Sumer is Icumen in

It's not summer. It's not even spring, especially in NH, where spring is delayed about a month. But the weather has gone above fifty degrees a few times already and we're getting excited. 

The first song is the only one I listened to here, though the whole concert is there if you'd like it. I can start videos at the time I want, but with the new system of embedding, the old method of ending a youtube selection where I want no longer works. One of these days I'll fiddle around with it and learn how.

Literally, Figuratively, and...

Update: Correction in the comments.  I was tempted to take this down but am keeping it up for my own admonishment.

There have been decades of complaints against people using the word literally when they clearly meant figuratively. Even CS Lewis was called to task for it in the 40's after a woman wrote in to correct him for making the mistake on a broadcast. He fully apologised, noting that she could not possibly upbraid him on this score more than he was upbraiding himself.

I believe things have gotten worse still. I saw this tweet today and realised I have seen usage like this before. I have recently railed against people using words like "unquestionably," or "undeniably," or "clearly" as bullying words, meant to intimidate others into silence by suggesting that they would be unable to mount enough defense to overcome what what the rest of the world considers "obvious."  The reality is usually that the writer or speaker cannot come up with a logical defense of his own, and thus resorts to a shaming tactic. A successful refutation, once one takes a breath and considers it calmly, is often quite simple, though it usually would take some time, as much jungle would have to be removed.

"Literally," has now descended into that category. The statement he refers to is not only not literally true, it is not even figuratively true.  It is untrue, but stated in bullying tone.

JD Vance

 JD Vance would be an interesting candidate. I read his book, Hillbilly Elegy and liked it quite a bit.  He grew up that family brand of Appalachian poor from Kentucky that moved to small-town Ohio to get work, but still went back a lot and kept their culture.  He went to the USMC, then summa at Ohio State, then Yale Law School, and humorously recounts the social niceties he needed to learn to succeed at the last of those - that it was important his belt matched his shoes, which would never have occurred to him - in addition to the academic excellence. Though he never says it this way, it's pretty clear that people just plain like him.

The author of the piece, Henry Olsen, is one of the few at the Washington Post who won't make you crazy, Sam. I know you're suspicious, but you'll just have to take my word for it.

Boling Again

He is near the top as short sprinter, long sprinter, and long jumper, and so picks up points for Georgia in both individual events and relays.  He's a sort of Swiss Army Knife, who can be moved around in different meets. It may work against him for the Olympics, however, as he is not the clear leader in any event. His upper-body form is better than last year, but still terrible, so coaching and training could still bring improvement.  Maybe nothing more to get out of his legs, though. He should peak in 3-7 years.

BTW, Terrence Laird is not as versatile, but might be more likely to medal in the Olympics.

I imagine football coaches look at that speed and torso and shake their heads, wishing they could get him on their squad.

Peace In The Valley

I heard something that annoyed me about a local church today, and my thoughts started going to bad places.  I knew their founders from my Jesus People days in the 1970s - not impressed.  Many of their kids were in Christian schools with my kids - I liked a few of them. Their youth group went in a fanatic direction when my kids were that age - highschoolers prophesying over each other about what was to come, that sort of thing.  But that was decades ago, and I don't think those things are happening now.  Still, some people I know have started going there, and I began to feel resentful.  It put me in mind of this.

P G Wodehouse

 

Obliviousness

When I was still working at the hospital, four months and a lifetime ago I had a lunchtime conversation with a lesbian friend of mine expressing frustration at a conversation she had recently had with someone from another agency.  That someone also knew here wife, who shares her last name, and asked how the two of them were related.  "She's my wife."  "Oh, I know, I heard that, but I wondered how the two of you are related, since you have the same name."  This apparently went back-and-forth like a vaudeville routine for a bit, Who's On First? My exasperated friend said to me "It's not like it's 1950! She's my wife!"  I offered that she was unlikely to be disapproving (I knew the woman in question - quite liberal) and was likely just oblivious, and that only temporarily.  When her error occurred to her she was likely to be mortified. 

