We all seek to capture the world with a net of language. Yet it is in the nature of nets to capture some things and let others slip away, and that goes for languages too. Our words turn experiences into objects, qualities, and actions, and we can build these into a kind of structure, a tower reaching into the sky – but (again) towers can only go so far, and there are always negative spaces surrounding the structure and its beams. What is left unsaid speaks volumes.
We might resign ourselves to this fact – the inescapable limits of what's sayable – but in fact a great many minds have sought to construct the perfect language, one that carves reality at its joints and captures the grand shebang of human experience. Presumably God was speaking such a language when he spoke the world into being, and perhaps he taught this language to Adam. Or perhaps the perfect language need only be carefully constructed from given, atomic elements that reflect the most basic concepts a mind can have, with rules that keep it innocent from the goofy twisting and mashing that the accidents of history impart to our tongues. Or perhaps we can cook up a language that, like physics, captures the essence of phenomena and parses away every nonessential feature. The payoffs would be inestimable: we would have not only a language that could not possibly confuse, but a language – like that of Jonathan Swift's horsey Houyhnhnms – whose very grammar would preclude ever saying the thing which was not.
This was a hope that inspired the young Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. He recalled that, as a teenager studying Aristotle, he arrived at “this remarkable thought, namely that a kind of alphabet of human thoughts can be worked out and that everything can be discovered and judged by the comparison of the letters of this alphabet and an analysis of the words made from them.” Leibniz's fundamental idea was to identify radically atomic concepts and compose molecular sentences out of them, so that once we translated our thoughts into legitimate terms, we could see whether they were true, possibly true, or totally confused.
This dream – the creation of a characteristica universalis – became Leibniz's lifelong project. His earliest publication, “A Dissertation on the Art of Combinations” (1666), aimed to do for metaphysics and science what Euclid had done for geometry. Before long, Leibniz sought to make his perfect language susceptible to mechanized computation. Fundamentally, his idea was to attach atomic concepts to prime numbers, under the guiding metaphor that just as every natural number is the product of primes, so too should every complex concept be the product of atomic concepts.
So many people have it in for well-intentioned, bleeding-heart, left-leaning liberals.[1] Of course, if the critics are bona fide racists, sexists, homophobes, gun and flag fetishists, religious fundamentalists, anti-government Ayn Randians, coal or oil industry CEOs, or just Fat Cats protecting their pile, then it's to be expected that they'll trash Well-Intentioned, Bleeding-Heart, Left-Leaning Liberals (WIBHLLLs–pronounced “wibbles,” and since I don't like acronyms from here on let's just call them wibbles.). It's part of these critics' job description, since wibbles cherish just what such people despise (and vice versa). What is surprising and disappointing, though, is how often one finds wibbles being attacked, ridiculed, or despised by others who hold progressive values.
George Orwell offers a paradigm example of this sort of hostility towards people who, in the great political scheme of things, are on the same team. In The Road to Wigan Pier, Orwell, a professed socialist, complains about
the horrible, really disquieting prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism' and ‘Communism' draw toward them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, ‘Nature-Cure' quack, and feminist in England.
I can't prove this, but I rather suspect he may have had in mind Edward Carpenter (pictured), an English socialist (1844-1929) who would check most of Orwell's boxes. For an example today of a left-wing theorist whose main concern seems to be to criticize those who presumably share some of his basic values, one need look no further than Slavoj Zizek. Zizek scoffs at vegetarians, recyclers, people who buy organic produce, and people who give to charity.[2]In the 2008 documentary Examined Life, he criticizes environmentalists who seek to reduce our alienation from nature by reminding us we are part of nature. In Zizek's view, the possible success of their teaching represents “the greatest danger,” and ecology threatens to become the new “opium of the masses.” For “to confront properly the threat of ecological catastrophe” we need to “cut off [our] roots in nature….We need more alienation from life….We should become more artificial.” Elsewhere he criticizes “tolerant liberal multiculturalism” as really just “barbarism with a human face.”[3]
I have good friends who also seem to hold wibbles–”nice” people, Guardian readers–in special contempt, although “do-gooders” inspire even more hostility. On one occasion the name of Bono came up.”God, I despise Bono!” one friend said. Another heartily agreed. Note, they don't despise rock musicians in general, most of whom (like most of everyone) are politically disengaged. No they despise the one who has campaigned vigorously for many years to alleviate poverty, disease, and debt in the third world. Perhaps they'd respect him more if he spent his free time sleeping off hangovers and playing video games.
Some countries are assholes. They trample on international norms about human rights, maritime boundaries, climate change conventions, and so on. They repeatedly make and break promises and then complain indignantly and even violently if they are challenged for it. They bully weaker countries shamelessly to get their way, all the while declaring their commitment to the highest ideals of international peace and justice.
