Saturday, January 8, 2011
2 be or not 2 be: thats the ?
Alfredo Triff
People say Twitter is the next big thing.
Methinks not.
While it is true that the Twitter phenomenon can be subversive, as we learned from Ahmadineyad's election coup in Iran (2009-2010), the blue birdie's song is essentially a one-way text-message operation (and a little less friendly than Facebook at that). And though there are clever tweets, the vapid seems to reign. Twitter is designed for "who" or "what" generates more attention. Content is secondary, almost a pretext for textlebrity.1
Twitter is defended in some quarters as "social phenomenon." This writer, for instance, uses Lacanian theory to make his point:
Social networks may be the new form of social life that is arising in the midst of the degradation of the Symbolic Order and the consequent fragmentation of Imaginary reality. The hallmark of this new form is that people are shifting their orientations away from the Symbolic Order to each other. The Symbolic Order no longer serves as a locus from which guidelines for living emanate. The representatives of orthodox knowledge, experts, are being supplanted by me "wisdom of crowds," evoked through social networks.2I'm not convinced. Surely, "texting" is not the problem. What I object to is the platform's self-imposed 140-character limit. Why? The idea cannot be that compressing meaning is necessarily better. What happens is that in our increasing (over)crowded space for attention, less is more.
This blogger cleverly imagines a -possible- Shakespeare tweet:
"2b or not 2b: thats the ? whthr tis noblr 2 suffr slings+arrws of outrgous frtune or take arms vs sea of trbles & by opposng end thm, die: sleep: prchance 2 dream. theres rub"
Tweeter's minimalist credo is conditioned by our present global predicament: As space and time get more crowded, there is less space and time time to say anything. Like in food rationing, the more you're rationed, the hungrier you get.3
Then, there is this Sysomos' survey, which finds that nearly 60% of tweets come from 2.2% of Twitter's users, with 22.5% making up a full 90% of Twitter's activity. How should we read this fact? Imagine each tweet as a unit of exchange with a certain value. If so, the information that is digested by the majority of tweetizens in Tweetverse emanates from a minority.
What is the majority in Tweetverse doing? Absorbing the endless proliferation of tweets coming down the tweetpipe. Even if they tweet once in a while, they still get all this news content and information. They don't have to do very much to get a lot back. It's just a matter of connecting and immediately getting flooded with stuff. In Tweetverse, being happy means being inside the Tweetbubble.
The "social phenomenon" boils down to getting people's attention.
Something has changed: We used to pay attention selectively, at discreet intervals. The very idea of attention (from the Latin attendere) means directing our attention carefully. We cannot pay attention to everything. With Tweeter, our attention becomes "enter-tained" (Lat. intertenere) we literally "stop in between" the ever-changing content.
In Tweetverse we don't pay attention. Instead, we passively absorbing content.
Don't take this post as an invective against Twitter. (Disclosure: I have a Twitter account). With McLuhan, I'm ready to say: "Twitter (the medium) is the massage." Only that this kind of medium leaves me empty.
As society, we've become less and less engaged with discourse, i.e., fighting with ideas, sweating a paragraph, looking for the best words, taking time to make the writing more lucid, richer.
How could this be good?
________1Celebrities seldom text. Instead, they send pics (and count with the most followers).
2 There are manuals that teach you how to write your best Twitter. You learn "how to avoid the too-much syndrome," as if writing and too-big-to-fail were related. The writer candidly recommends "writing techniques for writing poetry and fiction." There are "twitips" such as this: "An example of Twitterville Grammar is leaving out unnecessary words such as that and which. People understand what you're trying to say without them." How about spelling? It doesn't really matter because "English is a living language and Twitter is just the place to have some fun with your word choices." 3 O. C. McSwite, "Administrative Theory & Praxis." Volume: 31, #1 (March, 2009).
Friday, December 17, 2010
Many thanks, pleasant journey!
My dear ones: It was a real pleasure to have all of you in my class!
