Regarding Hubert Dreyfus' and Sean Dorrance Kelly's
"All Things Shining"
Quote from: p10The vision that is a "glaze of panoptic attention" . . . is attentive to opportunities for action, not to details of the scene.
Fascinating perspective on Shakespeare
Quote from: p17. . . Shakespeare himself seems to have been nearly obsessed with the breakdown of the divine order. . . . [Macbeth] hopes to leap beyond his natural place in the divine order into a new and higher place as king. The very idea the one should, by one's own will and desire, transform the divine order of the universe would have been anathema to Dante in the world of the Middle Ages.
Quote from: p14This [divine] order of things was not a belief that anyone argued for or a worldview that anyone proposed; it was simply taken for granted by everyone worth talking or listening to. Members of this society made sense of everything in terms of this fundamental idea . . .
Quote from: p24Perhaps, in other words, [David Foster Wallace's] depression made him peculiarly sensitive (or was a symptom of such sensitivity, whatever its source -droqen) to something that pervades the culture, something not personal and individual but public and shared.
The sadness and lostness. It says something, something about the world of time (https://letterclub.games/2024/06/10/worlds-of-time/) in which one resides, but also something about one's own personal perspective on it. A theme, a thought, a question...
Quote from: p28[Wallace] insisted that his goal as a writer was to show us the way out of our predicament, not to glamorize its awfulness.
I did not quote the part inside the jacket cover, but I must now link another thread which has been no doubt inspired by All Things Shining.
The subtitle of the book is "Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age;" Dreyfus and Kelly suggest, at large, that our modern secular age is riddled with a unique form of dissatisfaction arising from a lack of clear basis upon which to make decisions; everyone is uncertain what is right and what is wrong; we are empowered to make our own decisions, unhindered by a monodirectional system of value-making; but we are, too, burdened with making our own decisions, unsupported by a monodirectional system of value-making.
I am enjoying this read and I don't know where they will go with this book, how they propose to resolve this problem, but for now I understand that there is a dissatisfaction with considering many choices. There is a desire within me, within others, to walk a straight path. Not that I know what the right straight path is... but perhaps I should not fear to present a player with one such in a game, for a time, in order to spark that pleasurable feeling of monopresentness, directionality, purpose.
For a time.
See [AB] FRAMING (https://newforum.droqen.com/index.php?topic=682.0) for a structural approach to creativity and thought that seeks to approach such a position from a place of free choice.
Quote from: p37. . . the postmodern tendency to favor highly intellectualized, complex, and aestheticized principle over simple and and aesthetically uninteresting ones that are nevertheless deeply true.
Quote from: p46the true burden of . . . the responsibility to escape from the meaninglessness and drudgery of a godless world by constructing a happier meaning for it out of nothing . . . [is] too much for any human spirit to achieve. It is a possibility that requires us to become gods ourselves.
Quote from: p47the sacred in Wallace—insofar as he can see such a phenomenon at all—is something we impose upon experience; there is nothing given about it at all. For Wallace anything—even some type of "consumer-hell"— can be experienced as sacred if I choose to make it so.
Wallace's saving possibility, therefore, is the most demanding and the most impoverished all at once.
On demandingness
Quote from: p48First. . . nothing available on earth can achieve [this kind of experience of the sacred]. . . none of these human kinds of happiness will do.
. . . as well. . . it demands that this bliss be experienced constantly. . . it demands that Hell itself be experienced as fully paradisiacal bliss.
. . . it seems to level all possible experiences. . . One wonders whether bliss of this eternal sort is even desirable at all.
On impoverty
Quote from: p48The bliss that Wallace seeks is . . . unworldly. . . generated solely by the individual will. This divorces Wallace's notion of the sacred completely from its traditional support in some external notion of the divine.
Quote from: p55[The] idea of the poem as an external force, something wandering the world looking for a receptacle, a place to reside, is Gilbert's Lutheran ideal; it is what she thinks can save great artists from the destructive force and the dark times, . . .
. . . a shift that turns what was an onerous, pressure-filled, probably inachievable task into something that is entirely outside the artist's realm of responsibility.
I've reached the end of Chapter 2, "David Foster Wallace's Nihilism," and I am going to jump to the conclusion chapter now. The structure of the book, much alluded to (as I will show), is [A ...... B] whereas I definitely prefer [AB] [...] when possible.
Quote from: p56. . . there are disadvantages. . . if the poem is a purely external force that rumbles through us. . . this receptive view is just as incapacitating as Wallace's kind of Nietzschean nihilism. Whereas Wallace gives us an unachievable task, Gilbert gives us no task at all.
Actually, I think this is wrong and the book shows a perfect contradiction in its next sentences:
Quote from: p56-57. . . what really matters in the end has nothing to do with how we live our lives. What matters is only whether we happen to be near a pencil at the moment the poem rumbles through.
Clearly then something does matter: that state of readiness to receive. Still, it's not much.
Ok, here's how the chapter ends: On the topic of Wallace's nihilism vs Gilbert's "passive recipient" viewpoint, is there anything in between?