She was not fully mollified by this, which surprised me, as she is a pretty easygoing person.  As I have had moments of serious obliviousness myself I thought the sin a small one, and my friebnd being unusually harsh.

Since that time I have reconsidered, thinking that she might be right.  Obliviousness is not always innocent.  I say this because I remember instances when it was not innocent in me, when the inattentiveness was part of an uncaring attitude, a mild declaration that the other person was just not important enough for me to think hard about it.  My friend should have been more generous and regarded it as a simple mistake, sure. But not knowing the whole story, including previous interactions she had had with this person - or with a hundred other oblivious persons - I think I can see my way to understanding the irritation.

Obliviousness can be contempt, or a disguise.  Once I saw that, I thought of immediate examples of people treating me that way, and not liking it. This means there are probably folks out there I have hurt in this way that I have long forgotten.  I think I will bring that up in morning prayers tomorrow.

Titania McGrath Educates Her Followers

Under the thread Granite Dad linked to about Harry and Meghan is this thread from Titania McGrath sharing some of the interactions she had with people who thought she was a real person and opinion-maker. I am weeping.

Cultural Automatic

When modern Christians study the Old Testament, they automatically zip in the equivalence of ourselves as individuals drawing lessons from what happened to the Israelites. What should we learn about our own trust in God from looking at what happened to Israel under Joshua?  This morning's sermon from Malachi switched effortlessly from the people of Israel being discouraged and ceasing to be rigorous in practice to our own individual tendencies to wonder if God has forgotten us and no longer cares for us. Not what our family's experience is, nor our church's, nor our denomination's, nor our country's, nor our era's.  Just ours.  Our own little selves.  We see individual lessons automatically, and do not even think to expand them to something close to their original meaning. 

I don't write this in particular criticism.  Sumus quod sumus, we are what we are.  While there are advantages to expanding our thinking and applying it to our groups rather than our own transitory feelings, it is not easily done. I simply note it as a place where our culture is so divergent from the assumptions of not only Old Testament times, but virtually every other culture in the world until the last few centuries in NW Europe and its colonies. Don't leap to conclusions here.  God may be speaking to to you about your church, not you personally in your reading and devotions.

The Symbolism Factor of Cancelling Dr Seuss

My commenters have convinced me that I was wrong earlier.

A young(er) progressive friend challenged the idea that so many things are being "cancelled," noting that his friends tend to ask what exactly this cancellation entails.  It is almost a fair question, but it is ultimately an evasion.  It relies on technicalities to avoid the main point. It is true that sometimes the conservative press will call something cancelled when it is mostly unaffected. It is removed from  a few platforms but is still available. A writer cannot sell their goods at this shop, but can sell them next door. 

I would say this is technically true but overlooks important aspects.  If you can no longer sell your book on Amazon, your commerce is impeded. But Amazon is a private entity and can do what it wants.  That's their freedom, right? Yes, they have legal right, but let us not confuse that with moral rightness. So long as they didn't say it out loud, or disguised their true intention by putting up false excuses, they could decline to carry black authors, or Muslim ones, or South African.  Libertarian types have long defended the right of businesses to set some limits on what they want to participate in.  That these current businesses are precisely the people who do not allow that argument for others is infuriating, but still may be legal.  Yet not moral. It is legal to be a stripper rather than a prostitute, but that doesn't imply a lot of moral space between them. (Big difference in safety, but that is not a moral issue.)

There is the related issue of whether a book or film or essay is being voluntarily withdrawn or being forbidden. Legally that is quite different, but if one is withdrawing something under pressure of possible boycott or bad press, that is not voluntary in quite the same sense. If someone is "encouraged" to resign, is that not a continuum logically and morally whether or not it is voluntary, even though it is a legal bright line?

Dr. Seuss becomes a cause because people recognise it, can remember it, and can identify with it.  Unfortunately, they can easily become distracted by whether they own it, whether they read it to their children and other irrelevant issues that allows the cancelers to hide behind them.

