Buy, Buy says the sign in the shop window,

why, why says the junk in the yard.

Paul McCartney

I had two revelations from my reading of A History of Western Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell this week.

The first is that at the heart of (almost?) all scientific, philosophical and religious effort is a desire that something, anything, be eternal. We want our lives to mean something even if only that they were a necessary, albeit, tiny part of something grand and purposeful.

The second is that when we ask the question why, we either ask it teleologically, seeking first cause, or we ask it mechanistically, seeking to understand the mechanics of what we observe. The first is a process of induction of universal truths from experience. The second is a process of deduction of rules from experience. Regardless of path chosen, it is impossible to know anything in an absolute way. Consequently, certainty that there is something eternal is beyond grasp.

My wife loves to ask why and then tell me she doesn’t understand when I offer an explanation. Why would anyone like Putin exist (because absolute power makes absolute assholes)? Why would he invade Ukraine (because absolute assholes are assholes)? Why do conservatives want to destroy democracy (because absolute power is worth it)? Why do white supremacists exist (because we are primally disposed to enslave the other)? Why can’t we all just get along (because humans have never just gotten along and there are always power hungry assholes)?

“I don’t understand” she continues to say to any explanation I offer. I love her for being this way. She still has faith in humanity and it doesn’t compute when humanity is not faith-worthy.

When we were young we asked about the sign in the shop window and the junk in the yard. We also asked about the Vietnam war. These days liberals like ourselves ask why as we witness the Enlightenment Liberalist world order we have been comfortably ensconced in decomposing. We are pretty sure we won’t like it if it does decompose fully, any more than Ukrainians are enjoying bombs and displacement.

The ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles believed everything was composed of earth, air, fire and water which were moved into vortices of physical manifestation by love and strife in a cyclical manner.

Love and strife have been playing themselves out in humans since the time before memory. We are lucky if our lives contain plenty of love and strife is rarely life threatening. But it’s a crap shoot. We could as easily be Ukrainian as American. We could as easily have brown skin as white skin. And we could as easily live in an authoritarian form of government as a democratic one.

The struggle between some form of Oligarchic/Authoritarian rule and Democracy has been going on in the west for most, if not all, of recorded history. A prime example is the struggle between oligarchic Troy and democratic Athens, a contest the Trojans won, marking the end of the Athenian Golden Age. It would not be until the Renaissance that anything like that golden age (The Enlightenment) appeared again in the West.

We may eventually turn Putin back in Ukraine. But will we turn back Oligarchic Authoritarianism in the US? It’s not clear and on my bad days I despair. If Authoritarianism wins, it would be in no small measure because of Vladimir Putin. Are we going to win the battle but loose the war?

The United States has been in this place multiple times in the past. The Civil War was the manifestation of one particularly harsh turn in the cycle. So far, the people have rallied to push back the slave holders, the oligarchs and the would be despots to preserve the promise, if not execute the ideal of democracy. If Greek history teaches anything though, it’s that the only thing pre-ordained are the cycles, not the winners and losers.

Some photo notes from yesterday…

In other words, ultimate knowledge is not humanly attainable regardless of how one looks for it…

… in A History of Western Philosophy Bertrand Russell distinguishes two possible intents to asking the question why… we seek “an explanation by final cause,” which he labels a teleological inquiry… or we seek an explanation by mechanistic cause and effect… he goes on to point out that the question why cannot “be asked intelligibly about reality as a whole (including god), but only about parts of it."…

A ground breaking photo documentary project… Revisiting Susan Meiselas’ Riveting 1970s “Carnival Strippers” Series | AnOther

In the summers of 1972 until 1975, Susan Meiselas travelled across New England, photographing “carnival strippers”: girls and women between the ages of 17 to 35 who worked out of a “travelling box” – a truck that opened onto the public or private areas of rural state fairs. Beyond the agricultural facade of the carnivals, these women – and their bodies – were the main attraction.

Very significant if true… Australian Firm Claims “Giant Leap” Toward Clean, Cheap Hydrogen Power – Mother Jones

Hyasta, a company using technology at the University of Wollongong, said its patented capillary-fed electrolysis cells achieve 95 percent efficiency, meaning little wastage, beating by about one-quarter the levels of current technology.

