Insidious

Just the other day, a fervent holder of a minority point of view asserted that if a group of people were silent with regard to something, it meant that they were doing an injury to whatever they were being silent about. Yes, I know, it twisted my head around a bit.

But this is really nothing new. It's part of postmodern reality interpretation, where what is not said, whether there is evidence or not, is actually 'negatively said'. So if you don't talk about fluffy purple swans, then you must have something against fluffy purple swans, fluffiness, purpleness, or swanniness.

The three main disciplines of the classical age were mathematics, history and art. It was asserted that one could know no truth, virtue or beauty without the ability to appreciate and to command these disciplines. Now however, because we are in the business of 'negative saying', to not say has the same weight as to say.

It is as if I, wandering down a street and thinking only of getting to my destination, am to be censured for not going to other places. Indeed, it is as if I am being taken to task for spreading calumny about these other places of which I have not even thought, for my not-saying is taken as tantamount to anti-saying.

Christe eleison.

Postmodernism and the Void

It's fascinating to watch the blind watchmakers at work. Everyday, I see people, I read people, I hear people say very proudly how good it would be if people would just accept that there is no God.

The thing about this is that we think there's meaning. That bugs me. If thinking that meaning must exist is just a random chemical phenomenon, then intellectually speaking, I shouldn't be irritated about my thinking, which is a concerted process that will achieve nothing. Yes, it's like spontaneous order-generation, which happens in limited anti-entropic circumstances. But it's not meaning, it's just a complex process issuing from simple rules, like a Mandelbrot set.

If there's nothing that thinking is for, then why do we say suicide is a crime, or that democracy is good, or that ice-cream is wonderful, or any of a multiplicity of sensations and experiences, catalogued, filed, named, defined, outlined, silhouetted, engraved... Why?

Why bother to write something extolling atheism of all things? It's like saying, "(meaningless term denoting individuality, 'I') (meaningless state of meaningless activity, 'am writing') (meaningless identifier implying meaning despite entire argument of meaninglessness, 'a book') (meaningless preposition implying relationship, likewise a meaningless concept, 'about') (meaningless string of meaninglessness words all of which contain too many concepts, which are of course meaningless too, 'why you shouldn't believe in God')."

I mean, what is it to an atheist that he should write any books? Why not let the rest of us get on with our sequence of pseudorandom events? After all, what can be done about the fact that there is no script, no plan, no director or producer to this appalling film? Why go around yelling?

Postmodernism is a void. It says nothing useful, but argues a lot. It is like something so black that you see everything and nothing in it, all at once. And it goes nicely together with atheism, which in effect is the same thing.

Doctoral Inquisition

Yesterday I attended one of these events; they are quite common and come in several varieties and flavours. By variety, I imply a difference in intent ranging from exploration to confirmation of candidature to defence of thesis. By flavour, I imply a difference in the nature of the panel applying the instruments of inquisition.

Yesterday's was a confirmation of candidature, in which some slightly nervous or incompletely prepared proto-candidate is subjected to the intellectual equivalent of a gentle grilling and racking (which makes me think of lamb, somehow). I and my neighbour enjoyed it quite a bit, probably because I've already gone through that stage and was looking for points of interest applicable to my end-stage; my neighbour was interested because of the nature of the evolving dissertation.

The real problem wasn't that everything seemed to be anchored to the überzeitgeist of Foucault and his merry sociology, or Fullan and his equally merry 'change is simple, look you can break it down into eight bullet points' approach. The problem was that there seemed to be some sort of empty space between ground-level micro analysis and global-level macro analysis. The scope was too great in range; it was analogous to doing research with one eye on an electron microscope and the other on a radio telescope.

As an aside I am so glad that the inquisitors panel pointed out that you couldn't take for granted that any old innovation (say 'Understanding by Design', for example) was necessarily innovative, useful, successful or educationally good just because a bunch of people spent a lot of time on it.

On a smaller scale, I've noticed this in TOK presentations and other kinds of presentations. Some candidate will zero in on two minor Scandinavian authors like Ibsen and Strindberg, call it 'World Literature' and generalise the findings to include literature in general. And the worst part is that the examiner will merrily (I'm using that a lot today, aren't I?) accept it.

It is like some sort of stream of consciousness robin hoodwink with one eye up and the other down in the dirt where the dead men have their bones and good is oft interdiction is important because without it Rome was not built in a day in the life I miss the Beatles. Heh.