Vivre la philosophie!
:)
Friday, December 10, 2010
FINAL EXAM (link to "Doing Philosophy")
This is the link to our textbook's Website. Click on chapters 5 and 6 and review each section/. It has flash cards, "true" or "false" and multiple choice questions. Test yourself and good luck.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Chapter 6.3 (Fideist arguments)
Kierkegaard’s Leap of Faith: According to Kierkegaard, God needs not be proved because -at best- He would become "probable." He agrees with Tertullian's motto: "I believe because it is absurd." The best solution is to believe by faith. We need St. Paul's definition of faith: Faith is the certainty in things that although one cannot see, yet one believes. The more absurd the predicament, the more intense the faith. What’s important with faith is not "what" one believes but "how" one believes. Kierkegaard defines it as "subjective truth." Counterargument: 1- What if one is wrong? 2- How about the result of blind faith in fundamentalism or fanaticism?
Evidentialism: It holds that not only we need evidence to support our beliefs, but that we have a responsibility to have adequate evidence to avoid unnecessary wrongs to innocent people (Torquemada and Savonarola during the Inquisition are good examples: They had faith in what they were doing, yet, they didn’t have evidence. Same with the kind of religious fundamentalism that Bin Laden defends.
Existentialism: In a world without a God, humans are free and responsible for what they do. We constantly create ourselves in the act of making choices. Life is absurd: There is no single explanation for the way things are.
Chapter 6.2 (Theodicies)
The Ontological Defense: Goodness cannot exist without evil. So a world without evil is impossible. C/A: 1- Lack of evil doesn’t preclude goodness. If it did, there would be no goodness in heaven. Also, there is no evil in heaven.
Knowledge Defense: Knowledge of evil is important (even to understand goodness) and it cannot exist unless there’s evil in the world. C/A: Suppose this is true, then how can one explain the excess of evil? Unnecessary evil is not justified by the knowledge defense. Evil must be necessary for something other than our education. Necessary evil: Evil that is required to prevent further evil or to bring about a greater good.
Free will defense: Evil is necessary for free will. We choose and sometimes we choose evil over good. C/A: 1- A being with free will who always chooses good is logically possible. God is such a being. 2- There’s still much more evil in the world that is necessary. Why is unnecessary evil chosen so often? The theist needs to answer this question. 2- Angels are free and yet they don’t choose evil. Why not?
Ideal Humanity Defense: Evil improves the human race. C/A: There is little evidence that the struggle for survival has improved the human race. One could argue that the advancements we've made in science are not the result of natural evil. Finally, the ideal humanity defense seems to contradict the Christian prionciple that each human is of infinite value.
Character (or soul) building defense: According to philosopher/theologian John Hicks, evil is not wrong for our own sake. C/A: It works both ways, suffering can also debase us. If this is true, then fighting evil becomes wrong (you shouldn’t alleviate a person’s suffering because it’s good for her character).
Chapter 6.1 (Review)
Find a succinct breakdown of some of the most important arguments and counterarguments from 6.1 under Theism.
Cosmological Argument by St. Aquinas: The universe must have a “first cause,” which must spring from an eternal Being. That eternal Being is God. Aquinas is doing 12th century physics. He is trying to demonstrate the existence of God from a series of (cause and effects), i.e., the series must have a beginning = GOD. C/A: In the Big Bang Theory the universe just “happens”. The universe is not caused because time and space begin with the Bing Bang.
Analogical Design Argument: A watch is to a watchmaker as the universe is to God. C/A: 1- John Stuart Mill sees the creation of the universe as evidence against the omnipotence of God. If God needs the universe to accomplish HIS goals, then HE is not omnipotent. 2- One can see the universe an "organism" rather than a machine (where living things come into being through reproduction rather than conscious design). 2- One could cite the evidence of Evolution (i.e. natural selection, speciation, etc).
