The Faith of a Heretic

The issue of finding the manpower, time and resources to catalog documents was brought up in the readings as a hurdle to overcome. A solution to cataloging the influx of data may not be found in librarians, or other professionals, but instead in gamers and voluntary user collaboration. Take the GWAP/ESP game, pet project of computer scientist Luis von Ahn, a simple multiplayer experience in which players have to describe an image using metadata (descriptors) while also matching what the other player picks. This game is behind the recent vast improvement in Google Image Search queries (which, as you may have noticed, now allows you to do all sorts of advanced searches), as the logoi derived from the game play has been imported into the search engine. The task of cataloging millions of images based on verbose descriptors would have proved impossible for a professional team, not to mention economically impractical. Yet, give the users of the internet a fun game where they have to guess what other people are thinking in describing an image, and you can catalog vast amounts of information for free.

In the web 2.0 the administrator takes a horizontally creative rather than vertically supervisory role – it is fundamentally different than the old system, in which top down procedures and content-creation dominates. So yes, old traditions should be abandoned, they have no place in this new environment. The user should be able to interact in order to have a rich user experience, customizing and creating content at will. The archivist/librarian can help maintain the systems that facilitate this collaborative process, as well as ensure that no out of place or unwholesome content pops up.

When the user feels he/she is contributing something or engaging in an experience, traffic increases. When the user visits a sterile and uninteractive website, traffic stagnates. And by interactive I do not mean the web 1.0 notion of “interactivity” – aka gaudy “tours” and games, but multi-user collaborative proccesses. Twitter/flickr/wiki/blogs etc.

With the ocean, too many sharks and one too many Cthulhu, but in this instance I refer to the HBO show and spiritual successor to Band of Brothers.

No matter how much I try to like this show, to feel the same sort of rich experience I had while watching it’s superior forefather, I simply cannot. There is a critical flaw. While some movies and shows get attacked for too much exposition, the Pacific has scant, and the result are a cast of characters whose names and lives are unknown to the viewer. It doesn’t help matters that a dizzying cast of supporting characters enter into the fray during one episode and are gone the next, blurring the line between who the viewer should care about and who is simply there for foil and detail.

Ultimately, as a viewer I don’t identify or care about the main characters, and I can’t say that this is a misunderstanding or prejudice on my part. The characters of Band of Brothers, and perhaps the actors as well (due to bootcamp) developed a thick camaraderie on screen, and I can’t say the same of the Pacific. The acting is adequate, I suppose, but the characters seem to be isolated figures moving through a video game world, without any real consequence or connection to the other characters around them. When one character’s brother dies at Guadalcanal its astonishing how little both the viewer and the brother appear to care, and little emotion or seriousness is conveyed on screen. I miss Band of Brother’s palpable serious undertone and tense mortality.

Even the action scenes leave something to be desired. Since you don’t particularly care about or know anything of the characters on screen, they become flashy and confusing affairs, where yelling marines cut down the Japanese in a series of seemingly disconnected and incongruous actions.

And sex scenes (EP 3)? Why does the Pacific need sex scenes? And graphic ones at that. I am a firm believer that graphic sex scenes belong in one genre: pornography. Why? The manner in which one has sex rarely adds to character or plot development. There are a few exceptions, Bad Lieutenant (the original, not the rubbish sequel) comes to mind, but in the vast majority of films sex scenes are simply a means for which to pander to the base cravings and lowest common denominator of the viewer ship. These scenes imply that the viewer is too stupid to realize what is happening once a naked woman enters the bed of a marine.

Ultimately the show does not live up to the standards its predecessor set, and while I continue to watch it, I only do in hope that it will capture a bit of the essence of that former series.

Screenshots from an outlandish couple of Call of Cthulhu sessions, played online using Fantasy Grounds 2:

My character is the deranged Harald Alanbrooke – a WW1 veteran who was tormented by supernatural evils in his childhood.

Ultimately I believe this project is outside the scope of private enterprise, necessitating governmental oversight. States must offer the resources and/or create policy which mandates the universal access of archives. Whether this comes in the form of state funding on grant or a public project, I see little impetus to create a universal database of archives in the private sector.

