Stop and Frisk: A Modest Proposal

May 19, 2012







Anywhere out of the world! A confession.

May 16, 2012


“Tell me, my soul, poor chilly soul, how would you like to live in Lisbon? It must be warm there, and you would be as blissful as a lizard in the sun. It is a city by the sea; they say that it is built of marble…”

My soul does not reply.

Now is the time to spill my bile, or spleen…

When I was done with school, I was resolved to get out of this world, the Western world, and so I went on a trip for six or seven months through south-Asia.  I wanted to get away from the radio, TV, magazines, advertisements, the culture of “achievement,” and all that was part of my upbringing.  Of course, they had it there too, but it was in a language I did not understand, so it was merely interesting.

I was filled with critical theory and radical politics, unconnected with any practical organization or activity, and disgusted with my petty bourgeois, intellectual culture.  It was a good trip.

During the ensuing thirty years, I struggled to fit into this society of ours, and did it quite well, being a conformist at heart.  I spent a lot of time thinking about how to balance ideas and values that I retained with life in a society that seemed to contradict all of them.  Like many of us.

Today, I have never felt so out of tune with the world that faces me (I speak from my very narrow perspective and experience only), and I find that my earlier feelings of disgust are returning.  Perhaps its due to the fact that my children are out of the house, and I am free of many practical obligations and responsibilities that children bring, freeing me to return to my untethered philosophical aloofness.

Google, Facebook, billions and billions of dollars!  Endless news, speculation, and expectation of the next big thing, i.e., the next great business coup that will reap fortunes for some, and produce more…avenues for buying, selling, and consuming goods and our leisure time for the rest of us.  Well, as I have often said, I prefer a world sunk in the intellectual and spiritual doldrums of consumerism to one in which people dream of how to become the Master Race, dressed in smart black uniforms. 

There is no escape from culture, from style, from the structure of our society.  Once you have asked the question of how to escape, you have proven that you are so much a part of it that it is carried inside you always.  And to what would you escape?  To a life that is more … real?  Gimme a break!  Keep calm, and carry on is all you can do.

Here is the complete prose poem, Anywhere Out of the World (N’importe où hors du monde) by Baudelaire, in English and French:

     Life is a hospital where every patient is obsessed by the desire of changing beds. One would like to suffer opposite the stove, another is sure he would get well beside the window.
     It always seems to me that I should be happy anywhere but where I am, and this question of moving is one that I am eternally discussing with my soul.
     “Tell my, my soul, poor chilly soul, how would you like to live in Lisbon? It must be warm there, and you would be as blissful as a lizard in the sun. It is a city by the sea; they say that it is built of marble, and that its inhabitants have such a horror of the vegetable kingdom that they tear up all the trees. You see it is a country after my own heart; a country entirely made of mineral and light, and with liquid to reflect them.”
     My soul does not reply.
     “Since you are so fond of being motionless and watching the pageantry of movement, would you like to live in the beatific land of Holland? Perhaps you could enjoy yourself in that country which you have so long admired in paintings on museum walls. What do you say to Rotterdam, you who love forests of masts, and ships that are moored on the doorsteps of houses?”
     My soul remains silent.
     “Perhaps you would like Batavia better? There, moreover, we should find the wit of Europe wedded to the beauty of the tropics.”
     Not a word. Can my soul be dead?
     “Have you sunk into so deep a stupor that you are happy only in your unhappiness? If that is the case, let us fly to countries that are the counterfeits of Death. I know just the place for us, poor soul. We will pack up our trunks for Torneo. We will go still farther, to the farthest end of the Baltic Sea; still farther from life if possible; we will settle at the Pole. There the sun only obliquely grazes the earth, and the slow alternations of daylight and night abolish variety and increase that other half of nothingness, monotony. There we can take deep baths of darkness, while sometimes for our entertainment, the Aurora Borealis will shoot up its rose-red sheafs like the reflections of the fireworks of hell!”
     At last my soul explodes! “Anywhere! Just so it is out of the world!”