St. Anselm’s Ontological Argument: If one can conceive of a God (the greatest possible Being), then that God could also exist in reality, but then it would not be the greatest possible Being. So, God must exist in reality. C/A: Following Anselm's argument one could easily justify the “Superman”'s existence (ex. just plug "Superman" wherever you see God in Anselm's proof).
Argument from Miracles: The universe must have been performed by a miracle worker. C/A: Why should God bend its own rules?
Argument from Religious Experience: A subjective experience that’s so powerful and unique that the only possible explanation is that it was produced by a supernatural being. C/A: Hallucinogenics have been used by ancient civilizations as worship experiences to tap into altered states. This kind of experience is internal and vague and not enough to warrant an external source.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Wiki-leaks: Tragedy or comedy?
If the government knows that the willingness of people to give up rights in order to fight terrorism is proportional to their level of fear, then it’s obvious that we should expect more fear.-- Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 1954
Wiki-leaks has delivered another digital coup. Yet, compared with the previous Iraq Log,1 these memos -with detailed characterizations of world leaders' behaviors- seem out of a libretto from la commedia dell'arte. We learn that Libya's Qaddafi has vertigo and "cannot travel" without his "voluptuous blonde" nurse from Ukraine. Mr. Putin, is an "alpha dog" who behaves like "Batman," while Medvedev "plays Robin." Sarkozy is referred to as an "emperor with no clothes," "thin-skinned" and "authoritarian." Germany's Angela "teflon" Merkel "avoids risks and is rarely creative," and so on. American diplomats are running for cover (there's much foreign trepidation and Schadenfreude).
Honoré Daumier, At the Theater, (1860-64).
Then, Hilary Clinton's response is -predictably?- surprisingly conservative! Our government feels betrayed, ridiculed. Even some progressive thinkers question Wiki-leaks' ulterior motives. A liberal commentator declares on the radio that "America has lost its credibility." In contrast, journalists all over the world support the mission of the website. They agree that the most insidious effect of our present political and economic crisis is the undermining of public opinion (the press is dying by slow strangulation).2
Keep in mind that politics is a constant struggle among different actors (groups) pursuing conflicting desires on public issues. Then there is power. And right now our military power has become political and one dimensional. This hegemony is the greatest danger. As a political observer has written, "The paradox of American power is that it is too great to be challenged by any other state, yet not great enough to solve problems such as global terrorism and nuclear proliferation."2a It is as if due to a society forcefully laid open by the pressure of globalizing forces, power and politics drift ever further in opposite directions, the system operating beyond itself, its resources become over-extended and it declines as a result.
The Pentagon, Washington, DC.
The individuals portrayed in these cables recall Northrop Frye's Theory of Comedy.3 We're not dealing with heroes, but rather defeated, stereotyped characters. We live in a skewed, absurd world filled with unforeseen danger, social apprehension and hypocrisy, where unscrupulous characters win and the honest lose. Yet, one doesn't get a sense of impending doom but instead, an ordinary this-is-the-way-it-is debriefing. Is this not a bit manipulative? 4
What's going on? Politics is "presented" by politicians as guided by morals, but it's actually a realm of means-to-end, which is why Machiavelli counsels that in politics, one must suspend what's right for what's expedient.5
Legal experts weigh in: Wiki-leaks has stolen documents, which constitute a criminal act (as if legal arguments cannot be overridden by moral considerations, such as transparency to the public and coherence in foreign policy). As Norman Solomon suggests, "the recent mega-leaks are especially jarring because of the extreme contrasts between the U.S. government's public pretenses and real-life actions." Of course the legal reach gets intractably complicated: there is anonymity, tracking down violations, locating the offender, claiming jurisdiction over such offender (which brings forth geography, problem with mirror siting, etc, etc.).
Is Wiki-leaks not a counterbalance in an environment where the media plays an "opiates of the masses" role, subsidized by political interests?