You know the kind of country I'm talking about. The kind that believes in its own moral exceptionalism: Not only does it not feel bound by the ordinary rules; it even demands that other countries acknowledge its moral right to set its interests above their own or the international peace. Take Russia. Its behaviour in Ukraine (and elsewhere in recent years) is classic assholism and is systematic and comprehensive enough to warrant the conclusion that Russia is a true asshole nation. I'm sure you can think of others.
I
The term “asshole nation” is inspired by Aaron James's neat little book Assholes: A Theory in which he defines the asshole individual as someone who in interpersonal or cooperative relations,
1. allows himself to enjoy special advantages and does so systematically;
2. does this out of an entrenched sense of entitlement; and
3. is immunized by his sense of entitlement against the complaints of other people. (p.5)
James' theory is directed at the anti-social behaviour of individuals. It covers much of the same ground that organizational psychologists have mapped as the ‘dark triad' of anti-social personality types – narcissism, Machiavellianism, and sub-clinical psychopathy – which will be unfortunately familiar to most people who have worked in any large organization. But James adds two things. First, his account is a thoroughly moral one: the asshole is morally repugnant because of his fundamental lack of respect for the moral status of those he interacts with: He doesn't register other people as morally real. Second, because James' account starts from the moral requirements of participation in cooperative relations rather than from human psychology it is more general than that produced by organisational psychologists. I believe it can also be helpfully applied to non-human agents, such as countries.
Just as some individuals seem to think that every day is their birthday and they deserve special consideration from everyone else – and a general exemption from rules intended for the general benefit which happen to be inconvenient to them, like using their phone in the movie theatre or speeding through school zones when they're running late – so some countries seem to think that their sovereignty is more important than the sovereignty of other nations.
Walking down from the cathedral, our feet hurt from the rocky Andalusian pavement that bites into your soles with every step. When a café appeared in the middle of the piazza we stopped to rest and fortify ourselves with a thimble of fino.
The slow and regular tapping we heard seemed to be coming from an intersecting alleyway. Then two young boys came into view practicing an elaborate ritual.
The grim-faced lad in back seemed to be in charge as he pounded a wooden stick on the pavement. His friend strode ahead as solemn as a deacon in time to the beat, balancing a chair smothered in carnations atop his head. Every fifth tap he would stop to kneel on the cobbled street and then hold the pose for two counts before continuing forward.
It wasn’t until they stopped to buy a pack of gum that I saw it wasn't Jesus lashed to the cross, but a G. I. Joe action figure.
I caught the boy’s eye, smiled and asked if we could take his picture. He stood still and stoic then moved on to follow the demand of his friend’s stick.
I remembered what a fervent little believer I’d been as a girl, walking in stately procession with other maidens in church, intoning a litany of praises to the Virgin Mary during her holy month of May. One lucky student (never me) was chosen to crown Her statue with a wreath of roses. It was like a religious beauty pageant where the winner was always the same: the mother of Jesus.
What was the intention of those two little boys in Arcos, I wondered? Not surprisingly, this is the town where penitents crawl on hands and knees up to the cathedral to atone for their sins. Perhaps the boys didn’t consciously know why they were doing what they were doing. Perhaps they were instinctively following the impulses to art-making that Catholicism has inspired for centuries: to render the beauty of martyrdom, to reach for perfection, and that only through suffering can we hope to achieve salvation – ideas I had forsworn but, truth be told, never completely abandoned.
G. I. Joe as a stand-in for Jesus might be laughably kitsch-y, but those boys were not being ironic. They were practicing atonement or spiritual discipline or reverence – who knows what they had in mind—but their seriousness of purpose was exactly what I had come to Spain to find.
Photo by the author
Postcard From Spain is an ongoing series of images and text on 3QuarksDaily by Randolyn Zinn. Click below for the first installments and feel free to engage with me in the comments section below. Hasta pronto!
We, as members of an affluent society, have a moral obligation to help those who are far worse off than we are. To establish this moral obligation, I'll use Peter Singer's Life Saving Analogy from his seminal (1972) paper “Famine, Affluence and Morality” – an argument that strongly influenced my thinking when I first read it as an undergraduate (more years ago than I care to remember), and still strongly influences me today. It sparked off a movement known today by the name Effective Altruism.
The Life Saving Analogy asks us to imagine walking past a pond, where we happen to see a child drowning. We can safely and easily save the life of the child, but in the process would ruin our new pair of shoes, which cost, say, $300. We all judge that it would be wrong not to save the life of the child, and that the cost of the shoes doesn't have any moral significance in comparison. And yet – and this is the analogy – we are in a position right now where we could save someone's life for exactly the same cost, who would otherwise die of poverty-related illness. The only difference is that we can't directly see the person we would save; but this fact alone makes no moral difference. Therefore, we have a moral obligation to give money to those who would die of poverty-related illness, and to alleviate poverty-related suffering, because our money would actually make a difference – that's the effective part of effective altruism – and because our lives would not be any worse off in any significant sense.
