Contradictions

 This has almost been a day off.

It has seen me up on time.

It feels like I have been procrastinating.

I went to Payless for groceries in the morning. In the afternoon, I went for smokes up on Wheeling. The only thing planned for today was to go to the grocery. I made it nowhere else.

I made one submission today. One Story – “Coming Home”.

The email has almost been emptied - I am caught up with yesterday; most today's stuff got deleted or moved onto another day.

Fly Fishing & Fly Tying with Tom Rosenbauer (Fulling Mill Blog)

Courage And Concession (Sheila Kennedy) is one political piece that I did not put elsewhere. It only reinforces my feeling that we back in 1860.

I spent time watching videos on YouTube (which means I mostly listened).

The Naked Spur: A Retrospective by Thomas Jane, surprised by being knowledgeable and well-written. 

The Shadow | Better in Black and White - one of my eccentricities is that I think Alec Baldwin's The Shadow is under-appreciated; another voice in support of that idea:

A little history - I have read about them for decades, this was a bit more of an explanation.

I have been watching off-and-on clips from The West Wing. It was criticized for being so liberal back in the day. I think it was an open rebuke of Bill Clinton. Too bad it did not raise the level of political discourse in this country.

MW was to call. CC did. I also talked to DM. I need to call Paul S.

It is 6:56 AM. I have been awake for about 12 hours. It feels later and also not so long of a day.

So, you know why this post is about contradictions.

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History Videos & News

 Off into the weeds, sort of, with YouTube. It is fascinating what is there regarding serious historical videos, and strange how their algorithm works.

Two on Grant, the General:

 

Britain and the Republic of Texas; for me, this one poses all sorts of what-ifs, and a completely unknown American history.

 Unforgotten? How Did Elizabeth Of York Remember The Princes In The Tower?

 (Okay, but what does it have to say about the death of The Princes?)

Ghost Fleet of the Iron Age: Three Ancient Shipwrecks Rewrite the Story of Mediterranean Seafaring (Arkeonews)

The earliest cargo, known as Dor M, dates to the eleventh century BCE, when the Mediterranean world was just beginning to rebuild after the chaos of the Bronze Age collapse.

Archaeologists uncovered rare Iron I storage jars of a type found in Egypt, Cyprus, and Lebanon, alongside a stone anchor inscribed with Cypro-Minoan signs—the same writing system used on Cyprus at the time.

These clues point to a vibrant network of early seafarers linking the city-state of Dor with Egypt and Cyprus. The find echoes the ancient Egyptian tale The Report of Wenamun, which describes a harrowing voyage from Egypt to Dor and Phoenicia around the same period.

“Dor M represents the rebirth of long-distance trade,” says Yasur-Landau. “It shows that within a century of the collapse, people were back at sea, rebuilding their connections across the Mediterranean.” 

The Bronze Age collapse is a big thing — probably not as big as if we had lived through it — but raises questions of who destroyed the former civilization. 

Twelve Failed Constitutional Amendments That Could Have Reshaped American History (Smithsonian magazine) — I could go for 7 and 8.

The Walking Giants of Easter Island: How Physics Solved an 800-Year-Old Mystery 

 The process was elegant and efficient. Ropes were tied around the statue’s head or shoulders. Two groups stood on either side, pulling alternately to create a rhythmic rocking motion. Each swing shifted the center of gravity, causing the moai to tilt and pivot slightly ahead. A small forward lean in the design helped the statue self-correct and avoid falling backward.
Step by step, the giant “walked” toward its destination—balanced by nothing more than rope tension, gravity, and coordination.

De Soto Invades the Mound Builders (1540) 

 sch 10/12

 I do like listening to Sarah Paine — she makes complex issues understandable. So, I give you Sarah Paine — Why Japan lost WWII (lecture & interview).

 sch 10/13

Was World War One pointless? The video is right, you need to consider what were the war aims and not the war's outcome. I think what went wrong with Germany, Russia, and Italy led to their futures. Perhaps, the same is true of Turkey.

 Not quite as silly as it sounds, but actual historical questions. I know I have always wondered how Lee's plans were left to be found.

 The Feral Historian takes on the South's Lost Cause through the show Firefly. I am not a Southerner, I do not come from a Southern family, and I have no love for the Lost Cause. The freedom the South fought for was to make dark-skinned people slaves. Southerners fought because they thought others were coming to impose their will on them. I do not see the two ideas as opposites.

