Hardly a mystic

He came to despise the idea that literature is a criticism of life in the sense that the literary faculty occupies a high place apart, from which it can sit in judgment upon the life that produced it. His distrust of the conscious intelligence as infallible guide to truth had the same base. The thing produced could not be the judge of its producer. Instead, he came to see literature and all art as the interpreter of meaning, as the translator of the truth about existence and purpose: a revelation. And he thought that this revelation came from another and deeper activity of the psyche than the rational intelligence, which continually missed the point, the reality.

Saturn’s modern melancholy

'In an article Verlaine wrote at the same time as the publication of Poèmes Saturniens he attacked the Romantic idea of inspiration and of “life” and “human nature” and came out in favour of a poetry completely mastered, controlled and formal. Nor did he in his best work present “themes” that preceded and were external to the actual poems; as we read we feel that we are watching those poems materialize under his pen, just as Chopin’s Nocturnes come to life under his improvising fingers. Nevertheless, since this first book brought together some very early poems written in his collège days as well as his most up-to-date experiments, it is something of a grab-bag, and anything but consistent or programmatic.'

Segregáție

'...the actions of every human agent in history are simply a part of the universe-wide pattern of events that determines what the laws are for this world. It is then hard to see how the most elegant summary of this pattern, the BSA laws, can be thought of as determiners of human actions. The determination or constraint relations, it would seem, can go one way or the other, not both! '

Crisis of Legitimacy

'This particular form of obsession is not new. Nor is it confined to blond, white, racist Norwegians. Raskolnikov, the hero of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, brutally murdered a pawnbroker in the name of a vaguely defined "freedom" that was not available in decadent, czarist St. Petersburg. Since then, revolutionaries and madmen of all kinds, from the Russian anarchists to the Irish Republican Army, have justified the murder of innocent people on the grounds that it would hasten the end of an illegitimate government and bring to power some theoretically more authentic regime... In the past, left-wing illegitimists were quite common, and in fact Marxism is a classic, paranoid version of this creed. The illegitimist Marxist argument goes like this: Bourgeois democracy is a sham; bourgeois politicians and the bourgeois newspapers are tools of shadowy financial interests. The entire system deserves to be overthrown—and if a few people die in the course of the revolution, it's all for a good cause. Though not every Western Marxist advocated violence, this is certainly the kind of argument that motivated the Weathermen, the Baader-Meinhof gang, and other far-left American and European terrorists of the past.'

the way Socrates questioned

Now a new study, recently reported in Scientific American, has found that excessive online time can literally rewire our brains, causing mental health problems as well as shrinkage of surface-level brain matter. While the study focused on genuine Internet addiction, it joins a growing body of evidence suggesting that frequent computer use may impair students’ academic performance...The Times review alludes specifically to a passage from Plato’s Phaedrus, in which Socrates approvingly quotes an Egyptian king’s skepticism about writing:' 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…you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing. (Phaedrus, Benjamin Jowett trans.)'

"useless" knowledge

In the first phase of the two-phase program, performers will develop automated tools and techniques for recognizing, defining and categorizing linguistic metaphors associated with target concepts and found in large amounts of native-language text. The resulting conceptual metaphors will be validated using empirical social science methods. In the second phase, the program will characterize differing cultural perspectives associated with case studies of the types of interest to the Intelligence Community.

Istorísm

For all the accumulated wisdom of philosophers, political scientist, historians, politicians, journalists, respected commentators and ‘experts’, the most striking aspect of all this is its unpredictability. Recently there has been a lot of talk of something called the ‘Arab Spring’, as if that is something which we all understood and which could be neatly parcelled up and pigeon-holed under a categorial heading like ‘emerging democracy that isn’t Al-Qaeda’ or something of the sort. But this time last year – as with the USSR in 1987 – who, of all our experts, actually predicted significant threats to the regimes of Gadaffi and Assad, for example? Even now we have little idea about how big a role the Muslim Brotherhood will play in the new Egypt, or indeed how that role might sit with our ideas of liberal democracy. But perhaps we shouldn’t be too hard on the experts, except in one respect.

