Joel Dietz

"In the Google age, what is the point of teaching memorization?"

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:25:54 -0500

“In the Google age, what is the point of teaching memorization?”

- Jeff Jarvis

Albrecht Dürer | Apocalypse of St. John

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:16:52 -0500

Albrecht Dürer | Apocalypse of St. John

I page through campus publications while waiting for another’s decision — will I spend...

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:26:19 -0500

I page through campus publications while waiting for another’s decision — will I spend the night alone, with books, or with another? An odd piece of pedophilia in a feminist magazine mixed in with other light pieces of pornography. I puzzle over the concept of liberation, its tie to the nakedness of children, just as I finish a review of Carl Schmitt. Still waiting, hoping, but prepared to be alone.

"Whether you (by you I mean any other agglomeration of souls) really wish for immortality as an..."

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:59:24 -0500

“

Whether you (by you I mean any other agglomeration of souls) really wish for immortality as an agglomeration, I cannot tell. But I confess that ”my mind to me a kingdom is” —not! Rather it is a fantastical republic, daily troubled by more revolutions than ever occurred in South America; and the nominal government, supposed to be rational, declares that an eternity of such anarchy is not desirable. I have souls wanting to soar in air, and souls wanting to swim in water (sea-water, I think), and souls wanting to live in woods or on mountain tops. I have souls longing for the tumult of great cities, and souls longing to dwell in tropical solitude; souls, also, in various stages of naked savagery; souls demanding nomad freedom without tribute ; souls conservative, delicate, loyal to empire and to feudal tradition, and souls that are Nihilists, deserving Siberia; sleepless souls, hating inaction, and hermit souls, dwelling in such meditative isolation that only at intervals of years can I feel them moving about; souls that have faith in fetishes; polytheistic souls souls proclaiming Islam; and souls medieval, loving cloister shadow and incense and glimmer of tapers and the awful altitude of Gothic glooms. Cooperation among all these is not to be thought of: always there is trouble, — revolt, confusion, civil war. The majority detest this state of things; multitudes would gladly emigrate. And the wiser minority feel that they need never hope for better conditions until after the total demolition of the existing social structure.

I an individual,—an individual soul! Nay, I am a population,—a population unthinkable for multitude, even by groups of a thousand millions! Generations of generations I am, eons of eons! Countless times the concourse now making me has been scattered, and mixed with other scattering. Of what concern, then, the next disintegration? Perhaps, after trillions of ages of burning in different dynasties of suns, the very best of me may come together again.

”

- Lafcadio Hearn, Dust

From Chang, Kwang-chih, Art, myth, and ritual: the path to...

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:14:32 -0500

From Chang, Kwang-chih, Art, myth, and ritual: the path to political authority in ancient China

He does not sleep more than a few winks. He rises early and writes. He is incapable of loving again....

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 10:17:26 -0500

He does not sleep more than a few winks. He rises early and writes. He is incapable of loving again. So he thinks, but there is more than a stirring.

I have, perhaps via metaphysical principles, been reduced to a man of work, with little effort in...

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 22:28:19 -0500

I have, perhaps via metaphysical principles, been reduced to a man of work, with little effort in other directions and little passion, save that which expresses itself in these occasional ramblings — not entirely directionless, though direction is not always sure. Passion, in strange new form, stirs, and has not reconciled itself with my stale rationality, which often returns to instincts of a cruder sort. First, perhaps, self-preservation, although this also wanes with time as each moment appears empty without the sun, a procession of insects to their hive of choice, and I also with them, with a camera, amazed at the drops of honey and intoxicated dance of the drones. This no antique drum, yet every morning the same rhythm compels the dancers — I can find no place where it does not haunt me.

I awake suddenly, sweating, with great passion. I am lonely but I barely notice it, and my mind empty strikes against almost empty chords, no longer strung together, but each note hanging from an almost invisible glistening thread, promising almost something, and yet, the breeze comes and I roll over as their own procession, almost emerging, appears in no particular order, each emotion presenting itself in some intensity, then disappearing.

Anger is easiest to hold to. At least one breathes deep for a moment — though the next it is gone — and nothing yields to ever-present hollowness like the shaking fist, worse when an act of pure mind, not body, never unclenchable.

So many enemies parade along this ground, poking, reminding me of my faith, this eros of the old dispensation, no longer scattered or scatteredable. I was there, I must remind you, at Konigsplatz. I marched under the pink banner. I rejoiced in the moment to come.