 

 

The best Union generals gave me one surprise, an Indiana entry. There are some I might quibble about, but there is a cogent argument for this list:

 

We are always learning something new — or should be:

Gore Vidal made a big deal of Henry Clay — in his essays, if I recall properly — as a person embodying a course not taken. YouTube turned up HENRY CLAY AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE UNION. It seems a rational documentary on Clay's career; although I heard nothing of Clay's American Plan, that was so touted by Vidal.

 Sheila Kennedy's An Absolutely On-Target Essay where she highlights an essay on the University of Chicago's curriculum. 

Stephens attributes his own appreciation of proper argumentation to his time at the University of Chicago, an institution that requires its undergraduates to read the books that formed the Western tradition, to familiarize themselves with a philosophy and literature that was notable for argumentation meant to persuade, not put down. 

 This may seem utterly divorced from history, but I think you are being too narrow when you think of history. History is not just of Great Men and dates. History is also the passing along of ideas.

The virtue of Chicago’s curriculum is that it introduces students to a “coherent philosophical tradition based in reasoned argument and critical engagement that explained not only how we had arrived at our governing principles but also gave us the tools to debate, preserve or change them.” (In other words, students who were required to immerse themselves in these works received an actual education, rather than a job training credential; a distinction entirely lost on Indiana’s pathetic legislature. But I digress…) 

  sch 10/17

Forgotten Prelude To WW1 — Italo-Turkish War 1911-1912 (History Documentary):

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The Radical John Wilkes (History Today). I think I first knew of Wilkes from Garry Wills, but also that he provided the middle name for John Wilkes Booth.

The Publication of ‘1066 and All That’ (History Today) - short, funny.

sch 10/19

Five Essential Books For Understanding Haitian History (Literary Hub)

The Haitian anthropologist and historian Michel-Rolph Trouillot most forcefully signaled the damning implications of eliding the world-historical significance of the Haitian Revolution in his well-known book Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Beacon, 1995). Trouillot insisted that the “silencing” of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) is only “a chapter within a narrative of global domination.” “It is part of the history of the West,” he said, “and it is likely to persist, even in attenuated form, as long as the history of the West is not retold in ways that bring forward the perspective of the world.” By erasing, downplaying, or otherwise denying how the Haitian revolutionaries opened the door to the Age of Abolition—when they proclaimed slavery an actual crime and declared that freedom from slavery should be constituted as a universal human right—it is not just Haitian history, but the Haitian people themselves who have been silenced.

The remarkable stories of some of Haiti’s most famous Black freedom-fighters, Dutty Boukman, Cécile Fatiman, Toussaint Louverture, Suzanne Bélair, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and Henry Christophe, for example, have been replaced in the world’s memory by the more treacherous recent histories of dictatorships, earthquakes, presidential assassinations, and armed paramilitary violence. Moreover, in the nineteenth century, instead of garnering global applause, Haiti’s insistence on remaining free and independent consistently brought punishment, most aggressively, by France. In 1825, French king Charles X ensured longitudinal impoverishment of the newly independent country when he ordered the Haitian government, under threat of war, to pay 150 million francs as the price of France relinquishing its territorial claim over the island and to compensate former French enslavers for the loss of their “property.”

Bringing forward the perspective of Haitians represents one way to both lessen the silences of the past and rectify the ongoing and harmful distortions of the present. In my recently published biography, The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe, I therefore sought to highlight the stories of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Haitians, whose numerous memoirs, pamphlets, letters, and myriad collections of essays and other forms of writing about the Haitian Revolution have often been ignored in favor of consulting western European and U.S. sources. At the same time, an incomplete and sometimes non-existent written archive encouraged me as a historian and literary critic to be imaginative in considering alternative sources about King Henry’s life, including oral histories, and to question the privileging of written forms over other kinds of storytelling.

 I think there is much to learn from Haiti; if nothing else, the obscuring of its history makes me suspicious of the reasons for its suppression.

sch 10/20 

Catching Up On Politics - Indiana & Further Afield

 I find Todd Rokita an embarrassment for Indiana. Let me just be clear on why I could not let news about him go without remarks. From there, it was all downhill for my writing plans this morning. It got consumed by this post. Why? Because good conscience cannot let me ignore what is going on in the wider world.

