It's strange, as a Christian, to have a deep conviction that China Miéville is definitely getting into the Kingdom ahead of me and to hope that, like George MacDonald, he will want to come help his meat-eating, carbon-burning brother--me--who is still being purified in the depths of hell. This conversation is glorious. China and Richard are simply amazing. Thank you, David, for hosting this absolutely brilliant discussion. I've read (virtually) everything you've published, and this conversation ranks among the best of your works.
Instrumentalisation of humans can be rationally justified when mutual benefits are foreseen on individuals' level. At large, economy also rationalizes the functionality of society to be mathematically organic in a view of reciprocity between numbers and sociological life. This is my primary response to the conversation.
Reductionism of language is supported by democratic sentiments. If not, exemplified manualism could be an endorsement for educated tribes able to employ over-wrought sentences in technical professionalism, which differ very much from beautifully composed thoughts in complexities and subtleness of a mind.
Deteriorations would be found everywhere in anything. Prodigality of flatteries, if pointed out, will turn itself into a fortress of psychological functionality as excessive. Absence of coherence becomes the easiest target by deliberate interpretations. An argumentative stance is described as bellicose and intentional disaccord, thus subject to psycho analysis for a rectification for a harmony. I'm sincerely commenting on the conversation in my paraphrases here.
Intriguing has been, for me, Marxists' romanticism, which seems to be more serious about God by His absence than Christian Marxists' social attitudes according to which instrumentalisation of others would be expediently rationalized and theorized for a creation of an organized community with no wasteful idea. One transcends, in this case, into a realm of self-compliance in a collectively environmental consentement.
I teach Latin to 6th graders so this idea of elitism in prose style and the disaster of American education and the unwillingness of readers to engage with anything challenging resonates with me. Rick Riordan made Greek mythology huge again because he wrote for the widest possible audience and it worked. My side novels are in that same vein but much more dense and serious (and there's a lot of Latin in them, God help me!). My readership is vanishingly small compared to Rick Riordan's, but I do have a readership. I like the idea that I'm filling a niche that Rick Riordan has left available. He's taken a very large number of niches in his empire, but not so far fantasy novels with Archaic Latin as the magic system.
I have a 19-year-old college student who, when I asked a question about the Trojan War, gave a solid summary of The Iliad. I was like, I'm glad young people are reading Homer. She said, oh, she hadn't read Homer, she'd read Madeline Miller. Which is fine—Edith Hamilton taught a lot of kids.
Thank you for this. Your comments on the mystery and sacredness of plant and animal life were particularly interesting to me. Do you have any book recommendations on plant and animal sentience/consciousness?
This pestilent meme logic—or meme language—is irrevocably hindering the average person’s willingness or capacity to settle down and discern complicated or relatively straightforward ideations in the written form.
The ludicrously unimaginative grammar of meme logic is mere mindless repetition without forethought. And when that overtakes the mind, I don’t know what to expect later on down the road.
A lot to chew on with this one. I've greatly enjoyed the more political tone of these conversations - I hope there might be more in this vein in the future. China's roguish grin when he said his recent meditations on metaphysics and materialism have been making him feel a bit like C.S. Lewis upon his conversion ("miserably liberated" were China's words) symbolizes, for me, how genuinely provocative and truly fun this conversation was to listen to. Thank you David.
I might have been unwillingly fallen into a different dimension. My esprit was not fully working around that time at that particular part, I have to confess. Did China say something along a line such as mesmerizingly revealing because he didn't get it? That should be my imagination in liberty from my own counter-predilection toward C.S. Lewis.
I agree. This conversation as a whole is quite something.
Thanks for this! Your voice is tarrying with the shade of Leonard Cohen. Hope your health is not taking a backward step! (2/3 of the way through Roland: exquisite. I will be foisting it on others.)
Allow me please to address here a purely technical issue which I could have brought to Substack site for an assistance. But, asking your kind help would give me an answer in the most proper manner, I thought.
One of your readers liked my comment below, posted on Apr 24 (which begins with "Instrumentalisation of humans can.."), and I received the notification to my account. The fact however does not appear.
This is a small matter. Besides, there might have been a case that the reader, after having read through my comment more carefully to the end, regretted his hasty judgment and retrieved his earlier action by re-clicking on the heart icon, which did not though update the notification on my account. Or, some other technical problems might have been the cause.
