Achieving a human understanding

A quote from Marie Curie referenced by Felipe Fernàndez-Armesto in his book "A Foot in the River":

"There is nothing to be feared. It is only to be understood.

Another by Isaiah Berlin who explains why we should accept and adopt pluralism:

There is a plurality of values, which men can and do seek...And the difference it makes is that if a man pursues one of these values, I, who do not, am able to understand why he pursues it or what it would be like, in his circumstances, for me to be induced to pursue it. Hence the possibility of human understanding."

Felipe Fernàndez-Armesto goes on:

This position differs from cultural relativism. It does not say, for instance, that all cultures can be accommodated. One might exclude Nazism, say, or cannibalism. It leaves open the possibility of peaceful argument about which culture, if any, is best. It claims, in Berlin's words, 'that the multitude values are objective, part of the essence of humanity rather than arbitrary creations of men's subjective fancies'."

(All quotes are from Chapter 8, "Towards the planet of apes")

See also this old blog post that is relevant to this topic.

Acting on climate change?

The following is a quote from Sherwood Rowland he made after receiving his noble prize in 1995:

"What’s the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions, if in the end, all we’re willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true?"

Sherwood Rowland

Poem by William F. O'Brien

Better To Try And Fail Than Never To Try At All

Some say risk nothing, try only for the sure thing,
Others say nothing gambled nothing gained,
Go all out for your dream.
Life can be lived either way, but for me,
I'd rather try and fail, than never try at all, you see.

Some say "Don't ever fall in love,
Play the game of life wide open,
Burn your candle at both ends."
But I say "No! It's better to have loved and lost,
Than never to have loved at all, my friend."

When many moons have gone by,
And you are alone with your dreams of yesteryear,
All your memories will bring you cheer.
You'll be satisfied, succeed or fail, win or lose,
Knowing the right path you did choose.

William F. O'Brien

A quote from Horace

Coelum, non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt.

Courir au-delà des mers, c'est changer de climat, mais non changer de cœur.

Those who hurry cross the sea change their sky but not their soul or state of mind.

Horace, Epistulae I, 11 v. 27.

Vagabond

"Le Vagabond ne regrettait plus rien. Il ne désirait que l'infinie durée de ce qui était."

"La tête appuyée sur son bras replié, les membres las, il s'abandonnait à la douceur infinie de s'endormir seul, inconnu parmi les hommes simples et rudes, à même la terre, la bonne terre berceuse, en un coin de désert qui n'avait pas de nom et où il ne reviendrait jamais"

Isabelle Eberhardt, Le Vagabond, in Amours nomades.

"Strophes pour se souvenir" de Louis Aragon

Vous n'avez réclamé la gloire ni les larmes
Ni l'orgue, ni la prière aux agonisants
Onze ans déjà, que cela passe vite onze ans
Vous vous étiez servi simplement de vos armes
La mort n'éblouit pas les yeux des partisans.

Vous aviez vos portraits sur les murs de nos villes
Noirs de barbe et de nuit, hirsutes, menaçants
L'affiche qui semblait une tache de sang
Parce qu'à prononcer vos noms sont difficiles
Y cherchait un effet de peur sur les passants.

Nul ne semblait vous voir Français de préférence
Les gens allaient sans yeux pour vous le jour durant
Mais à l'heure du couvre-feu des doigts errants
Avaient écrit sous vos photos " Morts pour la France"
Et les mornes matins en étaient différents.

Tout avait la couleur uniforme du givre
À la fin février pour vos derniers moments
Et c'est alors que l'un de vous dit calmement:
"Bonheur à tous, bonheur à ceux qui vont survivre
Je meurs sans haine en moi pour le peuple allemand."

"Adieu la peine et le plaisir. Adieu les roses
Adieu la vie. Adieu la lumière et le vent
Marie-toi, sois heureuse et pense à moi souvent
Toi qui vas demeurer dans la beauté des choses
Quand tout sera fini plus tard en Erevan."

