by Maniza Naqvi

Opposite the White House, and across from the park, an entire block holds the flat and faceless, building of the Export and Import Bank of the United States (here), it is the color of khaki or a dead tree stump. It evokes a sense of a black and white film from the cold war about Eastern Europe– I almost expect subtitles to run beneath my gaze. It is responsible for providing financing for the foreign purchases of American goods and services. And across from it on the same street, hunkered down for the long haul, equally hued but embellished with Greek columns—I think ionic– is the Department of Veterans Affairs. It is responsible for taking care of the consequences of some of these purchases.

On the corner of that block, on some days at the entrance to the McPherson Square metro a street musician plays jazz on a horn— while on most days now, on the sidewalk in front of the building responsible for their welfare, a few stray left over “Occupiers”, veterans of these ongoing wars and past, still protest, looking like a heap of rags or lumps of dumped bodies—or body bags—as they take shelter from rain or cold, covered head to toe in their sleeping bags in the early mornings at the entrance to the Department's building. Nearby, large shiny bullet proof black sports utility vehicles, in the employees reserved parking slots on the street, provide a a sharp contrast to them and symbolize wealth, power and the capability to roll over bodies and crush them. On a large brass plate on the outside wall of the Department of Veterans Affairs the inscription quotes Abraham Lincoln: “To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.” I wonder if war was Lincoln's definition of battle or was his idea more profound than that—This man who himself was felled by an assassin's bullet and who left behind a widow and orphans. Was the notion of battle for Lincoln, the struggle to care for all on the basis of need and the un-decorated act that these stragglers, these society's lost souls, on the sidewalk were now engaged in?

One day as I walked by the Department of Veterans Affairs, on my way towards Lafayette Park and past the White House, my path was crossed by a trolley cart wheeled out from the building by janitors. The trolley was loaded with about three feet high painted wooden soldiers as though props for a pageant or the Nutcracker ballet. The wooden soldiers, some with broken parts, were being loaded into a truck, perhaps now useless, they were homeless and bound for a Park or perhaps for repair and storage until needed for another occasion. I turned to look back at several people, amputees, in wheel chairs who had come out, for a smoke and the warriors in their sleeping bags, as if discarded and broken props themselves, waiting to be picked up and loaded into a garbage truck.

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by Dave Maier

It's very difficult to write a good introduction to philosophy. Put in too much technical detail and it reads like a textbook, irrelevant to all but sophomores; but leave too much out and it's just a self-help book. Luc Ferry is a French philosopher whose recent essay in this genre, A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living, is our subject today.

Ferry's book is generally successful in walking that fine line. He keeps the details to a minimum, leaving room for plenty of argument, much of it eloquent and forceful. He leaves no doubt about where he thinks his explorations lead, and what their consequences are for contemporary life. As he himself argues, philosophy must address its readers in this direct and personal way if it is not to devolve into pointless academic speculation, a fate shared, he thinks, by too much contemporary philosophy. Even if that subtitle promises more than it can deliver (more accurate, if more unwieldy, might be A Philosophical Guide to Philosophical Guides to Living), Ferry's book provides an excellent background for further investigation and debate.

Ferry's explanatory scheme is necessarily compact, but for his purposes it works very well. The philosophy of each major era in the history of Western thought addresses three related questions: in Kant's famous formulation, they are 1) What can I know? 2) What must I do? 3) What may I hope? Kant's own system is built around his answer to the first question, which inaugurates the “critical philosophy” that brought us irrevocably into the modern period. In contrast, Ferry centers on the third question as the one driving the whole endeavor.

A human being […] is the only creature who is aware of his limits. He knows that he will die, and that his near ones, those he loves, will also die. Consequently he cannot prevent himself from thinking about this state of affairs, which is disturbing and absurd, almost unimaginable. And, naturally enough, he is inclined to turn first of all to those religions which promise 'salvation'.