   Cette vie est un hôpital où chaque malade est possédé du désir de changer de lit. Celui-ci voudrait souffrir en face du poêle, et celui-là croit qu’il guérirait à côté de la fenêtre.
   Il me semble que je serais toujours bien là où je ne suis pas, et cette question de déménagement en est une que je discute sans cesse avec mon âme.
   “Dis-moi, mon âme, pauvre âme refroidie, que penserais-tu d’habiter Lisbonne? Il doit y faire chaud, et tu t’y ragaillardirais comme un lézard. Cette ville est au bord de l’eau; on dit qu’elle est bâtie en marbre, et que le peuple y a une telle haine du végétal, qu’il arrache tous les arbres. Voilà un paysage selon ton goût; un paysage fait avec la lumière et le minéral, et le liquide pour les réfléchir!”
   Mon âme ne répond pas.
   “Puisque tu aimes tant le repos, avec le spectacle du mouvement, veux-tu venir habiter la Hollande, cette terre béatifiante? Peut-être te divertiras-tu dans cette contrée dont tu as souvent admiré l’image dans les musées. Que penserais-tu de Rotterdam, toi qui aimes les forêts de mâts, et les navires amarrés au pied des maisons?”
   Mon âme reste muette.
   “Batavia te sourirait peut-être davantage? Nous y trouverions d’ailleurs l’esprit de l’Europe marié à la beauté tropicale.”
   Pas un mot. – Mon âme serait-elle morte?
   “En es-tu donc venue à ce point d’engourdissement que tu ne te plaises que dans ton mal? S’il en est ainsi, fuyons vers les pays qui sont les analogies de la Mort.
   – Je tiens notre affaire, pauvre âme! Nous ferons nos malles pour Tornéo. Allons plus loin encore, à l’extrême bout de la Baltique; encore plus loin de la vie, si c’est possible; installons-nous au pôle. Là le soleil ne frise qu’obliquement la terre, et les lentes alternatives de la lumière et de la nuit suppriment la variété et augmentent la monotonie, cette moitié du néant. Là, nous pourrons prendre de longs bains de ténèbres, cependant que, pour nous divertir, les aurores boréales nous enverront de temps en temps leurs gerbes roses, comme des reflets d’un feu d’artifice de l’Enfer!”
   Enfin, mon âme fait explosion, et sagement elle me crie: “N’importe où! n’importe où! pourvu que ce soit hors de ce monde!”

Getting and spending: Facebooking the Future

May 15, 2012

I just heard a report on the coming IPO of Facebook, possibly at a value of $100 billion.  What could justify such an enormous sum assigned to a social networking site?  It gives a price to earnings ratio of 100 or more.  That is, investors, if they give it that value, are betting that its profits will double every year for many years, so said the financial analysts.

Why would they assume this?  Because Facebook is pitching itself as the ultimate of advertising pitchmen, with a new system that integrates the members of its network, and all the information it holds about them, to create ads based on links between people.  That is, I buy a toaster, FB knows who I know, ads appear at those nodes for toasters and whatnot that I and they like.  We all become elements in the grand scheme of managed buying, selling, consumption.  Am I wrong to find this a bit dispiriting?

Remember the days when the Internet was new, and people were dreaming of how it would create a completely different sort of social network?  It has!  And it’s all based upon sales!

Wordsworth’s poem.

Cranky on Consumerism…

April 29, 2012

crank   (krngk) n.











The Real (Techno) Revolutionary

October 16, 2011

Amid all the media hoopla and weeping over the passing of Steve Jobs, a real revolutionary of the digital age passed quietly from the scene, Dennis Ritchie.  The book he co-authored, known simply as Kernighan and Ritchie brought the C language into the world, and changed computing forever.  As the Times also points out, his development of Unix is at the heart of the current digital world infrastructure and consumer frenzy:

The Unix operating system has similarly had a rich and enduring impact. Its free, open-source variant, Linux, powers many of the world’s data centers, like those at Google and Amazon, and its technology serves as the foundation of operating systems, like Apple’s iOS, in consumer computing devices.

Dennis Ritchie, a true technological and intellectual pioneer.


October 11, 2011

…instead of studying how to make it worth men’s while to buy my baskets  I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them.

Thoreau, Walden

Mentalités: Old and New

September 9, 2011

A relief in the apse of Narbonne Cathedral showing the mouth of Hell filled with damned souls.  To the right, a donkey pulls a cart with more unfortunates destined for the same.  The Virgin surmounts it all.

A storefront on a small street in Narbonne.  Not quite sure what the missing link between shopping and Darwin is, but clearly our view of mankind and its needs and ends has changed a bit.