by Max Sirak

I spent my 20s working in bars and bookstores. Really, what this means is – I read a lot and I drank a lot. And, over the course of all this reading and drinking, I even managed to learn a thing or two. So, today we're going to talk about making a good drink and living a good life.

One of my favorite reads in my 20s was Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd's, The Time Paradox. One of my favorite drinks in my 20s was a well-crafted margarita. Now – I know what you're thinking, “A margarita? How pedestrian…” and “The Time Paradox? I've never heard of it…”

The book is all about how “attitudes toward time have a profound impact on your life and your world, yet you seldom recognize it.” (The Time Paradox) The drink, when done right, is about the most delicious thing you can put in your mouth on a summer's day. And – as luck would have it – the recipes for how to best think about time and how to best make a margarita are pretty damn similar.

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by Thomas R. Wells

“How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” John Kerry challenged Congress about the Vietnam war in 1971. There in a nutshell is the standard test by which democratic republics assess their military adventures: Is this cause worth dying for?

The idea of such a test is a good one. War is a question of politics, indeed the oldest question of political power: ‘Who's in charge here?' Specifically, governments contest each other's sovereignty – their ability to get their own way – by employing or threatening the means of extraordinary violence. Since war is defined by its terrible means, it can only be justified by some extraordinary purpose. Ordinary political goals will not do. Hence the need to find some measure that will be immune from the merely personal or factional interests of politicians or their hubris.

Nevertheless, Kerry's test is not quite right. The most ethically significant thing about war is not that our soldiers are ordered to risk their lives to further the interests of our state – or perhaps just our politicians – but that they are ordered to kill for it. The real ethical test of a war is whether our cause is worth killing for. If that is not satisfied then our soldiers are mere murderers and we are the ones who made them so.

This test turns out to be much harder to meet.

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At The Milken Conference: “Attendees want to know about … politics
and global military campaigns only insofar as (they) produce new
opportunities to make money. A panel called “Value in Turmoil” was
packed (and) ‘Opportunities in distress’ was a recurring theme.”
…………………………………………. —David Dayen in The Intercept

Das Kapital

In a conference of elites
the distress of others is an
investment opportunity,
said the gator to the croc,
croaked hen vulture to her cock,
shot Kalashnikov to Glock,
coughed Phillip Morris to a doc.
.

by Jim Culleny
5/7/16

by Holly A. Case

Ares, god of war

When Joseph Brodsky taught poetry at Mount Holyoke College, his method of choice was memorization. At the beginning of every class, students took out a blank sheet of paper and wrote out the poem for discussion that day from memory. Every comma, every line break, every word: they all had to be in the proper place. More than three errors of any kind would earn a zero.

I audited Brodsky's course on the poetry of W. H. Auden as a sophomore. Though I rarely adhered to his strict regimen, I did with Auden's “September 1, 1939.”

After the ritual of the blank sheet came the discussion. Holding a plastic espresso cup, and often—in defiance of every code—a cigarette, Brodsky walked among us, repeating lines from the poem with Russian-accented rhythmic intonation:

Blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse: …

(He pronounced the noun and verb forms of “excuse” identically, always like the verb.)

Then came a question: Why “blind skyscrapers”? A hand or two went up. Possible answers were proffered and gently dismissed. Finally, he offered an image of clouds reflected in the glass; everything deflected, nothing allowed in. As I listened, the adjective “blind” opened wide, swallowing a hissing tangle of nouns: “ignorance,” “hubris,” “superficiality,” “soullessness,” “emptiness,” “selfishness,” whereupon—already grotesquely distended with meaning—it proceeded to engulf the hundreds of pages of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, as well. Brodsky was passing from behind on my right as he spoke, the light on the desks was diffuse and without shadow, and a boy in a tutu from Hampshire College was sitting to my left: nothing happened, everything changed.

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by Carl Pierer

German foreign policy often talks about a particular historical German responsibility, some special status that Germans have inherited after World War II[i]. Even left commentators, usually internationalist in outlook, seem to accept such a notion uncritically[ii]. But what role does the concept of ‘nation' play in this context?

