Location of Disagreement

Alan Jacobs, on his tumblog, posted these thoughts that tie in to something that I think about often.

Watching a Twitter conversation unfold today, I was reminded for the hundredth time that debates about same-sex marriage tend to be so fruitless because SSM doesn’t really mark the point of disagreement. There are already preceding disagreements about what marriage itself is and is for, but even those are not foundational. People disagree about all these things because they disagree about what human flourishing (eudaimonia) is, about what kind of life is generally speaking best for human beings to live.

So, it is not the SSM part of that comment that I think about often, it is the "where is the locus of disagreement" part of it that is fascinating to me, but even more interesting than the fact of the disagreement at deeper levels is the "why?" of that fact.  How do we come to disagree at those points?  How do we come to the conclusions, often tacit and even unconscious to our own understanding, that we hold so strongly.  Strongly enough to make major life decisions upon them and even (historically) come to verbal or physical blows with others over.  

"How do we come to our own epistemology heurmenuetic?" is one of the most interesting questions I have ever come across and wrestled with. 

Citation: Jacobs, Alan at <http://ayjay.tumblr.com/post/46879051145/on-core-beliefs> Accessed 3/2/13.

Alan Jacobs, once again, ROCKS!

Alan Jacobs is one of my favorite thinkers and writers.  His essays (on such diverse topics as Harry Potter, the editing of children's bibles, and commentary on the poetry of W.H. Auden, to name just a tiny fraction of his scope) have stimulated my thinking as much as almost anyone else's writing I can think of. (Okay, I am going to bring him into that list after Lewis, Ken Myers and Tim Keller.  Something like that.) His book on the bio of Lewis was incredibly stimulating.  Of course, the bio was on Lewis, so it would be hard to not be mentally stimulating with that material, but his writing is just darn well put together.

I have followed his blogging essays and reposts for a few years now, and again: challenging, formidable, refreshing.  His refusal to accept too-simple responses to things that may seem simple but are actually more complex than they seem has been uncomfortably confrontational to my own way of thinking, which typically is satisfied with a good-enough answer that doesn't, in the end, take into account all the facts.

So, when I read on his tumblog a series of questions he was asking about a variety of Christian responses to the onset of World War II, my pulse quickened.  He didn't give any answers.  Just a set of questions.  By the time I was done reading his comments and questions, I was wishing I had the time to research the answers.  THEN he said he was writing a book to attempt to address those very questions.

*******The (interior) crowd goes wild******

I am excited about his upcoming book.  Have to wait until 2015 is the downside.  Dang.  Three Cheers for AJ.

You can find the blog post I am referring to here: <http://ayjay.tumblr.com/post/45675950491/christian-humanism-and-total-war>. Accessed 3/18/13.

Why I like Alan Jacobs' way of thinking about things

Alan Jacob's thinking and writing often refreshes me. He ably rejects generalization in favor of a deeper look at specifics in a way that is instructive.  Here is just one example.

"I would say that all our experience is indeed mediated, but mediated in a wide range of ways. Perception itself, neural activity itself, is a mediating activity. I often think of this passage from Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:

Peeping through my keyhole I see within the range of only about thirty percent of the light that comes from the sun; the rest is infrared and some little ultraviolet, perfectly apparent to many animals, but invisible to me. A nightmare network of ganglia, charged and firing without my knowledge, cuts and splices what I do see, editing it for my brain. Donald E. Carr points out that the sense impressions of one-celled animals are not edited for the brain: “This is philosophically interesting in a rather mournful way, since it means that only the simplest animals perceive the universe as it is.”

So we really don’t have a choice between mediated and unmediated experience. The choices are always among various forms of mediation. I don’t think Heidegger fully realized this, which is why he could speak of writing with a pen as something you do with your hand but typewriting as something alienated from the hand — never acknowledging that we type with our hands too.

Now, if someone wants to argue that the mediation of the pen involves our body in more intimate ways than the mediation of the typewriter, in that (for instance) in writing with a pen we shape the individual letters instead of just striking keys with a uniform motion, I’m ready to listen — as long as it’s okay to point out that writing with my finger on an iPad screen is more intimate still!