So the view is that we as affluent people have a moral obligation to donate a percentage of our income to charities that have been proven to be highly effective, since it's inconsistent to accept that we ought to save the drowning child in front of us, but not save a person who's far away, when it's within our ability to do so. I'll quickly rebut three common objections to the effective altruist view.
1. The first objection is that donations to charity can't make the different that people would like them to, because charities invariably have massive overheads and administrative fees that prevent your money getting to those who need it. However, the problem with this objection is that there are non-profit organisations like Give Well that analyse a huge number of charities for their efficiency and effectiveness. For example, Give Well have shown that if you donate $10 to the Against Malaria Foundation, at least $7 goes to those who need it, and if you donate $10 to Give Directly, $9.10 goes to those who need it. This money makes a huge difference to those living in extreme poverty, on less $1.25 per day.
This is new dispatch from the frontlines of Startup Tunnel, a new incubator based in New Delhi. Links to earlier dispatches appear at the end of this stand-alone piece.
On Saturday we went to see Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party take his oath of office as Chief Minister of the state of Delhi. We rode the metro out to Ramlila Maidan, Delhi’s traditional center for agitations and large public ceremonies. I was with Namit Arora and Usha Alexander, also sometime correspondents of 3QD, along with another friend of theirs, Pran Kurup, who had had a role in the online campaign. It was a bright winter’s day and a festive scene at the maidan, where volunteers were giving out stickers, banners and those trademark hats which we also put on. Kejriwal spoke about inclusion and participation and about his plans of making Delhi a city free from corruption. If anyone asks you for a bribe, he began smiling at his trademark line, never say no, setting kar dena, put your phone recorder on and record the official demanding a bribe. And then report him to us so we can begin disciplinary action.
The holacratic revolution is taking so many shapes and forms all over the world, whereby new services, new forms of decision making, new kinds of patterns of interaction and financial flow are coming about. This is its first and most memorable articulation in India. No complex audio-visual equipment, no CCTV required, just a record function already included in just about every smart and feature phone on the market and in the pocket of every second citizen of Delhi. The extortionary optic of the state is suddenly subverted, power is distributed everywhere and to everyone with the means to participate in the network. It is a powerful and true instantiation of the change the Aam Aadmi Party wants to bring about, but it is surely only the very first and initial step. And yet, the solution envisioned by Kejriwal to report such incidences of citizen extortion, a hotline number, seems in no way related to the much higher sophistication of a digital recorder situated on mobile OS. Shouldn’t that digital just go into an app somehow, time and location stamped, with some metadata concerning the identity of the officer being reported on? Shouldn’t this be the very first app that this administration puts into production?
In today's world, no matter what you do, success seems to depend on how you project and market your ‘brand'. Surrounded constantly by advertisements, full of startling images and clever one-liners, it is only natural that most of us adopt the same vocabulary; painstakingly, we hone our physical and digital selves to come as close as possible to magazine perfection. When we practice our elevator pitches, we cast around for the catchiest phrases – those that will have the maximum staying power. As a theoretical physicist, I find myself quite at odds with this social phenomenon. When asked to describe the work that obsesses my thoughts, I have often caught myself searching for the mildest words I could possibly use in a given context. For instance, when I talk about the 10 dimensional space-time mandated by superstring theory, I will never refer to the invisible (or unfamiliar) six as ‘higher' dimensions, but instead by the physicists' preferred term of ‘extra' dimensions.
At first, it might seem like I am merely splitting hairs, but if you think about it, the word ‘higher' carries connotations of hierarchy – as if there are some dimensions that are more exalted than others. ‘Extra' sounds – to me, at least – far more down to earth. It is a matter-of-fact way of referring to something that is left over – in this case, from the visible world.
It was an unconscious reflex, this definite preference for one term over the other, but even as I first became aware of it, I knew instantly why it was so important to me. The ideas I deal with are so far removed from every day experience, that they can quite easily be made to sound fantastic. It takes very little skill to package them as exotic, almost mystical, phenomena bordering on the supernatural. But these ideas are worthy of more. They deserve to get attention not for their sensational packaging, but for the depth and beauty of what lies within.
And so, with that long preamble, let me now introduce you to these extra dimensions.
Superstring theory has been called the holy grail of physics, because it performs the theorist's ultimate objective of reducing the multiplicity of phenomena in this vast universe down to a single cause. The rich diversity of matter and forces we perceive, are merely the manifestations of the range of motion of quivering, fluttering, infinitesimal strings. The modes of oscillation of a string appear to us as distinct particles, and the gymnastics strings perform, as they split and recombine, are interpreted by us as particle interactions. Since string theory reduces all we know to a common origin, it also – as a corollary – unifies general relativity and quantum mechanics, two theories that were wildly successful on their own, but had been thought for decades to have ‘irreconcilable differences'. The price string theory demands in return for executing this coup, is that it must live in ten dimensions. The mathematics is simply inconsistent otherwise.