Ernest Renan writes in « Qu'est-ce que une nation ? »:

Or, l'essence d'une nation est que tous les individus aient beaucoup des choses en commun et aussi que tous aient oublié bien des choses. (…) Tout citoyen français doit avoir oublié la Saint-Barthélemy, les massacres du Midi au XIIIe siècle.[iii]

At first, a seemingly straight-forward cynical remark. But in the revised edition of his hugely influential “Imagined Communities”[iv], Benedict Anderson realises that Renan takes ‘la Saint-Barthélemy' and ‘les massacres du Midi' as being understood, without the need for further explication. Anderson rightly asks: “Yet, who but ‘Frenchmen', (…) would have at once understood that ‘la Saint-Barthélemy' referred to the ferocious anti-Huguenot pogrom launched on 24 August 1572 by the Valois dynast Charles IX and his Florentine mother (…)”[v]? Secondly, as Anderson points out, there is something paradoxical to the demand that every French citizen must already have forgotten these atrocities, which immediately afterwards are supposed to be known.

Anderson's ingenious insight is that this particular way of talking about historical events supports the idea of an ancient community, which was always there and finds only now its political manifestation in the ‘nation'. In this way, it is not that these atrocities were inflicted by one community against another, but are to be understood as ‘fratricidal' episodes of a common family history: “Having to ‘have already forgotten' tragedies of which one needs unceasingly to be ‘reminded' turns out to be a characteristic device in the later construction of national genealogies.”[vi] Of course, as Anderson does not fail to point out, this idea is fittingly illustrated by the US-American ‘civil war': presented as a war between ‘brothers' always to be re-united into the sovereign nation that is the USA, and not as a war between two sovereign states, it seems only fair to suppose that this narrative would be wholly different had the South not lost the war[vii].

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by Libby Bishop

“Descending tetrachord?” Neither one of us had a clue. The descending tetrachord is one of many musical mysteries my husband and I have faced as we have listened and watched Professor Craig Wright's course, Listening to Classical Music, on YouTube from Yale University. Professor Wright is a self-described old white guy, talking about dead (mostly) white guys, to (mostly) rich kids, about a (supposedly) dead musical genre. It should be as exciting as watching gravy congeal. But instead, it is intelligent, instructive, entertaining, funny, and moving.

Much of the success of the course can be attributed to Professor Wright, an exceptional teacher, with knowledge that is broad and deep, yet with no perceptible arrogance from that knowledge, and a passion for his subject and the pleasure of sharing it with others. But equally important is his approach to studying music. From the first lecture, he challenges the dualism of knowing and feeling in which knowing more means feeling less. We can learn about music – its history, forms, structure, and composition—without diminishing our emotional response to it. In fact, understanding may enhance feeling, and vice versa.

Like too much of the rest of my education, my knowledge of music is uneven: the best parts were excellent, but far too many gaps remain. As a child, I learned from my mother and sister, both good pianists, guitar players and vocalists. After attempts at violin and piano, I settled on flute, which I played for several years, barely reaching middling mediocrity. But I do recall the great satisfaction I felt the moment I blew my first full, true note.

Learning music and learning about music is to learn two languages. First, obviously—or rather aurally—is the language of sound. It demands refining one's hearing to distinguish separate voices or instruments. It is like trying to separate the words when listening to rapidly spoken French. I can make out the individual words if they are spoken slowly, but in normal conversation, the words blur into indistinguishable phrases. I can “hear” it, but I cannot differentiate the words to get their meaning. Similarly with music, I can hear, but far too often, I cannot differentiate: bass from melody, oboe from clarinet.

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by Mathangi Krishnamurthy

Alienation has an aesthetic. While it reeks of coldness, sharp edges, and an inch-thick coating preventing any form of attachment, it nevertheless also produces the joy of detachment, and irresponsible freedom. While we all know the dangers of too much alienation, a dose every now and then is a welcome elixir to help stave this world that presses down so hard.

Every now and then, in search of an easily available alienation, I find myself craving the luxuries of a hotel room. I imagine the details of the transaction — the presentation of a credit card, the perfunctory smiles, the reading of rules and regulations, the due verification of self as self — in return for the insides of a cavern with an attached bathroom. I imagine that someone else will have taken charge of providing for me the pleasures of a gigantic bed, white sheets, and a spotless bathroom. I do not, and will not ever own white sheets, or white pillowcases, or turn up the air conditioning so high, that I need the services of a white duvet. But countless movie tableaux have impressed upon me the vision I will make, wrapped up in all of the above. I imagine the softness of the bathrobe that every hotel cautions the guest against stealing. I speculate at the brands of mini shampoo, conditioner, and moisturizer that this hotel will stock. I think of the hours I will lie in bed, watching television, protected from the world, safe in the knowledge of room service. I dream of towel warmers.