Indiana AG sues Indianapolis Public Schools for 'thwarting' federal immigration enforcement (Indiana Capital Chronicle)

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita on Thursday filed suit against Indianapolis Public Schools — with help from a conservative think tank — accusing the state’s largest public school district of “thwarting” federal immigration enforcement.

State law blocks local government entities, including school districts, from limiting cooperation or interfering with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other agencies.

Rokita spends so much time chasing headlines, I have to wonder what job he is seeking. 

We have also seen ICE playing dress-up, we've all seen their brutality. Do we want them invading schools with their guns and tactical gear and tear gas? 

The Republicans have been going on about family values for too many decades, but their actions show their lack of value for children and families.

In a Thursday evening statement, the IPS board of school commissioners affirmed the district’s commitment to “ensuring safe, supportive, and welcoming learning environments for all students.”

“As has always been the case, we will continue to uphold the law while keeping these commitments,” the board added, before knocking Rokita’s intentions.

“While IPS takes all legal obligations seriously, we respectfully hope that all concerned parties will recognize the heavy burden that silly litigation and political posturing places on students, families, and taxpayers,” the statement continued. “Every dollar spent on defensive legal posture is a dollar not spent on instructional support, teacher development, student services, or enrichment. In this case, Mr. Rokita prefers those dollars go to fight gratuitous political battles, as has too often been the case.”

***

“Unfortunately, despite taking six months to craft his opinion on IPS’ policies, Mr. Rokita permitted only five business days from the time IPS received his review to respond, and then refused IPS’ request for any additional time,” they said. “Yet, these important issues deserve thoughtful, deliberative weighing of important legal rights — not impulsive, superficial efforts for political gain.”

Board members also criticized Rokita’s use of the term “aliens” for noncitizen children and their families, saying that he’s “willfully dehumanizing” them and instead calling students “invaluable, unique, and bright human beings.” 

 Oh, Todd Rokita the federal DOJ needs you to protect the Border Patrol from flying sandwiches! How DC thwarts federal law storm troopers law enforcement - Jury acquits D.C. 'sandwich guy' charged with chucking a sub at a federal agent (NBC)

The resident, Sean Dunn, a former Justice Department paralegal, faced a single misdemeanor count after a federal grand jury rejected more serious charges over the encounter, which took place in the nightlife area of U Street in August.

Border Patrol Officer Greg Lairmore received two "gag gifts" related to the incident — a plush sandwich and a patch featuring a cartoon of Dunn throwing the sandwich with the words “Felony Footlong” — which the defense team argued showed this was not a serious event in his life.

Confirmed: ICE Is Arresting American Citizens—and Lying About It (The New Republic )

I have never understood the conservatism behind the “conservatives” anger at public health during COVID-19 pandemic. Public health has always been a duty of government. I will call the response, a radical right-wing libertarian reaction (not that there were not empty-headed morons with the social orientation of toddlers following along).

But the problem continues: Indiana health agency plans furloughs because of federal shutdown (Indiana Capital Chronicle).

The Consumer Services and Healthcare Regulation Commission’s work includes health care facility licensing and certification, health care quality and ensuring radiation safety and protection among health care providers, according to the Health Department’s website.

The Health Department has nearly 900 total employees, according to the Indiana Transparency Portal.

What are we to do when the media does not do its job?

 Money, Trump And The Media (Sheila Kennedy)

Take the reporting about the administration’s refusal to fund SNAP. On the NBC evening news I watched, the lack of funding was attributed to the shutdown; there was absolutely NO reference to the fact that the administration was refusing to release funds that had been appropriated for precisely this purpose–to ensure ongoing funding of a critical program in cases of government shutdown.

That failure to explain the actual reason for the SNAP crisis is journalistic malpractice. It allows partisans to point fingers and distort the political conversation. In a very real sense, it’s participation in a lie.

NBC isn’t the only network or mainstream source to evade this reality, and the question is: why? Why are major networks and news sources “both siding” multiple reports rather than accurately reflecting the fact that one side is primarily responsible? Why are they normalizing so many aspects of a profoundly abnormal Trump administration?

Rush Limbaugh called it the lame-stream media. Conservatives have whined for decades about the liberal media. The liberal media is a corporate entity, heeled by its corporate owners economic interests.  

There has already been far too much consolidation, too much transformation of journalism into just another business, where owners worry more about official reprisals for stepping out of line than providing first-rate reporting.