"Un grand soleil d'hiver éclaire la colline
Que la nature est belle et que le coeur me fend
La justice viendra sur nos pas triomphants
Ma Mélinée, ô mon amour, mon orpheline
Et je te dis de vivre et d'avoir un enfant."

Ils étaient vingt et trois quand les fusils fleurirent
Vingt et trois qui donnaient le coeur avant le temps
Vingt et trois étrangers et nos frères pourtant
Vingt et trois amoureux de vivre à en mourir
Vingt et trois qui criaient "la France!" en s'abattant.

En souvenir du Groupe Manouchian.

Victor Hugo and the death penalty

"Que dit la loi ? « Tu ne tueras pas ». Comment le dit-elle ? En tuant !"

"You hold capital punishment up as an example. Why? Because of what it teaches. And just what is it that you wish to teach by means of this example? That thou shalt not kill. And how do you teach that "thou shalt not kill"? By killing."

Victor Hugo

A pragmatic, positive and integrated use of the ideas of nonlinear science and complex systems

Manuel De Landa closes his book, A thousand years of nonlinear history, with a reflection on the pragmatic use of the ideas borrowed from nonlinear science and the science of complex systems. The two main forces that De Landa has been recognized throughout his book are homogenization and heterogenization. The first force assures a pyramidal or stratified construction with a hierarchy and a strong commandment, the second a flat or destratified organization or meshwork with no central control.

De Landa recognizes that linear science, adapted to describe hierarchic and stratified systems, have dominated the western thought for the last three centuries and thus limited our view of the world. On the other hand, the actual homogenization of the world, in terms of economies or ecology and occuring over many scales, have rendered the world more linear:

"[A]s our industrial, medical and educational systems became routinized, as they grew and began to profit from economies of scale, linear equations accumulated in physical sciences and equilibrium theories flourished in the social sciences. In a sense, even though the world is inherently nonlinear and far from equilibrium , its homogenization meant that those areas that have been made uniform began behaving objectively as linear equilibrium structures, with predictable and controllable properties." Manuel De Landa, A thousand years of nonlinear history, Conclusion and speculations.

Still, the nonlinear contribution is important and indeed necessary to avoid the world and Earth to become a dead, predictable and uncreative body. So what should we do? First, De Landa cautions not to adopt the extremist view of destroying the homogeneous part of the system. As Deleuze and Guattari wrote:

"If you free [the system] with too violent an action, if you blow apart the strata without taking precautions, then instead of drawing the plane you will be killed, plunged into a black hole, or even dragged into catastrophe. Staying stratified -organized, signified, subjected-, is not the worst that can happen; the worst that can happen is if you throw the strata into demented or suicidal collapse, which brings them back down on us heavier than ever." Deleuze and Guattari, A thousand plateaus, pp 160-161, cited in A thousand years of nonlinear history, Conclusion and speculations.

What a balanced and moderate view from post-modernists such as Deleuze and Guattari that are supposed to be, according to what I heard about them, more nihilist that positivist! It reminds me of Camus who wrote in, L'homme rebel, that revolutions were not necessary. Revolutions are actually counter-productive. They may do more harm than good and only by changing the world small steps at a time, can we achieve the ideal dreamed. De Landa, Deleuze and Guattari expand that idea acknowledging the complexity and nonlinearity of the system:

"This is how it should be done: lodge yourself on a stratum, experiment with the opportunities it offers, find an advantageous place on it, find potential movements of deterritorialization, possible lines of flight, experience them, produce flow conjunctions here and there, try out continuum of intensities segment by segment, have a small plot of new land at all times." Deleuze and Guattari, A thousand plateaus, pp 160-161, cited in A thousand years of nonlinear history, Conclusion and speculations.

De Landa explains that

[a]ll these precautions are necessary in a world that does not possess a ladder of progress, or a drive toward increased perfection, or a promised land, or even a socialist pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Moreover, these warnings derive from a recognition that our world is governed not only by nonlinear dynamics, which makes detailed prediction and control impossible, but also by nonlinear combinatorics, which implies that the number of possible mixtures of meshwork and hierarchy, of command and market, of centralization and decentralization, are immense and that we simply cannot predict the emergent properties of these myriad combinations will be." in A thousand years of nonlinear history, Conclusion and speculations.