In my love for hotel rooms, I find myself beholden to the seductive beauties of capitalism, even as I know so very well, how soon these attractions wane. The first hotel room that I remember inhabiting was at my first job, when I was housed, courtesy client money, at a tastefully decorated, swanky five-star enterprise, with mirrors on all walls, and a shiny bathtub. I was sure that all my life had been building up to that moment. I remember walking around testing light switches, taps, and soap dispensers, wondering if they would do what they promised to do. My remembrance of the light in that room is resplendent to this day. Everything appeared softer, richer, and more meaningful. Even my reflection.

Since then, I have lived in countless hotel rooms, of all denominations, and never recovered that one joyous moment. The law of diminishing marginal utility governs all things in my life.

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— 'You may call it “nonsense” if you like … but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!'

—The Red Queen in Through the Looking-Glass

by Richard King

When Seymour Hersh published his 10,000-word essay ‘The Killing of Osama bin Laden' last May he entered a strange and murky realm of information and counter-information in which nothing and no one is quite the real deal – a through-the-looking-glass world (to use one of his own tropes) in which black is white and up is down and four is not always divisible by two. No, not the shadowy world of ‘intelligence' in which his sources and their opposite numbers move, though the dissimulation and disinformation that characterise that milieu had their parts to play; I mean the brave new world of online media and instantaneous ‘analysis', of truth subordinated to tribe and identity, of epistemic closure and flat-out confusion. An intervention in, and challenge to, the official version of the war on terror, ‘The Killing of Osama bin Laden' became a (small) battle in the reality wars.

I am certainly not the first to notice how the reaction to Hersh's article – which was published in the London Review of Books and alleged, inter alia, that the CIA had lied about the provenance of the information that led the Navy SEALs to Abbottabad; that Pakistan's military leaders had secretly agreed to the murder/execution of Osama bin Laden; that a frail and unarmed bin Laden was killed, not at the end of a chaotic shoot-out, but at close range and with high-calibre rifles; and that his mangled body was thrown, bit by bit, from a helicopter over the Hindu Kush – displayed a lack of journalistic rigour. A few days after the story broke, Trevor Timm published an essay in the Columbia Journalism Review anatomising the media's response to the piece. Noting that the online magazine Slate had run no less than five hit-jobs on Hersh's story in the space of just thirty-six hours, and noting as well the collective deaf ear turned to the many documented falsehoods offered by the CIA to the US government and by the US government to the US citizenry, Timm described that reaction as ‘disgraceful'. This was the kind of press, he implied, of which most governments can only dream. No wonder the White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest looked so relaxed when he fronted the media in order to rebut Hersh's version of events.

The principal allegation levelled against Hersh (who has recently published the essay in book form) is that his story is ‘a conspiracy theory' – a fantasy concocted on the back of sources too scarce and too anonymous to be trusted. This is a charge to which Hersh's record of breaking big stories is apparently no impediment, though anyone making it feels called upon to pay the grizzled old muckraker his due, noting in particular his sterling work on the My Lai massacre (for which he won a Pulitzer) and his key role in breaking the Abu Ghraib story.

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by Dave Maier

If you ever meet a guy who tells you that he is a skeptic, most likely he means that he doesn’t believe in angels or fairies or anything “metaphysical”. Maybe he is a member of CSICOP (the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, publishers of Skeptical Inquirer magazine). We should, he will tell you, examine the evidence carefully before committing to anything, and be neither gullible nor dogmatic. But of course he himself believes plenty of things, and one person’s skeptic is another’s denialist. What, after all, is “intelligent design” if not skepticism about the biological theory of evolution, and climate change “denialism” if not skepticism about climate science? In all such cases the objector accuses his opponents of epistemological dirty pool and demands that the matter be instead illuminated by the sweet light of reason, as manifested (naturally) in his own views and the ironclad evidence for same.

Such battles about which particular things to believe do not concern the philosopher, who has bigger, more theoretical fish to fry. But these fish can smell pretty fishy to those primarily concerned to beat back the dark forces of dogma and superstition (or “metaphysics”). Perhaps they should be left out for the cat.