This piece from The Feral Historian about Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers seems appropriate here:

 It has been decades since I read the novel, so I will not take issue with the description of the novel in the video. The interpretation is that voters need to be selected from the virtuous, rather than assuming some voters may possess the virtues necessary for self-government.  But if it is an accurate interpretation, it is a wholly irrelevant idea if the information given to the virtuous voter is garbage. Garbage in, garbage out. 

It was not unknown that unfettered capitalism is dangerous. If I recall what I have read about Adam Smith, he warned about businessmen joining together in monopolies. Others made the same warning about capitalism.

In Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy revisited (Engelsberg ideas) Niall Ferguson (not a left-winger) writes:

Joseph Schumpeter was pessimistic. ‘Can capitalism survive?’ he asked in his book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942). His answer was stark: ‘No. I do not think it can.’ He then posed and answered a second question: ‘Can socialism work? Of course it can.’ Perhaps the Austrian-born economist’s pessimism was simply the effect of teaching at Harvard. Yet Schumpeter offered four plausible reasons for believing that socialism’s prospects would be brighter than capitalism’s in the second half of the twentieth century, even if he signalled his strong preference for capitalism in his ironical discussion of socialism.

 First, he suggested, capitalism’s greatest strength — its propensity for ‘creative destruction’ – is also a source of weakness. Disruption may be the process that clears out the obsolescent and fosters the advent of the new, but precisely for that reason it can never be universally loved. Second, capitalism itself tends towards oligopoly, not perfect competition.

The more concentrated economic power becomes, the harder it is to legitimize the system, especially in America, where ‘big business’ tends to get confused with ‘monopoly’. Third, capitalism ‘creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest’ — namely, intellectuals.

Finally, Schumpeter noted, socialism is politically irresistible to bureaucrats and democratic politicians.

Now, I am nowhere as well-educated as Niall Ferguson; anyone reading this knows I am not all that smart, either. However, Mr. Ferguson is cherry-picking his history. He notes socialism predates Marxism, then he proceeds to subsume socialism under the rubric of Marxism. On the other hand, he does a very good job of showing what Marx got wrong as a prophet. Socialism did not lead to mass murder in Europe (or America); Marxism as a secular religion has a bloody history. It might be good to remind (or inform) people that in the Weimar Republic, the Communists were trying to overthrow the Social Democrats.

I still think the best rebuke to Marxists was in the movie Reds, given to Jack Nicholson as Eugene O'Neill. I paraphrase: Americans want to get rich.

Democratic socialism does not bother me. People can still get rich. Maybe not trillionaires, but trillionaires are sociopathic and, therefore, a threat to the community. The government is not just a state, but representative of the community. Economics exists to benefit the community and must be subject to that community through government. 

Let Them Eat AI-Generated Cake (William Kristol, Andrew Egger, and Jim Swift; The Bulwark) came in after I wrote the above paragraphs. They refer to The French Revolution; having just read Ferguson, I go for the Russian Revolution.

The current state of American capitalism isn’t sustainable. It doesn’t deserve to be sustained. And the best way to avoid an American version of “eat the rich” is to fix the current “let them eat cake” distortion of capitalism into which we’ve fallen.

One person who doesn’t begin to understand this is Elon Musk. His solution to income inequality, he said yesterday, was for people to buy humanoid robots—specifically the one he’s developing. “People often talk about eliminating poverty, giving everyone amazing medical care. Well, there’s actually only one way to do that, and that’s with the Optimus robot,” he proclaimed, according to the New York Times. How convenient.

One man who does seem to grasp the character of the current moment is Pope Leo XIV. In an interview in September, Pope Leo cited Elon Musk’s pay package in the course of arguing that “we’re in big trouble” when it comes to the “continuously wider gap between the income levels of the working class and the money that the wealthiest receive.” More recently, he commented on “the growth of a wealthy elite, living in a bubble of comfort and luxury, almost in another world compared to ordinary people.” We might take guidance from the first American pope.

And there I have used up my morning on politics - 2 hours writing and reading are represented here. I need to get ready to leave from the group session. Back to using buses again.

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To The Boondocks of Hendricks County - Cultural Stagnation - And Back

Thursday was a frustrating day here in sunny Muncie.

I either slept through the alarm or forgot to turn it back on.

