The last of the Milesians - Anaximenes, and we have become fire

So, how do we top our hopelessly sarcastic and barely educational post on Anaximander? Do we harken back to the more informative posts like on Thales where we blind side you with a jab at the end? Well, we don't know. Generally speaking we begin to write what pops into our head, briefly read over it to ensure that we don't say anything that would embarrass our fiancee, the lovely E, and then push publish post and look for places to generate interest on it. There isn't a formula though I am certain it appears so.

So what do we have to say about Anaximenes? Bertrand Russell says that he was much more admired in antiquity than Anaximander, but that this trend has been reversed in modernity. Because modernity tends to be wrong, we here at this blog of repute have backed Anaximenes for whichever office he so chooses.

But, what did Anaximenes teach. Like Thales and his obsession with water and Anaximander and his indefinable infinite item, Anaximenes believed in a fundamental substance. His fundamental substance was air. He reasoned, "the soul is air; fire is rarefied air; when condensed air becomes first water, then if further condensed, earth, and finally stone" (Taken from Bertrand Russell's The History of Western Philosophy). So what does it mean???

It means that air becomes fire when it becomes less dense and other things when it becomes denser. If the soul then is air, when it becomes less dense or otherwise more intelligent, then it becomes fire. We have suddenly had the revelation as to why we are consistently sweating. It has nothing to do with our tropical surroundings or extra poundage, only that we have become so intellectually stimulated and stimulating that we have become the very embodiment of fire. Beware of Leibniz, he has become flame. Come near him and in the famous words of Michael Kelso, burn.

Obviously we chose the last second jab route.

Burn.

Anaximander and the insistence of ID Science in the Classroom

Anaximander was the second of three Milesian philosophers. Like Thales, he came of age in the time when Miletus was one of the most important Greek centers in the world. Also like Thales, he was interested in defining the world based on what it was made of. Whereas Thales said that everything is water, Anaximander said that everything was made up of that which we know not exactly what it is, but we know that it is infinite. This boundless or infinite, took the form of other things and those things in turn made up everything that exists. How he arrived at this conclusion is what is really interesting about early Greek philosophy.

Ancient Greeks believed in justice and a balance of power. It wasn't that they believed that we ought to receive justice but, that we are in the midst of justice that will eventually balance itself out. Like Thales, he agreed that there had to be some underlying and foundational substance of which everything else is derived from, but he said that it could not have been an element that we are familiar with because otherwise that fundamental substance would have swallowed everything else up. If there was too much water than water would be destroyed. If there was too much ground there wouldn't enough air. The elements had this symbiotic relationship and were assigned a specific amount of space to occupy by this cosmic sense of justice. But, fire and water and earth and air constantly try to expand their existence. Therefore, since there needs to be a primary substance and none of the elements can be that substance without overtaking all of the other substances, the substance must be something else. Also, things keep coming so that substance that makes up everything must be eternal and boundless. Staying with me? Glad you got it on the first try. It took us much longer.

Anaximander would have been a boring post though if we only spoke about first substances. It also would not have provided us with a platform to pose a lowbrow joke at the expense of someone else. Thus, we must continue on the topic of Anaximander in order for me to do, as what the hipsters call it, a snark. Anaximander also believed in evolution. He taught that man, like every other living creature, had evolved from fishes. His reasoning behind this was that man takes so long to mature during infancy that if he had been a man in the wild he would not have made it. This theory however, was not well received by the traditionalists who said that the Prometheus had made man and was subjected to the horrors of woman by Zeus' rage. But Anaximander was an excellent rhetorician and well funded by deep-pocketed liberals. He won the argument and his theory of evolution was taught to all the young Milesians. After years of trying the defeated traditionalists repackaged their thoughts and said that man posseses the ability to weild fire, this demands that man must've been given fire by something greater than himself. They said, "we admit that to say that Prometheus gave man fire, though an obvious and true statement, would go against your poor rendering of the freedoms guaranteed by the constitution; however, to not teach the existence of man because of the gift of fire alongside the theory of Anaximander's nonsense about man coming from what can be made in to school lunches when molded into straight lines, breaded and deep fried is a travesty of justice. Since there must necessarily be justice the Prometheus version must be taught along side the Anaximander one".