India's art heritage dates back several thousand years. Through the ages Indian art was for the most part figurative and highly stylized. Think of the Tanjore bronzes, the Buddhist cave paintings, the stylish Mughal and Rajput miniatures. Regional folk art, murals and fabric designs too bore distinctive distortions and motifs that identified geographic locations and specific traditions. It was not until the Victorian era that decorative realistic art (I think of it as calendar art) became popular among the art aficionados of India. In the early part of the 20th century, a group of artists in Santiniketan (the university founded by Tagore) and Calcutta began to break away from that developing trend of photographic realism. Trained in western methods, they looked eastward to draw inspiration from Buddhist, Mughal and Japanese paintings. The European style that influenced them most was that of the 19th century impressionists. The movement, loosely known as the “Bengal School,” ushered in the era of Indian contemporary art of the last century. The focus was on rural and urban scenes, mythology and politics. The result was a vibrant homegrown art movement which continues to thrive.
Shown here are ten modern Indian artists whose works span the decades from the 1930s to the present. Some of them are widely known, others not so much. This is a visual tour and not a conventional blog post. My commentary and analysis are sparse (not that I know very much more). Readers can follow the link to an artist's biography from his or her name. The choice of artists and art work is my own. Except for one, I have had the privilege of seeing the original work of all of the artists featured.
(Be sure to click on a photo to see its pop up image)
1. As a personal tribute,Abani Sen is my first pick in the line up of artists. He was my art teacher who taught me to draw and to look at light and shadow with a discerning eye. He belonged to the Bengal School and used ink, water color and oil with equal facility. A very fine artist and a dedicated popular teacher, he was well reputed within the informed art circle of Delhi and Calcutta but not so much in the art market.
best of all seeming impossibilities, of all the unlikelihoods at the heart of utopias,
is the slim hope of Ponce de León
(the golden nut of Eden’s tree to hoard and hold and keep alive, like the fire-tenders of prehistory, an ember no matter how small of coals hot and red of passion, a mind transparent as the whirr of hummingbird wings, firm as tenon in mortise, expansive as a new thought balloon, determined and fearless as a road-crossing tortoise at the pinnacle of noon)
—the will to keep lit a lasting blaze of moments that were hourless dayless monthless yearless and clear of haze .
American Sniper has been both a wildly successful and wildly controversial film. While moviegoers have made the film the highest grossing war movie of all time, cultural critics have alternatively lauded and criticized the film for what they see as either a stirring depiction of a soldier's travails or a galling piece of jingoistic propaganda. Neither interpretation, however, hits upon the real takeaway of American Sniper, which is that unprovoked shark attacks off the Pacific coast are becoming a more prevalent threat for surfers, swimmers, and regular folks just trying to enjoy the water. It may seem counter-intuitive that a war film set in the desert could comment on shark attacks in the ocean, but then again, the actual Iraq war was sort of counter-intuitive too.
On its most literal level, American Sniper is a film about Chris Kyle, a real-life sniper and Navy SEAL. Kyle, portrayed by a beefed up Bradley Cooper, is enraged by the terrorist attacks he witnesses on television and subsequently decides to join the American Navy at thirty years old. Despite his advanced age, Kyle quickly becomes the “most lethal sniper in U.S. military history,” and the passionate debates about the film have centered around the depiction of how his transition from concerned, freedom-loving American to red-white-and-blue killing machine is depicted. For many right-leaning commentators, the film realistically describes the struggles of an honorable soldier putting himself in harm's way for his comrades and country. For many left-leaning commentators, the film is an overt piece of propaganda, a nuance-less film that refuses to acknowledge that there are regular people living in Iraq, people who don't necessarily spend their days fantasizing about blowing up Apache helicopters with RPGs.
In the past few weeks I have heard and read a number of impassioned responses to Clint Eastwood's “American Sniper”, a film based on the memoir of Chris Kyle, a Navy SEAL with the highest number of confirmed sniper kills in U.S. history. A common assertion that amateur and professional reviewers are arguing is if the film glorifies an unjust war. This focus of the debate is puzzling because I believe that few Americans are clinging to the notion that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past decade and a half have been morally justified, or even logical. Yet, the “War on Terror” continues to be divisive—one of the points of tension is the way most civilians view the armed forces who fought and continue to fight in the name of American interests overseas. What the U.S. still has the ability to constructively consider is how to reconcile this war and the men and women who are fighting it with an American society that is sharply divided in its opinions. This is largely because the armed forces make up such a small percentage of the population that the majority of Americans are far enough removed to think of them in absolute terms, rather than as actual people. As James Fallows writes in his piece in the most recent issue of The Atlantic, “Among older Baby Boomers, those born before 1955, at least three-quarters have had an immediate family member—sibling, parent, spouse, child—who served in uniform. Of Americans born since 1980, the Millennials, about one in three is closely related to anyone with military experience.” This is a barrier that it is necessary to address before Americans can intelligently debate the role the U.S. will have in Iraq and Syria in the coming months, specifically how American forces should be engaging with the Islamic State, or any other extremist groups, from the air or on the ground.