There were two incidents at prestigious Smith College, an initial one where a student made false accusations against the working-class staff and destroyed their lives, and the followup programs to "combat this terrible racism" that an extremely liberal, even radical professor put her foot down about as simply insane and was punished for it. But we don't remember her name, nor maybe the colleges, nor the incident exactly.

Twitter closes down Newt Gingrich's entire account for making a fairly boring and obvious statement.  We probably remember that it was Newt, but the rest of the details are hazy.

"The courts," whatever that means, seem to be doing some bad things about free speech when it doesn't fit the progressive template, but we forget what, exactly.

Some college in the Pacific Northwest censored one of its own professors for blowing the whistle about censorship.  We forget what exactly, but we know we saw it.

A law professor at Georgetown gets fired for pointing out the obvious that affirmative action students are going to have a harder time and are more likely to not pass muster, and she feels bad at grading time every year because so many minorities are at the bottom of her classes..  Which is the definition of affirmative action, but you can't say it.

So all the above are true, but harder to keep in mind, especially for the general public rather than those of us who follow this stuff.  All my examples are very recent, BTW.  Go back two weeks and you could generate another equal list.  Two weeks before that, same.  Dr. Seuss, on the other hand, is easy to remember, so people gravitate toward it.  One could defend the cancelling of Seuss by pointing out that it's really the copyright holders who are withdrawing the books (just coincidentally at the time that there have been negative press stories of accusations of racism.  I mean, what are the odds, right?); and that there are really bad old things that should be cancelled, so the principle is sound, as if anyone was suggesting otherwise.  Or we could pretend that reasonable liberals don't want these things to be forbidden, exactly, just labeled, put away where they are hard to reach...and quietly dropped from syllabi* - all entirely voluntary, you understand, so that in twenty years when no one under the age of forty has read Huckleberry Finn no one will even notice. So the people getting worked up about Dr, Seuss are technically wrong.  Yet at a deeper level, they are onto something.

The lesson of Cowslip's Warren is receding beneath the waves.

The Babylon Bee gets it right, as it often does. Study Finds Book Burners Always Stop With Just a Few Fringe Books, So There's Nothing to Worry About.

*If you want to be very technical, neither syllabuses nor syllabi should be the correct plural.  It should be just "syllabus."  But that's never going to catch on, so don't try and use it.  Language isn't like that.  It goes ahead and breaks whatever rule it damn well pleases.

Marvin Hagler, RIP

I just wrote about him a few days ago, and now he has died.

High School Dances

We were a big enough highschool (2,000) to have local cover bands for our dances, rather than relying on someone to play records. This was always big, and I put up the extended version rather than the abbreviated radio one for that reason. We didn't have light shows like this, though we had  a milk-and-water version by senior year.

Abusing the Past

WRT secondary sources (previous post), I don't want you to think I have no standards. I try not to make authors from the past say things they are not saying. When one has a large storehouse to draw from, the temptation is there to pull a particular quote of Martin Luther's and bend it into service for what you are trying to prove, even if you know that was not his intent. In the same way that "Taking the Lord's Name in vain" means forging God's signature under your ideas, Dickens or Shakespeare can be pressed into service as pretended authorities supporting your plan for government or marriage advice. 

I think I used to do that with some conscious dishonesty in college, and maybe later.  I may not have gone so far as making Christopher Marlowe say things I knew he would likely disapprove of, but I was certainly careless, with a very long kite string of what I thought he might mean, based on no information whatsoever, because it would be so cool if Marlowe had actually said something like that - and prove my little theory about whatever. People more often use vagueness, saying "Well, in the Middle-Ages, people believed that..." It's hard to disprove.

Knowing it is a dishonesty I was prone to, I try to be very strict with myself about such things now. Once one gets strict about it, noticing where the little cheats are likely to hide, one can't help but notice when others are doing it.