Politics as comedy
One should resist looking at this as a showdown between good and evil. It's too simple. True, at one local level, some people feel they have to oppose an unjust and secretive system -while others feel betrayed by it. At a more systemic level, Wiki-leaks transcends the issue of freedom of expression vs. national security.6 Like any organism, whatever comes its way, the system tries to adapt. In this case, the balance lies between two opposite hypothesis: The Slippery Slope and the Weimar Hypothesis. In the first scenario, the government trims some rights, which raises little alarm at the time (e.g., Guantanamo and torture under G.W. Bush's reign). Then a few other rights are curtailed (wiretapping, public coercion against opposing the wars, etc). Soon, more rights are lost and gradually the entire institutional structure on which democracy rests tumbles down the slope with nobody able to stop it. In the second hypothesis, we resemble the Weimar Republic of the 1920's, which lost its legitimacy and opened the door to a tyrannical government due to its woefully insufficient responses to major public needs.
Let's not ignore that Internet technology offers the potential for more liberating forms of social organization. Capitalism and Marxism are predicated on the belief in technological progress and its potential for social improvement (unfortunately, far from fostering social change, technological developments are generally absorbed by the system and actually reinforce existing social structures). Communication and information have two sides. They provide a collection of "facts" but at the same time they become a tool for social management.
Isn't information a form of cultural and political domination?
Facebook Ad (2009).
What if the leak's unmitigated public attention works in favor of the American policies the leak denounces?
Some have already observe that, compared with their American counterparts, the tone of the Arab leaders on the Iran problem (as it appears in the memos) "seems pretty jingoistic." David Rothkopf writes in The Financial Times that the Wiki-leaks information shows "the formidable courage and capabilities of many US diplomats." As you may expect from comedy's ethos, the memos already have the redeeming effect of producing more happiness than suffering. The endless repetition of the cables in all the major papers of the world ensure the desired mirroring didactic effect.
Let's wait and see how the initial shock gives way to a more optimistic assessment. The system will end up in a better place than it started at. Whether that's "really" better is another thing.
_____________
1Actually, this dump is no Pentagon Papers either. What makes this event different is the new technology. At the moment of publishing this post, one cannot access the Wiki-leaks link. Has the site been hacked? The New York Times link seemed the best second choice. 2 The inference is not that citizens ought to refuse to sacrifice individual freedom on behalf of measures proposed in the name of national security, but rather that any sacrifice should be made knowingly, with full consciousness of what is being given up, and why. It should always be necessary to make a positive case for any limitation upon individual freedom, and also for the specific method to be employed in administering the limitation. By viewing these dangerous possibilities in advance, we can reasonably hope to prevent or mitigate their occurrence. The picture projected is what might happen, not what must happen. 2a Sebastian Mallaby, "A Mockery in the Eyes of the World," Washington Post, January 31, 1999, B5. 3Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, Four Essays (Princeton University Press, 2000). 4 Spanish El PaÃs follows the New York Times style of parading the different memos on its global front page. French Le Monde (in French style) presents a photo-series ridiculing world leaders. Wiki-leaks can be seen as a unique phenomenon of the digital era. The most dramatic moment in Wiki-leaks' short history is when the site revealed the so called Iraq War Logs, detailing information that the American people didn't know: 109,032 deaths in Iraq (comprised of 66,081 'civilians'; 23,984 'enemy' (those labeled as insurgents); 15,196 'host nation' (Iraqi government forces) and 3,771 'friendly' (coalition forces). 5In other words, "moral pathos resides in a situation, not where the end justifies the means, but where the end dictates means of a type which renders both the wholly good and the wholly evil superfluous." Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision, (Princeton University Press, 2004) p. 87. 6 Most intelligence experts agree that these memos are not "NOT DIS" information, which would be really compromising.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Some quick notes on "religion"
You could see religion as a sort of complex system, with myths, moral & symbolic codes, codified worship behaviors (i.e., rituals), and creation-and-destruction narratives. Religions are extremely successful because they give purpose, and meaning to life.