I was gonna write something about the Clint Eastwood film American Sniper. Seems like a topic of the Now. Something the internetting public can really grab onto and scream about.
U.S. sniper Chris Kyle: Troubled war veteran of humble origins whose experiences are a sharp prism for viewing America's exploitative class divides and tragic foreign policy, or a remorseless, racist killing machine who's murderous life and violent death reflect much of what's wrong with the nation?
That kinda thing. People love that sort of stuff. Gets ‘em all jacked up, clickety-click. Plus, I just saw the movie and have some ideas of my own. But you know what?
Fuck it.
I don't wanna talk about moral ambiguity. I don't wanna dissect global politics. I don't wanna filter through the finer shades of artistic vision, intention, and reception. I don't wanna delve into any of those abstractions. I don't wanna tap society's pulse and jump on the topic du jour. You know why?
Because life is meaningless.
As I sit down in front of this keyboard, I can't bring myself to care about what 3QD readers want or would enjoy reading. I can't be bothered to speculate on what type of essay might once again garner me a citation by Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish or land me back in the Huffington Post.
None of that matters. Because nothing matters. Nothing at all.
Meaning and truth are just illusions that humans chatter about incessantly because they can't stomach the sheer meaninglessness of it all.
The Earth is a snowball of cosmic debris. The possibility of life on it is a longshot accident that came in like a broken down nag in the 10th race at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens (a real dump if you've never been). To consider the evolution of single cell floaters into multi-cell life forms is a far more boring prospect than even the droning monotone of the dullest high school biology teacher could suggest. Just that jump took over two and half billion years.
The rest of it? Some dinosaurs, some meteorites, some mammals, and us.
Thoughts on the breath and depth of knowledge in the information age.
Last year, I finally completed my Master's in Literature. I'd started way back in 2006 but, midway, I became the editor of a magazine, and I never found the time to take my second-year exams. Not that I had much time when the exams dawned in April, my last chance to retain my (great) first-year score. Perhaps I shouldn't be admitting this but, considering I read the syllabus four days before they started, I did an MA-by-Wiki and by watching the movies made on the books I should have read.
Finish I did, and fabulously. And, while part of me is proud of my genius and is jumping for joy at having worked the system, this has also been bothering the jigyasu* in me no end. While I recognise awareness is not held in degrees or determined by exams, I wonder what knowledge, general and specific, means today.
GK: Who's To Say?
It brings me to a nugget of an idea that has stayed with me for years from, of all things, Bridget Jones's Diary (probably book). Bridget justifies not knowing a piece of common information by presenting a counterpoint—when there is so much information available to us, what is ‘general knowledge' anymore? I am reminded of this often: at a random get-together just the other day, two friends of mine met for the first time. X, an activist, started raging against Monsanto. “What's Monsanto?” asked Y-the-fashion-writer. “You don't know Monsanto?!” he replied aghast. It was a bit tense and judgemental, but the evening moved on. Later that night, he decided to show us a video that he had recently chanced upon on YouTube. It was a homemade vid of a white girl rapping. “It's so cool,” X said awestruck, “the way she's talking-singing so fast…” “Erm, yeah, that's what rap is,” said Y, “and this is not even good!” And he said (I kid you not): “Rap?! What's that?”
In line with the criticisms of IQ tests, one must ask who determines general knowledge? What is relevant to whom? Today, when ‘do research' means ‘Google it', when we're bombarded with more information than we ever have been before, when our short-term memories are suffering from the lack of micro-moments, where does the Lowest Common Denominator of information lie?
This post, which will be brief as my posts go, consists of three parts. The second is a letter that my friend and colleague, Charlie Keil, has sent to the Vatican where he hopes it will come to the attention of Pope Francis. He urges us to send the letter as well. Charlie tells me that the second part of the letter, in which he speaks for the creativity of children, is the heart of the appeal. The first part, urging a peace process, is necessary for the second to flourish.
I’ve placed some contextual information before and after Keil’s letter and, as you can see, I’ve larded the post with photographs of children.
The Roman Catholic Church is a Remarkable Institution
It must be one of the oldest corporate bodies in existence and, of course, it precedes the existence of the nation state, a corporate form that now dominates world affairs. Other religions are older than Christianity, Judaism of course, but also Hinduism and Buddhism and others. But none of them are organized in the way that the Roman Catholic Church is.
The Roman Catholic Church is organized as a hierarchy that extends from the top, the Papal See in the Vatican, throughout the world to individual parishes, with various levels of organization in between. Other forms of Christianity have a similar organization, but not all of them. Most religions aren’t like that at all. They operate at the local and perhaps regional level, but without world-wide coordination on matters of doctrine.