That promise, though, is worthless if we don't believe it. Where religion demands faith, philosophers – arrogantly so, from the religious perspective – accept only what can be shown by reason. Philosophical “salvation” is thus intimately connected to what Ferry calls theoria, an investigation into not only how things are in the world, but also the means by which we know this (or what Ferry is careful not to call “metaphysics” and “epistemology” respectively). More practically, we also want to know how to deal with other people, and what our mutual obligations are (which includes the question of what “obligations” are in the first place). The key to understanding each era, in Ferry's view, is to see how it deals with these three questions.
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by James McGirk

My wife and I live in Oklahoma. But for the past few months it's felt like we haven't really been living here. That's because you need a car to live in Oklahoma, and until recently we didn't have one.

Actually, what you really need to live here is a truck. Maybe not in the cities, but out here, in the foothills of the Ozarks, where the roads flood when the creek overflows its banks, and even traversing a parking lot means tumbling into tooth shattering ruts and axle scraping bumps: you do. Given that my 'job' is being a freelance writer, and my credit is shot to pieces and my income is totally erratic, buying or leasing a new one was out of the question. So that left buying a used truck. And buying a used truck in Oklahoma—especially when you don’t know the first thing about them—is downright scary.

That's because people out here use their trucks. Take my neighbors as an example. There is a family of fishermen (and –women and –children) who live across the street from me, and they have at least a half-dozen trucks and truck-like sport utility vehicles parked in their lawn, and they drive the hell out of them. At the crack of dawn each morning I watch them hook huge boats to the their trailer hitches, and pile huge people inside of their huge trucks, and form a convoy and go wheeling off toward the Illinois River. They return around noon, caked with mud, with a dozen of the neighborhood cats in tow. My neighbor is a nice man, but there was no way I wanted to buy a truck that was used the way he used his.

I wanted a mall crawler. An off-road vehicle that had never been off-road. So I started looking at the auto listings in California, where my folks live. My thesis was this: that a California car would be more gently used and have much lower mileage than its Oklahoma-equivalent (enough to justify flying out there and driving the thing back).

I found one that met our requirements: a 2004 Grand Cherokee Laredo. The seller was selling it on behalf of his son’s fiancée, who was moving to Europe to become a champion cyclist. This was her beloved “Daisy”, according to the ad; Daisy was painted a glossy, sparkly black, had 4×4-wheel drive, and the famously reliable six-cylinder Jeep 4.0 engine, was big enough to fit my wife’s paintings inside of it (or her stretcher bars), had under 100,000 miles on the odometer, had an automatic transmission, and best of all fit, comfortably in our meager budget (which was about $6,000, generously loaned to us by my folks). A comparable car in Oklahoma, according to my hourly scans of Craigslist, was going for about a $1,000 more and had at least another fifty thousand miles on it.

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by Maniza Naqvi

As I stepped into the park I saw that two large trees had been felled. The sight saddened me. I was unable to identify what kind of trees they were—I don't know much about the species of trees — now they were a pile of chopped wood marked off by yellow tape—as if a crime scene. I felt such indignation, such sadness as if I had walked into my garden and found that someone had vandalized it. I looked around me, for an explanation. How could this have been done without notice, without—well–without my permission! Ridiculous this, my reaction but there it was. There was no one to ask and I was too afraid to walk up to the security guys guarding a checkpoint near the park to inquire. So I thought up of reasons: It may have been the storm the other night that had brought them down or a fungus or some other molestation that had killed them. There would have to be a good reason, a very solid rational explanation. Knowledgeable custodians of the park—expert gardeners would have had the authority to do this, I was sure. And they would know better than mere walkers through a park, like me about such things. The deed was done, the trees were cut. That was that. In fact I had only noticed these two particular trees once they were a pile of wood. Now, their stumps were as though monuments to themselves or to amputations caused by closed processes, or to the kind of instant culling that can take place in Washington of what are seemingly solid and rooted.

A few days earlier, I had passed by an old man seated on a bench his protest placard placed next to him which read “At least the war on the environment is going well.”