De Landa pursues:

"Thus the call for a more experimental attitude toward reality and for an increased awareness of the potential for self-organization inherent in even the humblest forms of matter-energy." in A thousand years of nonlinear history, Conclusion and speculations.

He finishes by emphasizing that this approach does not necessarily mean a hopeless and boring view of life. Far from it:

"It is important, however, not to confuse the need for caution in our exploration of the nonlinear possibilities of (economic, linguistic, biological) reality, and the concomitant abandonment of utopian euphoria, with despair, resentment and nihilism. There is, indeed, a new kind of hope implicit in these new views. After all, many of the most beautiful and inspiring things on our planet may have been created through [partial] destratification. A good example of this may be the emergence of birdsongs: the mouth became destratified when it ceased to be a strictly alimentary organ, caught up in the day-to-day eating of flesh, and began to generate other flows (memes) and structures (songs) where the meshwork element dominated the hierarchical. The emergence of organic life itself, while not representing a more perfect stage of development than rocks, did involve a greater capacity to generate self-consistent aggregates, a surplus of consistency. The human hand may also have involved a destratification, a complete detachment from locomotive functions and a new coupling with the external environment, itself further destratified when the hand began converting pieces of it (rocks, bones, branches) into tools. Thus, despite all the cautionary tales about simplistic calls for anarchic liberation, there is in these theories a positive, even joyful conception of reality. And while these views do indeed invoke the «death of man», it is only the death of «man» of the old «manifest destinies», not the death of humanity and its potential for destratification." in A thousand years of nonlinear history, Conclusion and speculations.

Camus and the philosophy of absurd

Albert Camus develops in his impressive essay Le mythe de Sisyphe his positive view of the situation of Man. He put in perspective the entire existentialist movement, transcends its view and offers an admirable future: Man is condemned like Sisyphe but he is and will be happy in his condemnation.

First, it is an observation, the existentialist observation that Man cannot access the Truth: the world is irrational, relativist, what is true for one may be not for another. But it is also the recognition that Man is nonetheless driven by such Unity of Knowledge. From that confrontation is born the philosophy of absurd:

"[C]e qui est absurde, c'est la confrontation de cet irrationnel et de ce désir éperdu de clarté dont l'appel résonne au plus profond de l'homme."

[Les murs absurdes]

Camus notices, however, that the greatest existentialists failed to pursue their own philosophy and, afraid of their findings, either turned back, consciously or unconsciously, to the religious God they previously eliminated, or looked at this absurdity as a new God. In both cases, they betrayed themselves: they first find that Life has no meaning but finish by giving it a meaning via some artifact.

Camus, instead, thinks that there is no need to such despair:

"[L'homme absurde] reconnaît la lutte, ne méprise pas absolument la raison et admet l'irrationnel."

[Le suicide philosophique]

Or again:

"L'absurde, c'est la raison lucide qui constate ses limites."

[Le suicide philosophique]

Camus considers that Man should look at his fate not only without fear but proudly and live thoroughly and passionately such contradiction and absurdity. He sees the absurdity as an opportunity: instead of keeping oneself blind with illusions, he is fighting, constantly, ceaselessly, the more so knowing that there is no goal to reach. For Camus, the fight, the revolt is the only way of life:

"L'une des seules positions philosophiques cohérentes, c'est ainsi la révolte."

[La liberté absurde]

He seems to join some of the romantic movement who also came to the same conclusion.

What is left is actually a quite positive view of the world, where Man is in charge of his fate:

"Un monde demeure dont l'homme est le seul maître"

[La création sans lendemain],

free of past illusions:

"Non pas la fable divine qui amuse et aveugle, mais le visage, le geste et le drame terrestres où se résument une difficile sagesse et une passion sans lendemain."

