Dear Jamie
Damn it man all I wanted was an exact explanation of the hierarchy of value boiled down into a sentence or two. What good are you?
I’d like to sully your thinking by forcing it into categories. Here’s what I have. It seems like there are four reasons to explain why a work has currency now. Firstly, what’s said and/or what’s interpreted has Continue reading #52 On reasons for selection
Dear Jamie,
That was my favourite letter in some time. Thank you. I also love irony, at least when I’m aware of it.
The progression of agency in the history of literature was something I never really appreciated until you said it. It makes sense given your snapshots; a deus ex machina-heavy ancient Greek play through conscious fate-addled Shakespearean contemplator up to the unrelenting conscious agency of the agent James Bond. OK the last one’s a joke, and it’s because an invincible agency is as boring as a completely yielding one, which suggests to me this Continue reading #50 On depth
I realised after I sent the letter that I might have been wrong to say you dismissed it because it was Jesus. What I meant to say is that you dismiss it because it comes from a religion. Ex Schola would have been the better phrase to use, but because it’s less pretentious it’s less fun to say in a letter.
It’s absolute madness that fundamentalists think The Bible is perfect. And the exact opposite to this, which is to think it’s perfectly and absolutely flawed, is also madness. If you had never heard Continue reading #48 On Groups
Dear Jamie,
I’d like to invent a phrase. I proposed it on Twitter and a rando was able to give me the Latin for it. “Ex homine”. Rather than ad hominem (try to disprove an idea by criticising the person), ex homine (from the person), my phrase, is to automatically dismiss an idea because of who it comes from. The rando insisted that ad homimem does what I want, he has a point, but this second thing is so common I think it deserves this more precise version.
Jesus is an ethical exemplar only in the way that his story contains tidbits of ethical exemplarism. You’re triggered because Continue reading #46 On hominems
Dear Jamie,
I’m sitting at my house in my spare room with that cool Canberra breeze invigorating my fasted frame. It’s a cold snap that feels like a reprieve from the extreme heat of previous weeks, but in reality it’s likely to be two violent swings of a unpredictable climate growing more extreme. Still, feels good.
I admit I didn’t know about COINTELPRO. But I was aware of other, more purely racist things like Nixon and his advisors recorded on tape actively working to increase racial tensions, and of course Jim Crow. But I do see a very uncomfortable reality that all* these “conspiracies” you mentioned were government-instituted. And government instituted because the people were either: undermining the government (COINTELPRO), weren’t trusting the government enough (Nixon) or not segregating themselves enough (Jim Crow). Who knows what the world might be like if the government wasn’t trying to fix our social lives over the last hundred years.
Now moving to systemic problems more generally. Continue reading #44 On the struggle
Dear Jamie,
I’d already read the Atlantic article of Between the World and Me, and read it again after your suggestion. To be honest I found it baleful and conspiratorial. The end kind of saves it with a Christian-like “we’re all struggling but some more than others”. Though rather than a cosmic evil or an entropic universe his struggle is against a white conspiracy beyond the knowledge and intention of most of those involved. One of the issues with subjective experiences as we’re discussing them is that they can be annihilated when in contact with an opposing one. At the time I also read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s response, a more optimistic reading of America despite her subjective plight being obviously more violent and horrible than Coates’.
Two topics have been rolling around in my head since reading your letter. Can subjective experience add up to an objective indictment? And what is the role of exploitation in history? Continue reading #42 On objective exploitation
Dear Jamie,
Thank you for your answers, but I think I disagree with almost everything you said. Let’s begin. Continue reading #40 On integrity
Dear Jamie
You said “women are treated unfairly in overt and subtle ways”. That’s true. All groups are to different extents in different ways. And groups on average are different in preferences, while individuals are all over the map in terms of capability. This is a multi-level, fractured problem that can never be perfectly solved. Indeed by definition it will never be even satisfactorily solved, because you can’t solve all competing, fluid preferences at once.
You’ve kind of walked the line with the dichotomy I gave you before (free market vs enforced ideology). You say they should “die by the sword” but do it on a “level playing field”. It sounds like you’re advocating a regulated capitalist system if I were bring back the economic analogy. But I can’t see that working at all. The competing fluid preferences problem would be the least of your worries. You would be Continue reading #38 On unfair, necessary or different differences
