Exploding Orchids

Did I read it or am I making it up? Are there such things as exploding orchids or sentences and book titles which looked at a certain way give a different reading, one antithetical to the probably meant. Today I saw in the book shop The Subjugation of Women by John Stuart Mill. For a moment I wondered if there were any useful tips in it. Probably not. If his companion Harriet Taylor had written a book called The Subjugation of Men now that would be a manual like the one written along the lines of dog training which was a hit a few years ago.
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A few days ago John Fletcher entitled a blog post:
On Opposing Monstrous or Irrational Beliefs in Liberal Democracy in philpercs.com
I rejected the idea that belief in Liberal Democracy was monstrous or irrational. Fletcher though is working up to declaring war on those resistant to the full spectrum liberal program. What that war would entail I await with interest to find out. I have a certain sinking feeling that the norms of Liberal Democracy will be set aside for the greater good.

Christina's Noble Suffering

I think the argument from evil needs to be balanced by an argument from good. Christina Noble though horribly abused by a care system run by a religious order turned her pain into the energy behind her goal of rescuing abused and abandoned children in Vietnam and elsewhere. The film last night on RTE was about this. She was aged 10 when her mother died and she and her 2 sisters and a brother were all dispatched to separate orphanages. Her brother Sean ended up in the infamous Letterfrack reformatory. At a certain point he discovered that his sister Christina was in a school in Clifden which is nearby. He managed to get there and knocked to enquire about her only to be told that she had died the previous year.

In moments of low comedy which are inseparable from Irish productions Christina was shown ranting outside The National Centre for Excellence in Furniture Design and Technology. which the defunct reformatory at Letterfrack has been for 20 years at least. Such was the vile feng shui of the place that it will always be what it was for her. There was also an meeting with a Joycean revenant The Citizen in a public house in Dublin. Plus ca change yiz ‘ll geh.

The reality show reunion of the family in Austin Texas was awkward. Some things are too real for reality shows. They had not met as a unit for 50 years.

RTE player : In a House that Ceased to Be.house

I can't go on

There was a time when ‘I’ve started so I’ll finish’ was my motto with books but now I recognise that I won’t have to pass an exam on this; it’s not Henry Esmond. Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain put years on me. I felt chained by the ankle to a Guardian editorial, it would be ok. when we got to the salt mines. Humourless bien pensant worthiness. I left her at Chap. II smiling bravely. “Just popping out for a minute, shan't be long”.

Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow was another book that I abandoned in the bush. It’s as though Bellow set himself a task of writing about something he knew nothing about on the basis of some ancient National Geographics. A lot of bellowing. Herzog was a similar demented savant but didn’t have to carry the novel on his own. I enjoyed that.

Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis became a hymn to science, a vapour that refused to condense. It was episodic and somewhat like an engine with more gears than are feasible. Let’s go back to Meridian.There was a nicer sort of evil there and you knew who to hate. It was a small town but it contained the world.

I’m not sure about The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand. There is the sense that all those characters were at college with Menand’s great great grandfather and that their collective enlightenment was to result in Homo Menandis. My pause at page 179 may be a reculer pour mieux sauter or baulking. Life!

Coleridge on Shakspeare and Milton

May 12, 1830:
Shakspeare is the Spinoistic deity - an omniscient creativeness. Milton is the deity of prescience; he stands ab extra, and drives a fiery chariot and four, making the horses feel the iron curb which holds them in. Shakspeare’s poetry is characterless; that is, it does not reflect the individual Shakspeare; but John Milton himself is in every line of the Paradise Lost. Shakspeare’s rhymed verses are excessively condensed, - epigrams with the point everywhere; but in his blank dramatic verse he is diffused, with a linked sweetness long drawn out. No one can understand Shakspeare’s superiority fully until he has ascertained, by comparison. all that which he possessed in common with several other great dramatists of his age, and has then calculated the surplus which is entirely Shakspeare’s own. His rhythm is so perfect, that you may be almost sure that you do not understand the real force of a line, if it dows not run well as you read it. The necessary mental pause after every hemstich or imperfect line is always equal to the time that would have been taken in readin the complete verse.