Also, I did something I have not done in ages: read a software manual. I may have mentioned downloading NovelWriter. I thought it would help me organize my stiff better than just a word processor. It may. Now that I figured out how to put text into it. Next thing to do is figure out how to format the text! Something like 3 hours gone there.

Yesterday was also my last day with a car. The owners needed picking up in Indy at 7:30. I decided to leave early. I got the info requested for Medicare to Family Services. Then made a stop at The Asian Market in Yorktown, since it is off any Muncie bus route. I really like the place - it has the most amazing supply of Asian - Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino - cooking supplies from rice to pork bellies to sauces to canned squid and real kimchi.

I thought I could look up Guina since I would be on the far side of Indy. Between traffic slowdowns and me deciding to get off of I-465, I wound up in the boondocks of Hendricks County in the dark. I gave up trying to find her place. She has probably moved, anyway.

Twenty-two years ago I was living in the Danville area and the highway there - 36 - was already very much one strip mall. It looked even more so last night. Downtown Plainfield looked as quaint as ever.

I got back here around ten, then putzed around until midnight.

Today, I slept in until 7:30. The morning I spent on a blog post regarding Indiana politics. Then off to my group session. 

Before that, I had lunch at The Dumpling House.

After the session, another chat fest, I did some quick shopping at Payless. 

Back here, I have been on the computer. Working through the email, neglected yesterday, and on this post and on another. 

Now, I want to spend time with Edna O'Brien.

The future of the Muncie Mall is making way for potential major retailers - (Ball State Daily News) - this sounds good. Yesterday, I drove around Castleton Mall, and to my surprise it seems to be flourishing. I do not think I have been inside for over 20 years. One thought about malls - why not have something that cannot be duplicated online? Activities - carpentry where the work is seen while being done - things like that.

I love this headline, without ever hearing of the singer before today: ‘It’s impossible not to have contradictions in a contradictory world’: Catalan pop visionary Rosalía on critics, crisis and being ‘hot for God’ (The Guardian).

I always knew I had contradictions. I would play them up, and ride them like a surfer on a wave; they let me laugh at myself and the world. At the same time, I did compartmentalize my life. Those separations began to crumble, I was trying to be only one thing without knowing what that one thing was. Depression took over, then nihilism.

Recovering from my crack up took me through to the place where I saw life seemed to be too multifarious for being just one thing. That life cannot be constrained into ideologies and stereotypes that other people demand of one's self.

The Orthodox Church helped with this change - that we are a mixture of good and bad, not creatures hated and condemned by an angry God.

Eleven years away from the internet, and, particularly, Yahoo Chat, may have helped, too.

But it seems that what I went through before my arrest, has become commonplace. That is my observations from being out, working (although, restaurant workers will always be a strange class of people), watching politics, and the group session, seem to support this thesis.

Reading The Decline of Deviance - by Adam Mastroianni contains what I have felt into a rational, thought out, essay.

I’m not the first to notice something strange going on—or, really, the lack of something strange going on. But so far, I think, each person has only pointed to a piece of the phenomenon. As a result, most of them have concluded that these trends are:

a) very recent, and therefore likely caused by the internet, when in fact most of them began long before

b) restricted to one segment of society (art, science, business), when in fact this is a culture-wide phenomenon, and

c) purely bad, when in fact they’re a mix of positive and negative.

When you put all the data together, you see a stark shift in society that is on the one hand miraculous, fantastic, worthy of a ticker-tape parade. And a shift that is, on the other hand, dismal, depressing, and in need of immediate intervention. Looking at these epoch-making events also suggests, I think, that they may all share a single cause.

***

Creativity is just deviance put to good use. It, too, seems to be decreasing.

A few years ago, I analyzed a bunch of data and found that all popular forms of art had become “oligopolies”: fewer and fewer of the artists and franchises own more and more of the market. Before 2000, for instance, only about 25% of top-grossing movies were prequels, sequels, spinoffs, etc. Now it’s 75%.

I guess my monitoring software cut off the author's conclusion as to cause. His argument up to that point was persuasive as to its existence. Do give it a look, please.

And consider this, Alexander Stern Qualities Without Men: Is inner life on the way out? (Commonweal).

