The Act and Art of Seeing

 "Most people can't see with any acuity. Their eyes skid over things, but they're not really aware of what they're looking at. Take a typical person and look a the kind of furniture they have, the clothes they wear, the food they eat, the things they read - if they read - and the places they go on holiday, and you realize that they are probably missing 90 per cent of the pleasure to be got out of things because they really don't see anything. You're taught to talk, read and write, but no one seems to teach you how to perceive."
From –  Beware Wet Paint by Alan Fletcher

"Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember?"
Mark 8:18 New International Version (NIV)

I am currently obsessed with the books of graphic designer icon Alan Fletcher. There is a playfulness to his work that is enchanting. Plus his ultra-inquisitive and omnivorous sense of discovery is dazzling, and a little intimidating.

But I want to take his quote above and extend it beyond strict visual arts. I say the same thing is true of the way most of us “look” at life, other people and the world in general.

Just as “Their eyes skid over things, but they're not really aware of what they're looking at” regarding art and design, our eyes skid over poverty and cruelty. Of course it is way easier to “skid over” people in need if they live on the other side of town, are in prison, or from the other side of the world.

The word Compassion comes from Middle English: via Old French from ecclesiastical Latin compassio(n-), from compati ‘suffer with.’

IF you really look at person (or any sentient being, aka animals) in pain and actually “SEE” them in pain, you feel for them and suffer with them. Compassion only happens if you know how “to see”.

Cultural Hegemony

I just wanted to save this...It came out of Marxist theory, but the idea is intriguing

In Marxist philosophy, the term cultural hegemony describes the domination of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class, who manipulate the culture of that society — the beliefs, explanations, perceptions, values, and mores — so that their ruling-class worldview becomes the worldview that is imposed and accepted as the cultural norm; as the universally valid dominant ideology that justifies the social, political, and economic status quo as natural, inevitable, perpetual and beneficial for everyone, rather than as artificial social constructs that benefit only the ruling class.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony

And if added to the amazing ability of people to be so susceptible to advertising in our consumer society it explains a lot of wacky behavior. The Billionaires go on CNBC and bemoan how oppressed they are and how the poor need to work more, and somehow the general public believes it.

Blow My Mind Mr. Jesus

• Why do people hate/love Christianity?
• Why do so many people believe / disbelieve Christianity?
• Why does it make so much sense / nonsense to so many?

Let the above soak in. Place yourself in the spectrum of pro or con.(sorry  to have to say it, but in the above I am referring to the really zealot type persons like Sam Harris or Pat Robertson or such )

Then forget all about it.

My sermon today is on the teachings of Jesus, but not about belief, truth or whatever.

If you actually read the Gospels and weed out the history, miracles, prophecy what you are left with is the actual teachings. And if you really look at the teachings it is pretty freaking shocking. And really shocking in that it is completely opposite from the way of life our Christian Nation or Religion-less world is supposed to be aligned.

Take the Sermon on the Mount (or plain). It is antithetical to modern, much less “conservative Christian” worldviews.

But before I take off I just want to say the messages in the New Testament are as anathema to non believers as they truly are for the modern Christian believer. They really are “unto Jews (basically the modern Christian) a stumbling block, and unto Gentiles foolishness (the modern non believer)”

Here are the greatest hits

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, - for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” First off, modern society is all about presence and branding and attitude and I defy anybody to find and example in popular culture where humility and meekness is presented in a positive light. From superheroes to pop stars and politicians, it is all about style baby.

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” - Again meekness is weakness. Hats off to Steve Jobs, Donald Trump and anybody in the modern capitalist system.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” - Any conservative Christian will tell you water boarding is good and criminals deserve more prison time.
 
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor^[i] and hate your enemy.’ ⁴⁴ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵ that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous" - I listened to conservative Christian radio today and that is a REALLY angry bunch of people. I don't think they heard the bit about not hating. What's else is there to say, hate rules the day. Christians hate Muslims and Atheists, Atheists hate Christians and Muslims and I don't presume to know who Muslims hate, but the ISIS dudes seem to hate just about everybody.

“And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well.” - Need I say more?

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth”. How about that 401K?

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? “What is American life other than buy more clothes, food or drink?

There is more like this stuff, but what is the point. If you take the opposite of the sermon on the mount you have modern American values, Christian or otherwise.

Basically for the non Christian the above thoughts are crap because they feed an oppressive religion and Christians pay no attention to them because really it is about a social values religiion not a radical change in their way of thinking.

That is all I have now.

- - - - - - - - - -

Update: I am again reminded that things that seem obvious to me are somehow considered illogical to others. I admit the fault may be with me. It is a hard truth to accept that my thinking may not be as clear as it seems to me.

To fight this I will try to pare down my argument on this pont to the essentials later.

But to start, I offer that the Sermon on the Mound should be considered as vital to the teachings of Jesus. If someone disagrees then my argument has no weight. Otherwise we may continue.

