Quotation

"It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things:  freedom of speech,  freedom of conscience,  and the prudence never to practice either of them."
Mark Twain (American writer)
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Rambles & Grumbles

"I complain about the American economic 'free market' system and people proceed to tell me how much it has given to me.  They don't grasp that my complaint is about what it has taken away."


I don't enjoy people who get bored easily.  They always seem too quick to experiment, to change things thoughtlessly.  'There's nothing to do', they cry, 'every thing is the same, always the same'.   Before I can stop them, my world is changed; the things I loved to do are gone or altered forever.  Damn their tiny minds, their black imaginarys.


The world is full of experts who are prideful of their perceptive judgements of others.  For example, the meek man is often ridiculed as someone who lacked what it took to succeed, intimating that he had failed in life.
In fact, the meek man was quite aware of who he was, and, more important, who he wasn't.  He had the wisdom to know that all men are not the same, that some are meant to lead and some to follow, and the winners are those who are loyal to their destiny.  The losers are those who pretend to be other than what they are.


A young woman, a girl really, has just finished a stint at a studio microphone sing-talking a song without any melodic line.  She is asked to comment on her singing.  "I know it's not Broadway," she says, "but maybe that's a good thing.  Maybe we should start being open to new sounds."
Here is someone who is an apologist for her self and her time.  She welcomes a future without standards.  I believe this is called feeling good about yourself.


I am still trying to understand why so much of our life is spent on ideas and passions and goals that have no lasting useful relevance to our personal life.

Remember when you could eat without worry or fear or guilt?
When walking was a pleasure, not a duty?
When health insurance was something that people not only didn't have, but didn't talk about.
When blues music was an authentic cry of pain and not a forum for whining?
When one could choose to be poor, and afford it?
If you don't remember, you missed something good.
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Quotation

"Back in 1964, I had a mortgage payment of $51, and I made $200 a week.  Four mortgage payments there.  What I make today will not hold four mortgage payments."

Finley, the barber
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Voice from the New Bourgeoisie

West Palm Beach artist Ralph Wolfe Cowan:
"My aim is to reflect contemporary man's ultimate desire for self-expression and living on the edge.  The latest in technology is how today's individuals define themselves and separate themselves from one another.  Even the lack of clothing is a statement of stepping out of established moral and social boundaries."
His subjects sport exotic tattoos, designer clothing and the latest de rigueur accessories.  His pictures also include meteors being pulled to earth by helium balloons, and there are mysterious symbols etched in sand and rocks.  He explained:  "They represent how society is re-examining its belief and understanding of the world, turning it inside out to see new possibilities."

From an article in Palm Beach Post, by Gary Schwan

Where are the philistines when you need them?
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The avant garde

The term avant-garde is not used much these days.  At least I don't find it in the reading I do.  Thinking about that,  I wondered if one should say the term is dead, or perhaps the avant-garde has won.  It does seem that all art more than a year old is passe and valueless in the aesthetic sense.  Much art may continue to sell and draw huge auction prices but very little of it seems to be spoken of as innovative or challenging.
What risks are there for the artist today?  There are no barriers to self-expression, no statement too outrageous, no subject so vapid, no color so misused, no space so filled with dross, that art cannot find a way to transform it into its green web of commerce. 
Today, in museums and galleries, we are confronted with art works that look like materials left on the floor for the sweeper.  But this distribution of materials is intentional.  The jumble of wire, the splintered axe handle, the fine layer of sawdust, the irregular stack of newspapers are meant to speak to us by the unusual, even outrageous presence of their incongruity.  There is meaning here if we will give ourselves the unbiased chance to discover it.
Once the avant-garde artist flouted the norms of our culture and provoked us to feel and to think about how we see the world and how we spend out lives.  It remained moderately successful on the margins and was useful as a catalyst to the mainstream world of art.
Now the outrageous is the norm.  The avant-garde is the New Bourgeoisie. 
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Technology and Natural Selection

Many years ago I was taken with the possibility that the telephone, by giving us an alternative to face-to-face conversation, would alter the ways that our minds perceive and confront reality.  On the few occasions I spoke of this idea to friends, I was the subject of laughter.  What a crazy idea was the most common reaction. 
One person did  note that many people had stopped writing letters or postcards because it was so easy to call  and talk directly.  Exactly, I replied.  Isn't it possible that prolonged habits of this kind will weaken the written form of our language?  Might it not weaken our mental capacity to form coherent and logical statements if we do away with the process of writing our questions, answers or ideas?
After all, when we speak on the phone we rush our speech to  permit the other party to respond.  When we write, we use a much slower, reflective process whereby we choose our words, re-read what is written, edit what we wrote, and may even sleep on it to be sure we got it right.
No, everyone felt, human nature can't change without genetic change.  Using the telephone won't do that.
Well, hold on there!
Rob Boyd, a professor in the Department of Anthropology at UCLA has co-authored a book with Peter J. Richerson titled "Not By Our Genes Alone: how culture transformed human evolution".  They have researched this idea for a number of years and present examples of genetic changes due to habits of living derived from a people's system of beliefs.
The first chapter of their book reviews the prevalence of violence in the South of the U.S. when compared to the rest of the nation and the possible causes for it.  It is an interesting read.
If there is merit to this branch of anthropology, (and I believe there is), what of the ubiquitous cell phone, the computer, the television?  All these inventions have changed the way we live;  no one doubts that.  They may also be changing what kind of human beings appear in the distant future.
An exciting time to be alive.  Oh, to be young again, and devote one's life to study this!
And this is a separate issue from the physical effects of chemicals in our food and water and that now live in our bodies.  We have become permanent receptors for chemicals.  When babies are born today, some of these foreign chemicals are already in their bodies, passed on to them from the parents.
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There is wisdom which lives outside the temporal realms of knowledge or action or reality.  One of those immutable rules is that principles are weaker than purposes, especially those purposes that are born with the fetus.
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