James McElvenny in Aeon:

Switching between languages, we may feel as if we are stepping from one world into another. Each language seemingly compels us to talk in a certain way and to see things from a particular perspective. But is this just an illusion? Does each language really embody a different worldview, or even dictate specific patterns of thought to its speakers?

In the modern academic context, such questions are usually treated under the rubrics of ‘linguistic relativity’ or the ‘Sapir-Whorf hypothesis’. Contemporary research is focused on pinning down these questions, on trying to formulate them in rigorous terms that can be tested empirically. But current notions concerning connections between language, mind and worldview have a long history, spanning several intellectual epochs, each with their own preoccupations. Running through this history is a recurring scepticism surrounding linguistic relativity, engendered not only by the difficulties of pinning it down, but by a deep-seated ambivalence about the assumptions and implications of relativistic doctrines.

There is quite a bit at stake in entertaining the possibility of linguistic relativity – it impinges directly on our understanding of the nature of human language. A long-held assumption in Western philosophy, classically formulated in the work of Aristotle, maintains that words are mere labels we apply to existing ideas in order to share those ideas with others. But linguistic relativity makes language an active force in shaping our thoughts.

More here.

Walter Johnson in n + 1:

People would later say that it began with the statement issued by the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee and thirty-four other campus groups after the massacre of October 7. The statement was relatively restrained. It did not celebrate the violence. Instead, it attempted to reframe the killings in a longer history—to say, as many would in the coming days, that history did not begin on October 7. “Israeli violence has structured every aspect of Palestinian existence for seventy-five years,” the statement read. “From systematized land seizures to routine air strikes, arbitrary detentions, military checkpoints, and forced family separations to targeted killings, Palestinians have been forced to live in a state of death both slow and sudden.” But for all the conversation there has been about it both here at Harvard and elsewhere, I doubt that many people actually read the whole statement. It was only the first sentence that came to matter: “We, the undersigned student organizations hold the Israeli regime responsible for all unfolding violence.”

That one sentence was enough to compel 350 of these students’ teachers to issue a public denunciation.¹ The students’ statement, the professors argued, “can be seen as nothing less than condoning mass murder.”

More here.

Sean Carroll at Preposterous Universe:

Scientists and philosophers sometimes advocate pretty outrageous-sounding ideas about the fundamental nature of reality. (Arguably I have been guilty of this.) It shouldn’t be surprising that reality, in regimes far away from our everyday experience, fails to conform to common sense. But it’s also okay to maintain a bit of skepticism in the face of bizarre claims. Philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel wants us to face up to the weirdness of the world. He claims that there are no non-weird ways to explain some of the most important features of reality, from quantum mechanics to consciousness.

More here.

Juliet Frost & Sophie Roell at Five Books:

Normally at Five Books we ask experts to recommend the best books in their field and talk to us about them in an interview, either in person, by phone or via Zoom. In January 2023, we asked the AI bot, ChatGPT, to recommend books to us on the topic of AI. Being an AI doesn’t necessarily make the chatbot an expert on AI books, but we thought it might have some ideas. This week we caught up with ChatGPT to find out if there were any new AI books it wanted to recommend in the year since we spoke.

Five Books: Tell me about your top choice among these new AI books, AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future (2021) by Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan.

ChatGPT: This book combines both science fiction and non-fiction to explore how AI will change our world by 2041. Kai-Fu Lee, a prominent AI expert, and Chen Qiufan, a science fiction writer, offer a unique blend of storytelling and analysis. The fictional stories, set in the year 2041, are penned by Chen Qiufan, while Kai-Fu Lee provides insights into how these scenarios might become reality. It’s a thought-provoking look at how AI could shape our future in diverse ways.

Five Books: Kai-Fu Lee was head of Google China, is that right?

ChatGPT: Yes, Kai-Fu Lee was the founding president of Google China. He served in this role from 2005 to 2009. During his tenure, he played a key role in establishing Google’s presence in China and managing its operations in the country. After leaving Google, Kai-Fu Lee went on to become a prominent figure in the Chinese technology and venture capital industries.

More here.