This garden reminds me of other places- —I realized something—everyday this walk—-the way it is—the brick pathway—the sunlight coming through the canopy of trees— reminds of going to school in the mornings in Lahore—-here now the pathway is not lined by hundred year old mango trees but shaded by equally majestic Gingkos, Oaks, Frangipani, Magnolias, and a Bald Cyprus labeled as such at the Southwest corner— I found out in my search for the names of these trees—that this Park used to be an apple orchard in the 18^thcentury—–The trees, the dappled sunlight on the bricks—the whole sense of it—the morning light—my reaction to it so visceral so deep, such longing and nostalgia of something so beautiful and innocent and perfect. And just as I was thinking of this perfection I came to the realization– that there is no such place—it is a delusion—for that perfect place was in a place where a military dictator was in power and was in the process of jailing, trying and hanging an elected civilian Prime Minister. My attention was drawn to the protesters in front of the White House, today they are Ethiopian. And in this perfect peaceful garden, in this lovely morning light, the context unchangingly was of war, and today there were more revelations military courts, secret courts and surveillance—only now fugitives are seeking asylum, not here but rather from here. I felt I was walking on a path right back to home—

In front of the White House the marchers protest human rights violations in their country. They chant slogans asking President Obama to stop support to the military and the Government there, as two fellow countrymen, perhaps from the embassy, took pictures and video-taped them.

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by Ruchira Paul

“There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot, dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks … Anything can happen.” —Red Wind, Raymond Chandler

It is not just the Santa Ana that inflames a fevered mind; the sirocco that raises a dust storm, the arctic wind which howls over frozen fjords and the gentle Mediterranean breeze that rocks tethered boats too can fan murderous intentions. From slums to manicured suburbs the world over, sudden ill winds blow in the depths of the human heart when it comes to crime and crime fiction.

My devotion to mystery / detective stories began early -around age nine or ten – and as was common among English speaking Indian children of my generation, it followed the usual trajectory of Enid Blyton, Conan Doyle and the formidable Agatha Christie. British mysteries dominated the shelves of Indian book stores and libraries at the time. The first encounter with American crime fiction took place in my teen years when I began rooting through Ellery Queen's mystery magazines and the Perry Mason books in my uncle's paperback collection. The hardboiled American gumshoe caught my attention in college – the down-at-the-heel, smoking, drinking, quietly desperate philosopher-avenger was a far cry from the polished and well mannered British crime busters. The first such charming prototype appeared in the form of Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer and I was hooked. Macdonald provided the gateway into the vast world of American crime fiction. His hypnotic story telling led me to Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James Cain of the pulp fiction era and later to dozens of newer writers, some of whom continue to write to this day. Thus began a life-long habit. No matter what else I read – high, low or middle brow – after a while I go back to a good mystery book for a dose of adrenaline induced relaxation.

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by Colin Eatock

What's up with my friends on Facebook these days? Let's have a look.

One of my friends recently starred in a TedX video. Another friend was just interviewed by the BBC. Another just got tenure at the college where she teaches. Yet another is directing a theatrical piece that's about to open. And a friend of a friend published a short story about a cat in Paris.

These and other similar announcements pop up in my newsfeed on a daily basis. Thanks to Facebook, I know that I have friends who wear only the most fashionable clothes, friends who make scrumptious pies and cakes, friends with perfect marriages, and friends who go on splendid vacations – with the photos to prove it.

All of these informative (if not exactly helpful) nuggets of knowledge can be described with one simple word: boasting. Moreover, there's nothing sly, discreet or tangential about this kind of boasting – it's unfettered, undisguised and unapologetic. It's a kind of boasting doesn't ask permission to speak, and doesn't wonder if anyone is interested in what it has to say. It's so pervasive that Facebook should be renamed “Boastbook.”

Yet not so long ago in North America (and especially in Canada, where I live) boasting was considered a very bad thing. Boasting used to be vain and egotistical. Boasting was tedious and insufferable to others. Boasting was pathetic, because it was rooted in some kind of deep-seated insecurity complex. Boasting was also a stupid thing to do because it so often achieved the opposite of its goal: damaging, rather than enhancing, the boaster's social stature.

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by Gerald Dworkin

There is a story about the philosopher Nuel Belnap who collapsed in his classroom. After a period of time, having recovered, he returned to the classroom and began “As I was saying…” It has been several years since my last blog. My absence is partly due to my having had heart surgery and partly due to trying to finish several philosophical projects. Since both were successful, I return to the fold.

Readers with a long memory will remember two pieces Short Takes and More (and longer) Short Takes. They were excerpts from a commonplace book on philosophical humor– and lots of short, serious stuff– that I had been collecting for many years. One of my projects was to finish (or rather just stop collecting) this book. It now has been published as an e-book on Amazon and other sites. It is called Philosophy: A Commonplace Book.