Analogically, consider Walker Percy’s great essay “The Loss of the Creature,” in which he points out that our cultural formation makes it impossible for anyone actually to see the Grand Canyon: only some immense dislocation of our expectations can make is truly visible to us. It is at least possible that some technological mediations could help us achieve that valuable dislocation.

In short, we need fewer binary distinctions and more attention to the detailed phenomenology of particular technologies and their interactions with the mediating powers of our perceptual apparatus."

Citation: a comment Alan Jacobs made at this site, <http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2013/03/01/responding-to-carrs-digital-dualism/> accessed 3/9/13.

W. H. Auden's insight into my problems

I am afraid that I have succumbed to the temptation that W.H. Auden suggests here is the consequence of easily accessible books.  I primarily blame The Friends of the Library Bookstore for this, due to their incredibly cheap books and convenient location.

“We are all of us tempted to read more books, look at more pictures, listen to more music than we can possibly absorb, and the result of such gluttony is not a cultured mind but a consuming one; what it reads, looks at, listens to is immediately forgotten, leaving no more traces behind than yesterday’s newspaper.”

Citation: <http://ayjay.tumblr.com/post/44495998930/again-while-it-is-a-great-blessing-that-a-man-no. Accessed 3/7/13> from W. H. Auden, Secondary Worlds (1967).

Brass-Tacks Repentance with C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis posted this helpful comment in a letter to a fretful soul.  Clarifying.

"(1) Remember what St John said 'If our heart condemn us, God is stronger than our heart.' The feeling of being, or not being, forgiven & loved, is not what matters. One must come down to brass tacks. If there is a particular sin on your conscience, repent & confess it. If there isn't, tell the despondent devil not to be silly. You can't help hearing his voice (the odious inner radio) but you must treat it merely like a buzzing in your ear or any other irrational nuisance. 

(2) Remember the story in the Imitation, how the Christ on the crucifix suddenly spoke to the monk who was so anxious about his salvation and said 'If you knew that all was well, what wd. you, today, do, or stop doing?' When you have found the answer, do it or stop doing it. You see, one must always get back to the practical and definite. What the devil loves is that vague cloud of unspecified guilt feeling or unspecified virtue by which he lures us into despair or presumption. 'Details, please' is the answer.--"

Citation: The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Vol. 3: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy(Cambridge University Press, 2007), 962

C.S. Lewis on Why Myth?

In  a review The Lord of The Rings in On Stories and Other Essays on Literature C.S. Lewis writes this about myth's place in our reading and thinking:

" 'But why,' (some ask), 'why, if you have a serious comment to make on the real life of men, must you do it by talking about a phantasmagoric never-never land of your own?' Because, I take it, one of the main things the author wants to say is that the real life of men is of that mythical and heroic quality. One can see the principle at work in his characterization. Much that in a realistic work would be done by 'character delineation' is here done simply by making the character an elf, a dwarf, or a hobbit. The imagined beings have their insides on the outside; they are visible souls. And man as a whole, Man pitted against the universe, have we seen him at all till we see that he is like a hero in a fairy tale?"

"The Value of myth is that it takes all the things you know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by the veil of familiarity."

"We do not retreat from reality, we rediscover it. As long as the story lingers in our mind, the real things are more themselves... By dipping them in myth we see them more clearly."

In  Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton explains that he believes in fairy tales.  By the end of that book, I realized that I did too.  If we go through this life without the very real sense that the world around us has the characteristics of a myth, then we are missing the point, perhaps.  The fact that we are "used to it" doesn't make it any less astonishing.  As Lewis says in a letter to a Mrs. Johnson, "The good things even of this world are far too good ever to be reached by imagination.  Even the common orange, you know: no one could have imagined it before he tasted it. How much less heaven." And the same is true of all of our existence.

This is why I read myth and fantasy.  To remind me of the truth.