Sharon Brous in The New York Times:

A somewhat obscure text, about 2,000 years old, has been my unlikely teacher and guide for the past many years, and my north star these last several months, as so many of us have felt as if we’ve been drowning in an ocean of sorrow and helplessness. Buried deep within the Mishnah, a Jewish legal compendium from around the third century, is an ancient practice reflecting a deep understanding of the human psyche and spirit: When your heart is broken, when the specter of death visits your family, when you feel lost and alone and inclined to retreat, you show up. You entrust your pain to the community. The text, Middot 2:2, describes a pilgrimage ritual from the time of the Second Temple. Several times each year, hundreds of thousands of Jews would ascend to Jerusalem, the center of Jewish religious and political life. They would climb the steps of the Temple Mount and enter its enormous plaza, turning to the right en masse, circling counterclockwise. Meanwhile, the brokenhearted, the mourners (and here I would also include the lonely and the sick), would make this same ritual walk but they would turn to the left and circle in the opposite direction: every step against the current.

And each person who encountered someone in pain would look into that person’s eyes and inquire: “What happened to you? Why does your heart ache?” “My father died,” a person might say. “There are so many things I never got to say to him.” Or perhaps: “My partner left. I was completely blindsided.” Or: “My child is sick. We’re awaiting the test results.” Those who walked from the right would offer a blessing: “May the Holy One comfort you,” they would say. “You are not alone.” And then they would continue to walk until the next person approached.

This timeless wisdom speaks to what it means to be human in a world of pain. This year, you walk the path of the anguished. Perhaps next year, it will be me. I hold your broken heart knowing that one day you will hold mine.

More here.

Alla Tha’s All Right, But

Somebody come and carry me into a seven-day kiss
I can’ use no historic no national no family bliss
I need an absolutely one to one a seven-day kiss

I can read the daily papers
I can even make a speech
But the news is stuff that tapers
down to salt poured in the breach

I been scheming about my people I been scheming about sex
I been dreaming about Africa and nightmaring Oedipus the Rex
But what I need is quite specific
terrifying rough stuff and terrific

I need an absolutely one to one a seven-day kiss
I can’ use no more historic no national no bona fide family bliss
Somebody come and carry me into a seven-day kiss
Somebody come on
Somebody come on and carry me
over there!

by June Jordan
from Poets .org

Becca Rothfeld reviews Adam Shatz’s new biography of Frantz Fanon in The Washington Post:

More here. Adam Kirsch’s review in Air Mail can be found here, and Daniel Trilling’s review in the FT can be found here.

Kangkook Lee in Phenomenal World:

The South Korean economy is widely seen as the paragon of the East Asian miracle, characterized by its rapid economic growth and a fairly equal income distribution. The country continued its upward growth trajectory even in the aftermath of the 1997 financial crisis, emerging as a global leader in manufacturing semiconductors, automotive, and batteries. But the South Korean economic outlook has proven far less hopeful since the dawn of the twenty-first century. Income inequality began to rise in the early 2000s, and Korea now is home to the lowest birth rates and highest suicide rates in the developed world. In 2017, President Moon Jae-In attempted to change course, introducing a progressive income-led growth strategy. Through more active state intervention, the policy focused on increasing household consumption and promoting aggregate demand. Five years into its government, however, the administration lost its leadership and was replaced by the current conservative government of Yoon Suk Yeol. Keynesian wage-led growth has been replaced with trickle-down economics, with poor prospects for growth and redistribution. What went wrong? Examining the trials and tribulations of South Korea’s experiments with income-led growth reveals important implications for fiscal policy and the enduring influence of austerity.

Reversing the miracle

In 1997, foreign capital flowed rapidly out of East Asia, beginning from Southeast Asian countries that had high foreign debt and vulnerable economic fundamentals. Korea was no exception: its corporate sector had made substantial debt-financed investments, and its economy had lots of foreign short-term debt. Across the West, the crisis was explained as the result of crony capitalism and political interference in market processes. Grossly overlooked were the reckless financial openings and government retreat from economic management since the 1990s.

More here.

