism and nihilism are in agreement. The climate is changing due to humanity's economic development. Productive capacity (and the political stability afforded by globalism) will prepare humans to adapt successfully. But then the nihilist in me says that they'll adapt or die, just like any species, that it really doesn't matter which, and that preserving the tradition of the living is absurd because there is also a tradition of dying, and of extinction. What happens happens.

[Ross]

I've thought for some time that any money spent fighting climate change is wasted. Better to spend on adaptation, which has a better chance of working.

[luciaphile]

... the climate has been changing in absolute terms since the beginning of geologic history. Sometimes it is warmer, sometimes it is cooler, sometimes Texas is under water. That is our geologic heritage, which begat our economic heritage and the climate change that you seem to abhor. Concern over it just seems so senseless in the scope of geologic time.

If ever my views should fall within the spectrum of common sense, then they would not be worth expressing.

In this matter,my conflicting sense of humanism and nihilism are in agreement. The climate is changing due to humanity's economic development. Productive capacity (and the political stability afforded by globalism) will prepare humans to adapt successfully. But then the nihilist in me says that they'll adapt or die, just like any species, that it really doesn't matter which, and that preserving the tradition of the living is absurd because there is also a tradition of dying, and of extinction. What happens happens.

We're still on this then. All right.

I am strictly backward-looking (hence conservative -- no matter how degraded things may be, there is always something I wish to see saved). I'm not able to think about the future, never have, with the single exception that, morbidly, sometimes, I think of my son as an old man dying, long after I am dead, and perhaps he is alone, and I can hardly bear it. (And would you believe, that thought first came to me looking at him in the hours after he was born -- there's nothing my neuroticism can leave untouched, but there may have been plummeting hormones involved as well.)

So, first thing this morning, I casually raised the issue -- well, after a decent interval -- with my moral and intellectual superior, whose work you would definitely categorize in your "why bother?" file if you don't already object to it on dittohead grounds (I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt, but what you value -- is a continually moving target to me): "So, uh ... all human endeavor's pretty meaningless in the scope of geologic time, hmm?"

Him: "Of course."

"Then why do what you do?"

Him: "Because one respects the time frame one lives in, it would be ridiculous not to."

Then hedonism is a legitimate response, though no more so than any other?

Him: "Actually less, as it's not a very good strategy."

By which he meant, as always, reproductive strategy.

Which reminds me: you thought I was referring to military threats to American dominance. Of course I wasn't. {How stupid do you think I am? No, don't answer.) Rome fell due to internal weakening, specifically, a fertility crisis: people got too lazy and decadent to procreate. My limited understanding is that the Romans, believing the Visigoths to be the best of the lot, gave them Gaul in the hope they would keep out the others; and further, that as early as the1st or second centuries (no time to look anything up, sorry) they passed laws to try to incentivize childbirth. Historians are too precious to say "Rome fell" any longer; they would say, "it 'became' Visigothic in the West, Byzantine in the East," but that's what they would mean, if they were being honest.

ETA: re the marvelous globalism, and the infinite adaptability -- not being a utopian, mr.l foresees a bill coming due that you do not; or at least an end to the easy credit afforded by fossil fuels. Right or wrong, and quite apart from the fact that you don't share my narrow interests, we can't really expect to be mutually coherent given that difference.

Edited December 8, 2012 by luciaphile

[TheNiche]

Right or wrong, and quite apart from the fact that you don't share my narrow interests, we can't really expect to be mutually coherent given that difference.

Why should we let that stop us? Mine is chiefly a crisis of internal coherency. Drawing others in only exploits a kind of chaotic order, a formal logic with which to communicate universal senselessness.

[Subdude]

Oh good grief. *pounds head on wall*

[TheNiche]

Brain damage.

[luciaphile]

Why should we let that stop us? Mine is chiefly a crisis of internal coherency. Drawing others in only exploits a kind of chaotic order, a formal logic with which to communicate universal senselessness.

Was that last sentence a randomly generated string of words? It's amazing how close it comes to mimicking human speech.

It strikes me that you would have no conception, or markedly less, of the ultimate meaninglessness of your place in the cosmos if not for the work of others determined to penetrate to the meaning of it.

Truly you are standing on the shoulders of giants, but content with the view of your navel.

It was fine, in college, when my roommate and I concluded that there was no need to go to class because the sun was going to die -- we really liked the sound of that (and she, coincidentally, to listen to "God Damn the Sun" a lot that semester) -- only what started as something we said to be arch, became rather endemic with us; and she in particular failed a couple classes because she never learned the date of the finals; and she hung out at Halcyon House quite a bit and startled me by announcing she had begun using "horse."

Fortunately, toward the end of the year, the campus clinic put her on Prozac and she went on to become a well-regarded geneticist, with published papers and everything.

