This is a strangely juiceless book. The premise is promising — how examples from Proust’s life and the experiences of the characters in À la recherche du temps perdu — can guide you in your own life. Alain de Botton explains, with topics such as How to Open Your Eyes, How to Express Your Emotions, How to Be Happy in Love, How to Suffer Successfully. All of this sounds like vital self-help stuff, yet I read it completely unmoved. In How to Open Your Eyes, for example,

Why don’t we appreciate things more fully? The problem goes beyond inattention or laziness. It may also stem from insufficient exposure to images of beauty, which are close enough to our own world in order to guide and inspire us. The young man in Proust’s essay was dissatisfied because he only knew Veronese, Claude and Van Dyck, who did not depict worlds akin to his own, and his knowledge of art history failed to include Chardin….

Excuse me! This is interesting, even perceptive stuff, but has little to do with appreciation of beauty, even after overcoming the root question of what is beauty. Again and again, de Botton sees problems with pleasure or friendship or suffering or love as problems of knowledge or understanding. No one ever had a pain in his understanding.

Previous to How Proust Can Change Your Life, I did enjoy de Botton’s The Consolations of Philosophy. This book also follows the self help pattern with sections on Unpopularity, Not Having Enough Money, Frustration and so forth. For each topic de Botton explores the experiences and opinions of a philosopher, for example, using Socrates to stand for unpopularity. The approach works much better than combing through Proust’s life and work to find useful advice. I did, however, enjoy his insights into Proust the man. Having wandered myself through hundreds of pages with Swan and others, I could use a guide.

We hate Five Thirty Eight, and we hate Nate’s post 2009’s Most Valuable Democrat Is …

1. WE HATE statistics 74% of the time, and it so happens that 94% of the statistics we hate are found on Five Thirty Eight. We hated this blog from its earliest days, we liked it for awhile, and now we hate it again. Why? Because Nate loves him some numbers.

Politics used to be called Hollywood for ugly people. Now it's Fantasy Football for ugly people with bleach-toothed smiles.

In order to figure the most valuable Democrat (see Hate #5), he compiled ten roll call votes on legislation and did a logistic regression. That is a terrible way to judge the effectiveness of legislators, especially in when there are so many pressing matters on Capitol Hill.

This is politics, Nate. The future of our country, Nate. Not some silly game.

2. WE HATE political score keeping.

In a cruel coincidence, this is also a list of states we can no longer visit. Sorry, secret families.

Socrates, who founded America, wrote that man are political animals. He didn’t mean that we are supposed to hurl poo at each other to make our points. We are supposed to make reasoned arguments about the issues of our day.

The flag of Jesusland, which doesn't at all oversimplify our culture.

In other words, we are supposed to draw cartoons.

We think Socrates drank the hemlock voluntarily.

3. WE HATE Republicans. Straight forward enough.

4. WE HATE how Nate Silver and Five Thirty Eight understand the history of America.

The arc of the universe is long

5. WE HATE Democrats, and we can’t imagine what a valuable Democrat would look like. In fact, the question “What would a valuable Democrat look like?” hereafter begins We Hate Your Blog’s First Annual Christmastime Race to the Best Punchline Contest.

In the comments, leave your punchline, and we will hate it, but only to ourselves. The punchline we hate the least will win a free tube of We Hate Your Blog hair gel.

So, what would a valuable Democrat look like?

Cases of “Historical Dialectics” of human and knowledge development; (Dec. 23, 2009)

            Dialectics is not only used to comprehend historical development of human or knowledge development but is basic in discussions and effective dialogues. Hegel was first to introduce “dynamic logic” and used the term of historical dialectics as the interaction of an extreme opinion (thesis) that generates an opposite extreme counter opinion (antithesis) which results in a consensus (synthesis).  Historical dialectics is a macro method for long range study and it does not explain the individual existential conditions (survival situations).  Hegel offered dialectics as a method for explaining how human knowledge developed by constant struggle between contradictory concepts among philosophical groups. The purpose of his method was to demonstrate how the “universe of the spirit” or ideas managed to be raised in human consciousness.

            Before I offer my version of knowledge development it might be useful to giving a few examples of historical dialectics. In Antiquity, the pre-Socratic philosophers were divided between the Eleatics or philosophers who claimed that change of primeval substances was impossible: we cannot rely on our senses.  Heraclites reacted with his position that we can rely on our senses and that everything in the universe is in a state of flow and that no substance remains in its place.  The synthesis came Empedocles who claimed that we can rely on our senses but that what flow are the combination of substances but the elementary particles do not change. 

            The Sophists during Socrates were the paid teachers of the elite classes and tore down the mythological teaching of the period and focused on improving individual level of learning.  They were in effect in demand by a nascent City-State democracy of Athens that relied on a better educated society to participate in the political system. Socrates reacted by proposing that there are fundamental truths and knowledge is not an exercise in rhetorical discourse. The same dialectics worked between the world of ideas of Plato and the empirical method counterpoint of Aristotle.

            In the Medieval period the Catholic Church set up a barrier or distance between God and man and forced people to believe that all knowledge emanates from God.  The Renaissance man (wanting to be knowledgeable in many disciplines) reacted by promoting the concepts that God is in every element, that man is a complete microcosm of the universe, and that knowledge starts by observing nature and man.

            Another example is the position of Descartes who established that rationalism was the main source for knowledge.  David Hume responded by extending that empirical facts generated from our senses are the basis for knowledge. Kant offered the synthesis that the senses are the primary sources for our impressions but it is our perceptual faculties that describe and view the world: there is a distinction between “matter” of knowledge or the “thing in itself” and “form” of knowledge or the “thing for me”. Kant became the point of departure for another chain of dialectical reflections.

            Many philosophers used the dialectic methods to explaining other forms of development.  Karl Marx wrote that Hegel used his method standing on its head instead of considering human material conditions. Marx claimed that “philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point is to change it”; thus, he defined three levels as basis of society: condition of production (mainly the geographic, natural resources, and climatic conditions), means of production (such as machineries and tools), and production relations (such as political institutions, division of labor, distribution of work and ownership). Marx claimed that the main interactions are among the working class (the new slaving method of production) and the owners of the means of productions or the ruling class: it is this struggle that develop the spiritual progress.  Another dialectical process is the extreme feminist political claims of equality between genders which brought about a consensus synthesis for a period.

            My view of progress is based on the analogy of combination of two schemas:

            The first schema is the coexistence of two strings of evolution (picture a DNA shape): the knowledge development (mainly technological) and the moral string (dominated mainly by religious ideologies).  The second schema is represented by historical dialectic evolutions in the shape of helical cones. The time lengths of cycles for the two strings are not constant: the technological progress phase has shorter and shorter cycles while the moral string has longer cycles.