[La création sans lendemain]

Camus concludes with the myth of Sisyphus, a man condemned by the Gods in Hell to continually roll up the hill a head-high stone which has to be let it down at the end of each cycle. Although most of us would see it as a punishment, Camus invites to imagine on the contrary the smile of Sisyphus among his time of despair:

"Je laisse Sisyphe au bas de la montagne! On retrouve toujours son fardeau. Mais Sisyphe enseigne la fidélité supérieure qui nie les dieux et soulève les rochers. Lui aussi juge que tout va bien. Cet univers désormais sans maître lui paraît ni stérile ni futile. Chacun des grains de cette pierre, chaque éclat minérale de cette montagne pleine de nuit, à lui seul forme un monde. La lutte elle-même vers les sommets suffit à remplir un coeur d'homme. Il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux."

[Le mythe de Sisyphe]

"I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."

[The myth of Sisyphus]

A salute to the Romantic and Postmodern movements

Although Edward O. Wilson disagrees in general with the ideas of and motivations behind the Romantic and Postmodern movements, here is what he has to say about them:

"As today's celebrants of corybantic Romanticism, they enrich culture. They say to the rest of us: Maybe, just maybe, you are wrong. Their ideas are like sparks from firework explosions that travel away from all directions, bevoid of following energy, soon to wink out in the dimensionless dark. Yet a few will endure long enough to cast light on unexpected subjects. That is one reason to think well of postmodernism, even as it menaces rational thought. Another is the relief it affords those who have chosen not to encumber themselves with a scientific education. Another is the small industry it has created within philosophy and literary studies. Still another, the one that counts the most, is the unyielding critique of traditional scholarship it provides. We will always need postmodernists or their rebellious equivalents. For what better way to strengthen organized knowledge than continually to defend it from hostile forces? John Stuart Mill correctly noted that teacher and learner alike fall asleep at their posts when there is no enemy in the field. And if somehow, against all the evidence, against all reason, the linchpin falls out and everything is reduced to epistemological confusion, we will find the courage to admit that the postmodernists were right, and in the best spirit of the Enlightenment, we will start over again. Because, as the great mathematician David Hilbert once said, capturing so well that part of the human spirit expressed through the Enlightenment, Wir müssen wissen. Wir werden wissen. We must know, we will know."

Edward O. Wilson, Consilience, Chapter 3

The moon and sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham

Some quotations from the wonderfully written The moon and sixpence by Somerset W. Maugham. It is followed by two questions, in need of answer.

"Only the poet or the saint can water an asphalt pavement in the confident anticipation that lilies will reward his labour."

(Chapter XIII)

About beauty:

"'Why should you think that beauty, which is the most precious thing in the world, lies like a stone on the beach for the careless passer-by to pick up idly? Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it. To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiviness and imagination'"

(Chapter XIX)

On the difficulty in expressing oneself and being understood:

"Each one of us is alone in the world. He is shut in a tower of brass, and can communicate with his fellows only by signs, and the signs have no common value, so that their sense is vague and uncertain. We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them. We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemmed to the banalities of the conversation manual. Their brain is seething with ideas, and they can only tell you that the umbrella of the gardener's aunt is in the house."

(Chapter XLII)

Once beauty is reached, it has to be destroyed. Neither the artist, nor anyone else can enjoy it again. And in any case beauty can be kept:

"'I think Strickland knew it was a masterpiece. He had achieved what he wanted. His life was complete. He had made a world and saw that it was good. Then, in pride and contempt, he destroyed it.

(Chapter LVII)

Here are my two questions:

1) Why the title The moon and sixpence?

2) The central character of the book is Charles Strickland and his life is loosely inspired by the life of Paul Gauguin. At least, that is what I read everywhere. The story is told by a narrator using the first person, which we might think is Somerset W. Maugham himself. Everything should just be a fiction: Strickland, Maugham's meetings with Strickland, etc. But strikingly, the first chapter refers in footnotes three different books which supposedly describe the life of Charles Strickland. One reference reads:

A modern artist: notes on the work of Charles Strickland, by Edward Leggatt, A.R.H.A. Martin Secker, 1917.