Oddly enough, I was the one who never found any motivation again, not that I had much to begin with.

The Niche, I'm not a co-ed anymore. I'm too old for a discussion of "universal senselessness," to which you continually default, even if facetiously. There's really not much there. At least, not for those of us not versed in cutting-edge physics (which it's now impossible for a layman to be). And even the physicists have been rather spinning their wheels the past forty years.

[luciaphile]

Add, for myself, that the settled peoples of a 21st century Texas are tethered to a bleak decidedly American existence, to their debts, to the 'American Dream', to constructed material desires mistaken for fulfillment, to an insidious slavery, to a system of banking so tied to government that you cannot tell where the one ends and the other begins. It is as near to a sustainable form of communism as I could ever imagine being achieved in the history of human civilization. And so rather than that they work to live, they live to work. And they work. They needn't even ask why, or for whom. They work.

I have fled that, exchanged it for chaos, for unbridled capitalism (a form of which the most ardent Libertarian cannot fathom, and that they would shirk if they understood its implications), for swindlers and hustlers, for simple earthy pleasures, for excitement, for an occasional sampling of terror.

... the Texas that my father knew is long gone; ... the culture ... hemmed-in, safe, comfortable, blind, and docile.

I was born at the brink of the "Stalinization" of Texas. I think that the manifest insanity of the oil boom and the looming reality of an oil bust began to set in by about 1981 or 1982. You can hear it in ZZ Top records if you listen to them in a chronological sequence. And then, with the S&L bust, the hard money was gone and the soft money--the "American Dream" money--took hold. The people shall never again be free, not from the banks, and not from themselves. It is their desires, their greed, and a mechanism that fulfills it; that is what makes the American form of communism feasible is the peoples' implicit consent. We fought a revolution and then a civil war over something more straightforward and less ugly; but we will not do so again over what we have become. We don't even know what we are.

One of the lessons that has never been forgotten by the third world, which could never be extinguished by traditional communism, is that children are a more reliable form of social security than is any government. They will tend to one's social needs, but only if they are also responsible for one's fiscal needs. The latter begets an interest in the former.

I am only too happy to agree with your assessment of Libertarians' delusions, though I expect we would differ as to the lesson there.

The real estate in my head is limited; right now it's filled with Apsley Cherry-Garrard's "The Worst Journey in the World." (Brit obviously, but definitely not a "ninny.") That's his memoir of the Terra Nova Expedition, which includes an unsentimental but admiring portrait of Scott, though the journey referenced in the title is not the final one to the Pole but a side trip -- made in winter -- to the breeding grounds of the Emperor penguin. Perhaps you've read it.

Anyway, A.C-G is a gentleman, but there's an echo of your complaint about Americans' tameness when he uncharacteristically slings an insult at his countrymen in the final paragraph:

"For we are a nation of shopkeepers and no shopkeeper will look at research which does not promise him a financial return within a year. And so you will sledge nearly alone, but those with whom you sledge will not be shopkeepers: this is worth a good deal. If you march your Winter Journeys you will have your reward, so long is all you want is a penguin’s egg."

I thought the market could be said to have succeeded if it raised up a "people of customers .. a nation of shopkeepers," not swindlers and hustlers and chaos. Aren't we supposed to be tame? And doesn't that make possible things like polar expeditions (and young men's wander-years)?

So we're in thrall to the banks-cum-federal government. I can't hope to understand any of that, it's all beyond me, and about ZZ Top: you lost me on the flip side there...

{I mean, to listen to ZZ Top I'd have to venture back in time into my parents' attic to retrieve my brother's record collection, and while I'm up there I'll get my Barbie Corvette down, 'cuz I think I can sell that; and set up the turntable on the cinder blocks and put on ZZ Top oh look! "Earth Wind and Fire" -- and you can set up his old pyramid of Copenhagen cans -- we don't recycle yet -- "Mother, where are the speakers?" ... oh, she gave them away. Well, that was a waste of time... But we can still make out if you want. Yeah, my parents are here, but it's 1980 -- they don't care.}

... but perhaps that's the natural evolution of the market, just enough socialism admixed to insulate it from revolution. "Sustainable form of communism" sounds like hyperbole, though, the sort of thing one would say only after there was some distance between you and the real thing. I'll admit: in this light, it might be seen to be provident, the coincident waning of traditional social structures in the US, among them the family, the church. It means that, as against your garden-variety Marxist-Leninism, there's no need to undermine civil society. That's where things got so ugly, apart from the issue of all the people that couldn't be fitted into the future and so had to die.

And there's no historical imperative -- I think we can all agree we're over that; don't be a stranger, Hegel -- so this new system can be somewhat flexible, with a thin veneer of democracy -- another bad idea, though not as bad as Communism -- to lend it legitimacy.

