Beliefs and unbeliefs

One woman told me last Christmas that she did not believe either in Hell or in ghosts. Hell was an invention got up by the priest to keep people good; and ghosts would not be permitted, she held, to go "trapsin' about the earth" at their own free will; "but there are faeries and little leprechauns, and water-horses, and fallen angels." I have met also a man with a Mohawk Indian tattooed upon his arm, who held exactly similar beliefs and unbeliefs. No matter what one doubts, one never doubts the faeries, for, as the man with the Mohawk Indian on his arm said, "they stand to reason."

--W.B. Yeats

from "Belief and Unbelief"

The Celtic Twilight

I read (most of) this book many years ago--1997 I must assume since that's when that gasoline receipt was dated that I found in it--and recently decided to re-read it. I think I might have to hunt down a copy of that Katharine Briggs book, too.

Tulipomania

Another story is told of an English traveller, which is scarcely less ludicrous. This gentleman, an amateur botanist, happened to see a tulip-root lying in the conservatory of a wealthy Dutchman. Being ignorant of its quality, he took out his penknife, and peeled off its coats, with the view of making experiments upon it. When it was by this means reduced to half its size, he cut it into two equal sections, making all the time many learned remarks on the singular appearances of the unknown bulb. Suddenly the owner pounced upon him, and, with fury in his eyes, asked him if he knew what he had been doing? "Peeling a most extraordinary onion," replied the philosopher. "Hundert tausend duyvel!" said the Dutchman; "it's an Admiral Van der Eyck." "Thank you," replied the traveller, taking out his note-book to make a memorandum of the same; "are these admirals common in your country?" "Death and the Devil!" said the Dutchman, seizing the astonished man of science by the collar; "come before the syndic, and you shall see." In spite of his remonstrances, the traveller was led through the streets followed by a mob of persons. When brought into the presence of the magistrate, he learned, to his consternation, that the root upon which he had been experimentalising was worth four thousand florins; and, notwithstanding all he could urge in extenuation, he was lodged in prison until he found securities for the payment of this sum.

--from "The Tulipomania"
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
by Charles Mackay

"Man enough to know its value"

And yet I should have dearly liked, I own, to have touched her lips, to have questioned her, that she might have opened them, to have looked upon the lashes of her downcast eyes and never raised a blush, to have let loose waves of hair, an inch of which would be a keepsake beyond price; in short, I should have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest license of a child, and yet to have been man enough to know its value.

—from A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens

This, I think, is a goal worthy to be achieved, a profound secret to be understood and applied to many aspects of life: "to have the lightest license of a child, and yet be man enough to know its value."

"Held in deep odium by all civilized peoples"

There has recently been some buzz about The New Yorker publishing (for the first time ever! did we mention that? EVER!!!) a previously unpublished essay by Mark Twain titled "The Privilege of the Grave." This essay is actually only one of 24 such previously unpublished essays that are going to be published in the upcoming book Who is Mark Twain? The official release date is April 1, 2009, with books going on sale on April 21, 2009. You can read all about the book at Who is Mark Twain, and read a flash e-galley here. A quote from the aforementioned essay:

It's occupant has one privilege which is not exercised by any living person: free speech. The living man is not really without this privilege—strictly speaking—but as he possesses it merely as an empty formality, and knows better than to make use of it, it cannot be seriously regarded as an actual possession. As an active privilege, it ranks with the privilege of committing murder: we may exercise it if we are willing to take the consequences. Murder is forbidden in both form and in fact; free speech is granted in form but forbidden in fact. By common estimate both are crimes, and are held in deep odium by all civilized peoples. Murder is sometimes punished—free speech always—when committed. Which is seldom...

Pretty cool photo they had on their index page, too.

Questions

Why is it so important—what others have done? Why does it become sacred by the mere fact of not being your own? Why is anyone and everyone right—so long as it's not yourself? Why does the number of those others take the place of truth? Why is truth made a mere matter of arithmetic—and only of addition at that? Why is everything twisted out of all sense to fit everything else? There must be some reason. I don't know. I've never known it. I'd like to understand.