            The two strings are intertwined and clashes frequently.  When one string overshadow the other string in evolution then there are a slow counter-reaction culminating in stagnate status-quo phases between the two forces. Technological or level of sustenance period has time length cycles that is shrinking at the top of the cone before the cone is inverted on its head so that the moral time length cycles start to increase and appears almost invariant (that what happened in the long Medieval period that stretched for over 11 centuries in Europe); then the cone is reverted on its base for the next “rebirth” cycles (for example the Renaissance period that accelerated the knowledge string ascent).

Idiosyncrasy in “conjectures”; (Dec. 21, 2009)

            Idiosyncrasy or cultural bias related to “common sense” behavior (for example, preferential priorities in choices of values, belief systems, and daily habits) is not restricted among different societies: it can be found within one society, even within what can be defined as “homogeneous restricted communities” ethnically, religiously, common language, gender groups, or professional disciplines. Most disciplines have mushroomed into cults.

            A cult is any organization that creates its own nomenclature and definition of terms to be distinguished from the other cults in order to acquiring recognition as a “professional entity” or independent disciplines that should benefit from laws of special minorities (when mainly it is a matter of generating profit or doing business as usual). These cults want to owe the un-initiated into believing that they have serious well developed methods or excellent comprehension of a restricted area in sciences. The initiated on multidisciplinary knowledge recognize that the methods of any cult are old and even far less precise or developed; that the terms are not new and there are already analogous terms in other disciplines that are more accurate and far better defined.

            Countless experiments have demonstrated various kinds of idiosyncrasies.  This article is oriented toward “cult” kinds of orders, organization, and professional discipline.  My first post is targeting the order of mathematicians; the next article will focus on experiments.

            Mathematics which is used as meaning “sure study” (wisekunde) has no reliable historical documentation. Most of mathematical concepts were written many decades or centuries after they were “floating around” among mathematicians.  Mathematics is confusing with its array of nomenclature. What are the differences among axiom, proposition, lemma, postulate, or conjecture?  What are the differences among the terms, theorem, questions, problems, hypothesis, corollary, and again conjecture?  For example, personally, I feel that axiom is mostly recurrent in geometry, lemma in probability, hypothesis in analytical procedures, and conjecture in algebraic deductive reasoning.

            Hypothesis is in desuetude in mathematics. For example, Newton said “I am not making a hypothesis”: Socrates made fun of this term by explaining how it was understood “I designate hypothesis what people doing geometry use to treating a question.  For example, when asked for their “expert opinion” they reply: “I still cannot confirm but I think that if I have a viable hypothesis for this problem and if it is the following hypothesis… then I think that we may draw a conclusion. If we have another hypothesis then another conclusion is more valid.”  Plato said: “As long as mathematics start from hypothesis instead of facts then we do not think that they have true comprehension since they are not going back to fundamentals”

            Hypothesis is still the main term used in experimental research. Theoretically, an experiment is not meant to accept a hypothesis as true or valid but simply “Not to reject it” if the relationships among the manipulated variables are “statistically significant” to a pre-determined level, usually 5% in random errors. Many pragmatic scientific researchers don’t care about the fine details in theoretical mathematical concepts and tend to adopt a hypothesis that was not rejected as law.  This is one case of idiosyncrasy when the researcher wants badly the “non-rejected” hypothesis to represent is view. Generally, an honest experimenter has to repeat the experiment or encourage someone else to generalize the results by studying more variables.

            Conjecture means (throwing in together) and can be translated as conclusion or deduction; basically, it is an opinion or supposition based on insufficient proofs. In the last century, conjectures were exposed in writing as promptly as possible instead of keeping them floating ideas, concepts, or probable theorems. This new behavior of writing conjectures was given the rationale that “plausible reasoning” is a set of suppositions thrown around as questions mathematicians guess they have answers to them but are unable to demonstrate temporarily.

            The term conjecture has been used so freely in the last decades that Andre Weil warned that “current mathematicians use the term conjecture when they fail after a few attempts to verify a concept, even if the problem is of no importance.”  David Kazhdan ironically warned that this practice of enunciating conjectures might turn out like a 5-year Soviet plan.

            At first, a set of conjectures was meant to be the basic structure for a theorem or precise assertions that were temporarily used in the trading of logical discussions. Thus, conjectures permit the construction of rigorous deductions that are accessible to direct testing of their validity. A conjecture was a “research program” that move ahead in order to foresee the explored domain.

            Consequently, conjecture is kind of extending a name and an address to a set of suppositions and analogies for a concept long before tools and methods are created to approach directly the problem. A “Problem” designates a mental task submitted to the audience or targeted for research or project; usually, the set of problems lead to demonstrating a general theorem. Many problems are in fact conjectures such as the problem of twin primary numbers that consists of proving the existence of an infinity of coupled numbers such that p-q = 2.

            One of the explanations for using freely the term conjecture is the modern facility of mathematicians of discriminating aspects of uncertainty at the theoretical level. It is an acquired habit, an idiosyncrasy. Thus, for a mathematician to state a conjecture he must have solved many particular cases and recognize that a research program is needed to developing special tools for demonstrating the conjecture.  This is a tough restriction in this age where time is of essence among millions of mathematicians competing for prizes.

It’s hard to live in the world. Suffering happens. Then more suffering happens. Then you die. In the face of these facts, Albert Camus wrote that the first question of philosophy is suicide. But if you’re not going to do that, then what will you do?

As I see it, the menu of options is actually pretty thin (and if you think I’ve missed an option, please share it):