A thorough and good article about the blame game…

Blaming America for Russian Aggression, Then and Now - The Bulwark

Though many of these intellectuals have rejected the “who started it” paradigm altogether, viewing a Cold War between two ideologically opposed superpowers as essentially inevitable, their work still sheds light on Soviet hegemonic aspirations in Europe and the developing world—a glaring omission in revisionist works. Not only have the post-revisionists convincingly refuted the New Left argument that the Sovietization of Eastern Europe was “not predetermined,” but they also illustrate that Stalin and other Soviet leaders expected a “crisis of capitalism” in Western Europe to eventually trigger Communist revolutions and opportunities for Soviet subversion in the American sphere of influence (though they felt that assisting such revolutions could wait until after the USSR had fully recovered from the war).

Sign of the season…

We finished watching “River, Season 1” last night. We are grieving that there were no more seasons. Brilliant series.

Venus at the car wash…

March 12, 2022 - by Heather Cox Richardson

In our history, the United States has gone through turning points when we have had to adjust our democratic principles to new circumstances. The alternative is to lose those principles to a small group of people who insist that democracy is outdated and must be replaced by a government run by a few leaders or, now, by a single man.

… we have been here before… each time the tide has changed and we averted oligarchic rule… what will happen this time?…

I have been struggling with depression for much of the past week and probably for much longer than that if I am honest with myself. It’s not a debilitating depression. I can get out of bed. I can pursue my routines of reading, writing, walking, picture making, picture editing, and more. Still it’s a bit like I am moving through a viscous solution as I try to do these things.

Relative to Ukrainians, I have little to be depressed or anxious about, except, I feel deeply that their existential struggle is mine too. The loss of freedom they are threatened with is a loss I am being threatened with.

One of my prime thoughts this week is that the last seven years has been a firehose-shit-stream of angering, worrisome and depressing news. The most salient feature of this news has been the steady decline of Liberalism and Democracy and the steady rise of illiberal Authoritarian tendencies within the United States and around the globe. When Russia invaded Ukraine, it put an exclamation point on this trend towards Authoritarianism.

A vast struggle has broken out into the open in a dramatic way. There is no guarantee of the outcome, though, if we can avoid World War III, I am hopeful that Putin’s aggression will end with his loss of power and serve as a rebuke to Authoritarianism everywhere.

Among the many other thoughts revolving in my head these days:

• Will it ever be possible to have a world free of nuclear sticks?
• Is it possible to construct a world in which bullies don’t exist or can never acquire big sticks?

In The Greeks, H. D. F. Kitto describes the golden age of the Greek Polis, the pinnacle of which occurred in Athens towards the end of the 5th century BCE and lasted for a little more than 100 years. The Polis was a reasonably well balanced democratic organization of society where everyman’s opinion mattered, everyman’s participation was expected and status depended on the “excellence” of a man, not as determined by his wealth, but as determined by his character. One cannot overlook that there was slavery, limitations on the rights of foreign citizens and that women had no rights. But among the male citizens there was a relatively small (by today’s standards) distance between the wealthiest and poorest citizen, a common education around the principles of good character as illuminated by the Homeric epics and decision making by consensus. This is the foundational example of democracy, a more inclusive form of which Liberalism pursues today.

H. D. F. Kitto writes this in The Greeks:

It is an interesting, though idle, speculation, what would be the effect on us if all our reformers, revolutionaries, planners, politicians and life-arrangers in general were soaked in Homer from their youth up, like the Greeks. They might realize that on the happy day when there is a refrigerator in every home, and two in none, when we all have the opportunity of working for the common good (whatever that is), when Common Man (whoever he is) is triumphant, though not improved – that men will still come and go like the generations of leaves in the forest; that he will still be weak, and the gods strong and incalculable; that the quality of a man matters more than his achievement; that violence and recklessness will still lead to disaster, and that this will fall on the innocent as well as on the guilty. The Greeks were fortunate in possessing Homer, and wise in using him as they did.¹

The truth is that humans get enough right about how to arrange and conduct themselves such that golden ages happen now and again, but, so far, only for brief periods of time. We seem only ever to glimpse utopia, never fully achieve it.

Heraclitus came closest to an accurate description of humankind’s condition, proclaiming fire to be the foundational element of the universe and that flux is the norm. He thought wars (fire) inevitable and even necessary as a change agent. History is a churning beast and nothing lasts for very long. What is good eventually becomes bad which eventually becomes good again.