One does not have to be dishonest at all, and the carelessness might not be immediately apparent. It may be the person you are reading whose research is sloppy - or dishonest, and your fault is that you are accepting too readily because you so want the idea to be true. I am reminded by Scott Siskind's caution about new treatments, which I quoted about a month ago

"This is a very pre-replication-crisis book. In these more cynical days, we know that the first few studies on any technique – usually done in an atmosphere of frothy excitement, by the technique’s most fervent early adapters – are always highly positive. And later studies – done in an atmosphere of boredom, by large multi-center consortia – are almost always disappointing."

So too with new research about many things.  To make up an example out of whole cloth, if someone suggested that several early Gnostic sects in 1st C Mediterranean cultures gave a much more elevated status for women, and that was (really) why their  Christology was rejected, that idea would be popular in some circles. It would not only be popular with women keeping up with theology these days, but with anyone who thinks the Gnostics got short shrift in the early church for accidental reasons, not the Holy Spirit, or wants to kick the early church as having gotten it all wrong for emotional or intellectual loyalties of their own (such as homosexuality, for example), and even people not particularly interested in the church at all, but with agendas about women or homosexuality or pacifism or whatever. Whether the theory was true or not, and whether there was much evidence for it, it just might become settled doctrine among those groups and prove impossible to kill. We already have examples of people believing things about history because wouldn't it be cool if...rather than actual evidence.

I know of no solution other than personal vigilance. It is another long-standing theme of this blog, that I hope outlives me long after I have died, to regard that which you wish to be true should be treated with heightened suspicion. A new study has come out about Covid and masks. Quickly: what do you hope is true? A high-ranking defector from Iran spills his guts.  If what he says is devastating to Trump's policies do you reconsider what you have been thinking, or do you immediately revert to "this guy is not a real defector, he is a plant from the Iranian government which wants us to think the opposite?"

I will repeat the related sermon I often preach: this tendency to see what we want to is not a function of intelligence, of knowledge, or of training (unless you had that rare training that focused on humiliating you to teach you to drop your preconceived notions, as CS Lewis got from WT Kirkpatrick before entering Oxford), but of your personality, approach, cast of mind.  If you know a great deal about a subject you are in all likelihood more susceptible to the fashions of the school within your discipline, or the year in which you graduated from the Naval Academy, or consensus of everyone at your agency. 

The more you know about a subject, the more easily you can beat down the legitimate challenges to the conventional wisdom by observant outsiders.  Yes, many of these outsiders will be simply fools who know nothing, and that will sucker you into thinking you can take on all comers. I have done that with mental health, history, basic theology, and a dozen other subjects over my lifetime.  You know something, and keep encountering knuckleheads who make the same assertions you have been hearing since you were twenty, that have been utterly demolished a hundred times.  But there will also be people whose knowledge has strong overlap with yours, of neurologists commenting on psychology (or vice versa, and in all following cases), or historians on criminology, or small business owners on nonprofits.

The King of Secondary Sources

Do you remember when ED Hirsch came out with the book Cultural Literacy in the late 80's? There was a quiz, and other quizzes developed in imitation. I nailed those things, every one of them except the protest ones or parodies. 

I have also always been a strong advocate for reading primary sources, and the original works of the author, as CS Lewis encouraged in "On the Reading of Old Books." Don't read about Paradise Lost or the Inferno, fellow, read them yourself! You get a much better feel for Puritans if you read a diary or three.  Even more modern works are buried in commentary, and people know some excerpts, or what is said by folks who seem to know what they are talking about.

