Re: Racists In This Group


Chess One wrote:
> > how apt it is to talk of physics, and also a unified theory of experience
>
> as if there is not nature and human nature and the nature of quasars,and of
> god, but the nature of what is

A unified theory of existence is OK...A unified practice of existence
is an exotic route to suicide. But the nature of "what is" doesn't
exclude other types of nature...By definition, it would have to include
all or it would be a falsehood, logistically speaking. But defining the
nature of "what is" just about causes me to break out in hives! My head
starts churning ideas like, "The true "what is" must necessarily be
objective...But how can an objective fact be perceived by a subjective
consciousness? And if it CAN'T be perceived by a subjective
consciousness, how is it relevant at all?" I think that universal,
objective truth is more or less the grail to be conceptually grasped
but never actually realized by us lowly mortals.

> yes - i think fowles is something of a last voice for literature these
> days - how conscious generally of these things do you think even
> sophisticates are? i become tired of reading about how some movie kept to
> the script, as if people did not recognise that their interaction with it
> was completely different - and fowles's sense of things allowed the reader
> to be active, whereas almost all movies make them passive in relation to the
> director - and so to director adulations, even fellini and kurosaka did not
> quite escape such cupidity
> >>
Fowles didn't allow the reader to be active; he demanded it. Anyone who
left without participating didn't arrive in the first place. Being
passive to a director's vision is essentially the same as being passive
to an author's vision. You are still a visitor in a world that you
didn't create and won't improve on. There is, however, a qualitative
difference. The chair point was well made. But whether in appreciating
a book or a movie, value is gleaned by interpreting within the context
of one's own experiences, tastes, memories, etc.. That which is
personally relevant is most meaningful (oh, that was about as bright as
saying that fish like water). However, I'm of the opinion that any
audience-perspective activity that dominates the 5 senses too strongly
doesn't leave much for the 6th sense (the imagination) to create. I
think that people often neglect the salient point in regards to
creative appreciation. That point being that anything created says more
about the creator than anything else. Well go back to basic Randian
precepts...What presupposes the ability to create? The desire and
capability to do so - and most importantly, the person possessing those
qualities. So really, any piece of work is nothing more than an
expression, or extension if you will, of the person who created it. But
most people think of irises when they think of Van Gogh, not a
brilliant, crazy man who cut off his ear. Which is, I guess, in the
final analysis, OK. The irises ARE Van Gogh.

> > Yes, I agree. But it does lead to trouble. I'm minded of IQ tests, when
> > I think of trouble of that sort.

> IQ tests as clench for intelligence? Or as formal [if passe these days]
> enculturated evaluations?

Both. IQ tests as an evaluation of intelligence are idiotic to the
point of being nonsensical. For several reasons. IQ tests are generally
geared to test education as much as intellectual capacity. Even IQ
tests that lean more towards testing reasoning ability necessarily
assume a certain amount of education. Human intelligence has yet to be
properly defined. (I am giving very serious thought to making a
lifelong project of that...)Ethnozoologists have gotten about as far as
determining that human minds are different from dog's minds. Faugh!
They're still swinging from the phylogenetic tree! This hardly produces
an incisive comparative analysis of variations in HUMAN intelligence!
Any model, such as chaos theory, that analyzes dynamic processes
necessarily has a high error factor. (The inherent problem of trying to
quantify something with infinite variations with a mechanism of finite
capacity.) At this point, we have no idea of the limits of the human
mind. Hell, we can't even properly delineate the difference between
mind and brain! So we do a linear, A to B comparative analysis which
can only function with static samples. (How do you take a static sample
from a dynamic, unquantified medium??) But to pursue any sort of
accuracy, if only of a statistical nature, the samples must be finite,
i.e. static. And the "samples" that go into the equation are hardly
representative of the full gamut of possibilities. How do we know when
we've bottomed or topped out? How do you define a scale against which
to measure without a fully representative sample? (Can you say
ARBITRARILY???) The human animal seems to learn most from dissection
(and pigeonholing)...Unfortunately, the parts are rarely the sum of the
whole.

As encultured evaluations, IQ tests strike me as disturbing. The
conspiracy theorist side of me (and my paranoic multiple, Kate 3) is of
the opinion that more sophisticated IQ tests will lead to pigeonholing
according to levels of ability... A REAL paranoic could spin that into
the possibilities of eugenics and a return to red communism!

> I don't suppose there is anyone out there who would like to come to vermont
> in mid winter and sort books in the 'stacks' of our house? food is good or
> even very good. I couldn't find that title today, but found another fowles;
> 'wormholes' which might be more available and you have prob seen, sub title
> is 'essays and occasional writings' edited Jan Relf , copyright 1998 JF [400
> pages] - just before he died
>
I would. But I would want to keep anything that I saw that appealed to
me :-) I don't know that I have seen that one...I haven't read it. I've
actually read very little John Fowles. I really only remember "The
Magus" clearly because it was the first that I read and my favorite. I
picked that up when I was 16 at my father's recommendation and I've
read it to tatters since. I will certainly keep the title in mind.

> the title i first mentioned may be impossible to get since, who would read
> it? :) so i will continue to search and if you can't get an amazon copy at
> less than $100 i will send you this copy

I would :-) I'll look. But if it's that expensive, it will have to wait
'cuz I'm laboring under tuition payments for the next 3 months. Thank
you very much for the thought!

> he lived in south devon most of his adult life, and north cornwall a bit
>
> yes magus sort of shocked people, and French L Woman was an homage to
> Victorian women who tried to be women, god knows how, but about a survivor
> of that experiment. another experiment was that back and forth in time - a
> poignant one!

A modern writer couldn't get away with that now - the feminazis would
lynch him, or at the very least protest and boycott his work.:P The
rest of the story would be missed.
>
> my favorite of all fowles is a novella, 'ebony tower'

What collection is that in?

Best,

Kate

.

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