Stárea de dispérsie

'Ce n'est pas là un symbole. Nous ne gagne­rons pas notre bonheur avec des symboles. Il y faut plus de sérieux. Je veux dire seulement que parfois, quand le poids de la vie devient trop lourd dans cette Europe encore toute pleine de son malheur, je me retourne vers ces pays écla­tants où tant de forces sont encore intactes. Je les connais trop pour ne pas savoir qu'ils sont la terre d'élection où la contemplation et le cou­rage peuvent s'équilibrer. La méditation de leur exemple m'enseigne alors que si l'on veut sau­ver l'esprit, il faut ignorer ses vertus gémissantes et exalter sa force et ses prestiges. Ce monde est empoisonné de malheurs et semble s'y com­plaire. Il est tout entier livré à ce mal que Nietzsche appelait l'esprit de lourdeur. N'y prê­tons pas la main. Il est vain de pleurer sur l'es­prit, il suffit de travailler pour lui. Mais où sont les vertus conquérantes de l'es­prit ? Nietzsche les a énumérées comme les ennemis mortels de l'esprit de lour­deur. Pour lui, ce sont la force de caractère, le goût, le «monde », le bonheur classique, la dure fierté, la froide frugalité du sage. Ces vertus, plus que jamais, sont nécessaires et chacun peut choi­sir celle qui lui convient.'

L’inconnu

« … Ce qu’il y a au fond de nous, ce ne sont pas les obsessions, ni les désirs contrariés, ni tout ce qu’on a inventé pour expliquer le mécanisme de l’esprit. Fausse science, cette science du langage par le langage, qui invente ses propres monstres. Mensongère, cette science qui interprète, qui divise, qui juge. La faillite de la psychologie est tout entière dans son intelligence. Car enfin, de quoi parlons-nous ? Parlons-nous des problèmes de la société, de la pluie et du beau temps, des jeux de société et des histoires drôles ? Si oui, la psychologie répond parfaitement. Mais si nous parlons de l’âme, des émotions, de l’intérieur brûlant et remuant au fond de notre corps, comment imaginer que ces règles et ces associations d’idées vont réussir à en rendre compte ? Mais plus encore que la naïveté et le mensonge, plus encore que l’orgueil, ce qui condamne les prétendues sciences humaines, c’est leur esprit de domination.

Unparalleled

The meeting was generally felt to be a pleasant one, being composed in a good proportion of those who would talk and those who would listen; and the dinner itself was elegant and plentiful, according to the usual style of the Grants, and too much according to the usual habits of all to raise any emotion except in Mrs. Norris, who could never behold either the wide table or the number of dishes on it with patience, and who did always contrive to experience some evil from the passing of the servants behind her chair, and to bring away some fresh conviction of its being impossible among so many dishes but that some must be cold. In the evening it was found, according to the predetermination of Mrs. Grant and her sister, that after making up the whist-table there would remain sufficient for a round game, and everybody being as perfectly complying and without a choice as on such occasions they always are, speculation was decided on almost as soon as whist; and Lady Bertram soon found herself in the critical situation of being applied to for her own choice between the games, and being required either to draw a card for whist or not. She hesitated. Luckily Sir Thomas was at hand. “What shall I do, Sir Thomas? Whist and speculation; which will amuse me most?”