Not long ago, for example, Bill Nye the Science Guy opined on the value of philosophy. He was not impressed. One of his gripes was that philosophers spill lots of ink on pointless questions such as whether there’s really a real world out there, or whether instead we might all be in the Matrix, maaaan [*bong hit*]. There is much indefensible stupidity and ignorance packed into Nye’s short remarks, and it is not our task today is to air it out, but I did want to say a few things about the very idea of philosophical skepticism.

As it is presented in popular works and (sometimes) in Phil 101, the skeptical question is indeed given in just this form: how do we know anything at all about what’s “out there”? Most of the time we think we know all kinds of things, but here comes the skeptic to burst our bubble, and put everything we thought we knew into question. Maybe we all (or just you) are simply dreaming! Maybe we don’t know anything at all! And yet of course we do, for that way madness lies; so the whole thing looks like a perverse, logic-chopping sideshow. Why should we care about such nonsense?

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by Michael Liss

Film still from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

It is time for navel-gazing here in the US.

We are about to have an election in which the two likely nominees have managed to alienate the electorate to an unprecedented degree. It has led to a surreal atmosphere. Hillary Clinton slogs on with a message that brings to mind the appeal of an appointment with a dental hygienist—it won’t be the highlight of your day, but it’s the healthy choice. Donald Trump has managed to do something quite brilliant—he has identified his target audience, taken disgust with dysfunction, mixed it with a shot of anger, and distilled it into one easily digestible slogan: “Make America Great Again.”

It is a genius-level move by a master salesman. With those few words, Trump seizes for himself and his supporters a core identity as the true heirs of a legacy of American preeminence. Like a classic old building, American greatness is still here—it’s just covered under layers of accumulated grime. With the right man in charge, someone of vigor and boldness, we can sandblast it all away and have a palace—even a cathedral—that celebrates. As we once were, so shall we be again.

But who were we? To what are we returning? That’s a fascinating question, because to own something, you need to be able to define it. And history lacks the clarity of a mathematical proof or a replicable scientific experiment. To paraphrase an interesting point Mary Beard makes in SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, the historian engages in a work of reconstruction which, by definition, is self-limiting. When the written word is absent or suspect, you learn about things by piecing together inference and fact, as if you were reassembling a broken amphora. You can scientifically analyze the contents, you can date the time it was fired, you can make assumptions about the economic and social standing of the owner and the community he lived in, but, in the end, what you have in front of you is likely the remains of an attractive, once useful, pot. A pot—not an unimpeachable set of facts about the nature of the people who used it.

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Pakistan is digging trenches —graves for people who have not yet died
as the country prepares for another record-breaking heat wave. Scientists
place the blame for rising temperatures squarely on climate change.
……………………………………………………. —IndiaTimes, May 23, 2016

Diggers Dig

...diggers dig.
spades trace dolorous arcs in dry air
making long scars for many corpses.

diggers dig.
sharp bell-like clangs of steel on stone
echo from the depths of this new scar.
the swoosh of pick-heads through air
end in thuds as their pikes take bites.

diggers dig.
men sling dry earth over shoulders.
they lean into their work.
they heave the earth upon itself
raising mountains of waist-high ranges
that parallel the long straight wound they carve.

these sweating ghosts-to-be
who may soon be thrown as well
into the coarse cut of their work,
a ditch that will soon be healed, forgotten, lost
when the undulating range piled by gravediggers
is thrown back in to bury hearts that break,
covering myriad sins: myopia,
misanthropy, masochism, mistake,

diggers dig
this ditch where now-breathing, sweating,
living, loving dead will go—

diggers dig.
we’re so good to ourselves, so profligate
we‘ll waste even our own last breath,
we'll make a place for it in a hewn slash,
bury it in our blue mother’s flesh,
the one we have not wisely loved
but sold for cash instead
.

by Jim Culleny
5/25/16

.

by Humera Afridi

Mere steps from Castle Clinton in Battery Park, on the southern tip of Manhattan, stands a striking bronze sculpture titled, The Immigrants. Created in 1973 by the Spanish sculptor Luis Sanguino, it portrays a group of individuals who have undertaken an arduous voyage. Their gripping expressions and postures tell a story of endurance—borne with patience and prayer; kindled by hope for a life of dignity, free of fear, whose nimbus-like promise will surely unfurl in this new world where they have disembarked.