1. The first is the ironic agnostic route through existence. This is the path of Socrates, who claimed not to know anything, but asked a lot of questions. Under stress, the ironic Socratic path can morph into the extremities associated with the hyperconscious “Hamlet Syndrome” (to think or not to think, to believe or not to believe, to do or not to do, to be or not to be). For its negative capability, poets, like Emily Dickinson, and postmodernists, like Jacques Derrida, seem drawn toward this life stance.
2. The next three paths are atheist routes grounded in pessimism. The first is the way of resignation. Things are obviously bad. I see that things are obviously bad. I’m not denying that things are obviously bad. I therefore lower my expectations dramatically. I recognize that desire and aversion are at the root of all suffering, so I’m going to stop desiring and avoiding things and learn to wisely “go with the flow.” In the East, this is the path of the Buddha; in the West, it’s the path of Stoics like Marcus Aurelius and Seneca, and the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. In theistic guise, it’s what Krishna teaches Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita.
3. The second atheist path grounded in pessimism is Albert Camus’s way of rebellion. Living in the full acknowledgement of the universe’s apparent absurdity, I’m not resigned to it, but live in rebellion against it, and in solidarity with others. I see that it’s futile to push the rock of my values and goals up the mountain of existence, and I know that it will one day roll back upon me, but I choose the way of Sisyphus over the way of the Buddha. As an actor on a stage, I play my chosen role in full knowledge that the curtain will soon close and all my actions will come to naught. In Camus’s great novel, The Plague, this stance toward the world is exemplified by Dr. Rieux. A permutation on this way of being in the world can also be found in ancient tragic drama, Sophocles’s Antigone  being a superlative example. Antigone, as you’ll recall, faces an irreconcilable choice (to bury her brother or patriotically obey the State’s command that she not do so). In this conflict of loyalties, she chooses to bury her brother in the full recognition that her gesture of love toward him is meaningful only to her, and that it must end in her death. I put in this category philosophers like Isaiah Berlin. Berlin was exquisitely aware of the impossibility of making the world fully cohere as a meaningful whole, and yet he was willing to live and think in the face of this fact, and nonetheless make—and embrace—the not wholly adequate choices before him.
4. The third pessimistic atheist route through existence is to acknowledge, with Camus, that the universe is purposeless and absurd, but remove from Camus’s rebellion the prosocial gloss, the solidarity with humanity. This is the path of the acidic Darwinist who has absorbed, in a crass way, the nihilistic implications, not just of Darwin, but of Machiavelli and Nietzsche, and sees the human world as a competitive theater for the exercise of violence, power, manipulation, will, struggle, and the survival of the fittest. The Nazi propaganda film, Alles Leben ist Kampf (1937)—”All Life is Struggle“—is an example of this way of thinking about the world. I would include among contemporary people who have self-consciously absorbed an acidic form of Darwinism those like Varg Vikernes, well known in Norway’s black metal scene, and other neofascists.
5. The next route through life is moral atheist optimism. The optimistic moral atheist thinks that nihilists, agnostics, and atheists who indulge in existential hand wringing and pessimism are a bit silly. Yes, we die, but we won’t know it when we’re dead, and the world can be lived in rationally and morally now, so get on with it. In other words, this is the path of Oedipus—the competent, good, and self-made man. Like Oedipus, the optimistic moral atheist is a “heroic vitalist” (Harold Bloom) unflinchingly devoted to knowing the truth and doing what is right. No gods are needed for help, or missed. Science is sufficient, thank you very much. Of course, Oedipus ended badly, plucking out his eyes when he reached full knowledge of the truth, but a pessimist (Sophocles) wrote the end of that play. If Ayn Rand or Richard Dawkins had written Sophocles’s play for him, they would have ended it very differently. Think of Howard Roark or Daniel Dennett in the role of Oedipus, shrugging at the news of a terrible fate, and getting on with his life just the same. The optimistic atheist is confident that Oedipus (and humanity) can, without the weary and capricious gods—and absent a lot of melodramatic existential angst—have a better fate than Oedipus.  
6. The next route through existence is the way of Don Quixote. Don Quixote is a close kin to the optimistic atheist, but a bit less worried about objective reality, and a bit more open to living in the strictly aesthetic imagination. Don Quixote is not a reductionist. The world, at one level, may be an unhappy place, and just a lot of atoms shuffling in the void, but Don Quixote is happy to escape from these facts into dream, fantasy, imaginative projects, self-chosen disciplines, games, and causes (from art, to vegetarianism, to travel, to environmentalism, to having children).  
7. The path of Jesus. This is the path of transcendence in all its forms, and is not exclusively Christian. It’s the path that looks at the world with a hard eye and says, “This existence is unsatisfying. I’m out of here.” It looks at the world in pessimistic terms, but by faith denies the pessimistic conclusion, positing some sort of world “next door” that can be leaped into for optimism, hope, and refuge (Don Quixote “born again”). It is Dostoevsky looking at Hans Holbein’s image of Christ after crucifixion and saying that, in the face of this horror, I nevertheless put my faith—against all outward appearances—in the resurrection.
8. All of the above paths are, to some extent, aware paths. They are all the products of thought. Each sums up the world in a particular way, and each offers a very deliberate response to the world. But there is another way of being in the world that I would call the path of Saturn—the unaware path—the path of thoughtless appetite, of the range of the moment, of least resistance. As you’ll recall from Greek myth, Saturn, on learning of his fate (that one of his children would someday overthrow him), proceeds to gobble them up as fast as they arrive, careless for his own children’s lives and future. This is the path taken by all undisciplined people. It is the path of rampant and mindless consumerism and cultural conformity. If you are content to not think, and to live with the cliches and common sense opinions that float around you, then you’re on this very sleepy path. Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden  that “the commonest sense is that of men asleep, which they express by snoring.” The indifferent agnostic, the sleepy atheist, and the self-satisfied, doubt-free theist are all on this path. Nietzsche called a person who lived in this comfy inertial fashion “the last man”. It wasn’t a compliment. 

So here are the eight ways of being in the world again, in a nutshell:

1. The way of Socrates and Hamlet
2. The way of the Buddha and Seneca
3. The way of Sisyphus and Antigone
4. The way of the acidic Darwinist
5. The way of Oedipus
6. The way of Don Quixote
7. The way of Jesus
8. The way of Saturn

Note that two paths are grounded in confusion and drift, three in pessimism, and three in optimism. I find myself generally trudging (stumbling?) along the Socrates-Hamlet path, but I’m sympathetic with most of the other paths as well. But are there other options? Have I missed something? And which path are you on?

Where are you going today?

How are you going to get there?

Do you know that where you are going is completely up to you?

Speaking of where you are, how did you get there?

Did you have a plan, a road-map, or are you where you are today by happenstance? Did you just wake up with no real idea of how you got here?

Whether you know it or not: your freedom of choice has brought you to be where you are.

You have the freedom of choice and because you have chosen each and every circumstance of your life: your success and failure is completely within your grasp, your happiness and unhappiness, your present and future.

Everything that exists in your life exists because of you, because of your behavior, words and actions.

Here are a few examples of that:

1. Kate, a young woman from Russia. Six years ago Kate emigrated to this country. Completely unable to speak the English language, she now has a better command of the language than people who grew up here. This spring, she is starting college to get her degree in Accounting.
2. Aloha, a young woman in Florida, who is working as a waitress at a Waffle House. Aloha dropped out of high school because she had gotten pregnant. Now, with 2 small children, she hopes to someday get her GED and grow a better life for herself and her children.
3. Susan, a middle aged woman who did finish high school, but soon afterward had two children. Working smart and planning her trip, she retired from a career that culminated in an upper-level management position with a major national corporation.

Over 400 years before Christ, Socrates came up with what are known as basic laws of human life. One of them is called the Law of Cause and Effect. What that means is that for every effect in your life, there is a cause.

Let me explain: if you want a certain effect (end result), then you have to take certain steps (causes) to get that effect.

In our examples above, you see that each of the three women showed responsibility for their lives in different ways: Kate has a plan to make a new life for herself here in the States. Aloha has no real defined idea of where her life is, or is going, and Susan knew what it took to get where she wanted to go and followed that plan. She also has a plan for even greater success and achievement for the rest of her life.

Responsibility is the basic necessity to having the life you want and deserve.

When you accept that you are completely responsible for yourself and also that no one is coming to your rescue is the beginning of your road to success.
After you accept that, there is very little that you cannot do or have. “If it’s to be, it’s up to me!”

Success, achievement, motivation all come from your responsibility to yourself. Happiness and self-actualization are the end result from your responsible choices and planning.