_________
From the point of view of belief:
Theism, is the belief that some sort of personal God exists and HE is involved with the universe.
Agnosticism: The truth about certain religious claims, is unknowable.
Deism: There is a God but this supreme being does not intervene in human affairs. Deists typically reject supernatural events such as prophecy and miracles.
Monotheism: The belief that there is only one God.
Pantheism: God is the summation of the all universe. God = Nature.
Transtheism: A system of philosophy which is neither theistic, nor atheistic. Paul Tillich writes:
The courage to take meaninglessness into itself presupposes a relation to the ground of being which we have called "absolute faith." It is without a special content, yet it is not without content. The content of absolute faith is the "god above God." Absolute faith and its consequence, the courage that takes the radical doubt, the doubt about God, into itself, transcends the theistic idea of God.Fideism: It maintains that faith is independent of reason. Tertulian's Credo quia absurdum.
Big Bang (please, watch these videos)
Part 2 here.
What is the age of the universe? The best available measurements as of 2010 suggest that the initial conditions occurred between 13.3 and 13.9 billion years ago.
What caused the BB? Remember: The question doesn't make much sense. It's meaningless. However, it's still logically possible to imagine that the universe is caused.
______
Here you have the evidence for BB in 10 minutes!
Cosmogonical myths
Mesopotamian cosmogony: The basic feature of Mesopotamian cosmology was the firmament, or vault of heaven, that created a dry space above the Earth. The Earth was a disk, and the firmament rested on the Earth around its edge – as was obvious to any Mesopotamian scanning the horizon. Beneath the Earth were the waters of the abyss. The Earth had some thickness as was obvious from digging and from caves. Within the thickness of the Earth-disk was the underworld.
Sumer: Nammu the mother of all. Nammu creates an (heaven) and ki (earth). An, the sky, is a hard metallic shell lies on the earth, ki. The union of an and ki produce Enlil, the god of air, wind, and storm. Enlil lifts an away from ki, filling the space in which humans live. The space is filled with lil (atmosphere). The brighter parts of the lil form the sun, moon, and stars. Enlil also creates all living things. He also invents all the tools used by man and teaches him to use them. But it isn’t Enlil that creates man; it is his son Enki.
Babylon: But there are two kinds of water: fresh, deified in Apsu (male), and salt, deified in Tiamat (female). They call into being a whole genealogy of gods. The new gods were noisy and Apsu complains that he gets no rest either by day or night. This is significant since the gods are still existing in the primordial waters; sun, moon, and earth have not yet been created. This shows that the Babylonians were not aware that day was caused by the sun. They thought of day and night as fundamental and the sun as a mere marker of day. Apsu proposes to kill off the children gods that he and Tiamat have produced. But the gods take measures to prevent this and kill first Apsu and then Tiamat. The latter is accomplished by Marduk who is then the chief god. He splits Tiamat’s body in two ‘like and oyster’.
Ancient Israel: It is referred to as the “Preistly” or “P” account. It is very close to the Babylonian account and was probably learned by the Hebrew priests during Jewish captivity in Mesopotamia. It begins with a formless void of water. Yaweh’s spirit (i.e. breath, like Enlil the air) moves over the waters. He creates night and day; before creating the Sun, just as in the Babylonian myth. He creates the firmament that separates the waters and creates the Earth. He brings forth vegetation first and then produces the Sun, Moon, and stars. After creating all the other living things he makes man and woman and tells them to multiply and dominate the Earth.
Greek: The world began with chaos. Gaia, mother Earth, arose from the chaos. She gives birth Uranos. Uranos is the sky and holds back the chaos. As in the Babylonian myth, there is a revolt among the gods and Zeus becomes the chief god. In the Greek mythology the gods are just humans writ large. They live on Mount Olympus and engage in power struggles and intrigue and sex. As in the Egyptian and Mesopotamian religions, different gods are benefactors and protectors of different cities.