Crispin Sartwell in LA Review of Books:

I BOW TO few in my admiration for the anthropologist, economist, radical leader, and delightful prose stylist David Graeber, who died unexpectedly in 2020 at the age of 59. Since I read his little book Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology in 2004, I’ve been telling anyone who seemed inclined to listen that he was the most important anarchist thinker since Peter Kropotkin, who died in 1921. His ideas, including those beautifully captured in his book Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), helped motivate and shape the Occupy movement, which took inspiration from his commitments to radical democracy, egalitarianism, and “prefigurative politics”—the idea that people seeking to make a revolution should try to live and organize now in a way they’d want to arrange their lives together in the future.

Graeber studied at the University of Chicago under Marshall Sahlins and did his anthropological fieldwork in Madagascar in the early 1990s. When he returned, he published the still-neglected Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams (2001), a work of high theory whose ambitions constituted a throwback to the eras of Marcel Mauss or Claude Lévi-Strauss, though its positions were strikingly fresh. On the strength of his early work, he got a job at Yale and at the same time became active in the “anti-globalization” movement (Graeber hated that term), with its demonstrations and actions against such organizations as the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. When he didn’t get tenure at Yale, he believed it was because of his politics.

More here.

Ajay Singh Chaudhary in The Baffler:

IN 1971, Aaron Antonovsky, an Israeli medical sociologist, led a small team conducting a survey with over one thousand participants concerning how women cope with the effects of menopause. A question on the survey asked, almost as an afterthought, whether the women were concentration camp survivors. In reviewing the findings, Antonovsky was astonished. “How the hell can this be explained?” he exclaimed to colleagues. What he had discovered would prove foundational not only to Antonovsky’s career but to an entire new field of research. Of the 287 women who reported that they had survived the camps, over two thirds qualified in the category of “breakdown”—still suffering from “the horrors,” as he termed it. Unsurprisingly, this was a vastly higher number than for the women who had not experienced the camps.

“What is, however, of greater fascination and of human and scientific import,” argued Antonovsky, “is the fact that a not-inconsiderable number of concentration camp survivors were found to be well-adapted . . . What, we must ask, has given these women the strength, despite their experience, to maintain what would seem to be the capacity not only to function well, but even to be happy?” The answer was nothing less than a set of psychological dispositions that produce an understanding and acceptance that external stimuli reflect a coherent world; that one has the internal resources to meet any demands from these stimuli; of an optimistic disposition that such demands are “challenges, worthy of investment and engagement.” With these it might be possible for a person to withstand life reduced to the absolute degradation and deprivation of the camps and still remain functional by existing social standards. Antonovsky would eventually call his science “salutogenesis,” but what he had really discovered is what we now call “resilience.”

More here.

Merry-Go-Round

The holidays
go by on wheels.
The merry-go-round brings them
and takes them away.

Blue Corpus Christi.
White Christmas Eve.

The days leave their skins
behind, like snakes,
excepting alone,
the holidays.

These are the same as
of our old mothers’:
their afternoon long trains
of shimmering silk and sequins.

Blue Corpus Christi.
White Christmas Eve.

The merry-go-round turns,
hung from a star.
A tulip from the five
parts of the earth

On little horses
disguised as panthers
the children eat the moon
as if it were a cherry.

Rage, rage, Marco Polo!
On a wheel fantastic,
the children see horizons
unknown on all the earth.

Blue Corpus Christi.
White Christmas Eve.

by Frederico Garcia Lorca
from The Cricket Sings
New Direction Books, 1975

Jane Fonda in Time Magazine:

About a year ago, I was declared cancer-free after four months of chemotherapy at Providence St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif. I had been diagnosed with low-grade B cell non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. This was not my first encounter with cancer. I’d had breast cancer a number of years prior, which was treated with radiation and then a full mastectomy. I realize I’m lucky. I had caring, attentive doctors and nurses who saved my life. I also realize how much progress has been made in cancer research and I am deeply grateful.

Yet despite that, cancer has become epidemic. Approximately 40% of people in the U.S. will develop cancer and over 1.96 million new cases were expected to be diagnosed in 2023, according to the National Cancer Institute.