A few weeks after the book came out, and with no causal relation, a post on the website Reddit called “What’s the most intellectual joke you know?” went viral. Since intellectual does not equate to philosophical, the majority of the jokes are of the “a mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer” type. But there are some good philosophical ones as well.

“Is it getting solipsistic in here, or is it just me?”

“I’m a linguist. So I like ambiguity more than most people.”

“According to Freud, what comes between fear and sex? Fünf.”

“This sentence contains exactly threee erors.”

“Every word in this sentence is a gross misspelling of the word “tomato.” –Doug Hofstadter”

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by Leanne Ogasawara

From Xia to Shang
And from Shang to Zhou….

You know the story: Nine bronze tripods– cast back in the mists of great antiquity– were treasured by ancient Chinese Kings as a symbol of their right to rule.

Passed down from dynasty to dynasty– for nearly 2,000 years (or so the story goes) until the time when the First Emperor, Shihuangdi, finally toppled the last Zhou King– and rather than see their transfer to Shihuangdi’s new dynasty– the last Chu King flung the nine bronzes forever into the River Si

(English wikipedia suggests it was the Qin king; Japanese wikipedia has it as the Qin king who did the flinging).

Given their symbolic significance, Shihuangdi actively attempted to dredge up the sacred bronzes from the river, but it was to no avail; and scholars of later dynasties saw this as further evidence of the lack of moral virtue of the First Emperor.

There is a well known story about these matters, which supposedly took place at the start of the Eastern Zhou Period (770-256 BC). Severely weakened by external and internal threats, the Zhou kings came to rule in name only. Although the Zhou dynasty was the acknowledged recipient of the Mandate of Heaven and therefore possessor of the Nine Tripods, the real political power was held by the kings and generals of various surrounding kingdoms, chiefly those of the Qin, Qi, Chu, Wei and Yan.

The Chu were especially troublesome, and after some showy military displays near the Zhou capital of Luoyang, the worried Zhou king dispatched his trusty Minister, Wáng-sūn Mǎn (王孫満), to negotiate for peaceful relations with their southern Chu neighbors.

Arriving at the military camp outside the capital, the belligerent Lord of Chu immediately asked Minister Wang about the size and weight of the Nine Tripods (問鼎之輕重)– thereby implying that with their transfer to the House of Chu, the Mandate of Heaven would also be transferred to Chu.

Minister Wang–always quick of wit– sharply responded that unless it could be shown that the Will of Heaven had in fact changed, then it was forbidden to inquire after the weight of the tripods. He then went on to explain that the actual weight of the tripods was beside the point–for in fact, their weight corresponded directly to the virtue of the king who had them in his possession; that is, if the ruler truly held the Mandate of Heaven then the tripods would be immovably heavy. However, should a ruler lack virtue, the tripods would become weightless and therefore meaningless as a political and psychological symbol.

He then drove in his point: The tripods do not matter, virtue does.

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That's It

I’d mowed and cut and weeded
tips of fingers inked with earth

I’d heard our cardinal calling
I’d heard our engines down the valley groaning
coming up, distant, moaning

hands between dry stems of garlic moving,
like my mother kneeling, devout, but not in church

I’d yanked contentious weeds, insisting,
grabbing, pulling —this was how I worked:
so much sweat I wore a perspiration shirt

I’d quit and picked my tools up:
shovel rake— and shut the hose off
at the door I took my boots off
smacked them sole to sole to knock the mud off
and turned to see your garden blazing
with inner light in daylight failing
I cracked a beer and sat— amazing!

