anxiety of ignorance for a too-curious mind

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The sea of information can be overwhelming for a surfing reader
who wants to capture a prevailing tide, a clear Telos of Our species?

It’s not to be had, of course—though a capability for prospecting may shape appealing conceptual fictions.

What else can one do?

Like a fictional telos of one’s own life, horizons of life—personal, cultural, conceptual, social, political—may be practical appeals
for fidelities which become fruitful.

But for life, seafaring sees horizons transformed by engaged times.
Any sense of Telos is evolving.

from unconcealment to mysteries of being

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channeling Heidegger in our century

Obviously, children grow up into a world which is busy and prevalently superficial. Unconcealing richness of life is enlightening.

Over the years, concealment of meaning and opportunity remains especially the case for lower-educated persons. Education dispels
a lot of illusions, but most importantly it reveals one’s integral potential for growth.

Worse yet is living under oppression. Emancipatory address dispels resignation and enlightens hope for freeing life, experiencing decency, and gaining recognition of one's integrity. But most importantly, emancipatory address reveals the elevating power of educational opportunity which may lead to a higher quality of life.

As Jesus said: Truth will set you free. That was an avowal of eman-
cipatory and enlightening potential within “you” and “us.”

But such an enlightened and enlightening view was already integral
to early Greek thought. And given the deep Greek lineage of oral ancestry, we can’t plausibly presume that Parmenides originated the idea that thinking and being are the same, i.e., the conception of thinking was intimately the conception of being. Mental engagement and being (engaging relative to one’s potential?) belong together. Mental engagement is an existential notion. (Recalling Parmenides was Heidegger’s last posting, 1973.) Homeric odyssey was an allegory of enlightenment through adventurous striving (even for Leopold Bloom). Individually prospective and self-determinative life was likely integral to seafaring culture long before the Greek Golden Age. Unconcealing one's potential opens one to primordial possibility.

gardening better humanity

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an email to professor Stephen White [with some explanatory bracketing for here]:

Hi, Professor White,

My Constellations [journal issue contents] email today listed your essay [““The Aesthetics of Democratic Power“]. I recall your name from my Habermasian days. I hope you get lots of positive response. Sorry I can’t be too substantive yet in terms of your full discussion, having seen your article just a short while ago. 

Searching ’value’ in your essay, I think there’s lots of promise in relating aesthetic sensibility to authentic vs. inauthentic versions of appealing to moral-political values of democratic imagination. “...valuable insight...valuable resonance...“: I’m very attached to nesting political thought in value theory and identification with values in one’s life which carry motivation into political engagements.

We who don’t experience oppression in our own lives should want to appreciate the oppression of others as a matter of feeling shared humanity. These days, for example, the chaos in Ukraine (let alone Sudan, now called genocide) should enliven our demand that “America“ not withdraw from its soft power at a global scale. So, therefore, political power that we support must represent our shared humanity effectively. It’s a matter of feeling for the other. Indeed, we should need to “imagine the spirit of freedom and dignity that might have been expressed...“ by those who still can’t, yet may.

“'Morality is for suckers,“ Trump might say.

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“So, what are you going to do about it?“

Protest!

“Whatever.“: “Vance ironically acknowledged the yelling and shouts of ‘You ruined this place!’ [Kennedy Center for the Arts] with a smile and
a wave,“ notes The Guardian.

“Department of Education to investigate UC Berkeley for DEI-related claims,“ The Daily Californian.

“...Federal officials told [Columbia] university it must immediately place its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department under ‘academic receivership for a minimum of five years.‘ The demand was among several described as conditions for receiving federal funding, including $400 million already pulled over allegations of antisemitism,“ AP, i.e., protesting Israel’s degree of military activity. | Mar. 21: But the real reason seems to be revenge for his failing the “art of the deal.” Anyway, Columbia caves in, which creates an extortionist venue evincing considerations of principle by the President of Princeton.

humble attitudes of highland altitude

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Wandering through my textual garden…

Is that a frivolous trope for my library?

No: The work of having gathered preferred flourishings into my own constellation mirrors an oriental holism of value that can prevail over ephemeral news, soon forgotten in disjointing days of our times.