Responsibility: It’s the absolute minimum requirement for everything you could ever really want in life.

What is your plan?

Goals, a bucket list, a place where you want to be in your life? You deserve a wonderful life, what are you doing to grow the life you deserve?

Think about it and tell me what you are doing to grow your life into the one you want and deserve?

Translate this with Babel Fish

I am often asked if e-memory technology will have a negativity impact on our human memories: will our bio-memories get flabby from lack of exercise if we rely too much on e-memories? This concern is nothing new; in fact, it is literally ancient. Here is Socrates, as quoted by Plato, convincing Phaedrus that this new-fangled technology called writing will lead to forgetfulness and only the “semblance of truth.” The emphasis added is mine.

Socrates: At the Egyptian city of Naucratis, there was a famous old god, whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis is sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters. Now in those days the god Thamus was the king of the whole country of Egypt; and he dwelt in that great city of Upper Egypt which the Hellenes call Egyptian Thebes, and the god himself is called by them Ammon. To him came Theuth and showed his inventions, desiring that the other Egyptians might be allowed to have the benefit of them; he enumerated them, and Thamus enquired about their several uses, and praised some of them and censured others, as he approved or disapproved of them. It would take a long time to repeat all that Thamus said to Theuth in praise or blame of the various arts. But when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.

Phaedrus: Yes, Socrates, you can easily invent tales of Egypt, or of any other country.

Socrates: There was a tradition in the temple of Dodona that oaks first gave prophetic utterances. The men of old, unlike in their simplicity to young philosophy, deemed that if they heard the truth even from “oak or rock,” it was enough for them; whereas you seem to consider not whether a thing is or is not true, but who the speaker is and from what country the tale comes.

Phaedrus: I acknowledge the justice of your rebuke; and I think that the Theban is right in his view about letters.

You can read the entire dialog at http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.html

In ancient Greece (469 – 399 BC), Socrates was widely lauded for his wisdom.

One day an acquaintance ran up to him excitedly and said, “Socrates, do you know what I just heard about Diogenes?”

“Wait a moment,” Socrates replied, “Before you tell me I’d like you to pass a little test. It’s called the Triple Filter Test.”
Triple filter?” asked the acquaintance.

“That’s right,” Socrates continued, “Before you talk to me about Diogenes let’s take a moment to filter what you’re going to say. The first filter is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?”

“No,” the man said, “Actually I just heard about it.”

“All right,” said Socrates, “So you don’t really know if it’s true or not. Now let’s try the second filter, the filter of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about Diogenes something good?”

“No, on the contrary…”

“So,” Socrates continued, “You want to tell me something about Diogenes that may be bad, even though you’re not certain it’s true?”

The man shrugged, a little embarrassed. Socrates continued, “You may still pass the test though, because there is a third filter, the filter of Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about Diogenes going to be useful to me?”

“No, not really.”

“Well,” concluded Socrates, “If what you want to tell me is neither True nor Good nor even useful, why tell it to me or anyone at all?”

The man was bewildered and ashamed. This is an example of why Socrates was a great philosopher and held in such high esteem.

It also explains why Socrates never found out that Diogenes was bonking his wife.

MyLifeBits is a Microsoft Research project led by the legendary Gordon Bell, designed to put “all of his atom- and electron-based bits in his local Cyberspace….MyLifeBits includes everything he has accumulated, written, photographed, presented, and owns (e.g. CDs).” 

SenseCam - Click to enlarge

Among other technical means, Bell uses the SenseCam, a remarkable prototype from Microsoft Research.  It’s a nifty little wearable device that combines high-capacity memory, a fisheye lens passively capturing 3,000 images a day, along with an infrared sensor, temperature sensor, light sensor, accelerometer, and USB interface. My group has played with SenseCam a bit, and shared it with quite a few interested government parties and partners. More info on SenseCam here, and more on its parent Sensors and Devices Group in MSR.  

The MyLifeBits project has enormous potential, I think, befitting something which aims to incorporate and outstrip Vannevar Bush’s extraordinary original vision of Memex.  The project has now been captured in a great new book I’ve been reading: Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything, written by Bell and colleague Jim Gemmell. Their Total Recall motto is, “The e-memory revolution is changing everything.” 

In the FAQ section of their website, Bell and Gemmell write: 

“Total Recall works best when capture is completely automatic. For example, we automatically make a copy of every web page we visit, with a note of the URL and the time visited. If this was manual, very few web pages would be saved. Similarly, we get pictures from wearing the SenseCam without having to stop enjoying the moment to become the photographer. Today, at the start of the Total Recall revolution, too much is manual. Part of what will change in the next ten years as Total Recall comes to full fruition will be more and more automatic capture.” 

Here’s a quick video look at it: 

The companion Total Recall project blog also catalogs other interesting projects in the same spirit, for example The Quantified Self (about which Bell writes, “The QS implies capturing and recording everything, but it goes beyond what Gemmell and I describe, by using the data for conducting experiments and for control.”

I find that notion in synch with several thoughts around the idea of “Government as a Platform” and Data.gov, so let’s explore the government potential a bit.

No Leader’s Life Unexamined

Lately it seems that the world – or at least the digerati’s virtual continent –  is divided into two groups of people: those who knew Dr. Mark Drapeau by that name, first and in real life … and those who got to know “@cheeky_geeky,” his ubiquitous online persona, from his widely read Twitter feed, his Posterous blogs, or his prolific online writing at Huffington Post, Washington Life, and so on. Drapeau lives up to the line from Socrates, that the unexamined life is not worth living. His fully examined life quite evidently is. 

I barely fall into the first group, as I met Mark at a National Defense University conference before the Twitter phenomenon really got rocking, but I’ve watched as this talented writer opened up more and more of his private and professional life to the universe of digital eyeballs. The conferences, the dinners, the speeches, the parties – we’re all watching a life examined, reflected through his eyes and refracted through thousands of others. Mark Drapeau’s life is as transparent as they come. To illustrate, he’s even had to introduce a new acronym to his torrential stream; “TPTT” for too private to tweet. 

In the last year, Mark has become an acknowledged thought-leader in the Government 2.0 space as well; he co-chaired 2009’s inaugural Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase in Washington DC (disclosure: I chaired a panel there), and is co-chairing the full 2010 Gov 2.0 Expo (disclosure: I’m on the Senior Advisory Committee for that as well). 

Now Mark is bringing those two parts of his life together, in a musing of the future of government transparency taken to its extreme. Yesterday he posted a provocative piece on Posterous, “What Would an Always-On-the-Record Government Look Like?” in which he proposes something like a Gawker site for government: 

Imagine if someone … wanted to document a day in the life of Senator Ben Nelson. It’s not hard. You check the general schedules of his committees and such beforehand, go through security at the Capitol, find his office, camp out, maybe ask the person at the front desk some questions, find some press in the hallways and ask some questions, stalk the cafeteria and listen for people saying “Nelson,” go back to his office and see him leaving to walk down the hall to a committee hearing, go to the committee hearing and tape it from a Flip in your coat pocket, upload it to YouTube while you follow him to his next meeting, and so forth. 