There is an obvious sense in which the Catholic Church is the foundation of Western Civilization. Before Far West Asia, so to speak, had come to think of itself as Europe, it thought of itself as Christendom. The European nations didn’t exist. What existed was a bunch of Germanic tribes, cities, medieval fiefdoms, and regional empires.
And the Catholic Church. It preserved the books of the ancient world. And its liturgical music, descended from the chants of Jewish ritual, created states of mind conducive to contemplation and thought. It is in that context that Europe began to form itself and become the West.
Maybe the Catholic Church can now help the world to move out beyond its dependence on the nation-state as the organizational backbone of world affairs. It was there before the nations arose. Perhaps it will remain when nations have become obsolete. The job now is more modest, to bring the nations to embrace peace.
Jerwood Gallery Hastings, East Sussex, TN34 3DW, until 12th April 2015
by Sue Hubbard
Chantal Joffe made her reputation as a painter with work inspired by pornography and fashion, based on images torn from magazines. She is friends with the fashion designer Stella McCartney, has painted Kate Moss and Lara Stone, collaborated with the fashion photographer, Miles Aldridge, painting his wife the model, Kristen McMenamy, in her Islington studio, while Aldridge filmed the process. She enjoys what clothes do to the body, the excuse they give her to paint zig-zags, polka dots and Matisse-like patterns. Her work, mostly of women, questions how images are constructed and presented, subtly challenging the objectification of the female form, wrenching it back from the traditional ‘male gaze'. Recently she's moved more towards painting friends and family – her daughter Esme, her niece Moll and her partner, the painter, Dan Coombs. The results are works of disquieting intimacy. It's no surprise to learn that she has long been a fan of the emotionally jagged photographs of Diana Arbus, whose studies she describes as having: “everything about the portrait of a human that you can ever want.”
Joffe was born in 1969 in St. Albans, a small town in Vermont, in the US. When she was 13 years old her family moved to England and she went to school in London. But it was not until her foundation course at Camberwell School of Art that she began to find herself by ‘discovering Soutine, and all that paint.' Now she has been invited to show at the Jerwood Gallery in Hastings, the beautiful seafront gallery with a view over the beach full of working boats. Beside the Seaside features a number of new and unseen works made especially for this show and reflects her long-standing links with Hastings where she frequently visits family who live in the town. She often draws on the beach, though photographs commonly provide a starting point. She's not interested in literal truth but rather in what goes on under the surface, the awkward emotions that are held in check and frequently remain unconscious, only to leak through the publicly presented face. Just outside the main gallery is her 2008 painting of Anne Sexton with Joy. An American confessional poet, writing in the 1950s, Sexton was attractive, ambitious, manic depressive and suicidal. Like Arbus she penetrated shallow and socially conventional facades to reveal a brew of anger and suicidal thoughts. Here she is shown with her daughter and we can see just how imbalanced that relationship is. Joy looks away as her glamorous mother clings to her, voracious and needy.
How could Joseph's brothers have plotted to kill him? Why would they, and why stop amidst a frenzy of murderous intent? Was fratricide common in biblical times? Surely the story of Cain and Abel, whether it is factual or not, appeared with some historical context in which jealousy led to unbounded anger, and before the perpetrator could regain his senses, the regrettable act was complete. Intentional killings—be they foolishly impassioned manslaughter, premeditated murder or political assignation—continue to occupy our fascination today. A few thousand years later, and we're not all that different. What can we learn from this ancient story?
Perhaps a reading of Genesis was meant, at least in part, to provide an opportunity to reflect on the power of envy before it was too late. What thinking person who read the Bible would choose to become Cain in his own personal narrative? Later in the Book of Genesis, Jacob's older sons manage to stop short of killing their brother, and while throwing him in a dry cistern and selling him off to slavery was nothing to write home about—indeed they did not tell their father what they had done—at least they spared Joseph's life.
My problem with the story was that the brothers' jealousy motive never really made sense to me. Ok, their father Jacob's thoughtless favoritism for a younger son not born of their mother would certainly breed some resentment, but even with the ‘coat of many colors,' and Joseph's self-aggrandizing dreams, the plot remained simply too thin to support a murderous rage… that is, until I understood a couple of key words in the Hebrew I was not able to understand in English translation. Once I saw what I had previously missed, there was no going back. The meaning of the sequence of events in the whole story fell into place.
“Meaning of Heb. Uncertain”
The footnote “Meaning of Heb. uncertain” appears dozens of times. In spite of all the learning, teaching and preaching rooted in the stories of the biblical narrative over the past few thousand years, we know that some of the meaning has been lost in translation along the way. How does one know when to be uncertain? Let's face it; in the Bible as in life, there may be much more uncertainty than we are comfortable admitting to ourselves. Ambiguity reigns in a world that is subject to multiple interpretation. Ancient Hebrew is so foreign to modern readers that there are simply many passages where the translation relies on interpretations, rather than on a verifiably definitive meaning of the text itself. There are many phrases where wordplay carries the deeper meaning of a passage, and the unfortunate reader of a translated text cannot even see the double entendre that may well be the literary jewel of a certain passage.