Our times?

We have in common this medium, what may be said, preferring to be here, giving time to this.

aftermath of a regression for the mean: Trump 1.01

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I live in a state—a nation: California (12% of U.S. pop.)—which voted strongly for Harris, for the Democrats’ Harris. I live in this world.

So, should I bother analyzing why a slight (sleighted) majority of the continent’s population prefers a showman, a propagandist, a carnival magician, a salesman playing power broker?

That’s something to explain relative to one’s interests in political life, integral for me generally.

facets of evolutionary dissonance

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Who in the U.S. isn’t tired of the presidential election season? And I’m despaired about the degree of appeal that fascist Trump has in the world’s most “advanced” (pluralist) “democracy” (federation, which eludes the E.U.). (Nordic nations work well politically because they’re much more—still—ethnically homogeneous.)

Among many comments I make weekly at Washington Post articles,
this article on truthlessness in our politics caused this comment today, which implicitly laments the developmental relativity of political sense. (“FEMA” there is the Federal Emergency Management Administration,)

Bloomsday for greater humanity

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Leaders from the great plurality of nations, meeting in Switzerland, may have seemed to voice platitudes in their communique, but ask yourself: What can ultimately cohere humanity “fruitful[ly], comprehensive[ly] and constructive[ly]” other than sanctified commitment to the United Nations Charter and fidelity to UN-congruent international law by collaborative global political leadership?

The Summit photo is almost enough: “We are here. ‘High-level’ dialogue will prevail.”

for united nations evolving Palestinian prosperity

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At the New York Times, the excellent article on “…Biden’s Clash with Netanyahu…” caused my short comment, which brought a couple of replies, but the Times stopped new comments before I could post a second reply. In case you’re not a subscriber to the pay-walled site, here’s my comment, replies, and the reply which I couldn’t post:

me: I want to see more attention given to how collaborative regional leadership can lead to a Palestinian state which Israel can accept (especially by helping that to be so, in partnership); and extended attention given to how all regional powers can collaborate to rebuild Gaza.  

We need a vision for hope which is realistic and detailed, so that we have better reason to endure too much news about unbearable tragedy; so that Israel can be seen to serve constructive aims; and so that Palestinians can focus their energies on self-determination, not mere recovery.

more exemplary persons

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One of the great dimensions of democracy is the well-informed citizen. But time for that is stolen by the normal job world. Nevertheless, sustaining principled journalism is a noble profession.

A great exemplar was Robert McNeil, who died today at 93 (News Hour tribute video). This memorable man of art, as well as addict of news which matters, noted some years ago (tribute video: 10:00 min.) that “Winston Churchill said...the empires of the future are going to be empires of the mind.”

wishful thinking about the Hamas-Israel conflict

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Ongoing crises in the news make my immersions in value theory seem foolish: as if care for principle, better distinctions, and compassionate reasoning can have effective merit. Nevertheless, I trek onward.

Here’s a comment I posted tonight at the NY Times article by UN General Secretary Guterres (quoting some key phrases he uses):

If global society will make and keep real that there must be an “international community” (not just global society alluding to the notion)—if We will hold sacred “each other’s humanity”—then we can make “UN resolutions” and “international law” effective, by demanding that our national leaders make the UN an effective institution during crises.

supreme leader: democratic constitutionality

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I want to share the letter I wrote to the Editor of The Atlantic magazine where I praised his article on General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose explicit “constitutional patriotism” expresses that strict fidelity to democratic constitutionality protects against autocratic exploitation of military power.

There is “supreme leader”ship located in (distributed through) the three estates of (1) jurisprudential “divining” of implicit lawfulness, which yields to (2) Congressional action, which yields to (3) valid electoral legitimation.

anomie of ordinary luck in a time of heat and war

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I’m unremarkably lucky among persons not living with intense heat or war. As a news junkie, I regularly feel gratitude and depressing sadness —and anger: How many Ukrainian civilians must die before a conspiracy of confidantes arrests Putin and sends him to The Hague?

staying oriented by the better sense of Our humanity

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It’s not that my sense is “the” better sense because it’s basically mine. Rather, prospecting all manner of issues for decades results in—has derived—a “simple” sense of Our humanity which seems better than any other sense I’ve found—which I assert here in hope that—inasmuch as I’m misguided—senses better than mine will come my way!