I’m a cancer survivor but also a climate activist and I’m very aware of the connection between the environment and health—especially cancer. The same fossil fuels that are driving the climate crisis are driving this health crisis. The Environmental Protection Agency keeps finding cancer-causing chemicals derived from fossil fuels—such as dioxins, benzene, and naphthalene—in the air, in our water, our food, our furniture, our clothing, the utensils we cook with…. They are also in our bodies. These poisons are even found in the umbilical cords of newborn children.

More here.

Katrina Miller in The New York Times:

I had two memorable experiences with the moon this year. The first was seeing the “blue supermoon” rise over Lake Michigan in August. The second, a few weeks later, was watching it quietly slip in front of our sun, casting the world below in an eerie, ethereal glow. Both of these moments left me with a sense of awe that I was not expecting. Frankly, I’ve always found the moon a bit boring. If you could study anything in the universe, I thought — the depths of black holes, faraway stellar explosions, or ghostlike particles called neutrinos, as I did — why on Earth would you ever pick the unmysterious moon?

But the science writer Rebecca Boyle proved me wrong. In “Our Moon,” Boyle walks the reader through a history of both Earth and humanity, from the formation of our planet and the evolution of life to the development of civilization, religion, philosophy and, eventually, science. And through it all, she argues, the moon has played a starring role in how we came to be, and who we are.

“The moon is more sibling than subordinate,” Boyle writes, explaining that it formed out of the same cosmic cloud of debris that made Earth. Its gravity not only stabilizes our climate — making the moon “captain of our seasons” — but also enabled life. As ruler of the tides, the moon pulled primitive organisms into early Earth’s nutrient-rich seas, then pushed them back onto shore where “the fish, out of water, walked.”

More here.

Justin Smith-Ruiu at The Hinternet:

It struck me recently that it’s been quite some time since I last heard anyone speak of the importance of maintaining a “work/life balance”. Like co-dependency, like low blood-sugar,1 like cottage cheese atop pineapple rings, like “remembering to breathe”,2 like so many other things that once seemed central to the way we talk about ourselves and go about our lives, it may be that the idea of such a balance is in decline. If that is so, I suspect it has something to do with what has been called “work creep”, most noticeable since the pandemic and the concomitant rise of Zoom, which has thoroughly blurred the line between work and non-work. If work is the Vietnam War, our homes are now Cambodia under secret bombardment. Or, as I often say, my computer is my cloaca: the single opening to the world through which everything happens. Truly, the internet has turned us all into a bunch of scurrying monotremes, and it has left me, in particular, perpetually as prickly as an echidna.

More here.

Anne Gulland in Nature:

This might sound as though Lincowski is a crime-fighting hunter of aliens in a Marvel superhero film, and that interpretation isn’t far off. Until the end of last year, Lincowski worked as a police detective in Casper, Wyoming, from Monday to Thursday. And on Fridays, he looked for signs of life on planets beyond the Solar System, as part of a research team at the University of Washington in Seattle. Earlier this month, he started working as a mathematician at Eastern Wyoming College in Torrington, where he will be teaching mainly 18–21-year-old students. However, he will continue his one-day-a-week planetary science research at Washington.

Lincowski admits his career has been characterized by fairly drastic changes of direction. “I think it’s a symptom of my generation — the constant changing of your mind about what you want to do,” he says.

More here.

Sarah Aziza in Jewish Currents:

GAZANS HAVE INDEED SOUGHT OUR EYES and attention amid these days of peril. Defying Israel’s targeting of journalists and their families—which has made this the most dangerous conflict for journalists on record—Palestinians have risked everything to document and share. From the first hours of the carnage, they have rushed towards bombed-out buildings, swinging cameras to capture arriving doom. An immediate, reflexive instinct: to record, expose. As if the scale of violence had shocked even siege-worn Gazans into thinking, this time, surely, Israel has gone too far. Surely this cannot stand . . .

And so, mere meters from strike sites, their hands still shaking from terror, these survivor-creators have broadcast the unmaking of their world.

More here.