I am an advocate for the establishment of national or global, redundant archives databases. As Conway (2000) demonstrated, digital media is volatile and impermanent. The risk of important digital archives vanishing due to benign neglect is immediate and endemic. One need look no further than the NASA digital archives – a vast number of digital records are useless now because they were not copied to redundant sites. Accordingly the magnetic tapes degraded and are paperweights now.

Concerning those who are not “jacked” in I offer little comfort – once a paradigm shifts those who do not follow it are often lost in translation. Adapt or perish, for there is no turning back. The digital divide will be a faint memory within a generation, at least in the Western world.

This is my therapy
You breathe life into me
My only sanity
Within these walls is where I’m free

Square peg, round hole
Faces come and faces go
There is so little cast in stone
Regarding life, luck, loss, love
But there is one thing that I know for sure

These are the only crowded rooms
Because of these days I’ll never have nothing at all
Because of these times there’s only so far I can fall
There will always be a place, there will be a crowded room
Where I’m not all alone

The years have come and multiplied
So much of me has been washed out with the tide
Still there’s nowhere else
That I’d rather be
Drawn in like a moth to a flame
Without these days I’d have gone insane
So many hearts pinned to so many sleeves
Within these blessed walls
You have set me free

There is no mistake, that I’m not free to make
All because of six strings stretched across a board

—-

Bane’s song “My Therapy” speaks to something I have been thinking of and dwelling on lately: I am much happier when I have the chance to engage in dialectic on a regular basis. Training enables survival without it, because we must remind ourselves that we are not in control of the happenings of the world, and to what it avails us. Accordingly, one may temper all things. Regardless of this fact, I must confess that I feel best, most refreshed, most passionate about life, when I am able to exchange words with other virtuous and wise individuals.

This is where I feel “sane” and finally am able to lower my defenses and relax. I feel as if I am in good company when we discuss: I am drawn to it like a moth to a flame, to mime Bane. Epictetus and Musonius were not the only ones instructing during dialog. I operate best when there is a room I can go into and exchange arguments for the good life. This injects a vigor for life into me. I cannot begin to express my gratitude to my teachers who provided a place for this to develop in prior years.

I can say that I honestly am in love with wisdom. This is the desired condition of a philosopher, but it is difficult to keep the awe for life to oneself. That ability to share and to hear is absent in my life since the end of my undergraduate education, and without an outlet to speak of things worth speaking about, I draw a bit madder per day. Survival mode is constant as I am surrounded by viciousness, boorishness and indecency, with no holy place to unroll the scrolls of Vergil or Homer. Out here, I am the last Roman. At least in the university, I could consider a few professors brothers and sisters.

But I don’t want this to be a swan song, or lament. I try to simply make order of disorder. In some ways this post is a dedication and tribute to my teachers who offered a place for dialectic throughout my life.

Catherine Pentola – My first philosopher teacher. Her method was extremely personal and each class began with Socratic questions and often the meditation on a quote or saying. In her classroom I discovered my love of dialectic. Although prior I had been quite a skilled sophist, I became a philosopher by the end of her instruction. I neglected visiting my high school, even after she summoned me some years ago.

Donald Gilzinger at SCCC – Approached literature as philosophy, delving deeply into the moral implications of character and plot. His soft spoken, courteous and kindly manner was an immediate aid to learning, and few disrespected him. His lectures had a sort of threatening, shocking immediacy, and he was able to shoot a gaze which penetrated the superficial exteriors of students and forced them to consider the fundamental questions of life.

Lars Hedstrom at SCCC – Approached the good life from a different direction – not a study of the classical works, but a study of our lives. At key points he would skillfully weave the opinions of great men into the discussions, but never as an “assignment” but as an earnest guide for introspection. His utter disdain for the machinery inhibiting real learning and the good life was inspiring, and his expedience and fortitude were impeccable models for emulation. He sought to make friendships, real friendships, with all of his students, and to see to the establishment of friendships amongst them by creating an environment of no judgment or censor. The class was organic, and where it went was up to the students; a true visit to the school of Musonius or Socrates. Many of the classes ended with tears by all involved, as the deepest personal flaws were exposed, examined and confronted by a fellowship of virtue. Good times.

Marc Ricciardi at SJC – A Christian warrior of the greatest caliber, Marc speaks with great clarity and power of voice, urging his students to imitate the classical heroes, whether they be biblical or pagan. His speech and method is focused on unabashed raw honesty and a character of straight, moral living. His lectures and the conversations deriving from them were uplifting and life changing. He was utterly obsessed with the good life even in the face of disease and misfortune.