Citation: Quotes from Lewis' review of Tolkien found here <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis> Accessed 1/26/2013

Modeling repentance for the next generation

This quote, from an essay attempting to understand Luther's pithy but curious injunction, “Sin boldly. But believe even more boldly in Christ, and rejoice", concluded with a strong and important admonition to me as a parent. Worth pondering.

"I think it is literally a temptation: It would be a parental sin, a sin of the foolish variety, to launch my children into adulthood armed with nothing but the advice not to sin. What they really need is the knowledge of how to deal with sin and guilt as they all-too-predictablyh acquire it. I don’t want them to be blindsided by the fact that they are sinners, or uninformed about what to do with consciences that rightly condemn them. They need to learn the Christian skill of taking it to God, of walking in the light, of believing Christ boldly, rejoicing, and praying boldly."

Citation: <http://www.patheos.com/blogs/scriptorium/2009/08/sin-boldly/>. Accessed 1/24/13.

Goodness

This pic makes me want to adopt another little Guatemaltecan girl to be sisters with Adriana!  I miss Guate!



Photo Citation: <https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152055837765464&set=a.383412905463.358112.315791905463&type=1&theater> Accessed 9/23/2012

A "Circa, Moleskin, Ipad, Evernote"~fest

If you know me IRL, then you know I constantly use a Circa Notebook for my planning and reference materials.  I like having things on paper and accessible.  I often have thought how cool it would be to have a "page" in my Circa that was also a computer screen.  I figure some kind of paper-thin computer will be coming to us from Google or Apple or some company that is currently being dreamed up by a 14 year old, and will be in production in 15 months or so...

But in the meantime, I have discovered this:

Dang!  CIRCA/IPAD FUSION!  

I don't have an IPAD, but still...

And then I found this today.  I am a fan of both Moleskin and Evernote, and now they have joined up in an unexpected way to bring us this interesting and maybe delightful product.

The New Evernote Smart Notebook by Moleskine

August 24, 2012 | Posted by Andrew Sinkov in Product updates

   

 

137 comments

 

Over the past year or so, Evernote has begun to really focus on the design and experience of our apps. We’ve been inspired by a wide range of companies and products that do this right, from Apple toUchida Yoko to Moleskine. In fact, in Moleskine, we saw more than inspiration, we saw an opportunity to do something amazing together that fully embodied our Experience First thinking.

Moleskine is the maker of beautifully designed notebooks and accessories that are the go-to choice for creative individuals of all types. While these notebooks are beloved for their quality and style, they suffer from an issue common to all physical notebooks…they’re physical.

That’s where Evernote comes in. We’ve partnered with Moleskine to develop a new, limited edition Evernote Smart Notebook that’s designed specifically for the new Evernote iOS application.

Together, we created a gorgeous notebook that includes a number of special features that allow you to take your ideas off the written page and place them right into Evernote, where they’ll be searchable, organized and available forever.

Pre-order your Evernote Smart Notebook »

New Features. Magical Pages. Smart Stickers.

Our goal was to create a notebook that met Moleskine’s aesthetic standards, while adding an entirely new level of functionality. Here’s what we did.

Special pages
The Evernote Smart Notebook comes in two page styles: ruled and squared. For each, we designed a special dotted paper pattern on the pages that was optimized for new features in Evernote…

Page Camera
Evernote for iPhone and iPad got an update today (version 4.4) that includes the new Page Camera functionality, which is designed for photos of physical pages and documents.

To use the Page Camera, launch the camera inside of Evernote, then tap on the new Page Camera icon at the top of the screen. Hold your camera above the page and center the image inside the rectangle. Snap a photo, then move on to the next page. Using your flash ensures that you’ll get the highest quality image. Tap on the page numbers to review the images you’ve taken. Tap the checkmark when you’re done.

Page Camera automatically improves the contrast of the page and removes any shadows. For the Evernote Smart Notebook by Moleskine, it finds the dot pattern and even corrects the skew of the photo. This means that the images that end up in your account are perfect for Evernote’s handwriting recognition, so that you’ll be able to find you thoughts anytime. But, there’s more…

Smart Stickers
As if that wasn’t cool enough, in the back pocket of each Moleskine notebook you’ll find a set of multi-color Smart Stickers. When you apply a sticker to a page and take a photo, Evernote recognizes the sticker and instantly associates a tag with the note or places it into a notebook that you specify in your Settings. The Smart Stickers come with some pre-defined tags, but you can customize them to be whatever you want.