I’ve a mixed mind on whether this is progress in the life of the public square (I posted some thoughts in a comment there), but I’m a realist. The technology is definitely already here to enable the type of “amateur journalism” Mark writes about, and this past decade has seen an explosion in what is more typically called “Citizen Journalism.” 

There’s a high-minded aspect to this, beyond the Gawker mentality. As early as 2005 Steve Outing at Poynter Online wrote that Citizen Journalism was “one of the hottest buzzwords in the news business these days,” and proceeded to offer a thoughtful compendium of examples.   The next year, PBS put online ”Your Guide to Citizen Journalism,” saying that “The idea behind citizen journalism is that people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others.”  Wikipedia has a good background entry on citizen journalism; and the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism among others now has a program in the subject. 

That’s all outside-in, the citizenry watching their public servants. There’s also another, less explored aspect: the inside aiming out, or having public servants open up the fullness of their lives, transparently for all to see – and judge. 

I’m not certain how quickly we will advance along that front. So far, Twitter adoption and blogging among elected officials in the U.S. and Europe (primarily) have been somewhat faddish, used mostly as another channel for self-promotion. That’s not always a bad thing, as many elected officials self-promote the actual good things they do. Most simply self-promote.  Mark Drapeau is after something more fundamental. 

Perhaps we will indeed find public servants willing to use new social-media technologies to live up to that old saw, “My life is an open book.” In doing so, we would undoubtedly uncover a few Gary Harts along the way – he famously told journalist E.J. Dionne, “Follow me around. I don’t care. I’m serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They’ll be very bored.” They did, they caught him with Donna Rice, and his electoral career was finished. 

The consequences might in fact be negative. We’ve been suffering for the past twenty years since celebrity journalism included politics in its swath. Jack Kennedy would never run for office today; he enjoyed his girlfriends too much to give that up, and he’d never get away with them in a MyLifeBits scenario. Abe Lincoln would surely think twice about running, as he was already highly protective of his wife’s reputation and mental well-being… if there’d been some 24×7 spotlight on her and her Confederate relatives, as there is on Michelle Obama, Abe would’ve been toast. 

No Hollywood face looks great in HD television close-up …. and there’s a chance leadership in public service will never look the same under this glare. 

But science demands experimentation… so in the interests of science we must persuade some politician to step up to the challenge and do some real life-casting. Let’s strap a SenseCam around Sen. Ben Nelson’s neck – or better yet, fit it to a string of pearls for Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi!

Talk about open government

Share this post on Twitter

Email this post to a friend

Hello Friends,

Just came back from a 3 week fascinating, refreshing, festive and hectic vacation to India, and hence a long interval.

Just wanted to post this small post with a Socrates method of developing a perfect view or a thought.

It’s a 5 step ‘no rocket science’ method of refining your thoughts.

steps 1 :

Look around you for statements many people will consider common sence. for example .. a high paid job will keep us happy or getting married will keep us happy ?

Step 2 :

Find an exception to these statements i.e. can we be unhappy even if we have high paid job, or could we be still miserable even if married ?

Step 3

If an exception is found, that means your thought or statement is false or imprecise.

Step 4 :

Ask the initial statement to take into account the exception. i.e  realise it is possible to be unhappy even with high paid job..

Step 5 :

Keep trying to find exception till the no one can disapprove the thought or statement.

“An unixamined life is not worth living”

- Socrates

That’s all I have for the moment.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year..may God give you all that you wish ..and a little more bonus

Luv and Regards,

Dee

Some of you may have noticed that my thread on Socrates was going strong all through the summer and then, seemingly, stopped. Something similar, you might have thought, occurred with my thread on America.

Well, no, the two threads did not stop. They went into overdrive, albeit in a different form. Indeed, they became a story–what we call a “Christmas Special”–in the new holiday issue of The Economist.

It is called “Socrates in America: Arguing to death“. Please think and smirk as you read it (which also, of course, goes for almost anything you read on The Hannibal Blog).

(A similar, though less pronounced, process led to my other piece in that issue, a sort of polemic against direct democracy. That idea occurred to me after amusing myself, here on The Hannibal Blog, in my thread on freedom, with posts such as this one on James Madison.)

Thank you!

But what am I saying! Nonsense. It was not I, amusing myself. It was we, amusing ourselves.

And that is the point of this post. It is, first, to say Thank You to you, who come here to comment, to teach me, challenge me, tease me.

Those of you who have been readers for a while will see yourselves in my story in The Economist. Cheri will recognize, in the ninth paragraph, the gem that she herself sent to me. Jag will spot, further down, his pun on the Greek word idiotes. Mr Crotchety, who offends the gods by not having his own blog, will see his own worldview–irreverent, humorous, incisive–throughout the piece, since he trained me well in it. Phillip S Phogg, with his deep erudition, subtly worn; Solid Gold Creativity, with her sensitivity and philosophy; Thomas Stazyk, Thecriticalline and the Village Gossip, with their almost poetic thought processes;  Peter G, with his outrageous wit; Steve Block with his precision mind; Douglas with his forging inquiry; …. the list goes on and on and on.

Those of you who come sporadically, such as Vincent and Kempton; those of you have come recently, such as Man of Roma, Susan and Dafna; those of you who disappear for a while and resurface months later; and the many, many more who don’t comment at all but just read: all of you have enriched this blog and my mind and my writing.

You are all now co-authors of stories in The Economist and of a book in the making.

Academy 2.0

Which leads me to another insight: Socrates was wrong about one thing, as he himself would gladly concede if he were given a WordPress account: the written word is not inimical to good conversation; text is not necessarily dumb and dead.

What we do here is dialectic, defined as good conversations. What we have here is the Academy that Socrates’ student Plato founded in Athens. Where they ambled in circles and joked and teased and inquired and contested and thought, we do the same thing here on our blogs, minus the ambling.

And there is something new and special about these conversations. I have debated in many settings–the famous “Monday morning meetings” at The Economist in 25 St. James’s Square, London, being a notable one.

When you practice dialectic in those settings, in the flesh, you are always aware who is speaking as well as what is being said. Often this adds an impurity into the mental flow. Are we paying more attention to somebody of higher status or rank, less to somebody who is new? Are we distracted by a twitch, a snort, a sniffle? A curve, accentuated by a fabric, reminiscent of a …

Here there is none of that. With one single exception, I have met none of you in person. (And is that not amazing?) Here, the only thing that matters is what, not who.

Put differently, here in this modern and more pure academy, we all feel safe:

• safe to contradict ourselves,
• safe to take intellectual risks,
• safe to fail and advance,
• safe from embarrassment.

We exist on our blogs, between which we skip and link and flit like thoughts across neurons, through our words and associations, our minds and thoughts alone.

Here, we are each equal with Socrates.