I don’t know what Heraclitus would have though if nuclear weapons existed in his day. Would he still champion fire? What do we do with a bully carrying a nuclear stick? My deepest fear and sadness at the moment is that it is conceivable to me that the nuclear stick will get used. If not this time, then sooner or later.

Bertrand Russell² points out in The History of Western Philosophy that since the time of the pre-socratic philosophers a main endeavor of religion and philosophy in the western world has been to establish something, anything, eternal and relevant to the condition of humankind. The nuclear stick is a definitive refutation that anything eternal for humankind exists.

Enter my sadness.

Recent photos…

I am about to inherit one of these babies… apparently one of the better 35 mm film cameras ever made. 📷

Ukrainian Artists Are Building Anti-Tank Obstacles

The couple settled at a friend’s house in Lviv, waiting for other members of their families to arrive from Kyiv. It’s there that they heard about a group of local men, among them several artists, using an old metal workshop to construct anti-tank obstacles (also known as “hedgehogs.”). Bevza immediately decided to join the effort and Pidust took a camera to document the men’s work.

Shaken, not stirred…

International Women’s Day you all!

https://laurietobyedison.com/body-impolitic-blog/2022/03/international-womens-day-2022-honoring-yelena-osipova/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=international-womens-day-2022-honoring-yelena-osipova

Osipova is a survivor of the gruesome siege of Leningrad during World War II. She was born when people around her and her parents were dying of starvation. As an adult, she became an artist, painting both fine art and later political poster art (which of course can also be fine art).

What the Ukrainians Are Fighting For - The Bulwark

There are some who have commented that Putin has reinvigorated NATO, caused a revolution in German foreign and defense policy, and brought the democratic world together like never before. That is all true and good, but the slaughter of Ukrainians continues apace. Some would have us all “relax” because Russia’s military is “stalled out in Ukraine.” The Ukrainians cannot relax. Others argue that focusing on Russia and Ukraine distracts us from where we should be focusing—China. Without taking anything away from the serious challenge China poses, perhaps these commentators need reminders that Europe is the continent where two world wars began.

… the question the article does not answer is what would increased help look like?… is the author arguing up to the line of risking nuclear confrontation?… stepping over it?… what?… … and then, the problem with a bully with nuclear weapons is that the bully has nuclear weapons… how does one contain them without risking the planet?… at present, the right steps are being taken with appropriate restraint…

From Bacchus to Orpheus to Pythagoras to Plato to…Christianity

From this morning’s walk…

The Building Blocks of Peace: Pioneering X-Ray Crystallographer and Activist Kathleen Lonsdale’s Quiet Masterpiece on Moral Courage and Our Personal Power – The Marginalian

This is a point of great subtlety and great import, for it speaks not only to the constant threat of war looming over the world but to the ecological apocalypse looming with even greater certainty unless we re-educate ourselves. In the near-century since Lonsdale’s time, we have cannibalized our climate for the exact same reason we have failed, as a civilization and a species, to eradicate war: Most people, whatever their loftiest moral standards may be, are simply too unwilling to inconvenience themselves with the not terribly demanding readjustments of habit that a personal stance against fossil fuel or the tendrils of the military industrial complex would demand of their daily lives. We weigh political candidates by how their tax policy would impact our personal finances and not by their intended military spending. We toss our soda cans — made of the same metal as the military aircraft of WWII — into the recycling bin when we remember, and we continue to fly across the increasingly carbonic sky we share. (emphasis mine)

… i said to my wife the other day, if we get through the Ukraine conflict without the world blowing itself up, we must find a way that all nations renounce nuclear weapons and destroy them… … i know this is a futile thought with little future… but, it is the only thought and future that entails the continued existence of humankind… … how could it be possible?… aggression and the suspicion of other’s potential to become aggressive seems baked in to the human species… how does one get the point across to humanity that it isn’t worth the consequences of tomorrow whatever you think the gains may be today… … i think the idea of refusing to aid and abet war… of offering moral support to those who engage in it, would only lead to would be dictators running the show to the general misery of humanity… i don’t believe all humans can resist the temptation of power… what is, what could be the answer to this?… i don’t have it, but if we are not to destroy ourselves, it must be found…

… listening to Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion… love choral music almost more than anything…