It should come as no surprise that we cannot easily render ancient Hebrew into modern English. It can also be difficult to render ancient Hebrew into modern Hebrew. It's not that the meaning of an occasional word is uncertain. The very fact that these words came to us via hand written text on parchment scrolls is enough to suggest that we might easily misunderstand some of the words and much of the context. We really ought to have a bit less hubris about our own abilities to grasp the meaning of the ancient past.
Translators are interpreters who make choices for less informed readers. Some of those choices render the text in ways that alter or limit the meaning of the original. This is even true when we look at contemporary texts translated from one widely used and easily understood language to another. How much more so, must this be the case when we read translations of ancient texts? From spelling and usage to grammar and syntax to style and circumstances, we have to accept that we can neither see nor hear the text in quite the same way it was seen and heard a few millennia ago, and the differences are not always clear.
Genesis 37; 1-2
Here is the King James Version (KJV) rendering of Genesis 37:1-2 “And Jacob dwelt in the land wherein his father was a stranger, in the land of Canaan. These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brethren; and the lad was with the sons of Bilhah, and with the sons of Zilpah, his father's wives: and Joseph brought unto his father their evil report.”
Here is the Jewish Publication Society (JPS) version: “Now Jacob was settled in the land where his father had sojourned, the land of Canaan. This, then, is the line of Jacob: At seventeen years of age, Joseph tended the flocks with his brothers, as a helper to the sons of his father's wives Bilhah and Zilpah. And Joseph brought bad reports of them to their father.” In these and in many other Christian and Jewish translations, there are both subtle and significant differences.
I want to focus here on three key words. As I see it, they clarify the reasons for the intensity of the brothers enduring anger. They are: “na'ar,” “et” and “dibah.”
In the case of the word “na'ar,” both of the translations above and others completely miss a possible instance of double entendre. Simply by putting the accent on one syllable or the other, the word could either be the noun for ‘young person' or the verb for vocalizing an aggressive animal sound.* Take them together, given the possibility that the double meaning is intended, and we have young Joseph braying like a jackass or growling like a dog, barking orders at his older brothers, taking advantage of his privileged position in his father's eye's.
The preposition “et” could indicate that he is with his brothers, or that he is doing something to his brothers. It would be nice if Joseph was just a helpful lad, herding with his brothers, but it would be out of step with the rest of the story. Nothing else in the text supports that reading. It makes much more sense that he is he is 'herding his brothers,' as a simple reading of the Hebrew text suggests. He is treating them as they treat the animals, taunting and maybe even threatening them. He is lording over them, as his dream portends.
The report Joseph brings to Jacob is labeled “dibah,” which could mean ‘bad' (according to JPS) or ‘evil' (according to KJV.) If it is bad, is that because of the quality of the report or the way it was delivered? If it is evil, who is responsible for that? Is it a report on the evil brothers, or is Joseph the evil one, intentionally delivering a slanderous report? If the brothers found out that Joseph provided Jacob with an intentionally false report to increase his own standing in their father's eyes, this clearly strengthens the case for their resentment boiling into a rage.
Here is an alternate translation of the second verse of Genesis 37:
Joseph at seventeen years
was herding his brothers
with the flock
And he brays
at the sons of Bilha and Zilpah, his father's wives
and Joseph comes with an slanderous report to their father
יוסף בן-שבע-עשרה שנה
היה רעה את-אחיו
בצאן
והוא נער
את-בני בלהה ואת-בני זלפה נשי אביו
ויבא יוסף את-דבתם רעה אל-אביהם
Fallen Hero Rising
Jacob does not see through Joseph's act until his favorite son dreams that his parents will bow down to him. At this notion Jacob becomes livid, finally castigating Joseph. It is no coincidence that in the next passage of the story Jacob sends Joseph into the hands of his brothers. It is a set up, and Jacob is the one who put it in motion. As the opening of chapter 37 indicates in a slightly ambiguous way, 'these are Jacob's issues,' implying perhaps both the progeny and the problems with which they must all contend.^
It is worth remembering that Jacob didn't ‘start the fire.' He inherited his contentious family relationships. His parents, Isaac and Rebecca, taught him to set up his brother. Later his uncle Laban set him up, tricking him into marrying Leah before Rachel, and making him work for fourteen years as an indentured servant. Jacob later returns the favor, tricking Laban into losing much of his flock. Tricking and trapping each other seems to be the robust and irresistible inclination of this family. It is what they do, over and over again.