Graph Paper is the Road to Hell!

or..."If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him”

A simple notion, concepts are wonderful and necessary tools we have to have in order to live in the modern world. But for human creativity and the human soul, define that as you will, they are anathema. Try this, make a mental leap and imagine Buddhist enlightenment. It comes when you recognize your true self, the oneness of all things, and this can only happen if there are no filters, and no conceptions (much less PRE-conceptions).

I offer up that short of total mind blowing enlightenment, we can catch glimpses of this through creative acts. At those “AH HA!” moments the idea comes through of its own accord…let’s say “Inspired”. We may have been trying to solve problems by using tools and concepts to handle the data in front of us, but the inspired innovation is born as if of its own accord.

There is hard mental work preparing for the inspiration, but the flash is without attachment, even if it is immediately put to work adapting known concepts.

So why is graph paper the road to hell?

This comes from thinking about the late designer Richard Sapper, who (I am told by a friend who would know) really disliked using graph paper during the creative process. Which you might think is just a technical observation about the best way to loosen the mind with approaching a problem. But for some reason I always remembered this dictum and thought it was deeper than that.

The same friend mention above, suggested I read one of Sapper’s favorite books, by his early mentor Romano Guardini, called Letter’s from Lake Como by. And this quote from it really struck me

“Machines are steel concepts. They lay hold of many things in such a way as to disregard their individual features and to treat them as though they were all the same.”

“Machines are steel concepts” Man! That is a great phrase. I bet it is even better in German

Anyway, it reminded be about Sapper’s graph paper aversion (OK, maybe another mental stretch, but bear with me). Graph paper presupposes right angles and it would be hard not to fall into grid like and “pre-conceived” thinking. So in a way the Graph gives us concepts in paper. Not as poetic as “Steel Concepts”, but the graph lays hold of any ideas and treats any of them as if they are the same, with the same lattice nature.

AND, if these fleeting moments of creativity are those few times we let go of concepts and see into the world’s true nature…well, to avoid that divine spark means to embrace its opposite.

From Third Letter: Abstraction…

Mind and spirit are not abstractly universal like a formula that fits all things of the same type. They are life; they are concrete. Concepts, however, are abstract, mere forms, signs, abbreviations of thought, means of simplification, cation, and, in a final sense, aids.

It's A Cruel, Cruel, World!!

Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic by James Gilligan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you are going to read and talk about Violence, THROW AWAY your copy of Violence by Slavoj Zižek. THIS ONE by James Gilligan goes in deep to the heart of darkness where violence thrives. He starts in prisons, with the most violent people you could find. It is a hell of a starting point.

While Zižek throws around Heidegger and Lacan and Nip-Tuck TV, Gilligan steps in close and examines violence in its pain, and cause and consequence.

My short summary: Violence springs from Loss of face, which is really loss of self and out of that comes shame. And this shame brings a feeling of injustice that can only be addressed by violence. The thing to remember, in the eyes of the violent person all the pain that is inflicted by them has a logic of its own. Sometimes (or maybe usually) it is not articulated, but the violence in its horror is a symbolic expression of an inner conclusion that must be expressed by the aggrieved.

He does a pretty good job of pointing out “...the motives and goals that underlie crime are the same that underlie punishment...”. Pg. 18. So that much of the book looks at the criminal, but the other horror is the criminal justice system and prisons in particular. Crime and punishment are mirrors to each other. The criminal is addressing a perceived injustice and dispensing appropriate (in the criminal's eyes) retaliation. Then the criminal justice system uses laws to assign guilt and follow through with punishment.

And it gets worse with each chapter, because we find that criminal punishment is the best way to make sure it happens again. Plus there is unacknowledged sadism in criminal punishment that clearly mimics the sadism of the criminal and both rely on excluding empathy as a consideration.

Punishment feeds shame which grows violence which causes crime which results is moral outrage which justifies punishment....

“Punishment is almost universally rationalized as a means of preventing violence...But the conclusion that my analysis leads to is that punishment does not inhibit or prevent crime or violence...Punishment stimulates violence; punishment causes it.” Pg. 183.

He does not whitewash human nature, and admits violent behavior is "built into the very structure and functioning" of us humans. But these actions must be "triggered" by something and his contention is society itself prepares the way so many people are primed to react in a violent way.

From his time talking to criminals he comes up with a list of things we should NOT do if we want to avoid triggers that bring about violence. Some items are arguable but overall...seems about right.