—from The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

Seek not approval

A political emergency brings out the corn-pone opinion in fine force in its two chief varieties--the pocketbook variety, which has its origin in self-interest, and the bigger variety, the sentimental variety--the one which can't bear to be outside the pale; can't bear to be in disfavor; can't endure the averted face and the cold shoulder; wants to stand well with his friends, wants to be smiled upon, wants to be welcome, wants to hear the precious words, "He's on the right track!" Uttered, perhaps by an ass, but still an ass of high degree, an ass whose approval is gold and diamonds to a smaller ass, and confers glory and honor and happiness, and membership in the herd. For these gauds many a man will dump his lifelong principles into the street, and his conscience along with them. We have seen it happen. In some millions of instances.

Men think they think upon great political questions, and they do; but they think with their party, not independently; they read its literature, but not that of the other side; they arrive at convictions, but they are drawn from a partial view of the matter in hand and are of no particular value. They swarm with their party, they feel with their party, they are happy in their party's approval; and where the party leads they will follow, whether for right and honor, or through blood and dirt and a mush of mutilated morals.

--from Corn-Pone Opinions, Mark Twain, 1901

Seeing rocks

It is understood by the Zen mind that the senses cannot grasp reality from one viewpoint. For example, the Zen garden at Ryōanji, a Zen temple near Kyoto, appears as a few rocks and some sand. The garden begins to make some sense when you realize that from your vantage point you cannot quite see all the rocks. You might also notice that you are picking out only the rocks to look at. Is not all that sand just as important? What if it were all rocks? Would you be trying as hard to see all the rocks?

—from The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi

Many years ago I went through a phase of reading numerous books on Zen, for whatever that's worth. I read Five Rings several years before that. My paperback copy has pages yellowed with age, and was printed in 1982. This may have been one of the first books I read with the deliberate intention of reshaping my own mind, changing how I viewed the world and how my thought processes worked. One of the first things I did when unboxing books from the house move was stacking certain books in a special shelf, and this is one of the books that goes on that shelf (along with the Illuminatus! trilogy), which may give you a rough idea of the kinds of books that shelf holds.

I bought it new, and read it when I bought it. Twenty-six years on now, and it may be time to read it again.

On boredom

The word boredom did not enter the language until the eighteenth century. No one knows its etymology. One guess is that bore may derive from the French verb bourrer, to stuff.

Question: Why was there no such word before the eighteenth century?
(a) Was it because people were not bored before the eighteenth century? (But wasn't Caligula bored?)
(b) Was it because people were bored but didn't have a word for it?
(c) Was it because people were too busy trying to stay alive to get bored? (But what about the idle English royalty and noblemen?)
(d) Is it because there is a special sense in which for the past two or three hundred years the self has perceived itself as a leftover which cannot be accounted for by its own objective view of the world and that in spite of an ever heightened self-consciousness, increased leisure, ever more access to cultural and recreational facilities, ever more instruction on self-help, self-growth, self-enrichment, the self feels ever more imprisoned in itself--no, worse than imprisoned because a prisoner at least knows he is imprisoned and sets store by the freedom awaiting him and the world to be open, when in fact the self is not and it is not--a state of affairs which has to be called something besides imprisonment--e.g., boredom. Boredom is the self being stuffed with itself.
(e) Is it because of a loss of sovereignty in which the self yields up plenary claims to every sector of the world to the respective experts and claimants of these sectors, and that such a surrender leads to an impoverishment which must be called by some other name, e.g., boredom?
(f) Is it because the self first had the means of understanding itself through myth, albeit incorrectly, later understood itself through religion as a creature of God, and now has the means of understanding the Cosmos through positive science but not itself because the self cannot be grasped by positive science, and that therefore the self can perceive itself only as a ghost in a machine? How else can a ghost feel otherwise toward a machine than bored?

--from Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book by Walker Percy

I am not a "self-help book" kind of person. But then this is not really a self-help book. I like it because it's one of those books that presents a lot of questions, but no answers. You have to provide the answers yourself. Somewhere along the line, you might learn to think about things in a different way. Life changing? No. But entertaining and perhaps at least a little enlightening? Yes.