(ftom Table Talk)

Unleashing the Rolling Thunder of the Liberal Agenda (whilst ironing your underwear).

John Fletcher's leisurely development of his ideas on philpercs.commonstrous
shows up the hidden assumptions that emanate from a political culture that is based on the barely democratic majoritarian (first past the post) electoral system. If in the British or American system you won by a majority of 62% to 38% as in the Irish same sex marriage referendum you would now be considering the possibility of unleashing the rolling thunder of the liberal agenda. Some enthusiasts at CenCom ie. The Irish Times, proposed just that. Let's tackle the 8th.Amendment (abortion ban) was the rallying cry. However there is a difference between a measure sold as a cost free feel good vote for Stephen Fry and famous nice people and abortion. Not feel good. No. Wise heads realise that 38% in a proportional representation system is a lot of orphans looking for a good home. Why they might pull in a few final seats in 5 seater constituencies. It is also recognised that a mere 13% shift could have yielded a different result even with all the media, all the political parties, academics, the great and the good, and the famous nice people on the same side. Fianna Fail cute hoors and the prudent burghers of Fine Gael were busy ironing their underwear for the campaign.

John Fletcher feels that the elders of the Church of Reason have spoken and there's an end to't. I myself have never felt that belief in liberal democracy was monstrous or irrational. I am firmly committed to that position and nothing that John can say will sway me from it.

Pirsig Vs McKeon

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is after all a novel. There are biographical elements in it but Pirsig is not restrained by a correspondence theory of truth. Never mind the truth feel the quality! By the power invested in the internet certain of his central stances are brought into question. I learnt that although he had lots of E.C.T. and his short term memory was affected his long term memory remained intact mostly. Therefore the basic error of regarding what he calls Aristotelian substance and form as a dualism set against ‘Eastern’ non -dualism cannot be accounted for by mental fog. It may be that intelligence measured as a capacity for organising and retaining vast quantities of information is unsuited to true philosophical understanding. Being a bit stupid and puzzled by everyday assumptions is more adapted to that goal. Pirsig’s rejection of Advaita Vedanta on the basis of rigorist mayavada was hasty. The ironic thing is that a conflation of the aporetic aspects of Aristotelian and Advaitic philosophy might, I believe, be more fruitful for an understanding of the problem of Quality. Add in a soupçon of Maritain’s development of connaturality in Degrees of Knowledge and the mystic broth is just right.

Be that as it may and I will come round to it in time, I also found out that our hero’s nemesis, the Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Methods at Chicago University was Richard McKeon. Was he fair to him? In trying to discover that I read in some of his essays on Rhetoric. That was his specialisation and he knew everything about it, in several languages yet his powers of communication were limited even by academic standards. He is stupefyingly dull. As I read I thought to myself ' he can’t go on with this level of abstract information, soon he will offer examples of how it might work in living discourse’. The similarity of the mental apparatus of McKeon and Pirsig may be the key to their antipathy. I find the case of McKeon dispiriting , the early effort in attaining mastery of his subject stultified by the later failure to attain its objective.

Then there was the Great Books program, an enthusiasm of his of which I am the beneficiary having bought a lot of them very cheaply in perfect condition, never cracked, never ‘pounded’, withal a beacon to guide one through the fog of the inconscient.

Homo Habilis: Fettling the Mortice Chisel

If, like me, your grinder is the basic sort with a flimsy fixed rest you may find it very difficult to produce a perfectly square smooth bevel on your chisels. They will be fine for the average work of paring if the edge is honed. For mortice chisels however that are designed to be self-jigging anything less that absolutely square will cause twisting and leading and the horrible leaning mortice that is wider than the chisel. My solution may sound like a counsel of despair. File your bevel. In a couple of minutes you will get a perfectly square even slope right to the tip. Raise the tip on the oil stone to create a slight secondary bevel. Use a straight lath clamped to the side of your stile to sight your chisel. Chop. No steering required.