Why? And why now? Cultures break down all the time, of course. Roy offers as examples the rise of Christianity and Islam in once-pagan cultures, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and the cultural destruction wrought by colonialism and the Industrial Revolution. But in all these cases deculturation was followed by acculturation—the rooting of a new culture, whether by contingency, persuasion, or force. What’s happening now is different, Roy argues. There is no successor to the cultures currently breaking down. Nor is globalization simply replacing unique cultures around the world with an American (or any other) monoculture. The version of English used in international contexts, which Roy calls “Globish,” is not a sign of Anglo-American cultural dominance. International English is merely the stump of a language, necessary for functional communication in a decultured global environment. It is language emptied of its cultural baggage and reduced to a bare-bones instrument of communication—a code.

***

Globalization is just one of four drivers of the deculturation that Roy traces back sixty years. The others are neoliberal financialization, the internet revolution, and the “individualist and hedonist revolution of the 1960s.” All of these developments tend, for Roy, toward a leveling that both tears up roots—denying the relevance of history and tradition—and cuts down references to transcendent value above. Roughly speaking, globalization flattens space and pares away cultural particularity; neoliberalism flattens value, reducing everything to its going rate on the market; the internet, and especially social media, flatten transactions and relationships into their barest, most instrumentalized form (consider the difference between friendship and Facebook friendship); and hedonic individualism flattens identity into desire. The result is human societies that exist more and more on a banal, sanitized, and explicitly coded middle tier, without depths to plumb or heights to scale.

Take, as another example (though Roy does not mention it explicitly), the life-hacks, self-help suggestions, and consumer assistance so prevalent online. The implied audience of these countless articles and videos is an isolated individual looking for the best ways to fulfill their desires. The life-hacker is productivity-obsessed and desperate to optimize; he appropriates whatever cultural resources seem effective without concern for their origins or deeper significance (yoga, Stoicism, the Mediterranean diet); and he tends to evaluate personal relationships through the lens of his own “wellness.” This is life lived out of a cookbook. As with a cookbook, the instructions must be as clear and explicit as possible: they must, in Roy’s terms, be “coded” by a “system designed to make all forms of human communication and relationship unequivocal and linear.” Roy’s contention is that a culture “transmitted” through explicit instructions like this, with no implicit values that bubble up from practice, is no culture at all. 

***

Kornbluh argues that this disintermediation and “flow” in work and communication has also influenced culture, even when it is relatively insulated from the economic demands of the market. Twenty-first-century art, even “high art,” she argues, is increasingly characterized by the same immediacy. Kornbluh cites “exhibitions” like “Immersive Van Gogh,” where the painter’s works are technologically enhanced and projected to create environments that can either wash over us or accompany practices like yoga. She also mentions the Safdie brothers’ film Uncut Gems, which uses claustrophobically tight shots, constant motion, and a saturated color palette to create an atmosphere of severe, inescapable anxiety. Persisting throughout the film, these techniques don’t just convey the Adam Sandler character’s state of mind, they force the viewer to inhabit it. Like horror and melodrama (though without the mediating genre conventions), Uncut Gems produces a visceral, unmediated experience. Kornbluh finds a similar immediacy in Marina Abramović’s 2010 MoMA exhibit The Artist Is Present. A highbrow staring contest between artist and viewer, Abramović’s performance artwork offered a profound emotional experience to many critics and visitors. But the work’s “relational aesthetics,” Kornbluh writes, did “not produce a contoured or commodified object so much as a happening that defie[d] representation.” Immediate art eliminates interpretive distance.

Another place Kornbluh sees this is in the rise of autofiction and novelists’ increasing suspicion of literary devices like plot and fully imagined characters. She quotes the writers Sheila Heti—“it seems so tiresome to make up a fake person and put them through the paces of a fake story”—and Karl Ove Knausgård—“[j]ust the thought of a fabricated character in a fabricated plot made me nauseous.” For Kornbluh, the turn to unapologetically autobiographical fiction is a sign not that authenticity has vanquished artifice, but that mediation is in crisis. The distance between an author and his or her characters creates ambiguities and invites readers to reflect on both the author’s intentions and the wider social context that gives the work meaning beyond the author’s strict control. Without that mediation, we are left with the production and consumption of personal, emotional impressions—sophisticated doomscrolling.