So, how many of these works have I actually read, fully, start to finish? Very few. I am the King of Secondary Sources, having overheard, or seen references to, or read excerpts from way more material than just about anyone you know. The others spend so much of their time reading the whole thing.  It seems wasteful. The complete work is just boring, you know?  If you have to read slowly, noticing that TS Eliot is echoing Chaucer's Canterbury Tales' "Whan that Aprille..."  when he begins "The Waste Land" with "April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land," then I'm never getting past the first ten lines.  I would make an effort on those ten lines, just so I could have some tag for the poem that I might use to connect the ideas to something else (or to have something to say to give the appearance of having read the work), but then I'm out.  Boring.  Not enough happening. I read that Tyler Cowan reads only as far into a book until he thinks he has got enough of the idea, then just drops the book wherever he is standing - in an airport, at a restaurant, in the kitchen - never picking it up again.  That man is my hero.

I have read the Bible.  Once straight through, all of the NT books multiple times, and I think the OT as well.  Everything of CS Lewis I ever got my hands on. GK Chesterton, with a recent exception I found uninteresting, I read all the way through. Absurdist playwrights. I look at my shelves and see that there actually is a lot of nonfiction that I have read and reread. But fiction, or The Great Books, or The Classics? Not so much. One picks up things over the years and tries to assemble them and connect them.  I mentioned to a friend today that I am listening to 30 minute interviews about Great Books, and he nodded agreement that it must give me a good idea which one's I wanted to take out of the library or buy, then read all the way through.  Yeah, that would be a good idea, wouldn't it? Of the hundred episodes so far, I have bought or borrowed one.  Admittedly, there were some things on the list I actually had read at some point in the last 60 years, perhaps even thirty of them.  I could comment knowledgeably on about 80% before I started (and have!), and am now up to 90%, though even some episodes I just listened to have already begun to fade.  

I will have to look up the Wikipedia article on those, so that I have learned with two senses. 

I can name the countries of Europe and their capitals, even the debatable countries like Azerbaijan. It comes in handy the one time in your life you run into a guy from there.

I wrote about Pierre Bayard's wonderful book How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read about five years ago.

Sentimentality

It is perhaps too easy to draw the lesson from this that sentimentalists are destined to be ruled by Machiavellians who know how to exploit their attachment to sentiment and emotional expressions like “We must love one another, or we must die.” (James Piereson, "Lyndon Johnson and the Cult of Sentimentality" The New Criterion, 2005.

Yes.  And I don't know anything to do about that except keep railing against it.

Cousin Marriage

The idea seemed radical and intriguing to me when I first read it at HBDChick years ago, that the Catholic Church's sanctions against cousin marriage had created enormous downstream effects, which extend even to changes in the population genetics. The thought was that this weakened kinship power, which tends to keeping resources and power in the family. (She also identified feudalism as having a similar effect.  One's loyalty is to the lord, the landowner, rather than the clan leader.)

I am now hearing reference to this theory in many places.  It seems to have gained acceptance as one explanation for the WEIRD phenomenon, as in Harvard social scientist Joseph Henrich,  and be treated as established by some modern geneticists (as interviewed on the genetics podcasts I hear and articles I read.  They seem to be top guys and gals, not fringe) that this has increased gene frequencies for traits of cooperation, including those that have impact on welcoming strangers. 

I don't know if this is a cause or a result, but the tradition recorded in Beowulf and records of similar age that thanes gave their support to the many minor rulers freely but conditionally is important in this context as well.  If a warrior felt his lord was not living up to his obligations, he could choose a different lord.  This does not happen easily in clan-based  or family-based societies, even up to the present day, such as much of the Middle East. Beowulf may be imposing the ideas of the 10th C back onto the 8thC or 6thC in this, but that doesn't matter much for our current discussion. The entirely patriarchal authority of a clan leader trying to protect resources for his group gave way to what are called "third-party institutions," such as the church, guilds, market towns, and independent trading networks such as the Hanseatic League and its network of cities. Even banditry is an expression of independent organisation outside the previous structures. Whole tribes might ally themselves with the declining Western Roman Empire in the 5th C, but there were also many examples of individuals, especially from Germanic tribes, enlisting in the Roman forces.  This independence increased steadily over the next 1000 years.  Admittedly, this was intermittent, as crises of famine and plague would send individuals back to submission to group protection and rules. (Which is fine.  Independence is great, but people gotta eat.  Your sons can resume independence - because they survived.)