That was a rhythm to remember, casting about with the men, fishing for ancient songs and finding only the willing and the brave and the present. What a song, memory, hope, farce, all rolled up in one. And all we can remember is that it was not us who were there — it was not our blood, but someone else’s veins, and we have found, today, numbers more willing.

You do not understand me? So man walks, in between understanding, not content with the attempt or the fish. All the sages of yore were fisherman, understanding the cosmos with their hook dangling in the water and a pull on the line. A strange joy, we have learned to share it with each living creature, though still we expect some reprobation.

Or perhaps remonstrance, after all, there must be a trial, here, now, at some point in the future, continuing, and each side must present. I will start with a photo, then argue that I am no different, hoping by such means to commute my sentence.

Stand still. Freeze. Rejoice. There is nothing to protest. There is simply the job and the hospital and some poor man by the side of the road in between. This is the melody, and it ends with the burst of shotgun. First me, then you.

You will do the whimpering.

Our conversation inebriated,A necessary lubricant to discuss the flames of faith.What passion...

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:31:24 -0500

Our conversation inebriated,
A necessary lubricant
to discuss the flames of faith.
What passion attends
their transformation
to stone!

"Hurry up please it’s time"

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 15:11:11 -0500

“Hurry up please it’s time”

"I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it Since what is kept must be adulterated?"

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 14:53:22 -0500

“I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it
Since what is kept must be adulterated?”

- T.S.E.

"But I wish to enter a prison, not a sanatorium"

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 12:43:18 -0500

“But I wish to enter a prison, not a sanatorium”

- EJ, Aladdin’s Problem

Back from dc. Corporate media newseum displays new dispensation — news as entertainment. We...

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 12:35:21 -0500

Back from dc. Corporate media newseum displays new dispensation — news as entertainment. We collectively ask how we can extend rights to terrorists, I individually struggle to define my own right to live. Read of moon graveyards, promised eternal rest. Eternal life would be better.

Dore | Enigma

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 15:36:29 -0500

Dore | Enigma

Sex, Lies, and more of both

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:07:00 -0500

In a world in which numbers, by means of economics, are the primary evaluative method, relationships are necessarily perceived according to personal utility, as are the functions associated with them. Accumulation of partners may not be the goal, but accumulation of ‘good moments’ likely will be, likely taking the primacy of ‘fun,’ although other values will be in play. This means that no-fault, while previously the exception, because the norm, because every contract should be able to be broken by any party when the exchange of words/fluids leading to whatever other exchange is not kept. Which is to say, any purely quantitative system tends towards perfect fungiblity as a ‘perfect’ state. Lies here serve a purely cosmetic function: the word ‘marriage’ approaches a lie, as its origin and intention are not in keeping with the cosmetic. ‘Relationship’ would be closer to the truth, but really, any words are acceptable so as the fundamental nature of the transaction remains unquestioned.

How to act in such a sphere? Each sphere of action becomes little more than a game, and one should/must play to win in order to maximize. Is it permissible to use words with purely cosmetic function, allowing the other party to think according to old structures, while one embraces personally the new, entirely economic. Certainly it does not make sense to be in the middle, embracing both new and old, neither fully. The probable answer within the means presented is, it does not matter — do what you need to succeed.

What is an alternative?

The ground is covered with snow, or, where I currently reside, largely changed to mounds of ice,...

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:20:00 -0500

The ground is covered with snow, or, where I currently reside, largely changed to mounds of ice, over which both pedestrian and vehicle must tread with trepidation. The music of these moments is halting, frequent mental invasions, the product of an unsteady mind — yet recovering. There is research to be done, but on what is not yet clear, nor is the path to doctorate, academic career made clear. Nothing is. The professor I met — the best local espresso — tells me today of those scholars who died penniless. Better to be rich, he tells me, only then can you be a scholar in the way you wish. Academic constrictions abound yes, but traversing these old pathways sometimes reveals pebbles not yet uncovered, and I have begun to delight again in these pathways and this uncovering, here and there a new taxon, an additional degree of complexity. No new thread binds perhaps, but one is led to question all past threads, and perhaps it is better to build ground up, one brick at a time, each first baked in the sun. Which was Babel, ground up or down, I wonder, then retreat from the thought, as if further consideration might sign a breach from many-tongued orthodoxy or perhaps the more frightful, a divine-claimed sonnet. Grammar fades. It is reclaimed.