In addition to the Smart Stickers, we also included some handy Skitch arrows. Use those to draw attention to important things on the page.

Check out our Getting Started with Evernote Smart Notebook for some guidance on getting started.

Premium included

As if all of that wasn’t great enough, each notebook also comes with 3-months of Evernote Premium.

Availability

These beautiful and powerful notebooks will be available in two sizes, pocket ($24.95) and large ($29.95), beginning on October 1. If you would like to be among the first to get your hands on one, you can pre-order them today from the Evernote Store.

Pre-order your Evernote Smart Notebook »

C.S. Lewis on when to pluck out your eye

 C.S. Lewis on one subtle danger in doing a good thing, a thing that we may love and even be called to do:

"...we may come to love knowledge - our knowing - more than the thing known: to delight not in the exercise of our talents but in the fact that they are ours, or even in the reputation they bring us.  Every success in the scholar's life increases this danger.  If it becomes irresistible, he must give up his scholarly work.  The time for plucking out the right eye has arrived."

Citation: Lewis, C.S. The Weight of Glory. HarperCollins Publishers. San Francisco. 2001. Page 57.

The ITypewriter! I just like this.

Go to the link below to see a video of this sweet piece of retro-tech in action

Citation: <http://www.austin-yang.com/index.php?/projects/iturntable/>. Accessed 8/18/2012

 Eve Tushnet writes

"Social science in many ways depends on moral philosophy. In deciding how to measure causation and what to control for you’re making judgments about which causal mechanisms you are willing to consider and which situations you consider equivalent." (emphasis mine, citation below)

That last sentence really captures one of the nuances that I have been pondering for the last several years.  

While the culture in which we find ourselves may shove us in one direction or another regarding such things as 

• what foods are "breakfast foods" or 
• whether or not we think farming or computer coding is a more prestigious job or 
• whether we think spanking is an appropriate form of discipline...
• (to name 3 of a near infinite number of particulars)

How the culture informs us about such things as causal connection and equivalency is much more important, because it is almost undetectable, and therefore more powerful. The fact is that our culture, and indeed our history in many ways dictates what we think is "right" when we are "making judgments about which causal mechanisms you are willing to consider and which situations you consider equivalent".  This puts words to something I have been thinking about, and feeling a bit disturbed about for quite a while.  

Rightly or wrongly, I have settled on, as one of my points of particular interest, 15th-17th century Europe, it's philosophical influence through its writers and events, and it's direct influence on groups of individuals who, in response to diverse stimuli, ended up landing in America and forming our society in response to the old societies which they left. I believe they have been primary influences that dictated to those of us who came after how we would make those judgements about causal mechanisms and equivalencies.

The downside is that I think they got it wrong.  

The upside is that I have begun to see it.  

And that is sobering, but helpful.

Alfred North Whitehead, in Science and the Modern World suggests:

"Do not chiefly direct your attention to those intellectual positions which controversialists feel it necessary explicitly to defend.  More important and more telling for the deep understanding of a culture are the fundamental assumptions which adherents of all the variant systems within the epoch unconsciously presuppose.  Such assumptions appear so obvious that people do not know what they are assuming.  Indeed, they do not know that they are assuming anything, because no other way of putting things has ever occurred to them."

I think that what we perceive as causation, and what we consider equivalent is one of those deeply rooted assumptions that we do not understand as being an assumption.  And I think we should consider them deeply.

Citation: <http://www.theamericanconservative.com/three-kinds-of-argument-on-family-structure/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=three-kinds-of-argument-on-family-structure>. Accessed 8/15/12

The Jama Cold-Brew Coffee Maker! Probably need one...

Image Citation: <http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/3137UjasqmL._SL500_AA300_.jpg>.  Accessed 8/8/12