Brian Leiter on Wednesday directed his blog readers’s attention to Jack Ritchie’s Understanding Naturalism (2009), quoting a recent review of the book that says in part:

The attitude Ritchie recommends for the genuine or serious naturalist is metaphysical agnosticism (cf. 104, 143, 148, 158). Like Fine’s Natural Ontological Attitude, the naturalist should not take sides in the metaphysical debates between physicalists and nonphysicalists, or between “realists” and “antirealists” about theoretical posits, universals, possible worlds, numbers, and the like. Metaphysics wants to tell us how things must be, or can be, once and for all, but “science forces us to revise our conceptions of what is and is not possible, of where a concept can be meaningfully deployed and where it can’t” (147). Further, it is idle speculation to try to foresee how our future science might develop. Philosophy should purge itself of scientific soothsaying. In light of these considerations Ritchie interestingly suggests a reconception of metaphysics as metaphor: “Thinking of metaphysical theories as inspirational pictures or metaphors strikes me as . . . perhaps the best way to understand how science and metaphysics relate to one another from a deflationary naturalist perspective” (158). . . . In general, for the deflationary naturalist there is no unified story to tell about what exists: all he can do is to endorse “the many different things that our many empirically well-supported sciences say about the world” (158).

Richie, in other words, wants the deflationary naturalist to be conservative about knowledge, to hold close to empiricism, and to regard expansive metaphysical system-building as one of the spells that language casts.  This sounds an awful lot like the antimetaphysical position of the Buddha to me. Wasn’t it the Buddha who taught his followers to resist the mesmerizations of ”idle speculaton”? And I wonder, if we accept Ritchie’s constraint on naturalism’s range, whether atheism isn’t also a kind of metaphysical position that should be resisted as well. Maybe the agnostic spirit is most in accord with naturalism, not the atheist spirit.

Oh, and isn’t deflationary naturalism also Socrates—and Henry David Thoreau?

Thoreau said in Walden:

To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

Gods? No gods? Who knows? 

Thoreau’s quote sounds to me like a concise summing up of what Ritchie might mean by “deflationary naturalism”, but I ordered the book to see if that is just my own oversimplification—or even misunderstanding of the concept. Perhaps more anon.

This Kansas song seems to me packed to the brim with Western literary and religious allusions, from Greek figures like Diogenes, Socrates, and Odysseus—accompanied by a Greek chorus!—to an obvious biblical allusion (the Prodigal Son). Oh, and notice Icarus in the third line, and even an Eastern religious allusion (to samsara) in the first two lines. Here’s the lyrics: 

Once I rose above the noise and confusion
(just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion)
I was soaring ever higher, but I flew too high!
Though my eyes could see, I still was a blind man.
Though my mind could think, I still was a mad man.
I hear the voices when I’m dreaming.
I can hear them say:

(Chorus)
Carry on our wayward son.
There’ll be peace when you are done.
Lay your weary head to rest.
Don’t you cry no more.

Masquerading as a man with a reason.
My charade is the event of the season.
And if I claim to be a wise man, well, it surely
means that I don’t know.
On a stormy sea of moving emotion,
tossed around, I’m like a ship on the ocean,
I set a course for winds of fortune, but
I hear the voices say:

(Chorus)
Carry on our wayward son.
There’ll be peace when you are done.
Lay your weary head to rest.
Don’t you cry no more.

Carry on, you will always remember!
Carry on, none can equal this pleasure!
Now your life’s no longer empty!
Surely heaven waits for you!

(Chorus)

This is a true story: Three thinking  giants, an old teacher, his adult student, and his young student, got together twenty-four hundred years ago in Athens. The old teacher, Mr. S said, “Future communication between people on this planet depends on what we decide tonight.” His adult student, Mr. P asked, “Are we going to publish a dictionary, Master?” His young student, Mr. A said, “I don’t think so. P only wants us to establish the sources for future philologists where they can get information about the meaning of words.” S and P looked at the young student, “That was very good, Aris,” bursting out with appreciation of the young mind.

The young man’s confidence soared, not that he had come to the meeting with lack of it. Aris was an independent thinker at a period in Athen’s life when philologists were were not.

“My dear teachers, the meaning of words would always be based on how they are used by the people,” he said.

“It appears to me that you are proposing a new concept,” Plat said in visible discomfort.

“Yes, my teacher, I call it Community Standard of Language.“

“What about the essence of words, my son?” Soc questioned.

“Words have no essence, Master, only local meaning.”

Socra and Plat gave Aris a disdainful look, “If what you are proposing is true, future dictionaries will be a source of discord and not a source of consensus in the world.”

“I’m sorry, gentlemen, words have no true meaning. Take, for example the word ‘love.’ Do you really believe that men and women could ever mean the same thing when they communicate love to each other?”

Socrates and Plato started crying. Socrates took a deep breath and said, “Then language will kill. Think of all the wars that misunderstanding will cause.”

“I’m sorry, gentlemen, but culture decides the meaning of words, not philologists.”

Socrates said, “You have a point, my son, I was condemned to death last week for teaching our youth that language has an inherent meaning, different from what is taught in Athens.”

The  above story has a profound meaning in my life. I presented a research paper on the above topic at the 69th Annual Meeting of the California Educational Research association, 1990. There was silence in the room. 25 PhDs shuffled their feet out of the room in silence, not a word, not a question, just looks, you know, the kind of looks people give you when they think you are a weird killjoy.

Readers, I want you to retrieve my reasearch paper, It is called “Critical Thinking Skills” by Dr. Elior Kinarthy. You will know why so many people in your life disagree with what you say!

Back at the beginning of the semester we learned about the unjust death of Socrates. We looked at his unwillingness to fight as his way of critiquing Athens’ democracy and his death as him being a martyr. The classical civilizations course about ancient Greek history offers a very similar perspective, but does more to question the true circumstances behind his death. Was Socrates truly a martyr or was he arguing the way that he knew how? Was his death tied to the association with enemies of democracy? These are all definitely possibilities that will be explored. There is no way to know for certain because of the nature of the events that occurred and the sources of information that we have, but after taking the course I believe that it’s possible Socrates had different motives in his trial and consequential death.

Although Socrates wasn’t a sophist he did question all things and used rhetoric to prove any point that he needed to. The way that Socrates defended himself is similar to how all sophists would argue a topic. He would use an argument that wasn’t necessarily sound to prove the point that he wanted. Also, Socrates would never make assertions himself when arguing with someone. The way that Socrates defended himself against his charges was no different to his normal way of arguing, so to say that he poorly defended himself is similar to saying that he was a bad rhetorician.  Socrates defended himself the only way that he knew how, so there was no motive behind his “bad” defense because to him it wasn’t bad. His defense utilized the normal Greek strategies of arguing: argument from example, argument from mutually exclusive alternatives and argument from opposites. The analogy is with the horse trainer, the mutually exclusive alternative is him saying that he couldn’t, with knowledge, be corrupting the youth and argument from the opposite is Socrates saying that introducing new gods isn’t atheism (Apology 25-28). In his trial, Socrates had no motive other than defending himself and way of life.