I watched your garden’s still fires burning
it’s orange lilies burning
its incandescent red & purple gladiolus burning
its spiky flush of bee balm burning
rose campion bursting in the burning
sparking coral bell and yellow lupine burning
moonbeam coreopsis burning

all in all on still all, all lit
until the mountain’s shadow eased the fire’s edge off
as petal embers in its dying spit
as if some hand had turned a dimmer of the sun
to gently cauterized the done
to douse the blaze
to ease the day off
to say, that's it

by Jim Culleny
7/25/13
from Blink

by Maniza Naqvi

Every morning on my way to work, I walk past dead Washingtonians. High and mighty on their pedestals: My morning route has me heading towards the backs of statues of dead men on dead horses—spurs, and swords and boots and saddles. Cast in iron, the backs of dead Generals and horses asses, as if leading a charge towards the White House. Major General John A. Logan in the middle of Logan Circle which is now mainly a dog park for pampered pets to be brought out to poop here; Major General George Henry Thomas in the middle of Thomas Circle again a location for pooping pooches and then Major General James B. McPherson in the middle of McPherson Square the location of the memory of the evicted Occupy Movement's Washington chapter and a perennial home to mainly homeless veterans.

Further on just before the White House, I pass the Ministry of War—- rather, the Department of War Veterans and I enter into the peaceful tree lined beauty of a garden. This is Lafayette Park just outside the White House. Here too, there are more statues—not of artists or poets or writers or singers, nor of doctors, teachers, lawyers, laborers, railway engineers no—not even of Bankers. No, this variety just passes through here, or comes to click their cameras or hold up protest signs. No, here, the statues are of still more Generals posed with plenty of weapons: Brigadier General (US) Thaddeus Kosciuszko at the northeast corner of Lafayette Park, the inscription on his monument, shriek worthy in itself reads, “Freedom shrieked when he fell.” Major General (US) Marquis de Lafayette's statue sits atop a pedestal on the South east corner, Major General (US) Wilhelm von Steuben's on the Northwest corner and General Comte de Rochambeau's at the Southwest corner.

In Lafayette Park and centered right across from the White House's front entrance door lives the statue of Andrew Jackson. The seventh President of the United States who had also been a General. One morning as I passed by, I came across the typical crowd of high school students with their teacher staring up at the statue of Andrew Jackson depicted seated on a horse whose forelegs are up in the air. From the quick passing glances at the statue each day, I had the impression that Jackson was looking towards the White House tipping his hat, the whole posture that of a rakish blackguard taking leave of his mistress. When I was the age of these school children, I had a crush on Andrew Jackson—a portrait of him, in my history text book, depicted him as having a high forehead, beautiful swept back mane of hair wearing a long leather coat and high riding boots, a scar in battle or a barroom fight and a little story about scandals including a duel over a mistress. Well that did me in. Now these school children gathered at the base of the statue looked up at him as their teacher asked them if they knew whose statue this was. As I continued on my way I heard her say—”That's right, Andrew Jackson.” The kids evidently literate, were able to read the plaque, “He was a war hero—a General before he was President of the United States.” She repeated, it “He was a war hero before he was President.” This was the lesson that she was teaching these young minds. I grimaced and glanced towards the White House as I hurried on towards my office. For me he is Andrew Jackson, the good looking President, the dueling, whoring, swashbuckling, tall, high forehead long haired, long leather coat, boots with spurs President who I had a crush on when I was just a child and reading up on American history.

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by Sarah Firisen

As a woman, I know so much pain
Not the least pre-menstrual weight gain
Menopause is no fun
Birthing pain can quite stun
And we do it and rarely complain

Men get to glide right through life
A failed erection the worst of their strife
We have the right to refuse
But they still get to choose
When it's time to be husband and wife

Men get paid more, the ceiling's still glass
I'm still judged on the size of my ass
My gray hair is old
They're distinguished they're told
And they're still the world's governing class

But through all this we just grin and bear
Even though lots in life don't compare
But enough is enough
Men, we women don't bluff
What is broken it's time to repair

The control of my body is mine
Not yours or some being divine
Some graying white men
Just won't tell me when
My uterus is no longer mine

So back off, Wendy Davis was right
Should we all filibuster all night?
Now what will it take
For all women to wake
And to finally take on this fight?

For the women of Texas to say
“Rick Perry get out of my way”
It's not your choice, it's mine
And I'll make it just fine
We're all done with this male power play

by Shadab Zeest Hashmi

Heat is eerie: lipsticks left unrefrigerated melt into deformity, ice cream liquefies and renders the scoop useless; fruit and flower stalls carry the smell of that peculiar cusp between ripe and rotten.