Very likely, only few people are concerned about such a thing when it happens to them. However, I would like to draw your attention to my concern, because I have a strong feel of being in a sort of long attestation period as a writer to be recognizable or not as a writer on Substack. All of my writings are orignal, written only by myself with no collaborative operation of any kind. Before appearing more to accumulate conjuration moods too much, this letter-message will end.
In summary, if you check it and ask Substack tech whenever you have a moment to do so, I will appreciate your generous action very much!
(I hope I'm not breaking your community page policy in a possibility of being expelled).
It’s not mysterious, actually. Often someone hits the “like” icon with a finger while scrolling down and then removes it. Substack sends out an instant notice to the author of the comment the moment the icon is activated, but sends out no notice of the retraction. It’s not a technical problem.
Let me please mention a superbly ultra subtile point as minime. I've not been thinking of it since May 2, honestly, but I've been just slightly wondering. Then, finally I got (maybe) it. No mystery, I shouldn't have forgotten 's' at the end of 'conjuration'.
I see. I used to receive all of your posts by email along with community conversations, but I deactivated those features because there seemed to be compatibility issues in my end, which, practically speaking of it, made a drastic slowness on the activity of my email account. So, that deactivation might have been a possible cause, I additionally thought.
Btw, thanks of your attention, the reader came back on his "like" to revive!
Re: an ‘invitation’ to challenge our minds, I’ve always wondered why some folks would subscribe to insulting their own intelligence and accept that they simply cannot (perhaps will not) understand concepts of varying complexity. Maybe I consciously choose to not undertake this study or that, but I try not to default to throwing up my hands and telling myself “this is pure pretension”. Our minds have the impressive capacity to understand, therefore why not make the effort as one is able to
It's strange, as a Christian, to have a deep conviction that China Miéville is definitely getting into the Kingdom ahead of me and to hope that, like George MacDonald, he will want to come help his meat-eating, carbon-burning brother--me--who is still being purified in the depths of hell. This conversation is glorious. China and Richard are simply amazing. Thank you, David, for hosting this absolutely brilliant discussion. I've read (virtually) everything you've published, and this conversation ranks among the best of your works.
Instrumentalisation of humans can be rationally justified when mutual benefits are foreseen on individuals' level. At large, economy also rationalizes the functionality of society to be mathematically organic in a view of reciprocity between numbers and sociological life. This is my primary response to the conversation.
Reductionism of language is supported by democratic sentiments. If not, exemplified manualism could be an endorsement for educated tribes able to employ over-wrought sentences in technical professionalism, which differ very much from beautifully composed thoughts in complexities and subtleness of a mind.
Deteriorations would be found everywhere in anything. Prodigality of flatteries, if pointed out, will turn itself into a fortress of psychological functionality as excessive. Absence of coherence becomes the easiest target by deliberate interpretations. An argumentative stance is described as bellicose and intentional disaccord, thus subject to psycho analysis for a rectification for a harmony. I'm sincerely commenting on the conversation in my paraphrases here.
Intriguing has been, for me, Marxists' romanticism, which seems to be more serious about God by His absence than Christian Marxists' social attitudes according to which instrumentalisation of others would be expediently rationalized and theorized for a creation of an organized community with no wasteful idea. One transcends, in this case, into a realm of self-compliance in a collectively environmental consentement.
I teach Latin to 6th graders so this idea of elitism in prose style and the disaster of American education and the unwillingness of readers to engage with anything challenging resonates with me. Rick Riordan made Greek mythology huge again because he wrote for the widest possible audience and it worked. My side novels are in that same vein but much more dense and serious (and there's a lot of Latin in them, God help me!). My readership is vanishingly small compared to Rick Riordan's, but I do have a readership. I like the idea that I'm filling a niche that Rick Riordan has left available. He's taken a very large number of niches in his empire, but not so far fantasy novels with Archaic Latin as the magic system.
Keep it up. Think of yourself as a St Benedict in genre fiction.
I have a 19-year-old college student who, when I asked a question about the Trojan War, gave a solid summary of The Iliad. I was like, I'm glad young people are reading Homer. She said, oh, she hadn't read Homer, she'd read Madeline Miller. Which is fine—Edith Hamilton taught a lot of kids.
As long as ChatGPT doesn't write the answers for them, it's all good.
Thank you for this. Your comments on the mystery and sacredness of plant and animal life were particularly interesting to me. Do you have any book recommendations on plant and animal sentience/consciousness?