Even in literature that is not in the strict sense “autofiction,” Kornbluh finds the increasing dominance of first-person narration a sign of the same disdain for interpretation, mediation, and depth. (A recent viral tweet suggested that young readers have trouble even reading third-person omniscient narration.) To put it in Roy’s terms, it is in the space between expression and meaning that culture can actually breathe. In a culture of immediacy, where meanings (or codes) exist only on the surface—completely explicit and legible without need of interpretation—the depths and ambiguity of genuine culture are lost. Immediate art like autofiction rejects that space, forecloses interpretation, and suffocates both culture and individuality at the same time. 

 Is polymathy the answer? 

I felt it was while reading Cody Glen Barnhart's In Defense of Polymathia: Recovering an Ancient Intellectual Practice (Antigone). And I know this post has gone off on a long tangent, but too much of what has been discussed in these article, of which the quotes are only the highpoints, impacts on what I have been trying to do since 2011 and my future. I think it also is relevant beyond merely my own ventures. I will only give the briefest of outlines to his argument.

Despite these differing stances on the intellectual practice of polymathy, however, a common sentiment emerges when we compare the positions of all three. Ancient conversations about polymathy are noticeably in service of the larger social truth that virtuous learning invites what is distant and diverse to come together as one, not in an act of conformity but one of harmony.

*** 

If we take seriously the voices of the Classical past, and if we take inventory of the academic and social climates of the 21st century, we must concede how often we have failed our philosophical forebears in committing to a rightly guided, healthy polymathy. In the age of hyper-specialization, ideological siloing, and cut-throat vocational opportunities, the challenge is simple: the humanities could use a liberal dose of polymathy if they genuinely want to survive.

I wish to suggest that we would do well to appreciate the polymath’s inefficiency. The polymath takes us down winding turns through off-topic discussions and fills their volumes with needless verbosity – and we may better understand how to situate our own disciplines in the world if we develop an appetite for the tangential.

***

To recover polymathia doesn’t entail picking one’s place on the spectrum from “fox” to “hedgehog”. Rather, becoming a polymath entails recovering a vision for humanity that is infrequently found within the grounds of the academy. It entails pursuing charity in public discourse. It entails letting go of the desire to master anything, forcing us to recognize how limited our own lived experiences are in the face of truth’s breadth. And, above all else, it entails recognizing that each one of us are only bees tasting from the sources of our lives, synthesizing what we learn into the greatest product we can muster: the nectar of a lasting knowledge that we may, in turn, pass on to friends, families, students, and colleagues.

If nothing, else it has made me think of how harmony and conformity are not the same thing. But if I can tie Stern's flattening to Barnhart's siloing, they are then coming at the problem of cultural stagnation from the same direction. Likewise, Stern's culture of immediacy would be undone by Barnhart's polymath, which may lack depth also eschews immediacy. Tangentiality is, for me, creatively associating disparate ideas. 

One might also find some insights into this problem in The Decline and Fall of Classical Rhetoric (Antigone).

Do with this what you will, but try to be more creative.

What else I have been looking at this afternoon:

‘I took mushrooms before my audition’: Smiths drummer Mike Joyce on wild gigs, Marr’s jim-jams and Morrissey’s genius - yes, I was a Smiths fan. Less so of Morrissey as we have both gotten older.

‘Sinners was a blast’: Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram, the blues prodigy serving up electrifying riffs in the year’s biggest film (The Guardian) - if I had known Kingfish and Buddy Guy were in the movie, I'd have made a lot more effort to see the movie.

Movies, I want to see: Die My Love movie review & film summary (2025)  and All That We Love movie review (2025) (Roger Ebert)

KH called, and I took a pause in putting this post together.

‘I thought ‘Bond girl’ was such a demeaning term’: Famke Janssen on acting, ambition and Woody Allen (The Guardian) - a better actress who deserved better; the article mentions my favorite of her movies, City of Industry.

Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found by Andrew Graham-Dixon - review by Kathryn Murphy

David Lean: New biography explores filmmaker's work and philosophy

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Remembering One TV Show My Mother Should Never Let Me Watch

 I watched The Prisoner during its original run. I was around 8 years old. Probably not the right thing for an 8-year-old to see. It is about paranoia and rebellion, and just bloody strange. It prepared me for Twin Peaks, and surrealism (along with The Marx Brothers), and maybe even existentialism. It left me not trusting appearances.

If you have not seen it, find the show and do so.

The show's trailer:

 If you have seen The Prisoner, a documentary on Patrick McGoohan. This gives insights into The Prisoner's creator and the show itself.