Then rain comes, licking the sky green; the veil between the mysteries and the sun-weary, bleached and hardened world dissolves away, becoming thin as a glassy insect wing. A dusty estrangement washes out, newly woven silken webs everywhere; meditation is possible again.

Clarity makes me humble: I’m smaller than a melon seed, slighter than a fishbone. I’m the moisture in the air and the movement in antennae; I’m filament and feelers, the quiver within the quiver, the wet crease in the smallest leaves. I’m also a rusty door hinge, static on television, soaked clothesline, scurrying lizard, the moving minute hand on the timepiece that is suddenly ticking louder; Rain changes the acoustics entirely— each syllable, sob, twitter, footfall, turning of a knob, is distinct. The airwaves have cleared and the cosmic channels open up.

I watch the raindrops make rings on the surface of a mossy cistern: water bangles! I imagine the continuously disappearing rain bangles on my wrists. Leaves float, throats are stirred into singing: a frog’s croaking has a timbre of energy today, as if it is charging the earth in its deep, steady way.

Birdsong becomes an articulation in a foreign tongue I long to translate and memorize. I’m filled with a peaceful attentiveness. I listen like just another creature, to the sound of rain and the rustling and chirping in response. It occurs to me that the overpowering heat of summer hurts every sparrow, toad and tree as much as it hurts us. It also occurs to me that the heat has a maddening effect—we build rage, boil over, our spirits wilt, our vision blurs as if in sweat, our demons hover incessantly; we lose focus of the essence. It is a defeat of the soul because the body is under an immense attack.

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HALLUCINATIONS

— for Richard Howard

The servants never listen to me
Only when the new wife nods
They run around like rats
To fetch the thermos

There is poison in the spring water
Chanel!
A present from my son
In America — the wind

Carried my message
After all
Thieves
Under my bed

I want latches on my door
And a mirror
The old one shattered
When the nail

Gave way
I hang my shawl on the wall
Dried roses upside down
My room not swept for six days

No water to
dunk clothes
My daughter will clean
When she visits

The door is bolted
From outside
If the house catches fire who will
Open it?

Will I burn alive?
The servant's outhouse
Turns my stomach
A pane is broken

I'll spray Chanel!
My grandson from his grave
Come to visit
He is with his great-grandfather

They both received transfusions
My husband says I don't need a doctor
But that doesn't keep his new wife
From going to Combined Hospital

I am still the head of this household
O Wind
Tell my son in America
The dollars he sends

The new wife steals
Tell him I need a car
To buy roses
At Shalimar

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by Liam Heneghan

Male Torso (Wikipedia)

Every year, for a number of years, I received a letter about my body from a man who was neither a family member, nor an especially intimate friend. Invariably they started: “Dear Liam, thank you for your recent visit. I am happy to confirm that you are largely in a healthy condition.” The earliest of these letters was handwritten with a fountain pen, as if to confirm that, though not physically remarkable, I was nevertheless, in his eyes, a very special fellow.

The greetings and general summary thus dispatched, he would describe my physical condition meticulously. I was taller, by an inch, back then apparently. Perhaps I am not physical shriveling and merely relaxed now and less inclined to stretch to impress. On the other hand, I was less weighty back then, and having always had an ability to convert food into more me, I have slowly, and incrementally, squeezed out more Liam, becoming a shorter, heavier version of myself.

My correspondent recorded his observations on my pulse, and noted my blood pressure which was, in the old classification at least, high normal. Today, I understand, these number would be regarded with an arched eyebrow. Consolingly he informed me that “we’ll keep an eye on it.”

There was always in these letters some ominous tones, as if to say that though everything looked normal, potential horrors lurked around the corner. The price: eternal vigilance in matters of the flesh. My liver, for instance, didn’t seem enlarged. He reiterated my self-reported alcohol consumption. “You consume, you say, no more than two drinks a day.” I detected in this a whiff of disbelief, as if his intuition over-ruled both the evidence of his palpations and his ears.

His was not an especially expansive vocabulary. Once he described as “loose” both my stools and my testicles. The former condition I may have mentioned to him; the latter condition he detected for himself after each had descended like imperfect plover’s eggs into the grabby nest of his latexed hand. I coughed. By the mysteries of internal plumping something softly leapt within. I was not herniated.