While family ties constantly reasserted themselves within those contexts - noble families giving sons to the church and receiving influence in return, up to the level of the papacy, or passing along guild membership to sons - but this was no longer as strong among Europeans. 

So there was gradually less intracultural violence starting from at least 13th C and maybe even earlier. Women gradually enjoyed higher status and more rights, as they had more say over who they would marry, or weather they would marry at all.  That was not likely intended, but you can see how it would happen.  It's the Hajnal Line again, with both men and women marrying later, being closer in age, and women sometimes even not marrying, or not remarrying if widowed. These are the areas of decreasing cousin marriage and clan power and increased feudalism. 

Just so you know that it has moved from fringe belief to minority opinion among traditionalists and majority opinion among newer and younger researchers.

Victorian Novels

"It wouldn't be a Victorian novel if it didn't have a controversial will in it, would it?" John J. Miller, "The Great Books."

This is true, and not to be disdained.  It is a great plot device, as it relies so strongly on its place in a society bound by laws, and traditions, and sense of honor that we know every codicil will be enforced without provoking rebellion. Yet it also sets in high relief that many people will choose something other than money, standing on principle or declaring their independence.  They will refuse to marry, or will marry someone who does not meet the will's requirements. Or the device will set into high relief the character's lack of principles, of scheming to find a way to meet the conditions while subverting them.

The murder mystery only sells in places where people do not think they are in much danger of being murdered.  It's not entertaining if there are actually thugs ruling the county.

Meghan Markle and Vox Pupuli

I saw a reference to Meghan Markle as "The Princess of Woke."  I wouldn't focus on that aspect of her. My reading is that she has a Personality Disorder, similar to Diana's, and has taken whatever weapon looks most likely to create conflict. If you can force the conflict out of your own head and watch others do it, it is a relief, even if people get upset and yell at you.  That is just more ammunition.  Given her generation and upbringing, wokeness was the weapon she is best trained to wield. I don't think she and Harry are as fully capable of having ideas as most of the rest of are. Words and even entire attitudes are used instrumentally, with diminished relation to their actual meaning.

Sigh.  That's half the internet these days, it seems, of people adopting positions with an idea of elevating themselves and damaging others, with little regard for the actual content.  I wonder how much we should be applying that to history, of not taking the slogans at face value, nor perhaps even the well-crafted essays and orations. Even Bible sections might be looked at in this way.  It is Lent, and I am thinking of the statements of the crowd on Palm Sunday and then before Pilate. It is often noted that these are a complete reversal, making no logical sense. Yet they made emotional sense to the people saying them, expressing their aspirations and angers situationally rather than logically.  We are studying Joshua at present, and the voices of the people may be similarly unreliable there.  They think they mean what they say, but can turn on a dime.

Eddie Izzard

Althouse saw the Guardian article about Eddie Izzard now wanting his pronouns to be "she" and "her," making the full switch to transgender.  Except not quite. But let's start with something I liked.

I liked "Dressed to Kill" very much, but the other things I have seen, much less. He seemed to get both more mean and less silly. Comedians are often troubled people, who get some good feeling back by poking holes in their society. The society often deserves it, but the balance is delicate. With just a slight increase in irritation it becomes merely insulting.Once you have an audience that you know likes certain types of insult, or prefers certain targets you can go quite a while providing them with the mere insulting with just a bit of silliness or some vaudeville expressions to keep up the pretense that it's still comedy. They will still laugh, still think it's funny for quite some time.

Drums

Jonathan Winters used to do a routine about the old movies of primitive tribes drumming in the background and one of the characters shouting "I can't take it anymore!  Those drums, drums, drums!  They're making me crazy!" and another character saying quietly "It's when the drums stop that we should worry."

I think of that whenever I see the upper-class media relieved at how boring Joe Biden is.