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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2380 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 21, 2024

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So, what are you reading?

Slowly going through The Master and his Emissary. His basic thesis is that the hemispheres aren't in a symmetrical relationship, hence the title, with the right hemisphere being the Master and the left the Emissary. So far there are only hints about the consequences of this, but it seems to lead away from scientism and postmodernism.

There's something about this book that is hard to pin down. I haven't assimilated much that I've read, but it's beginning to fascinate me.

Recently (as in yesterday) finished The Lone Samurai, which is a biography of Miyamoto Musashi. Have just begun the Dune series.

The most interesting book I have read in the last couple of years was probably Seeing like a State. In particular, there was a section about how surnames arose due the state needing a more precise naming convention to track down specific people. There are many Johns in England, there are fewer John Smiths, there's probably only a couple of John James Christopher Smiths. While we, or at least I, thought surnames were common throughout history it is apparently a fairly recent phenomenon outside of royalty.

It also delved into failed state attempts at making the world legible to itself, like how it tries to homogenize a forest to extract lumber, but removing all other tree species, plants and animals create a perfect condition for a disease to devastate this new orderly forest. This 'short-slightness' extends to city-planning as well as farming and many other areas.

I have a rule to finish at least one book per month and think this is a rather languid pace, but my bookshelf is steadily filling up.

Is that realated to "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by Julian Jaynes or is it completely different?

Checking the index, I found (this is shortened by me):

I believe Jaynes was near to making a breakthrough - did in fact make one - but that, perhaps derailed by the view of schizophrenia outlined above, his conclusion was diametrically opposed to the one he should have drawn. His insight that there was a connection between the voices of the gods and changes in the mental world of those who heard them, that this might have something to do with the brain, and indeed that it concerned the relationship between the hemispheres, remains, in my view, fundamentally correct.

However, I believe he got one important aspect of the story back to front. His contention that the phenomena he describes came about because of a breakdown of the 'bicameral' mind - so that the two hemispheres, previously separate, now merged - is the precise inverse of what happened. The phenomena came about because of a relative separation of the two chambers, the two hemispheres...Where there had been previously no question of whether the workings of the mind were 'mine', since the question would have no meaning - there being no cut off between the mind and the world around...there was now a degree of detachment which...led to the intuitive, less explicit, thought processes being objectified as voices (as they are in schizophrenia), viewed as coming from 'somewhere else'.

I've only read about 10% of the book but I thought the whole point was that the left hemisphere, originally meant to be subservient, is now totally dominant in modern society.

Yeah, he cites a story of Nietzsche where the emissary, an ambitious regional bureacurat, usurps the power of the master who ruled his people wisely.

I think the core insight must be the idea of asymmetry. If the hemispheres are more or less equivalent, then there's no such thing as a wise arrangement.

Seth Kaplan's "Fragile Neighborhoods". Heard him interview on a couple of my podcast subscriptions: Stacking Benjamins and Strong Towns. Surprisingly easy to breeze through the first 50 pages where he makes his case. But it's only easy because it's either referencing a whole bunch of stuff I've already heard before or telling stories I'm inclined to believe. For instance, Trump's support in the 2016 primaries being heaviest among the disconnected and disaffected, and the unsourced claim that most money America spends on foreign aid doesn't end up where it's supposed to go.

This would probably be a much different experience if I were to take the time to backtrace all of his citations. I am not that sort of man these days. But I am noting that I feel like he's saying things I should look deeper into, because something is probably being smuggled.

But that was Part 1. Part 2 ought to set the stage for where to work in neighborhoods, and Part 3 plans to tackle the how.

Still running through King Rat. It’s a page turner for sure.

Still on Good Soldier Svejk

Read Empedocles at Etna last night. I've been listening to SHWEP and they had an episode on him, I found the poem. It's a light read, very interesting view of him on volcano day.

Just finished W. David Marx's Status And Culture. Interesting and expansive without tediously reiterating the same points over and over to reach the magic 350 page count as so many pop intellectual books do. A little too blinkered though; yeah status plays into and undergirds a lot of society, but it's not literally everything*. Most of it will be familiar material to everyone here but it's still good to see the theories fleshed out and not just used as stick to beat on the outgroup de jour.

About to start The Stories Of Ibis.

*Edit: What I find frustrating about the typical analysis of status is that it treats status as an end in itself. I see status as a means to reach/achieve/reflect the underlying concretely valuable objectives and avoiding the suffering of being deprived of the same.

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