philosophy

"Wabi and Sabi: the Aesthetics of Solitude"

Article, House of Solitude, Hermitary

Nearly all the arts in historical China and Japan derive their aesthetic principles from Taoism and Zen Buddhism. The two great philosophical traditions proved compatible specifically with the culture and psychology of Japan. The hallmark of a Chinese or Japanese masterpiece free of modern influence continues to be the naturalness and uncontrived, even "accidental" appearance of the work. The artist works with and harmonizes nature and its universal accidents. The guiding principles are wabi and sabi.

From Chapter 26 of The Marble Faun (1860) by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

And, in truth, while our friend smiled at these wild fables, [Kenyon] sighed in the same breath to think how the once genial earth produces, in every successive generation, fewer flowers than used to gladden the preceding ones. Not that the modes and seeming possibilities of human enjoyment are rarer in our refined and softened era,--on the contrary, they never before were nearly so abundant,--but that mankind are getting so far beyond the childhood of their race that they scorn to be happy any longer. A simple and joyous character can find no place for itself among the sage and sombre figures that would put his unsophisticated cheerfulness to shame. The entire system of man's affairs, as at present established, is built up purposely to exclude the careless and happy soul. The very children would upbraid the wretched individual who should endeavor to take life and the world as what we might naturally suppose them meant for--a place and opportunity for enjoyment.

It is the iron rule in our day to require an object and a purpose in life. It makes us all parts of a complicated scheme of progress, which can only result in our arrival at a colder and drearier region than we were born in. It insists upon everybody's adding somewhat--a mite, perhaps, but earned by incessant effort--to an accumulated pile of usefulness, of which the only use will be, to burden our posterity with even heavier thoughts and more inordinate labor than our own. No life now wanders like an unfettered stream; there is a mill-wheel for the tiniest rivulet to turn. We go all wrong, by too strenuous a resolution to go all right.

Randomly appearing in my Unix fortune program this morning, an excerpt from Carl Sagan's "The Burden of Skepticism" about the difference between making decisions based on evidence and making decisions despite the evidence:

... Another writer again agreed with all my generalities, but said that as an
inveterate skeptic I have closed my mind to the truth. Most notably I have
ignored the evidence for an Earth that is six thousand years old. Well, I
haven't ignored it; I considered the purported evidence and then rejected
it. There is a difference, and this is a difference, we might say, between
prejudice and postjudice. Prejudice is making a judgment before you have
looked at the facts. Postjudice is making a judgment afterwards. Prejudice
is terrible, in the sense that you commit injustices and you make serious
mistakes. Postjudice is not terrible. You can't be perfect of course; you
may make mistakes also. But it is permissible to make a judgment after you
have examined the evidence. In some circles it is even encouraged.

Speaking of Carl Sagan, I have been enjoying Hulu's free archive of the original Cosmos TV series recently. Holds up to this day. In fact, Denyse and I have been watching Stephen Hawking's Universe which debuted on the Discovery Channel last month, and apart from the fancy computer graphics, there's as much information in Cosmos. :) In any case, both are quite enjoyable programs.

From About The No No Project.

The premise of the project is quite simple:

Walking around town, you’ll see sign after sign forbidding you from performing healthy outdoor activities. Skateboarding. Cycling. Walking for the love of Mike. It goes to show what’s really important in this society: keeping things comfy for sedentary property and car owners who would deny you your god-given right to breathe outdoors!

So I take pictures of all the signs telling me not to exercise.

In case it isn’t clear, this is very much tongue-in-cheek. I’m just amazed how much effort is put into making verboten what are otherwise wholesome diversions.

In some indirect way, I’m also trying to connect the dots on what are often disparate cultures — cyclists and skaters, for example — to show we are united against The Man Trying to Keep Us Down more than we are apart.

See Submissions if you’d like to join in the fun. You can send me email at robert at the domain name nonoproject.com. Thanks for checking out The No No Project.

Also available on Twitter, @nonoproject.

"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things. I do not wish to be any more busy with my hands than is necessary. My head is hands and feet. I feel all my best faculties concentrated in it. My instinct tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout and fore paws, and with it I would mine and burrow my way through these hills. I think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts; so by the divining-rod and thin rising vapors I judge; and here I will begin to mine."

—Henry David Thoreau, from Walden

Michael Specter: The danger of science denial

Vaccine-autism claims, "Frankenfood" bans, the herbal cure craze: All point to the public's growing fear (and, often, outright denial) of science and reason, says Michael Specter. He warns the trend spells disaster for human progress.

Thomas Jefferson, who might well have been speaking of blogs and RSS feeds as much as newspapers ;) —

"I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid; and I find myself much the happier."

From Wikipedia:

A polymath, Jefferson achieved distinction as, among other things, a horticulturist, political leader, architect, archaeologist, paleontologist, inventor, and founder of the University of Virginia. When President John F. Kennedy welcomed 49 Nobel Prize winners to the White House in 1962 he said, "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House – with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

From Whitehouse.gov:

Freckled and sandy-haired, rather tall and awkward, Jefferson was eloquent as a correspondent, but he was no public speaker. In the Virginia House of Burgesses and the Continental Congress, he contributed his pen rather than his voice to the patriot cause. As the "silent member" of the Congress, Jefferson, at 33, drafted the Declaration of Independence. In years following he labored to make its words a reality in Virginia. Most notably, he wrote a bill establishing religious freedom, enacted in 1786.