Poetry

Yes, occasionally the grey side of me surfaces here and I actually post stuff I have written. It's a terrible failing, I know. I realise that most of my readers hate the stuff and I am not delivering something they want to read.

Well, I'm amenable to criticism as always. There'd be no point otherwise, since this is not really a vanity press. Keep it cleanly critical. And I will try not to offend your sensibilities so often.

Someone once asked me about a poem I wrote and why I wrote it. That poem can be found at this post. Well it was written over a period of four years really, with very small amendments over that time. It was written for an old friend, who is sadly no more with us.

But hey, in this postmodern world, criticism seems to stand on its own without biographical context. I hate that perspective myself, hence my need to develop a context in most of my posts. Ah, that's the paradox: the more you know, the less the text alone speaks to you. So where is the balance point?

I don't know. Why should I? It's poetry.

Watershed

Cold, wet, watery; which is to say: it is cold, the cold has resulted in a huge amount of precipitation, and on this planet, that precipitation is mostly water. And then it petered off. Now, it is cold and wet, but less watery. It will not be dry tonight.

I'm opinionated about education. I believe I have the right to form those opinions, keep those opinions, develop those opinions, and attempt to inflict them on people as a form of testing. Opinions are opinions, but when used as the basis for policy, it is good that they are tested. Some opinions are clearly wrong in certain circumstances; it is clearly not right to say that not all opinions are clearly wrong. Some opinions are more important to some people; that is, having greater import and significance; and some opinions are less important.

The reasons one might believe in this are simple: everyone practises a sort of ranking. This is a consequence of neurobiology; certain sounds, sights, and stimuli are responded to more sharply than others. It is like blue light and red light. Building from this fundamental truth, it becomes obvious that some news items, some effects and affects, some consequences of policy are of greater import to some people. Can it be said that this is clearly the case of certain matters?

Yes, I believe so. Time and time again, in any belief system, one is told that X is fundamental to belief, or that Y is of key importance, or that Z1 and Z2 are the greatest and second greatest commandments. Hence, if you have a belief system, it might be true (by fiat, or by acclaim, or by authority, or by necessity, or axiomatically) that something in it is of greater importance than all other things. If I were a Christian, for example, I might consider this to be more important than any kind of worldly knowledge or wisdom: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength; and your neighbour as yourself."

Why would I do that? Because, according to my putative belief system, the author and completer of my faith said that these were of paramount importance in the context of commandments. If I want to be true to the system, I have to believe that in any discussion of commandments (i.e. things we are told to do), these are the most important. And so on.

There is a dangerous trap in postmodern thought (although not all of it) which begins with saying that all viewpoints are equally non-definitive. This might be true, charitably speaking, but it is not the same as saying that all viewpoints are equivalent or identical or equal; in content, authority, utility, economy, and other qualities, they will be of differing value.

Think on these things, said the apostle. Think.

Broken

The world is fractured. It is made of too many fractions, too many pieces, too many interactions; they diverge in a way the Victorian world presaged but never envisaged, they multiply in a way the Centralised State could never deal with. Seven kinds of theories arise, dealing with things of this broken world. The theories look superficially similar, but are worlds apart - literally.

These are the seven Cs, the seven riders of our post-modern non-apocalypse: the theories of chaos, catastrophe, crisis, contagion, choice, criticality and complexity.

Together, they ensure that we will never ever be able to comprehend the universe around us. As I've told many of my students, to varying degrees and kinds of response, "We can apprehend much of it; we can comprehend almost nothing about it." There are no theories of comprehension which have not been broken in this modern age. And the ironic thing about it is that we did it to ourselves; for every theory and model which unifies fact and hypothesis and imagination, there is a a counter-theory coupled with a need to falsify. Karl Popper started it: the only good scientific theories are those to which a certain 'No' can be found, thus falsifying them.

And so we have banished all models which cannot be falsified. What does that leave us with? Our seven Cs have done away with an eighth C – certainty. Post-modernists think this is good. But you cannot define even 'good' with the new system of the world. In fact, no definition is secure; no definition or model or structure or logos will stand against the tide of anarchy.

For if in the beginning was no Logos, then there continues to be none, and mankind has no meaning save the pitiful scraps it gathers for itself – the unified theories which everyone seeks but which everyone at the same time denies by their pattern of thought.

There is only one remedy for a broken world. The proof is simple: if there were more than one, we could never know how many more – in that sense, all other numbers are the same in promoting uncertainty. If there were less than one, there would be none. One is a very special number. The answer is: One.