Ed Emmer at SJC – A living embodiment of the Cynic school (although he would probably adamantly refuse to be labeled), Emmer started every lecture with a scathing questioning of the ignorant dispositions of his students. Most students rolled their eyes and tuned out, but under the beautifully blunt satirical vitriol were gleaming gems of wisdom. His critique of modernism is visionary and mind blowing.

Probably others, but these few pop out in my mind. My intent was not to make a complete list of those who fostered such an environment but to illustrate the sort of environment to which  I speak. I feel like an alien most of the time, but I’m not alone, again miming Bane, in those rooms.

I pledge my head to clearer thinking,
my heart to greater loyalty,
my hands to larger service
and my health to better living,
for my club, my community, my country, and my world.

“It is not a fair match, that, between a pretty wench and a young beginner in philosophy” (III.12)

“Wait, allow me to see who you are and whence you come (just as the night-watch say, ‘Show me your tokens’). – that is, show me your travel papers, your passport…”

“And so now I am your teacher, and you are being taught in my school. And my purpose is this – to make of you a perfect work, secure against restraint, compulsion, and hindrance, free, prosperous, happy, looking to God in everything both small and great; and you are here with the purpose of learning and practicing all this… Why, then, do you not finish the work? Tell me the reason. … The fault lies either in me, or in you, or, what is nearer the truth, in us both. What then? Would you like to have us at last begin to introduce here a purpose such as I have described? Let us let bygones be bygones. Only let us begin, and, take my word for it, you shall see.” (II.19)

Would we Americans have such a strong sense of patriotism and national superiority without mass mediums like radio and television?

Of course the typical American would not have the assumptions about the nature of the world if not for television and radio; such is a truism. It goes back to Plato’s constitution (Republic) and the importance of carefully selecting what unwise people are exposed to in order to save them from themselves. In our culture this sort of thing is considered undemocratic – but democracy fails if not informed by a healthy, wise populace. This is not to say that Americans would not have other assumptions without the influence of television, but they would not have unified, powerful delusions a la Leo Strauss. These latter sorts of delusions fuel the fires of absurd slaughter.

As the professor brought up in this week’s talking points- the Muslim influence on European academia is typically understated in our studies. I find this to be a compelling topic to discuss. I brought up last week the importance of Pagan works in monasteries and how they served as an intellectual foundation for the monks and the subsequent European academic culture. Yet last week I did not mention how the monks acquired these said works, and now I set out to do so. Following the collapse of the Roman empire in the west, much of the literary wealth was destroyed or relocated to the eastern portion of the Empire, centered at Constantinople (modern day Istanbul), leaving the west only a small remnant intellectual wealth. What follows is a simple history of the period.

A growing threat in the east, the Sassanid Persians (stretching to modern Iran to Iraq) began to clash with the east Romans, weakening both states. The peoples from the Arabian Peninsula (recently unified by infant Islam) seized upon this opportunity to mass and strike into Mesopotamia, occupying the lands previously held by the Persians. From the 6th to 10th centuries CE the Arabs sporadically warred with the east Romans, but also traded with them. Cultural diffusion took place, and the Abbasid domain became a place for contemplation and expansion of the Pagan works acquired by sword or silver from Byzantium. While the east Romans were effective librarians, they were not innovators intellectually, considering the Pagan works and philosophy in general to be detrimental to faithful Christian practice. Accordingly the Arabs became the intellectual power of the time, and revitalized the old Pagan sciences and philosophies, creating a cosmopolitan kingdom centered at Baghdad (The city of peace). During this period algebra and serious astronomy were created by Arabs, and their many commentaries on Pagan works, especially Plato and Aristotle, helped to preserve the past age’s wisdom and knowledge. The Abbasids and their successors were prolific copiers of ancient works, and created vast and elaborate libraries to house them. As a side note, their greatest library, the one at Baghdad, was destroyed by Mongols in 1258.

Social turmoil in Europe instigated the crusades by the end of the 11th century CE – and so Europe plundered the Levant. During the fourth crusade the undisciplined European forces even plundered Constantinople on the way to the region, looting manuscripts and other valuable works. These campaigns introduced into Europe the ancient Pagan works as a form of plunder and began the slow process of intellectual restoration leading up to the Renaissance.