The staggering butterfly

Time passed, quite a lot of time. I stuck a cigarette in my mouth but didn't light it. The Good Humor man went by in his little blue and white wagon, playing Turkey in the Straw on his music box. A large black and gold butterfly fishtailed in and landed on a hydrangea bush almost at my elbow, moved its wings slowly up and down a few times, then took off heavily and staggered away through the motionless hot scented air.

--from The High Window by Raymond Chandler

In trying to keep up my practice of book-blogging on the other blog which will soon be defunct, here's another quote from Raymond Chandler. A few paragraphs before this one there was a strange word I had never seen before and had to look up: deodar, which means "A tall cedar (Cedrus deodara) native to the Himalaya Mountains and having drooping branches and dark bluish-green leaves, often with white, light green, or yellow new growth in cultivars." [Free Dictionary]. The High Window starts out with Marlowe describing the hot, oppressive atmosphere of the day. The butterfly taking off heavily and staggering away is a perfect accent for the surroundings and the weather he was describing.

And what is it with Turkey in the Straw and ice cream trucks? A universal phenomenon, apparently. Remember The Believers? I don't think it was that song that the ice cream truck was playing at the beginning of that movie, but when I heard that music and saw that truck creeping over the hill I got a serious case of the shivers. That was the scariest part of that whole movie.

I think this is also the story in which Chandler (as Marlowe) describes a woman as having "a face like a bucket of mud." That's one of my favorite descriptions of all time. Short, succinct and unusual, yet you know immediately what he's talking about. It's another line that I've always remembered.

Politics: 'twas ever thus

Some of the customs and attitudes of the times also operated to the advantage of the gentry in elections. The practice of treating the voters excluded a poor man from candidacy for the simple reason that he could not afford to buy meat and drink for the voters in the large quantities that were expected. Samuel Overton of Hanover County estimated that his expenses for two elections amounted to £75.²⁵. George Washington spent about £25 on each of two elections, over £39 on another, and approximately £50 on a fourth. These were large amounts for that day—several times more than enough to buy the house and land of the voter who barely met the minimum franchise requirements. The custom of giving expensive treats also implied that candidates were wealthy and that they lived with the open-handed, lavish generosity of gentlemen. If a poor man scraped up enough money to stand an election and attempted to treat the voters like a gentleman, his performance was more likely to excite ridicule or pity than respect.

—from American Revolutionaries in the Making by Charles S. Sydnor

Not much has changed, it seems.

Jade earrings and broken hearts

She was wearing a pair of long jade earrings. They were nice earrings and had probably cost a couple of hundred dollars. She wasn't wearing anything else.

I knelt down and squinted along the nap of the rug to the front door. I thought I could see two parallel grooves pointing that way, as though heels had dragged. Whoever had done it had meant business. Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.

—excerpts from The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

I had a long, hard day yesterday (it was one of those days when San Antonio was as squishy as a rotten avocado) and didn't spend much computer time when I got home. So today I'll throw in two quotes instead of one. I like quote #1 for everything it leaves out. Quote #2 is a fine example of how Chandler interjects philosophical-sounding descriptions almost off-hand, while his protagonist (Marlowe) is smack in the middle of a murder scene. Dead men are heavier than broken hearts. I love that sentence. The imagery, the rhythm of the words—it's perfect.

On Conspiracies

"Conspiracy mythology is a cop-out...a way of evading our responsibility for history."

—Robert Shea

"I am profoundly suspicious about all conspiracy theories, including my own, because conspiracy buffs tend to forget the difference between a plausible argument and a real proof. Or between a legal proof, a proof in the behavioral sciences, a proof in physics, a mathematical or logical proof, or a parody of any of the above."

—Robert Anton Wilson

As quoted in The Illuminoids by Neal Wilgus.