Quote from: p57We think there is, and we will try to develop it in the final chapter of the book.
The chapter ends by teasing the value of the end, saying nothing at all about the next chapter. Who, reading this, would not feel drawn to read ahead to the end?
I fully intended to skip ahead, but I instead chose to work on another droqever. That done and released, and now on a too long walk to an art gallery, I found myself in the right mood for reading. And oh, is this next chapter good. (Homer's Polytheism)
Quote from: p60Instead of understanding themselves in terms of their inner experiences and beliefs, [the Homeric Greeks] saw themselves as being swept up into public and shareable moods. . . . (P61) At the center of Homer's world, then, is the sense that what matters is already given to us, and that the best life is one that manages to get in sync with it.
Quote from: p63[The Greeks] were constantly sensitive to, amazed by, and grateful for those actions that one cannot perform on one's own simply by trying harder: going to sleep, waking up, fitting in, standing out, gathering crowds together, holding their attention with a speech, changing their mood*, or indeed being filled with longing, desire, courage, wisdom. . . we are the kinds of beings who are at our best when we find ourselves acting in ways that we cannot—and ought not—entirely take credit for.
* "their mood" was autocorrected by my phone to "their moods," and the singular mood was not even offered as an alternate, reflecting the modern sense of private and individual moods, and the loss of the notion of a shared mood which may in the singular belong to many.
Quote. . . a certain kind of gratitude becomes an essential component in the Homeric understanding of the best possible life. In one sense, then, the gods are whatever stands beyond us that requires our gratitude.
[AB]
When I attempted to describe the book to Chris, he said that it sounded like stoicism... a thing I have limited experience with, myself. How interesting that here the book definitely distances itself from pursuing stoicism:
Quote from: p65the goddess Fortuna [is often] represented as blind—indicating that her choices are indifferent to those whom they affect. . . if Fortune shines upon a Roman citizen then the proper sentiment is not gratitude, since Fortune didn't have him in view . . . The Roman Stoic stalwartly endures . . . inoculating himself against fortunes and misfortunes alike. This . . . willfully enforced detachment, could not be further from the Homeric conception of excellence in a life. . . . The notion that blind luck determines the course of our lives leads quickly to the nihilistic idea that our lives have no meaning.
Homer's gods are moods
moods public, shared
a mood that attunes us to what matters most in a situation, allowing us to respond appropriately without thinking
responding appropriately without thinking
being attuned to what matters allows us to respond
such ease of response is a desirable state
ritual sacrifice's role in Homeric gratitude
No argument is being made that gods are real beings, but the phenomenological response enabled by Homeric polytheism is valuable
gratitude and wonder
"By emphasizing life's dependence on luck, [X] is committed to nihilism." (p66)
"Being lucky and being cared for are radically different phenomena." (p66)
"a kind of detachment from the world that makes it impossible to experience meaning in our lives" vs "amazement and wonder, and the gratitude that follows naturally from it." (P67)
(Below, p84)
if the best kind of human life requires the presence of the gods . . the best kinds of human beings must invite the gods
an appreciation for those situations in life when favourable things occur out of our control
a sense of wonder and gratitude in the face of such situations
we become a standing invitation to the gods
Plurality of gods. Each one a different facet of humanity, embracing each facet.
Chapter 4. From Aeschylus to Augustine: Monotheism on the Rise
[AB]
Speaks of changing, with little material about the change:
P90
Quote. . . the transition from one scientific paradigm to the next is a complete Gestalt shift that is inexplicable . . . We can say something about what each has that the other does not, but we cannot tell a story about why and how . . .
Moving away from quotes, evidence, material... moving towards my experience of reading the book... I was surprised. Suddenly we were no longer speaking of the specific case, and into the realm of artworks as gods, and gods and madmen.
An inhuman maker of meaning, a thing that attunes mere mortals.
the articulator, the reconfigurer
Jesus the reconfigurer! revealing morality of the inner life, rather than adherence to laws
Descartes the reconfigurer! revealing the subject and object
I am as far as chapter 6, now.
I'm stunned at how this book too seems fascinated at Melville's work. I guess the book is a classic for a reason.
This quote from P152 about Ishmael is really starting to get me onboard with Dreyfus' "head open to the world" metaphor for how to be:
QuoteIshmael. . . is moody and constantly redefined by his moods; . . . And in all of these moody flights some godlike truth and meaning is revealed.
Quote from: p153Divine truths, . . . insofar as there are any, must be changeable and never completed. . . because they are revealed only by the current mood.
.
.
.
To take seriously our moods—both our highest soaring joys and our deepest, darkest descents—to live in each of them as moody Ishmael can, to do this is to be open to the manifold truths our moods reveal.