Amid the deep-green lawns, beds of blooming tulips, and the sunny melodies of street jazz, the bronze figures beckoned. I spotted them on my lunch break, a fortnight or so before Memorial Day. Their raw emotions and the naked display of the human spirit expressed in all its earnestness caught me by surprise. Here in plain sight was a visual testimony to the search for sanctuary—a struggle that is painfully alive in a world beset by wars, but also, immediate and close to home, visceral in the lives of many thousands of immigrants in America who having found refuge here, nevertheless, now tragically live in fear of being deported and separated from their families.

A figure kneels, bare-chested with head thrown back, arms spread wide, broken chain-links dangling from fingers; another clasps both hands in fervent prayer, gaze directed heavenward. Disconcertingly candid and telling is the stance of one at the front of the line, who crouches, with a hand outstretched—surely symbolic of the labor of immigrants, and former slaves, upon whose foundation this nation is built. In the middle of the group stands a robed male of dignified bearing, arm held across his breast in a gesture of allegiance? of self-determination?

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by Leanne Ogasawara

I was recently reading a book by the dreadful Robert Kaplan on the topic of China and the South China Sea, in which the author suggested that Chinese culture exists in one of its purest forms in Malaysia. He argued that only in the overseas Chinese communities that have continuously existed scattered around the Pacific Rim has Chinese civilization survived, uninfected by the tumultuous events of the Communist Revolution. Similarly, I have a friend who is a political philosopher and expert in Chinese philosophy who believes that it is in Japan and Korea where one can most easily find the artifacts of the Chinese civilization–specifically Confucian philosophy. Japan is, after all, a place where a lot of cultural practices and material culture from China have been preserved. And not just China, for much Silk Road artifacts are preserved in Japan as well, for the country has long stood as a kind of terminus, lying at the end of the line in East Asia.

And speaking of Confucianism and the Communist Revolution, have you ever wondered why Confucian philosophy has such a bad name in the West? Largely unknown–except in its fortune-cookie format– if it is recognized at all, the tradition is rarely fully appreciated. This is partly because of its association with patriarchy and elitism– and this bad wrap is something that was invented by the Chinese communists, who strongly discouraged Confucian thinking as being counter-productive to the egalitarian ideals of the revolution. (They were especially worried by its patriarchal stance toward women).

Personally, I've always thought this to be a shame as Chinese philosophy happens to be one of the world's oldest existing philosophies; one which has arguably impacted more human lives than any other philosophy– past or present. It stands as one of the world's greatest philosophical traditions, and it is also my own personal belief that Chinese philosophy–in particular Confucian philosophy– that more than any other tradition is most compelling for what it tells us about the Good Life.

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by Evan Edwards

I have a copy of Franz Wright's Walking to Martha’s Vineyard on my bedside table. It has been there since my son was born last year. I’ve been trying to educate myself on contemporary poets for more than a year now. Wright was the one who happened to stick the most readily. I want my son to know about poetry; good, modern poetry that speaks to the vibrancy of the present. Of course, we’ll always read the classics, but I want him to also get an education in the words of those who aren’t yet dead, who are living and here and maybe coming to speak somewhere nearby at some point so that we can go together to hear a great poet speak in person and then walk out of the lecture hall feeling the brief surge of ecstasy you feel when you experience something extraordinary. Maybe it’s my obstinacy that drew me to him, or maybe it’s just the way that irony works, because of course Franz Wright is dead.

I first encountered Wright through the blog of a poet I met when I lived in Indianapolis. In the interview he gave, I remember feeling overwhelmed by the way he spoke about his recent economic troubles. The way he hadn’t been invited to speak or teach or fraternize (to be part of the brother/sisterhood of poets) since he’d made some admittedly snide and vicious remarks about MFA programs. How he was struggling with cancer. How he didn’t have the means to keep up the struggle for much longer. He was in remission, and had a tenuous relationship with hope. The cancer would, eventually, come back and then end his life in May of last year.

The word remission comes up one time in the interview, in the context of saying that he’s posted on Facebook saying that he is in the state of remission, and that he can give talks and readings, if anyone wants to get in touch with him. There was something very tender and heartbreaking in that statement. Here is one of the greatest living poets, recipient of a fucking Pulitzer Prize in poetry, Guggenheim fellow, son of poetry royalty, subtlest and most brutal portrayer of spiritual suffering, reaching out for work through his personal social media page. The desperation of that. It seemed hauntingly appropriate to speak of remission in that moment.

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