I especially like Shea's more succinct statement. It is one of those "pernicious truths"—a favorite phrase of mine which came from Shea's and Wilson's Illuminatus! trilogy. I don't know exactly what they meant—if they meant anything at all—by that phrase, but to me it means a truth that most people refuse to agree with. But when they do finally agree with it, it changes their perspective on how they view the world. And even when they don't agree with it, it still lurks in the background of their mind, niggling away at them, slowly chewing away tiny bits of the foundation of their reality grid.

Robert Anton Wilson on Stupidity

There are two kinds of stupidity exemplified in most books about the Illuminati. There is the stupidity of the credulous conspiracy-monger, true child of the witch-hunter of yore, who will accuse anyone and everyone on the basis of wild hypothesis and unsupported inference, with no care for the elementary rules of civil courtesy or that famous Commandment which urges that we not bear false witness against our neighbor. This is an old and most murderous kind of stupidity and is the chief destroyer of innocents throughout history.

But there is also the stupidity of the True Believer in the revealed visions of the Establishment press, the Establishment universities, the Establishment "experts." This is the stupidity of those who believe all American science is represented in the Scientific American; that all the news that's fit to print really will be fond in the New York Times; that the little magazines, the underground presses and the minority parties in politics and philosophy are always wild-eyed kooks or unreliable fanatics. In fact, as a little open-minded investigation will convince anyone who stops parroting official consensus-reality and starts looking around independently, the current Establishment is like any other Establishment in history. It ignores, defames or persecutes really important ideas as often as the Victorian Establishment did, or the 18th Century Establishment, or the Holy Inquisition, or any other group that has enough power to shut up or drown out the signals it does not want to receive.

—Robert Anton Wilson in the Introduction to The Illuminoids by Neal Wilgus

Now that vacation is over, I'll have to post the (more or less) daily excerpt earlier in the day, rather than waiting until late at night and choosing one by the mood of the day. I didn't want to have more than three books in progress at one time, but I felt the urge to read something a little more "fun" and I saw The Illuminoids on the shelf. Another book that I purchased years ago from either Loompanics or Amok, I've read it before and it's an enjoyable and balanced book that looks at conspiracy theories without trying to propose or advocate any of them. I think it's a very good book for anyone interested in strangenesses or conspiracies, but who doesn't necessarily buy into them.

The plants

The plants filled the place, a forest of them, with nasty meaty leaves and stalks like the newly washed fingers of dead men.

—from The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

I thought I'd post something other than Charles Fort tonight, so when I checked my notebook it reminded me that the Commonplace Book's most recent incarnation actually began several months ago as I was re-reading my Chandler collection.

Raymond Chandler is one of my favorite authors. His books are like good music that you never tire of listening to or good art that you never tire of seeing—you never get tired of reading it.

I have read many authors. But there are still only a handful that have made me sincerely wish I could write like they did: Tolkien, Lovecraft, Philip K. Dick, Theodore Sturgeon, and Raymond Chandler.

Arsenic and sarcasm

Now, one of our Intermediatist principles, to start with, is that so far from positive, in the aspect of Homogeneousness, are all substances, that, at least in what is called an elementary sense, anything can be found anywhere. Mahogany logs on the coast of Greenland; bugs of a valley on the top of Mt. Blanc; atheists at a prayer meeting; ice in India. For instance, chemical analysis can reveal that almost any dead man was poisoned with arsenic, we'll say, because there is no stomach without some iron, lead, tin, gold, arsenic in it and of it—which, of course, in a broader sense, doesn't matter much, because a certain number of persons must, as a restraining influence, be executed for murder every year; and, if detectives aren't able to really detect anything, illusion of their success is all that is necessary, and it is very honorable to give up one's life for society as a whole.

—from The Book of the Damned by Charles Fort

This paragraph is a good example of Fort's method: a circuitous route to make his point, some quick examples, a brief digression or two along the way and a heavy layer of sarcasm to make sure you're paying attention.

Charles Fort on Knowledge

In the topography of intellection, I should say that what we call knowledge is ignorance surrounded by laughter.

—from The Book of the Damned by Charles Fort

I will try to post an excerpt per day if I am able. Some of the excerpts that I note in my "commonplace book" are more quote-worthy than others. I skipped over two others just now, before I came to this one. I suppose I'll use the others on days when I can't find something more clever.