I don't care for it, but my reasons you would judge to be aesthetic ones and reject out of hand. Apart from your professional unhappiness of late... you've said the system is stable -- maybe it's as stable and efficient as it can be, given the complexity of the modern world; and keeps the largest number of people well-fed (rather appallingly well-fed) and best promotes your favored value (which seems to be, strictly material human welfare).

Or are you prepared to admit of other values? (Yes, that's where I was going all along...)

[TheNiche]

It strikes me that you would have no conception, or markedly less, of the ultimate meaninglessness of your place in the cosmos if not for the work of others determined to penetrate to the meaning of it.

This is pretty much accurate. The search for meaning is a collaborative effort (and always petty). It is the development of language that allows one to infer and carefully sculpt a formal system of logic, and then also for zany barely-plausible abstractions. It doesn't have to be that way. However, the most extreme documented instances of neglected children seem to indicate to me that without an opportunity to develop that system of language and logic among humans; a child might go through the same process among a pack of dogs and howl at the moon, but does not thereby seem well-equipped to contemplate notions of philosophy.

It is easy, then, to say that a person enabled by language/logic to step outside their own culture and deconstruct its absurd barely-plausible abstractions (religion, political schemes, the 'American Dream', things that are supposed to make me happy). But can you ever totally leave the reservation behind? We are social animals, too easily programmed, difficult to re-write, impossible to reformat.

Do giants have navels? Perhaps, as with most human curvature, even the slightest distortion from the norm makes the whole ugly. And so it is best to look into the giant's navel and marvel at it. Even if that is all that can be seen--and especially if that is all that there is to see.

[TheNiche]

And there's no historical imperative -- I think we can all agree we're over that; don't be a stranger, Hegel -- so this new system can be somewhat flexible, with a thin veneer of democracy -- another bad idea, though not as bad as Communism -- to lend it legitimacy.

I don't care for it, but my reasons you would judge to be aesthetic ones and reject out of hand. Apart from your professional unhappiness of late... you've said the system is stable -- maybe it's as stable and efficient as it can be, given the complexity of the modern world; and keeps the largest number of people well-fed (rather appallingly well-fed) and best promotes your favored value (which seems to be, strictly material human welfare).

Or are you prepared to admit of other values? (Yes, that's where I was going all along...)

All reason is aesthetic when you get right down to it. And there is your answer.

[luciaphile]

It is easy, then, to say that a person enabled by language/logic to step outside their own culture and deconstruct its absurd barely-plausible abstractions (religion, political schemes, the 'American Dream', things that are supposed to make me happy). {sic - or was that clause ever going to have a predicate?}

Do giants have navels? Perhaps, as with most human curvature, even the slightest distortion from the norm makes the whole ugly. And so it is best to look into the giant's navel and marvel at it. Even if that is all that can be seen--and especially if that is all that there is to see.

Stop Making Sense, The Niche. Your recent posts are blowing my mind: it's like Tarski's undefinability theorem, and the barber who shaves all men, and only those, who do not shave themselves, and three chords and the truth, all rolled into one. I mean, you are really bringing it.

[TheNiche]

I still read some HAIF threads and browse Swamplot, but I'm finding the issues that I once expounded on to be distant and petty. (Who really gives a crap about METRO or a new highrise? It just seems like people that lead fairly boring lives have a need to invent drama for themselves, a reason to squabble, a reason to complain, a reason to feel self-important. (It's not lost on me that my own comment, which points that out, is cut from the same cloth.)

Every now and then, I'll spot some otherwise reasonable person saying something that's really quite dumb. Where I'd have pounced on it before, now I feel like I should let it be and speak for itself, as a monument to its own nature. Its sort of like a park with statues of former communist leaders that is maintained with revenues from outdoor advertising for Axe body spray. Never mind the Pizza Hut delivery service bringing the teen skateboarders in the park their lunch, and never mind the local girl in the U.S. Army T-shirt and a miniskirt riding sideways on the back of that motorbike ahead of you. ...oh, well I suppose that it's okay to mind her just enough not to hit a pedestrian or the random sweater-wearing chihuahua in the street.

[samagon]

, and never mind the local girl in the U.S. Army T-shirt and a miniskirt riding sideways on the back of that motorbike ahead of you. ...oh, well I suppose that it's okay to mind her just enough not to hit a pedestrian or the random sweater-wearing chihuahua in the street.

Personally I wouldn't mind the local girl in the mini skirt cause i wouldn't want the local girl in a mini skirt riding on the back of my scooter to notice me minding ;-)

Edited December 16, 2012 by samagon

[luciaphile]

http://pih.wikipedia.../wiki/Mien_Paij

Rilijin esa ting wi' dem god.

Dis artikal i' stub.

Yu ken hiiwp Wikkapedya b' adden t'et.

It kind of distills things to their essences.