Is this a real reference? And is Charles Strickland then real as well? I was not able to locate any the books, so I am wondering if I am not just the victim of Maugham's ability to push the fiction to such a realism that he does not hesitate to cross the line and violate the fragile convention that footnotes and references are part of reality and out of the fiction. And the joke might just be on me!

The life of a child, an example to follow

Osho describes the life of a child as a life full of surprises, where everything is new and has to be learned and where on has to be ready to be amazed all the time, opposing the life of the adults, dead locked into their clichés and a priori, stiff and solid, a fortress against any discoveries and new adventures:

"Laissez la vie entrer en vous, soyez de plus en plus ouvert, vulnérable; ressentez davantage, éprouvez davantage. On trouve partout de petites choses étonnantes. Observez un petit enfant. Mettez-le dans le jardin et observez simplement. Vous devriez faire comme lui - merveilleux, émerveillé: courant après le papillon, courant après cette fleur, jouant avec la boue, se roulant dans le sable. Le divin surprend l'enfant de toutes parts.

Si vous pouvez vivre dans l'étonnement, vous serez capable de célébration. Ne vivez pas dans le savoir, vivez dans l'étonnement. Vous ne savez rien. La vie est surprenante; c'est partout une surprise continuelle. Vivez-la comme une surprise, un phénomène imprévisible: chaque instant est neuf." (Osho, Aimer vivre, Chapter 10)

Later on, Osho starts to accuse our societies, via the uncouscious work of the parents, to destroy the curious nature of the child, because, as the parents argue, life is serious and there is not time for fun. For Osho, the true revolution will start when the relationship between the child and his parents will be renewed, a relationship where the parents learn from the innoncence of their child and the child from the wisdom and knowledge of her parents:

"[V]oit-on des mères danser avec leurs enfants, sauter, prendre plaisir à se rouler par terre? Non, les mères sont des personnes sérieuses, les pères sont très sérieux; ils portent le monde entier sur leurs épaules. Mais l'enfant vit dans un monde totalement différent. Vous le forcez à adopter votre attitude triste et misérable face à la vie. Il aurait pu grandir et rester un enfant, il aurait garder cette qualité de surprise, d'étonnement. C'est ce que j'appelle la vraie révolution. Aucune autre révolution n'aidera l'homme; qu'elle soit française, russe ou chinoise, aucune révolution n'aidera l'homme, aucune ne l'a aidé. Fondamentalement, entre parents et enfants, on a conservé le même modèle de fonctionnement et ceci en est la cause. [...] Le lien se trouve quelque part entre les parents et l'enfant; et si ce lien n'est pas modifié, le monde continuera d'avancer dans la même ornière." (Osho, Aimer vivre, Chapter 10)

Adam and Eve, the first revolutionaries

"Mais toutes les cultures, toutes les sociétés veulent l'obéissance. C'est un autre nom pour l'esclavage, pour l'emprisonnement spirituel. Quel mal Adam et Eve ont-ils fait en mangeant le fruit de l'arbre de la connaissance? La sagesse est-elle un pêché? L'ignorance est-elle une vertue? Et Dieu leur a interdit de manger de deux arbres: l'un était celui de la sagesse et l'autre celui de la vie éternelle. Qui a commis un pêché? Adam et Eve ou Dieu? Ni la sagesse, ni l'aspiration à la vie éternelle ne sont quelquechose de mal; elles sont absolument naturelles. C'est la prohibition qui est fausse, et leur désobéissance est parfaitement juste. [Adam et Eve] furent les premiers révolutionnaires du monde, les premiers êtres humains à avoir de la dignité."

Osho, Aimer vivre, Chapter 1

Les "Etrangers" et la Résistance

Les "Etrangers" formaient une bonne part de la Résistance dans le maquis français (Polonais, Italiens, Espagnols, etc) durant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale. Leur "étrangeté" leur a valu parfois d'être sacrifiés vers la fin de la guerre par la Résistance "française"...


"Alors je me souviens que le mot "Etranger" est une des plus belles promesses du monde, une promesse en couleurs, belle comme la Liberté."
Marc Levy, Les Enfants de la Liberté, dernière phrase.