Thus I puzzle over my approach to classical Chinese. I read, haltingly, a textbook on grammatical forms while recognizing that the forms often not apply, unsure of how better to proceed. Immersion is the only way, says the Classicist. Perhaps, but do we assume direct apprehension of the material — and what if descriptions differ, as seems often to be the case? So too with Japanese, which takes its fair share of time, I discover that one must love grammar to have any hope here, which comes, perhaps, at expense of history. These forms multiply, channeled and chiseled, as I am too, the poet between words and without any of his own, or, more often, offering the dribble from the not very deep, impressions without substance.

And yet what is the substantia in a sonnet, some heavenly hymn, some criticism, critique, and all the voices in cacophany, no longer bricks but blistering? Is this a holy house or, better, a strip mall of where word-brocades are sought with which to decorate our hollow frames, cheap and available.

Breath, breath deeply, I tell myself, you must forget these words. ‘Who am I?’ ‘Don’t know,’ the question and answer I ask and tell myself silently as I meditate in the morning, zabuton on the bed, half way to sleep, far from awakening. We are awake, we are here, and yet, never fully present. Oh to see a tree as I once did, warned from Rimbaud yet perhaps better to starve in solitude than accept rubber stamps from a minor functionary, or worse yet, become one of the accoladed.

I return to the legal code. So many pebbles; they should be in better piles.

Grammar (revisited)

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:22:31 -0500

Did grammar always exist in present form, defined, subject to rules that may, at times be broken? Or is there a grammar beyond grammar, an essence that can be appropriated and thus, obviating the need for such definitions as would attempt to render the image, the pathway, itself a god. Poetic diction is attempt to capture this grammar beyond grammar, although when it defines rules it becomes simply grammar, just as every musical system (e.g. Schenker) is just that. Are laws, thus, necessary for living? Only insofar as man has departed from this — or this is the essential Confucian position — protested by the many better acquainted with the mean nature of humanity, and, thusly, engineering any number of checks and balances with which to prod him that he may fulfill often cattle-like function.

Numbers are an act of definition, an effort to quantify is an effort to produce consistency, and, as...

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:23:23 -0500

Numbers are an act of definition, an effort to quantify is an effort to produce consistency, and, as with precise language, if ‘life’ is squeezed out, a more precise pattern is produced which approaches the universal. Or such is the claim, which relates to the claims that are inherent in all linguistic systems, claiming in someway to create systems of metaphors which tie to reality — at the very least as lived, at the utmost as a claim to ultimate reality.

Numbers are, everywhere, an attempt to take us in this direction or a claim to this attempt — the reduciblity of form. But if they can, what are the necessary constraints? What is ‘reducible,’ what is not, and how can this difference be adjudicated? Moreover, who is in the best place to evaluate this? If they are ‘beyond’ form and thus dispute the reduction of form to number, how can one evaluate their claims?

One answer is presence / being / essence encountered in experience, but can this experience, however real to the one experiencing it, ever be constitutive in a definitive way — does it not often lead us back to the world of form, a Shinto procession, rather than any truth.

Thusly we stumble on the way, to find it.

"Do not store up even what you have been given, nor run around searching for things. In a..."

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 09:46:59 -0500

“Do not store up even what you have been given, nor run around searching for things. In a non-Buddhist text it is said that if we learn the Way in the morning we should not mind dying in the evening. Even if we might die of cold or starvation, we should follow the Buddha’s teaching if only for one day or one hour.”

- Zuimonki

"No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is..."

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:17:59 -0500

“No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead.”

- TS Eliot

Philosophy, academics, abstraction

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:43:51 -0500

If one grants that the proper function of philosophy (or even ‘a’ possible function) is to treat disparate fields with a greater degree of abstraction, of what benefit is academic training to this end and, ultimately, is it possible to be both an academic and philosopher in this sense? The question turns on the idea of thinking, not only what calls for thinking but what is thinking? In other words, an assumed essence, or function of an autonomous mind. If one does not share this assumption (as may be the case with most academic philosophers) one might ask whether or not their task might be better accomplished in another field. Either they are listing facts according to some received schema (e.g. chronologically) or describing mental processes (perhaps better accomplished in cognitive or computer science). In this sense, Heidegger represents the death of philosophy. He is only able to ask the first question, and “thinking” requires a minimalist metaphysics. The remainder is pragmatism, the little we can process within the context of our received schemas, both epistemic (five senses) and ethical (societal mores at the current state).

The way out may or may not involve going in — the current struggle as I try to decide whether to pursue my PhD. In other news, a T.S. Eliot afternoon.