A short interview;

The Feral Historian's analysis:

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Was The Village The First 15 Minute City? | The Prisoner Puzzle

10/21

Writing, Religion and Justice, Bloomington's Troubles

Yeah, grab bag for you. 

 Not much yesterday. CC had stayed over, slept for a good part of the morning. I got through email and put together "One Dead Blonde" for entry into two contests. I took the car out for cleaning - part of my way of thanking J for its use. Then I spent time trying to help CC get her storage bin problems sorted out. The storage bin company has the most impossible website. After she left, I napped. 

 MW sent me http://www.heartlandchurch.tv/. The music set me off. Sorry, it is a prejudice of mine. I also mistook the church which produced the thing for another, which has been associated with Christian nationalism. Mistaken memories and bias set me off on the wrong foot.

The movie that follows is about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I would have liked the movie better without the editorials interrupting it. Then, too, I read Bonhoeffer's Ethics at Fort Dix.  I got through about all but 20 minutes of the movie - I know what happens to Bonhoeffer, and it is depressing. What I forgot to mention to MW was that I liked Bonhoeffer's ethics - both as Christian ethics in the face of injustice and as ethics in themselves. 

However, her email sent me off to see what Orthodox Christianity has that is similar. I failed to do so.

 

This video hit me on how well it describes me back before 2010 - fragmented. There is also some good sense in it about how to deal with anxiety and turmoil, even if you do not subscribe to Orthodox Christianity.

 Before all that, I got my novel excerpts out. Uncharted Mag (More details here: https://www.unchartedmag.com/) and The Masters Review received "One Dead Blonde" for their respective novel excerpt contests.

Now for this morning! I got caught up on the news. A blog post done. Received my instructions on where to pick up Jerry. I think I will make this into more of a road trip.

King Arthur has always interested me. One of my missing books is an Arthurian encyclopedia. Eleanor Janega On The Dark Origins Of King Arthur is running in the background. It is an entertaining overview of the legend.

 One political thing: Private businesses will bolster Bloomington after IU cuts, economic experts say has me wondering how much of this revenge on Monroe County leaning Democratic.

 The current average weekly wage in Monroe County sits at about $1,121, according to data collected by the federal government in August.  
 
Wages in the U.S grew 3.7 percent in 2025, and Indiana wages increased by 5.6 percent, Powell said. Meanwhile, wages in Bloomington fell by 6.2 percent. 
 
“In terms of our employment, while it grew in the state and nation, it fell almost 2 percent,” Powell said. “This is in one year.” 
 
Powell said the reasons lie with one of the largest employers in the region: IU. The university makes up about 20 percent of the region’s employment. External forces in the U.S. such as cuts to research funding and skepticism of higher education have come to bear at IU and forced retrenchment, Powell said.  
 
Leaders at IU are working through policy and industry changes, but the university will probably continue to pull back in 2026. 

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Indianapolis Shows Its Decency

 Usually, I am critical of my home state. Not so today. Today, we show our decency - the kindness, respect, care - for those less fortunate.

Indy is giving 100 moms $20k each to support their birth journeys  (Mirror Indy)

After you give birth, more cash is on the way each month: $750 for the first 15 months of the baby’s life, and $375 for the following 21 months. Over the course of three years, you receive about $20,000 to support your family.

For 100 moms in Indianapolis, this is about to be a reality.

Mayor Joe Hogsett’s administration is launching the BIRTH Fund, a program supporting pregnant mothers living in ZIP codes with the city’s highest infant mortality rates. To qualify for the payments, you must be:

• 18 or older
• 27 weeks pregnant at most
• Have a family income of $39,000 or less
• Live in the following ZIP codes: 46241, 46222, 46237, 46219, 46218, 46201 and 46235

Okay, it is not original, but what is? Considering the following numbers, it was indecent not to do something:

Studies show infant mortality rates are linked to poor nutrition, lack of access to prenatal care and doctors, systemic racism and poverty. In Indiana, Black babies are about twice as likely to die during birth or up to a year after.

“We have ZIP codes here where infant mortality is 200% higher than the national average,” Tapper told Mirror Indy. “About 1 in 5 children in Marion County are already living in poverty. It makes sense to put cash in the pockets of families that need it most.”

The fund is based on a national model from The Bridge Project, a nonprofit sending money to low-income mothers across the country. The group already has active programs in the Midwest, including Kentucky, Ohio and Wisconsin.

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