One huge problem with the claim that Socrates was critiquing the Athenian democracy in his trial is that it doesn’t account for his arrogance. Socrates was infamous for his arrogant comments and unwillingness to conform; that’s probably why the Greeks really didn’t like him. The arrogance can be seen in one of the claims that he makes about him being sent by the gods to help Athens and that unless the gods were merciful, they wouldn’t send another person like him (Apology 31A). Arrogance is a personality trait that isn’t dependent on a person’s location, so whether Socrates was in Athens or Persia he would still be arrogant. His attitude towards people that weren’t wise was rude and obviously wasn’t well received by the people that were subjected to it. It could easily be argued, based on his personality that Socrates had no motives in his defense speech and he wasn’t critiquing Athens.

The people that believe that Socrates was critiquing Athens through his trial could refer to his argument of the laws to prove their claims. To refute this, I would first state that this occurs in Plato’s Crito, not the Apology. Furthermore if we consider again the arrogance and consequential pride that Socrates possesses we could assume that Socrates may have just been acting in an immature manner. The argument at its core is purely sarcastic, especially since it’s coming from the mouth of a person who is falling victim to the flaw that the laws present.

In conclusion, this post is completely speculative, but so are the other claims about Socrates. We can’t possibly truly know what Socrates wanted out of his trial because he never wrote anything and the information that we have comes from biased sources. Based on the Apology the argument could be made from either side that Socrates had motives in his trial, but if his arrogance is taken into account and assuming that he didn’t purposefully give a bad argument then one could assume that his defense was just that. I’m not saying that Athens can’t be critiqued, but I am saying that it’s possible that Socrates didn’t have the intention of doing so.

Forsdyke, Sara. “Free Speech and Democracy.” Angell Hall Auditorium A, Ann Arbor. 3 Dec. 2009. Lecture.

Plato. The Defense of Socrates. New York City: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.

“Sophie’s World” on Hellenism; (Dec. 11, 2009)

            After Alexander the Macedonian defeated the Persian Empire around 335 BC the entire region in the Middle East and Egypt became Hellenistic; which means the elite and functionaries learned to speak and write in the Greek language and to study Greek philosophies.  Athens got a new life as center of philosophical schools and the newly built Alexandria in Egypt flourished as the center of sciences and medicine. Four major philosophical schools captured the interest of the people and had repercussions in Rome till the year 400 AC when the Christian Church got established as the state religion after the defeat of the last Germanic Emperor in Rome.

            The Cynics school was founded in Athens by Antisthenes, a disciple of Socrates in 400 BC. The frugality of Socrates was the guiding idea as he wondered before a stall: “So many things that I never used or needs”.  The dogma of this school is that happiness is learning to feel independent (detached) from external advantages such as material luxuries or political power. Happiness is in the reach of everyone if he so desired and it can be lasting. Suffering and death should not be disturbing events. Feeling concerns for other people should be overcome.

            Diogenes is the best representative of the Cynics; he lived in a barrel and carried no belonging but a stick. It is reported that he asked Alexander to step aside for he was blocking the sun rays. The Church of Rome coined the pejorative term “cynical” referring individual who exhibits a sneering disbelief in human sincerity with penchant insensitivity to people’s plights: The Church was competing with all the Hellenistic schools of philosophy and religions.

            The Stoics school was founded by Zeno in Athens around 300 BC. Zeno was not Greek by origin and he studied in Alexandria before he landed in Greece following shipwreck. Socrates and Heraclitus were his favorite philosophers and he used to teach under a portico (stoa).  Zeno dogma was that each individual is a complete microcosms reflected in the macrocosms; thus, first, there was a universal rightness or natural law based on human and universal reason that didn’t alter with time or place. Second, there is no conflict between spirit (ideas) and matter; this concept was coined “monism” in contrast to Plato dualism of the two worlds of ideas and matter. Third, sickness and death are within the natural law phenomena and must be accepted since everything happens out of necessity. Fourth, happy events and moments should be received in natural composure with no undue exhilaration.

            Stoics got involved in politics and social problems. Cicero, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and Seneca were staunch stoics. Seneca wrote “mankind is holy”; thus, considering individual dignity and well being as goal for improvement and care. The Roman Christian Church coined the connotation stoic for individuals who do not let their feeling take over.

            The Epicurean school was established by Aristippus, another disciple of Socrates. Epicurus founded this school around 300 BC in Athens. He developed the pleasure ethic of Aristippus and adopted the “atom soul” theory of Democritus which says that after death the soul disperses in all directions. The story goes that that Epicureans lived in gardens (safe-harbors): a notice hanged at the entrance said: “Stranger, here you will live well. Here pleasure is the highest good”

            The dogma of the Epicureans was: first, pleasurable results of an action is always counterbalanced with side effects that we need to mind of; second, short-term pleasurable results should be analyzed compared to the potential longer-term alternative pleasures if we control our actions; third, pleasure is appreciation of values in friendship, art, and self control in sensual tendencies.  Epicurus summed up his doctrine in four “medicinal” treatments: first, the gods are not to be feared; second, Death is nothing to worry about since when we die then we no longer exist; third, Good is easy to attain; and fourth, the fearful is easy to endure.

            Epicurus advice was to learn to live in seclusion.  Epicureans had little concern for politics and community services.  The roman Church coined a bad connotation such as “Indulge in or enjoy the moment”

            The Neo-Platonist school was founded by Plotinus (205-270 BC) and he was from the Near East and studied in Alexandria and settled in Rome.  Plotinus doctrine was influenced by Plato. The world span two poles: the One that constantly shines and the world that does not receive the light.  The immortal soul (concept of salvation) is the world of ideas that is illuminated by the One (or God), it is “a spark from the fire”.  The material world has no real existence until the light reaches it. Plotinus experienced mystical moments of fusion with the world of spirit.

            The Roman Christian Church had a hard struggle with this powerfully competing school of Neo-Platonism and ended up adopting most of its concepts.

It is important for Christians to understand our Jewish heritage.  It is equally important for us to understand our Greek heritage.  There is a reason why the New Testament was written in Greek.  Even Judaism was greatly influenced by Greek culture (the word synagogue is Greek!).  John Mark Reynolds does an excellent job of presenting the Greek background of Christianity in his When Athens Met Jerusalem.  Reynolds presents a useful introduction to ancient Greek philosophy which was highly influential on early Christian theology.  He deals with pre-Socratic philosophers, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and later philosophic movements and developments.  The most space is spent with Plato and Aristotle and it is obvious that the author has great knowledge and passion for these philosophers.  He does not just speak in generalities but looks at each major work and the ways in which these philosophers evolved in their thought.  One of the nice things about this book is that the reader does not need any background in Greek philosophy.  Reynolds presents many modern and popular illustrations to help the reader understand the concepts.  This is a very good book that is well worth watching.

1. I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.

2.I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

3.Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.

4.Be as you wish to seem.

5.Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

6.Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.

7.Wisdom begins in wonder.