~ backlink In Search of Mystery (https://newforum.droqen.com/index.php?msg=3534)
Chapter 6 discusses the white whale's facelessness, Ahab's desire to penetrate "through the mask" to something concrete that lies behind -- the book argues, there is nothing behind, "Divine truths . . . must be changeable and never completed".
p163-"Ishmael's amazing strength is that he is able to live in these surface meanings and find a genuine range of joys and comforts there, without wishing they stood for something more. . . . The ability to live at the surface, to take the events of daily life with the meanings they present rather than to seek their hidden purpose, to find happiness and joy in what there already is"
this plays nice with my mild revulsion to the semantics of Thinking in Systems's use of 'function' or 'purpose' (https://newforum.droqen.com/index.php?topic=439.0); when it is suggested that a system has a function or, in particular I dislike this word, purpose, it feels to me only a short hop away from 'wishing they stood for something more.' Often, actually, I find myself drawing conclusions much sooner than I ought to. In the linked forum post, I am already backing myself away, looking for a way out of the feeling.
It is alright to feel the feeling and not to draw any closing remarks.
Or rather, maybe it is OK even not to ever aspire to any closing remarks. If they come then they come, but if they never come... maybe that is alright too. Can I embrace a feeling without resolving it? Simply let it move on.
Quote from: p203. . . there is sense behind Kant's caution. There is, after all, a vanishingly small distance between rising as one with the crowd at a baseball game and rising as one with the crowd at a Hitler rally.
They claim Kant has proposed that one ought not, ever, 'rise as one with the crowd.' Were the above given scenario the primary one at question, consider that the ideal solution involves rising as one with the crowd at a Hitler rally, then — and only then — reflecting upon the sensation having truly experienced and understood it. The only other options are to shut oneself off from properly experiencing a way of being in the world, or in other words to shut oneself off from part of the world entirely.
Quote from: p205We must position ourselves so that we can condemn an act like this even if we find ourselves in a crowd drawn to applaud it at the time.
Quote from: p208"My own eyes know because my own hands have felt, but i cannot teach an outsider, the difference between ash that is "tough as whipcord," and ash that is "frow as a carrot."
Quote from: p209The skilled craftsman does not decide to treat the ash as if it were "frow as a carrot," . . . The task of the craftsman is not to generate the meaning, but rather to cultivate in himself the skill for discerning the meanings that are already there.
Quote from: p209For the master of wood, each piece he works with, and therefore more generally each woodworking situation in which he finds himself, is unique . . .
Quote from: p210. . . the uniqueness of each situation gives a sacred dimension to the craftsmanship. . . . each piece of wood is distinct, has its own personality. . . the woodworker has an intimate relationship with the wood . . . Its subtle virtues call out to be cultivated and cared for. . . .
But it is not just the wood alone, as if it sprang fully cut and dried into his workshop. The wood has a place of origin, too, so the master becomes familiar with the local soil, the terrain, and the sources of water that nourish the trees. He comes to know intimately the weather and the seasons, since they change the way the trees will respond to his saw. . . .
Quote from: p212Meta-poiesis, as one might call it, . . . the higher-order skill of recognizing when to rise up as one with the ecstatic crowd and when to turn heel and walk rapidly away.
Quote from: p213To the extent that technology strips away the need for skill, it strips away the possibility of meaning as well. To have a skill is to know what counts or is worthwhile in a certain domain. Skills reveal meaningful differences to us and cultivate in us a sense of responsibility to bring these out at their best. To the extent that it takes away the need for skill, technology flattens out human life.
Quote from: p213[Unskilled automatic work may produce worse results.] Even worse than losing quality, however, is losing the skill for telling the difference. As we lose our knowledge of craft, the world looks increasingly devoid of distinctions of worth.
I shall take this quote out of context:
Quote from: p215. . . landmarks, street signs, wind direction, the height of the sun, the stars—all . . . meaningful . . .
I love this small list of things that 'the noble art of navigation' may have given birth to reverence of in the past, that the GPS bulldozes.
Quote from: p220A new kind of courage . . . In place of the Kantian courage to resist the madness of crowds, we need the courage to leap in and experience it. . . . Only by having been taken over by the fanatical leader's totalizing rhetoric, and experienced the dangerous and devastating consequences it has, does one learn to discriminate between leaders worth following and those upon whom one must turn one's back.
Quote from: p221Ours is not a moralistic claim, but a claim about what the gods are calling us to do. It is a natural temptation to ask why one should hear the call, or why one should heed it if it makes itself heard. But these moralizing temptations must be avoided. There is no reason why one ought to hear or respond to the call of the gods: callings just demand to be heard an obeyed. . . . our focus on ourselves as isolated, autonomous agents has had the effect of banishing the gods--that is to say, covering up or blocking our sensitivity to what is sacred in the world. The gods are calling us but we have ceased to listen. . . . like Dante's sinners, we have closed ourselves off by telling ourselves that we ought to be self-sufficient.
Quote from: p222Ask not why the gods have abandoned you, but why you have abandoned the gods.
EPILOGUE
Quote from: p244. . . Said the second to the first, radiant with happiness,
"All things are not shining, but all the shining things are."
a really wonderful epilogue to a wonderful book. lately i have been thinking about returning to try getting again through Deleuze's Difference & Repetition; there is a connection there, but maybe the wrong one... ahgh, do I need to Kinopio this thought?
Let's [AB] it at some point.