All of the archetypal characters in the Book of Genesis follow this arc of rising to become the hero of the narrative for a time, until they fall to the depths of disgraceful behavior. But Joseph is a new type of hero, with the opposite trajectory. He is the first and only character in the Genesis narrative to get off to a despicable beginning and then rise above himself without falling from greatness. After Joseph is thrown to the depths of the pit where he is almost left to die, the story continues and of our fallen hero begins to rise. The rest is history, or perhaps not, but that is a subject for a different day.
* Think of an English word such as ‘kid.' Figuring our whether it means a young human or a young goat, or the verb to tease in a playful way, is all a matter of context. Another example would be ‘ram' or ‘buck' which could be an animal or an aggressive action. In the case of ‘buck' the word can also be a proper name or slang for a dollar. A young buck might ram a kid, and you might have to read that passage more than a few times to figure out who is who and what is going on.
^ “These are Jacob's issues,” The Hebrew word “toldot” is a plural that refers to things that have been born of other things, in either a literal or a figurative manner. 'Toldot' is alternately rendered in English as generations, lineage, history, events, etc.
Barbarian that I am, my knowledge of the classic Latin poetry, excepting Ovid’s exilic Epistulae, and what bits of the Metamorphoses an English major might meet in footnotes to the Fairie Queene and Paradise Lost, amounts to no more than names on a timeline. Poets in a Landscape is the remedial introduction I needed. Scottish classicist Gilbert Highet (1906 – 1978) was one of the great critic/teacher/explainers on the Columbia faculty, alongside Lionel Trilling, Jacques Barzun, and Mark Van Doren.
Highet starts with biographical criticism of an admirable suavity. Cyril Connolly, another devotee of sensuously contemplative Latinity, said that with each poet Highet succeeded “in finding the man in the style.” Next, Highet invokes the consequent canon. He shows Goethe and Byron, Browning and Baudelaire, Eliot and Pound as they summon, echo or emulate the poets of the early empire. And as its title suggests, Poets in a Landscape is also a travelogue. In 1956 Highet and his wife, the spy thriller writer Helen MacInnes, made a tour of the conjectural birthplaces, spurious tombs and excavated villas of the Roman poets.
This piece is part of an on-going series of blogposts from the frontlines of Startup Tunnel, a new incubator based in New Delhi. You might also want to check out dispatches one, two, three and four.
Having commissioned a new suit of armor, the emperor Akbar was now in the process of inspecting it. Installed upon a stone mannequin in the armory workshop, black bell metal and brass accents gleamed back upon the badshah and his vazir Birbal. Fresh from recent campaigns, the emperor now said he wanted to be sure of the quality of protection it offered. And so he called for a lance, with which he reared back and then charged upon the mannequin. He was able, after a few tries, to pierce all the small slits of the helmet. He asked for a sword and tore apart the subtle slits between the body armor and the helmet. He asked for a mace and went at the now headless mannequin and cracked the chain metal links all around its torso. Even now that it had fallen upon the floor of the workshop, Akbar was still working out his PTSD on that prone suit of armor and the lifeless dummy within. When he was done, he looked up and declared it to be a lousy suit, practically the same as wearing nothing at all.
Perhaps you already know the end of this parable? Perhaps you have heard some other version of it? I'm not sure when I first encountered it, either at the back of an Amar Chitra Katha or else perhaps among a collection of stories from Iran. Either way, it has stuck in the mind, long awaiting the unraveling. There is something so shocking about seeing a new suit of armor being destroyed like that, something like a medieval crash test. One knows not what to make of what is going on, nor even how to respond to Akbar's judgement. Is a suit of armor really useless if it cannot survive many minutes of the untamed rage of a battle hardened king?
The badshah is about turn his fury onto his smith, when Birbal suggests that they give him a sharp warning and a week to build another prototype. The next week, when Akbar returns to the workshop to inspect the new piece he finds Birbal already there, wearing the emperor's battle armor and spoiling for sport. It is new and improved, he says, have at me and I'll show you. Akbar is eventually goaded into picking up a lance. He makes straight for Birbal, who steps lithely aside, pulls the lance forward, tripping Akbar forward and landing him on all four. Now that someone's wearing it, he grins, it's begun working pretty well.
On the face of it, this would seem to be a parable about how an artifact changes with use — an early instance of user-centered thinking about human artifacts. But there's something a bit tricky about how a suit of armor is best used and what its function really is. Birbal's response is cryptic, and it forces you to think about the whole the point of battle armor: it must not only resist onslaught, but allow its wearer to move about and conduct battle. This little fable sticks in the mind is because of the way it shifts between offence and defence, between object and agent. That little shift of the mind, between a closed and essentially reactive reference frame and a horizon of open possibilities is sudden and complete. It cannot arise gradually and it has no continuity with that earlier way of thinking.
You will remember, reader, that I've signed up to share a more prosaic kind of story, about the setting up of a new kind of business in a more prosaic time in a global city whose air is already thick with pollution and corruption and crony capitalism.