To be brief, I’ll divide my supposedly better sense into three modes: global, discursive, and life cyclic; and simply allude to how they differ.

overcoming negate-ive ("Dialectical") thinking

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‘Dialectic’, in the modern sense (not Socratic), names an approach to thinking about differences as primarily oppositions. The opposition is resolved through synthesis which transcends the opposition. Typically, opposition is understood negatively: “A is opposed to B” is the same as
“A = not B” or A is the negation of B.

The appeal of this arises in two ways:

• A person (or party) finds oneself in a disturbing condition of opposition to something, and thinks of this dialectically, i.e., as a challenge of getting beyond the opposition through “synthesis” of some kind (“situated transcendence,” for example: ch. 7 here). 
• One comes to a disturbing situation already thinking dialectically, so the disturbance is understood oppositionally (e.g., disagreement; or alienation which objectifies the other). 

But the etymological history of the notion isn’t dialectical in any sense,
not even in the Socratic sense, which pertains to a conception of pedagogical debate.

standing for a principle-based global order of Values

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I responded via email to Professor Eliot Cohen’s Atlantic article “The Strategy Than Can Defeat Putin.” Cohen is Professor of Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Strategic International Studies. He replied “I think we are in agreement.”

What America is really about now pertains to the validity of U.S. leadership along the lines you've detailed; and pertains to…how the American Idea should be understood now, in this first half of this century. 

There is validity to the often-dismissed notion of American Exceptionalism, which is vested in the superiority of democracy vis-à-autocracy that is at the root of the "rules-based international order" which is misrepresented by Putinism—and China!—as a U.S. hegemony.

better humanity through better being

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This day, Our humane planet—the True humanity of Us—continues
an historic show of coordinated global response to the invasion
of Ukraine, whose men are fighting to death for their democracy.
Whatever the outcome, this March marks a milestone in Our decade.

for a Literary university in a democratic ecology

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for someone engaged with “scholarly work on ecology
and literary modernism” 

What Universities Owe Democracy, by John Hopkins University President Ronald J. Daniels et al. (Oct. 2021), inspires (for me) an idea of interplay wider than conceptions of the university and democracy:

Literary understanding <—> the university <—> democracy <—> ecological understanding.

Moreover, the interplay isn’t linear. Literary <—> democracy;
university <—> ecology; and Literary <—> ecology are equally relevant.

Indeed, a rich appreciation of ecological thinking—highly humanistic thinking—can contribute importantly to the university <—> ecology interface (which is absent from Daniels et al.’s book).

Usefully, though, they advance four foci, i.e., “four distinct functions of American higher education that are key to liberal democracy: social mobility, citizenship education, the stewardship of facts, and the cultivation of pluralistic, diverse communities” {publisher’s description].

It Just Is: The City, Life

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Late night, looking at the S.F. lights (for the “millionth” time, from
my spot in the Berkeley hills), I realized again that there never was any Purpose to It All.

No news here. The City—the urban kluge—gradually emerged (like brains in nature) for specific functional efficiencies: roads, lights, buildings, which altogether implied no conception of aggregate consequentiality (e.g., neighborhood, traffic congestion, inspired community, crime, deterioration of infrastructure, spectacular architectures oblivious of adjacent ugliness).

Unlike nature, which adjusts itself ecologically, the structural City forces upon itself unadaptability to consequences that its opportunistic humans are compelled to face.

democratic life involves perpetual renewal,in small degrees

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The point of transition to a new governmental era performs a constitutionally derivative act of re-Founding that idealizes citizen commitment to their part in making the new era real.

A normal response is that one doesn’t have the time to honor such promise.

That suits the capitalist world well, as its under-monetized demands of work time commonly deny folks freedom for a high degree of citizen presence—even denying folks time for good attention to reliable news, little time for self-directed learning, little time for enriching friendships and sustaining neighborhood, even denying us time for good family, good-enough parenting. (The capitalist world spends heavily to prevent legislation of fair minimum wages.)