Fathers should tell their sons what is involved in prostate exams. I swear I had no idea, though the terse preparatory directions make it clear. I was living in Georgia when first this test was administer to me.“This might make you tearful..”, my doctor drawled.

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by Misha Lepetic

“Not philosophers but fret-sawyers and stamp
collectors compose the backbone of society.”
~ Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

As the Outlaw Edward Snowden continues to languish in the transit lounge of the Sheremetyovo International Airport, I am struck by the overall nonchalance with which the revelations of comprehensive NSA-sponsored surveillance have been received. Obviously, it is still early days, but for the moment the broad-brush recording of vast amounts of telecommunications and social media information has not spurred any marches on Washington, the Googleplex or anywhere else for that matter. Let's look back on a little history and see why this relaxed attitude might be even more justified than we suspect.

One way to begin is by situating Snowden in his chosen brotherhood of US intelligence whistleblowers. In saying that he has been waiting for someone like Snowden for 40 years, Daniel Ellsberg plays John the Baptist to Snowden's – well, you get it. But Ellsberg's outing of what became the Pentagon Papers and Snowden's NSA reveal are extraordinarily different, not just in terms of the contents, but also in terms of each man's professional status, and the larger social context in which the leaks occurred. As Garance Franke-Ruta wrote on The Atlantic's website, Ellsberg was about as inside as an insider could be, whereas Snowden is the consummate outsider. Ellsberg was himself the author of swathes of the report that was a distillation of everything that the Pentagon needed to know about its own war, whereas Snowden – well, aside from a handful of documents, we still don't really know what he's got on those four laptops, although Glenn Greenwald, Snowden's chosen conduit, just might. Ellsberg knew that the stakes involved a country that was at war and – most crucially – was subjecting its population to a draft, while Snowden's revelations are of a decidedly more ambiguous variety, involving things that we use every day, that seem to be friendly, convenient (if not essential), and free. Finally, Ellsberg remained in the US, as Franke-Ruta puts it, “a powerful insider joining his conscience to an existing upswell in public opinion,” while Snowden is stuck playing Victor Navorski, with little chance of Catherine Zeta-Jones showing up in a stewardess outfit any time soon.

There is, however, an interesting thread that makes its way across all of these disparities. I would like to call it a matter of effort, and the difference that effort makes. In fact, I will further argue that the progress of technology has led to a progressive dissipation of the value of effort, and that in turn leads to a proportionate dilution of the stakes that we think we are talking about.

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by Rishidev Chaudhuri

The disciplined practice of being aware of bodily sensations is common to a number of meditative and psychological techniques, ranging from mindfulness meditation to the various species of humanistic psychology (especially those influenced by Wilhem Reich). Here's an example from Perls, Hefferline and Goodman's book “Gestalt Therapy”:

Concentrate on your `body' sensation as a whole. Let your attention wander through every part of your body. How much of yourself can you feel? To what degree and with what accuracy and clarity does your body—and thus you—exist? Notice pains, aches and twinges ordinarily ignored. What muscular tensions can you feel? Attending to them, permit them to continue and do not attempt prematurely to relax them. Try to shape their precise limits. Notice your skin sensations. Can you feel your body as a whole? Can you feel where your head is in relation to your torso? Where are your genitals? Where is your chest? Your limbs?

Walk, talk, or sit down; be aware of the proprioceptive details without in any way interfering with them. As you sit or lie comfortably, aware of different body-sensations and motions (breathing, clutching, contracting the stomach, etc.), see if you can notice any combinations or structures—things that seem to go together and form a pattern—among the various tensions, aches and sensations. Notice that frequently you stop breathing and hold your breath. Do any tensions in the arm or fingers or contractions of the stomach and genitals seem to go with this? Or is there a relationships between holding your breath and straining your ears? Or between holding your breath and certain skin sensations? What combinations can you discover?

Similar exercises exist in Buddhist meditations under the framework of mindfulness of the body (considered one of the four foundations of mindfulness), and in yogic exercises. It's intriguing to try to figure out what these techniques are doing, why awareness of bodily configurations should appear in practices that are aimed at insight into the nature of one's thought and cognitive life, and whether the justification for these practices can be usefully translated into some sort of scientific framework (or at least a language that is friendly to what we know of the brain and the biology).

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