1. Punish and imprison more and more people to increase shame and bring on more violence so there are more to punish and imprison...
2. Outlaw drugs that inhibit violence and encourage use of those that increase violence
3. Arrange taxes and policies to increase the wealth disparity
4. Deprive poor access to education to increase shame to cause more violence and crime
5. Perpetuate a caste system that falls along racial lines.
6. Expose the public to views that glorifies violence as male masculinity
7. Make lethal weapons easily available
8. Maximize polarization social roles of men and women and divide men into violent objects and women into sex objects
9. Encourage prejudice of homosexuals
10. Legitimize corporal punishment in schools and at home
11. Regulate economy so unemployment will never be abolished

Of course most conservative political types will balk at any suggestion that society has any responsibility in this matter. But that is really making his point, that "society" itself is part of a larger structural violence since its very philosophy encourages the expansion of violent norms that just happens to result in a world of increasing disparity between the poor and moneyed elite.

Lest I forget, one message everybody should learn from this book...NEVER DO TIME! If only for this one statistic on the frequency of rape in prison...

"That would still leave a total figure of 900,000 male rapes a year - as an integral part of the punishment to which prisoners are subjected to in the prisons and jails of this country. "Pg. 176

Yes, rape by the meanest of the mean in prison, is part of the way understaffed prisons contain the violence in those walls. EVERYBODY knows about it who is associated with the penal system.

Moving on...Sometimes he pushes the emotion envelope towards sappiness about love

"…a soul empty of love fills with hate" Pg. 53.

But I kind of think he is right. And I feel better now.

====
I am reminded of Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko where the key to the tale is the belief that the modern disregard for the natural world is caused by destroyers that tricked the white men into pursuing their march of destruction, thinking it a virtue while actually killing our souls.

There is a poem in the book describing the witchery world view that is eerie in its similarity to the death of “the self” described by Gilligan.

They see no life
When they look
they see only objects.
The world is a dead thing for them
the trees and the rivers are not alive
the trees and rivers are not alive.
The deer and bear are objects
they see no life

pg 135 of Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko

===
And a final thought, this really does compliment Age of Empathy by Franz de Waal that I read last year. In which he definitely mentions brutal violence by some of the great apes, but he also showed how there was empathy. In fact he was going for something similar as Gilligan by identifying things that would "trigger" these outbursts and what situations diffused them.

Which leads to the question, can we as humans be better at arranging our society to prevent violence? OR are we doomed just to be very clever chimps with cool toys, ignoring empathy and compassion because of an ever escalating arrangement of violent triggers?

And the 8-Ball says..."Outlook not so good"




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On Certainty & Uncertainty

Since death alone is certain and time of death uncertain, what should I do?

Stephen Batchlo

The Father Who Mistook a Washcloth for His Sandwich*

Dear Diary,

So my 96 year old Alzheimer father fell and broke his hip. Before this fall off the bed he was able to stand up and walk reasonably well, especially for a 96 year old.

Backstory… his particular brand of Alzheimer allows him to mask, amazing well, how little he really understands. He maintains many common courtesies like “Hello” and “Thank You” or if asked if he can do something he automatically might respond “I think so” or “Oh, I don’t know”. The upshot of is that after the operation to repair his hip, as he is in bed he kept folding a white wash cloth repeatedly. He didn’t know why he was doing it, but it kept him from messing with medical monitoring leads taped to him so all the better we figured.

And at one point he folded it quite neatly and stopped and stared at it. He ended this round of folding so that his hands held it like one does with a big sandwich. So he stares at it and opens his mouth and starts to bite down on it like you do with any good sandwich. Obviously I stop him before it gets too ludicrous.

Disaster averted, so I start day dreaming. That morning us non Alzheimer people were talking about some robot receptionist and how these things will have very human qualities programmed in, to the point it will be hard to tell the difference between the robot or a person.

That reminded me of the Turing test which is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. Which I always imagine will end with a Blade Runner like job for people like Harrison Ford to exterminate beings that are not human enough.

Which reminded me of two episodes of  The Twilight Zone where robots/androids think they are human but are horrified do discover they are just a mess-O-wires (The Lateness of the Hour and In His Image).

That blends into a Philip K Dick short story I once read where that lateness of time for an abortion kept getting longer since they just kept upping the age someone was considered human. In the story he had police type people chasing youths around town to “abort” them.

Which brings me to my final thought… What does it mean to be human? What if a computer program can pass the Turing test but you or I can’t? I am not making a big moral point about the sanctity of life (although maybe by accident). But from a purely practical matter, what constitutes being human?

What if being human is a not a genetic marker but rather a behavioral condition?
How will it feel when you fail the Turing test? 
Or what if you fail and don't care that you failed? 
Or what if you only fail the test when you don't care that you failed?

.   .   .  .  

Then for diversion I jumble all the above into an ill formed story idea. A world where humans and AI coexist and the only catch is all types of being have to be periodically tested (a la the Turing Test) to see if they are still human. Inevitably this leads to Human Testing prep classes, and Taking the Human Test for Dummies. Throw in some Logan's Run stuff and you got yourself a Sci-Fi classic

Good Night Diary

*(Hats off to Oliver Sacks)