Fort had a clever wit, but not so much rapier as cudgel. His response to those he chose to disagree with was not so much a skewer as it was an avalanche. He didn't seem to hold very high regard for "authorized journalists," or "authorized scientists" either.

Smarter than the Party

"But what I'd like you to answer is this: why do you think you are entitled to your own thoughts? Against those of the majority of your Collective? Or is the majority's will sufficient for you, Comrade Taganov? Or is Comrade Taganov becoming an individualist?"

[...]

"It's all right with me, Comrade Taganov. I have nothing more to say. Just a little advice, from a friend: remember that the speech has made it plain what awaits those who think themselves smarter than the Party."

--from We the Living by Ayn Rand

Although I am on vacation this week, I have not really done any extra reading, being more focused on being entirely without focus. However, I did make a big dent in We the Living today. I will be glad to finish this book. In its pages is an invaluable lesson on the evils of collectivism, but it is so depressing.

On the lighter side, my son discovered a heavily condensed children's version of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court which struck him as interesting, and I've been reading to him from it before bedtime. It's still a little beyond his reading level. My daughter found my old battered copy of Harriet the Spy last night. When we moved into our new house, we put one shelf in the hallway between their rooms and crammed it with children's books. I have many books that I bought in years past with the thought, I might have a kid someday who will want to read this.

Charles Fort on Darwinism

The fittest survive.

What is meant by the fittest?

Not the strongest; not the cleverest—

Weakness and stupidity everywhere survive.

There is no way of determining fitness except in that a thing does survive.

"Fitness," then, is only another name for "survival."

Darwinism:

That survivors survive.

--from The Book of the Damned by Charles Fort

I purchased this all-in-one volume of The Complete Books of Charles Fort several years ago, and so far have only scanned through it, snatching bits and pieces of it for my own amusement. I began reading it in earnest a few days ago, and I hope I can make it straight through from beginning to end.

Fort's writing style--if he has one--is idiosyncratic and perhaps even whimsical; although he is serious about what he does, he is not always particularly serious about how he does it. (Ye gads, I almost used the word "quirky" in there).

Further quotes to follow as I wend my way through this ponderous tome.

Collectivism

Once, Kira and Leo attempted to spend the night in the country.

"Certainly," said the landlady. "Certainly, citizens, I can let you have a room for the night. But first you must get a certificate from your Upravdom as to where you live in the city, and a permit from your militia department, and then you must bring me your labor books, and I must register them with out Soviet here, and our militia department, and get a permit for you as transient guests, and there's a tax to pay, and then you can have the room."

They stayed in the city.

--Ayn Rand, We the Living

Some Democrats in Congress have recently expressed the desire to nationalize the oil industry. If you think that traveling within the U.S. is difficult now, due to "Homeland Security," just wait for all the red tape you'll have to cut to get an extra tank of gas for your vacation.

So, after years of having a few of her books on my shelves and never reading them--except for Anthem, which I read once long ago--I have begun reading Rand. I recently purchased several of her books at once which I didn't already have (all used via an eBay auction). I decided to read her works as closely as possible to the order in which she wrote them, thus have begun with the book excerpted above. Technically a work of fiction, but realistic fiction based on her personal experiences in the U.S.S.R. If I weren't personally opposed to coercive education, I would say this book should be required reading for everyone, especially with socialism looming on our metaphorical horizon the way it is now.

Politics as usual...

...during a July election in the year 1758, George Washington's agent supplied 160 gallons [of alcoholic beverages] to 391 voters and "unnumbered hangers-on." This amounted to more than a quart and a half a voter. An itemized list of the refreshments included 28 gallons of rum, 50 gallons of rum punch, 34 gallons of wine, 46 gallons of beer, and 2 gallons of cider royal.

-- Charles S. Sydnor, American Revolutionaries in the Making

I remember when Ann Richards was elected governor of Texas, a certain flaming Democrat I knew said he voted for her because she threw a big party and everyone there got free beer. "I'll vote for anyone who gives me free beer," he said.

Such high standards.