Théâtre

'Nous nous sommes élevés souvent contre le réalisme pour la simple raison que la réalité n'est pas réaliste et que le réalisme est une école, un style, une convention comme tant d'autres et qu'il est devenu académisme, c'est-à-dire mort. Nous nous sommes élevés également contre le théâtre idéologique parce que le théâtre idéologique est lui-même contraire, prison, prisonnier de thèses, doctrines, postulats que l'auteur de théâtre est empêché de remettre en question. La vérité est dans l'imaginaire. Le théâtre d'imagination est un théâtre de la vérité authentique, authentiquement documentaire. Le document n'est jamais libre pour la simple raison qu'il est aprioriquement orienté. L'imagination ne peut mentir. Elle est révélatrice de notre psychologie, de nos angoisses permanentes ou actuelles, des préoccupations de l'homme de toujours et d'aujourd'hui, des profondeurs de l'âme. Un homme qui ne rêve pas est un homme malade. La fonction du rêve est indispensable, la fonction imaginative est également indispensable. Un artiste à qui l'on veut enlever la liberté imaginative, c'est-à-dire la liberté de l'esprit, est un homme aliéné. Les grands révolutionnaires ou leurs précurseurs ont été des rêveurs - je veux dire des utopistes. Mais lorsque l'utopie devient Etat, obligation, loi, elle est cauchemar. Le rêve, disait un grand psychologue, est un drame dont nous sommes à la fois l'auteur, l'acteur et le spectateur. Le théâtre est une construction de l'imagination en liberté. Chacun de nous a besoin d'inventer. C'est pour la joie d'inventer que moi-même j'ai écrit des pièces de théâtre. Imaginer, inventer n'est pas une activité aristocratique. Nous sommes tous des artistes en puissance. Le théâtre populaire engagé, orienté, dirigé, dicté par les représentants de l'Etat, par les politiciens, n'est pas un théâtre populaire, mais un théâtre concentrationnaire, impopulaire. Le théâtre populaire, c'est le théâtre d'imagination, le véritable théâtre libre. Les idéologues de la politique ont voulu faire main basse sur le théâtre et l'utiliser à leur profit comme un instrument. Mais l'art n'est pas ou ne doit pas être l'affaire de l'Etat. C'est un péché contre l'esprit que d'entraver la spontanéité créatrice. L'Etat n'est qu'une superstructure artificielle de la société. L'Etat n'est pas la société, mais les hommes politiques veulent utiliser, contrôler la création dramatique pour leur propagande. Le théâtre peut en effet être un des instruments rêvés de toute propagande, de ce que l'on appelle " éducation politique ", c'est-à-dire de détournements et de bourrage de crâne. Les hommes politiques ne doivent être que les serviteurs de l'art et de l'art dramatique tout particulièrement. Ils ne doivent pas en être les dirigeants, et surtout pas les censeurs. Tout leur travail doit consister à permettre le libre développement de l'art et de l'art dramatique tout spécialement. Mais l'imagination leur fait peur.'

value-added modeling

Like religion and politics, public education may soon be one of those subjects banned from the dinner table for the sake of family harmony. Few issues can boast so many deeply committed stakeholders with so many intensely opposing points of view.

1. People recognize that tests are an imperfect measure of educational success, but when sophisticated mathematics is applied, they believe the imperfections go away by some mathematical magic. But this is not magic. What really happens is that the mathematics is used to disguise the problems and intimidate people into ignoring them—a modern, mathematical version of the Emperor’s New Clothes....

Magic Gadgets

Wands: Personalized sticks for performing magic
Broomsticks: Primary means of transportation, also used in the game of Quidditch
Invisibility cloak: A rare and expensive item that makes the wearer invisible. Harry inherits one from his father
Remembrall: Clear orb that turns red if a wizard or witch has forgotten something
Sorting Hat: Magically determines which house (Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Slytherin) a new student is assigned to. The hat originally belonged to Godric Gryffindor, one of the four founders of Hogwarts
Owls: Serve as mail messengers for wizards and witches

Roving thoughts

'It was a hot and suffocating day. The windows were all flung open, but there wasn’t even the hint of a breeze, not even the slightest wind coming in from outside. Chekhov sat at his writing desk, immersed in his thoughts. I gazed at his tired, mournful eyes, trying to make a sketch of his head tilting to one side. His mind was on his work, but his face looked drawn, and his features—it seemed to me— were dissolving into the air. He had a kind of curve in his spine, and his entire posture indicated that he was exhausted. He had lost a lot of weight, and he looked gaunt. His posture, including his tilted head, his tired face, the tense movements of his thick hands – all this asserted that this was a person listening to his inner voice, to a voice which a strong, healthy man would never hear, due to the process of the illness going on inside of him. It was very difficult for me to look upon the features of a person so very sick. Yet, at the same time, the experience was invaluable for the entire country. “Have you found anything worth painting?” he asked me about his portrait. I looked at his somber face and replied, “No. It does not look anything like what I wanted to depict. You seem too sad and tired in this portrait.” “Then let us leave it as it is. Please, do not change anything. The first impression is always the most truthful.”'

Droite à gauche

À gauche et tout droit