David, you’re hitting the nail on the head here!
This pestilent meme logic—or meme language—is irrevocably hindering the average person’s willingness or capacity to settle down and discern complicated or relatively straightforward ideations in the written form.
The ludicrously unimaginative grammar of meme logic is mere mindless repetition without forethought. And when that overtakes the mind, I don’t know what to expect later on down the road.
I have suspected this very notion for years. Glad to see others express it.
My favorite moment, a line from China:
"Expressing a mystery with care is both re-enchantment and explication."
It’s a good one.
There's nothing wasteful about good conversation.
A lot to chew on with this one. I've greatly enjoyed the more political tone of these conversations - I hope there might be more in this vein in the future. China's roguish grin when he said his recent meditations on metaphysics and materialism have been making him feel a bit like C.S. Lewis upon his conversion ("miserably liberated" were China's words) symbolizes, for me, how genuinely provocative and truly fun this conversation was to listen to. Thank you David.
I might have been unwillingly fallen into a different dimension. My esprit was not fully working around that time at that particular part, I have to confess. Did China say something along a line such as mesmerizingly revealing because he didn't get it? That should be my imagination in liberty from my own counter-predilection toward C.S. Lewis.
I agree. This conversation as a whole is quite something.
Thanks for this! Your voice is tarrying with the shade of Leonard Cohen. Hope your health is not taking a backward step! (2/3 of the way through Roland: exquisite. I will be foisting it on others.)
Great stuff. Would love some recommendations for literature on animal cognition too
Carl Safina's books Beyond Words and Becoming Wild are good, sympathetic observational books. Not much theory. But I'd be suspicious of that anyway.
Dr. Hart,
Allow me please to address here a purely technical issue which I could have brought to Substack site for an assistance. But, asking your kind help would give me an answer in the most proper manner, I thought.
One of your readers liked my comment below, posted on Apr 24 (which begins with "Instrumentalisation of humans can.."), and I received the notification to my account. The fact however does not appear.
This is a small matter. Besides, there might have been a case that the reader, after having read through my comment more carefully to the end, regretted his hasty judgment and retrieved his earlier action by re-clicking on the heart icon, which did not though update the notification on my account. Or, some other technical problems might have been the cause.
Very likely, only few people are concerned about such a thing when it happens to them. However, I would like to draw your attention to my concern, because I have a strong feel of being in a sort of long attestation period as a writer to be recognizable or not as a writer on Substack. All of my writings are orignal, written only by myself with no collaborative operation of any kind. Before appearing more to accumulate conjuration moods too much, this letter-message will end.
In summary, if you check it and ask Substack tech whenever you have a moment to do so, I will appreciate your generous action very much!
(I hope I'm not breaking your community page policy in a possibility of being expelled).
It’s not mysterious, actually. Often someone hits the “like” icon with a finger while scrolling down and then removes it. Substack sends out an instant notice to the author of the comment the moment the icon is activated, but sends out no notice of the retraction. It’s not a technical problem.
Let me please mention a superbly ultra subtile point as minime. I've not been thinking of it since May 2, honestly, but I've been just slightly wondering. Then, finally I got (maybe) it. No mystery, I shouldn't have forgotten 's' at the end of 'conjuration'.
Oh, that's not him, but you !!
I see. I used to receive all of your posts by email along with community conversations, but I deactivated those features because there seemed to be compatibility issues in my end, which, practically speaking of it, made a drastic slowness on the activity of my email account. So, that deactivation might have been a possible cause, I additionally thought.
Btw, thanks of your attention, the reader came back on his "like" to revive!
Dr. Hart,
In your work on Mind, do you treat prayer? If you do, can you give an indication of how? If you do not, can you give an indication of why not?
No. It’s not relevant to my argument.
Really good discussion
Re: an ‘invitation’ to challenge our minds, I’ve always wondered why some folks would subscribe to insulting their own intelligence and accept that they simply cannot (perhaps will not) understand concepts of varying complexity. Maybe I consciously choose to not undertake this study or that, but I try not to default to throwing up my hands and telling myself “this is pure pretension”. Our minds have the impressive capacity to understand, therefore why not make the effort as one is able to
"[...] real resistance as opposed to convulsions of discontent..."
This sums up so well the combination of moral sentiment and moral powerlessness that characterizes our generation.
"Sadism dressed up as virtue."
Great phrase.