8.Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.

9.A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.

10.Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

11.From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.

12.One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.

-Socrates-

There was one thing on which this world has been built. That one thing has been the back bone for the development of many civilizations. That single thing has been the reason that one country with all its latest technology in warfare could colonize another primitive country.

That single thing was responsible for all the riches of successful men and women who walked on this planet since the recorded and unrecorded history!

This one thing even helped the cavemen and women.

What? Even the cavemen and women! Yes cavemen and women. If it weren’t for that “One thing” we would still be like them, this whole world.

And that one thing is, simply put: “IDEA”. Yes “ideas” are the most important “Magic Aladdin carpets” that takes you to enormous heights and make your life ride an enjoyable one by the way of large compensations in all forms for you in addition to a sense of contribution in you.

Ideas are the biggest capital for any success aspiring man or woman.

Everything around us are once ideas in the minds of some people who took the pain and “action steps” to translate those ideas into realities.

Microsoft Windows was once just an idea that was sitting expectantly in a corner in Bill gates mind.

“Airplane” was an idea before it pounced and attacked the paper to be recorded and thought about by the Wright Brothers!

“Youtube.com” was an idea that was a small blip of an idea in the minds of its founders Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim.

Before these men accomplished the big things they generated ideas that could take the country by storm and after generating the ideas they acted upon them to develop them, to perfect them and importantly execute them successfully.

“Generate potential ideas first and then wait for your ideas to generate you many life rewards”

You have the same kind of imagination to generate any number of ideas. You are no inferior to anyone and could do marvelous things when you start to think of your business or job in terms of producing great life-changing or life-enhancing ideas.

When you become a man or woman who always generate ideas, your life would unfold in such a way you had least expected. You can create new ideas in your business or job, in your personal relationship, in the way you live, in the way you raise your kids, etc. Every improvement comes from a better idea.

Innovation and inventions have benefited by millions and millions of ideas from millions of people all over the globe. And the “Idea generation” has become more crucial than ever before today.

What we have seen so far in this world would be surpassed by new ideas that are going to be generated in the days to come. So let us start contributing our part by generating new innovative ideas in every area of our life.

Japanese are renowned for their innovative strategies. They were the country which nobody thought could give a comeback after they had been hit by the “Little boy” the atomic bomb. However… how could they give a miraculous comeback like a phoenix bird reviving itself from ashes!

They had faith in themselves first… then they worked as a unit… and finally they generated ideas after ideas to make their country a world leader once again.

Did they make it? You bet!

If you want your country to be a great nation in the world let your country’s each citizen realize the importance of new ideas and let it start from you, now!

Not only you’ll become a successful man or woman in your life but your country would become a much developed nation as a whole and that’s 2-in-1 victory! For you and your country!!

For the last 2 centuries  the thinking intensity and generating ideas among the people all over the globe have been on a gradual decline. This means the number of people who think independently has been always successful and small in number when compared to the huge population who have chosen to “think superficially”.

But you can join the high ranks now and start making full use of your brain power to generate ideas after ideas for earning and for good life!

That’s what Socrates did, Andrew Carnegie did, Charles Schwab did, J.K.Rowling did and every successful people did on our planet.

One great way to capture ideas is to keep a journal handy so that we could enslave an idea when it shows up. Also there are lots of books that teach how to generate ideas which could teach one how to generate limitless ideas in every area of their life.

All you need is a good idea to transform your life and it may come in any form from any source. Who knows today may be the day that you generate that great idea!

Wish you all the riches to come with God’s blessings

Peter Anand

Parody of Plato’s allegory of the cave with the part of Socrates being played by a magic 8-ball. 

*snip*

[Glaucon] And when they run out of beer and have to send a freshman back to the beer cave, do you not think that he might look upon the changes he has made to himself and pity those still dwelling there?

[Socrates] It is decidedly so.

[Glaucon] What if he returned to the beer cave and saw the prisoners as they played games amongst themselves, predicting what the shadows would do? What if he sat with them and tried to play alongside them; would he not still be buzzed and unable to compete against them? Would he not be ridiculed by them?

[Socrates] Yes.

[Glaucon] Would he not have to practice going into and out of the beer cave to teach them to party? Whereas there are those that say that partying must be put into the soul, does not our dialogue prove that the ability to party exists in the soul already and the knowledge to use it must be learned by bits and sips?

[Socrates] It is certain, I said.

[Glaucon] Then those that have partied in the world must be made to sober up and return to the beer cave to take a turn living amongst the punks to make them the next generation of party hosts. For it can be said that the party at which the hosts are most eager to share their beer is always best, and in which they are most reluctant, the lamest.

via McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: The Allegory of the Beer Cave..

Read on the wall of a men’s room stall in a Philly dive bar.  Color indicates a different handwriting.

No matter how hot she is, some guy is tired of her.  -Socrates

Dude, we don’t have anything by Socrates.

Yeah, but Aristotle quoted him in the Dialogues.

Yeah but those weren’t really quotes.

Paul Valery (top), Polonius & T.S. Eliot

The last 100 years have seen more pedantry in poetry than in any other age.

Remember when poetry as a topic brought out the best in thinkers?

Socrates may be a villain to many poets, but Platonic arguments are grand, necessary, and…poetic.

Horace and Aristotle laid groundwork so vital we can overlook their pedantic natures.

Dante’s Vita Nuova is without the pretence of pedantry.

Shakespeare, another enemy of pedantry, made it a popular trope: Rozencrantz, Guildenstern, and Polonius in one play alone.

Pope and Swift fought pedantry as a natural impulse.

Burns, Byron, Keats, Shelley and Poe were against it in their souls.

Yeats, at his best, displayed a hatred of pedantry: “Old, learned respectable bald heads edit and annotate lines…”

These artists are practically defined by their opposition to pedantry.

Something went wrong in the 20th century, however, as Manifesto-ism became a way to get attention in a field of diminishing returns

Here’s Scarriet’s Top Ten Pedant List:

1. Yvor Winters

Claimed the formal is moral, while convincing himself that Allen Tate’s poetry was better than Shelley’s.

2.  Harold Bloom

A pedant’s pedant’s pedant.   Shakespeare’s great—OK, we get it.

3. Jacques Derrida

One part Nietszche, one part William James, one part Analytic Philosophy, one part New Criticism, one part absinthe.

4. Ezra Pound

“Make it new” is a very old pedantry.

5. Cleanth Brooks

Ransom and Warren kept him around to feel like geniuses by comparison.

6. T.S. Eliot

Hated Hamlet.   Afflicted with Dissociation of Verse Libre.

7. Allen Tate

Modernism’s Red-neck traveling salesman.

8. Helen Vendler

A drab sitting room with a Wallace Stevens poster.

9. Charles Bernstein

“Official Verse Culture” was in his own mind.

10. Paul Valery

Always too correct.  Proves the rule that Poe sounds better in French than modern French poetry sounds in English.

BONUS—11. Charles Olson

Take a deep breath.  And blow.