Everything is H2O, Lessons from Thales

So, it comes to pass that we, a philosopher of note are sadly lagging behind in our duty to philosophize. For heaven's sake we have seven posts about zombies and only two posts about philosophy! We are so ashamed!

So to recommence with a renewed sense of vigor we have traveled back to the dawn of Philosophy to the coast of Asia Minor and made contact with Thales. Thales told us that everything was made of water, showed us how to calculate the distance between three points by way of a triangle and said that there would be a total solar eclipse for the citizens of the United States on August 21, 2017. We asked him about the doomsday of 2012 and he said that that was preposterous superstition and swore by the Delphic Apollo that if his predictions were wrong the world would cease to float upon the great waters of the earth.

We didn't know what to do with all of that. We didn't know how we could relate this to today. So we kept digging and we learned some interesting things about Miletus, the Ionian city he was from. At the time of Thales, Miletus was being ravaged by class warfare. The land owning aristocrats and the peasants were battling with one another for power. The peasants, in modern terms we'd call them the 99% got the upper hand and killed many of the aristocrat's wives and children. Not to be outdone, the aristocrats started burning the 99% alive. Thales, a member of the wealthy was ushered away to Egypt to learn in peace.

Upon returning to Miletus he saw that the power of the aristocracy had waned. In their place was the gradual rise of wealthy merchants. The wealthy merchants ruled for a time until through a democratic process a tyrant seized power of the polis. It is in this backdrop that Thales pretty much gave birth simultaneously to philosophy and science.

So what lessons can we learn from this today? Class warfare leads to mass atrocities. When the 1% lose power it will be gradually replaced by wealthy merchants, i.e. modern corporations. Modern corporations will eventually lose power because democracy will elect a tyrant. Is our lesson too late?

Last thoughts on SOPA PIPA & Piracy for at least nine hours

We've touched on SOPA PIPA a number of times today. First, we commented on how SOPA PIPA may hurdle us into a renewal of the Dark Ages. Second, we talked about the trouble that modern day Pirates. Lastly, we briefly discussed it in our continuing John Boehner posts. As your resident philosopher of note fights the sand in his eyes we shall give you one last tid-bit concerning SOPA PIPA. If you're wondering why SOPA PIPA has been mentioned four times in caps like this SOPA PIPA in the preceding paragraph it is because SOPA PIPA is a hot trend right now and we are shamelessly trying to use that to our Search Engine Optimization strategy that we are cavalierly using from an undocumented source. Take that SOPA PIPA...

SOPA PIPA SOPA PIPA SOPA PIPA

Ok, now that we have become sell outs let us give that last comment on the SOPA PIPA news for today. In our final SOPA PIPA post we'll talk about Marco Rubio decision to jump ship from SOPA PIPA before he is forced to walk the SOPA PIPA plank. Seriously, I'm done. Sorry.

Marco Rubio (R-Fla) was one of the first people to sign on to the PIPA part of SOPA PIPA. (I can't help myself). Anyway, because of the backlash that he faced today because of that which shall not be named from here on out. This wouldn't be all that interesting had he not been so frank in his reasons why. The Huffington Post reports that Mr. Rubio has admitted to signing on to the Voldemort Bill without fully understand the full ramifications and potential problems that would come if the bill were to become law. It is becoming obvious that many of the bill's supporters are finding themselves in the same ship, surrounded by pirates (another name for lobbyists). By the way, we understand Mr. Rubio's befuddlement at Heraclitus' forceful wringing of his hands.

We give Mr. Rubio all the credit for owning up to not fully understanding all of the possible contingencies of such a complex bill facing a complex and consistently evolving issue. Basically intellectual property and laws applying to it have been in what Heraclitus would have dubbed the perpetual flux. Heraclitus may have not been prescient enough to foresee that his doctrine could be applied to Intellectual Property laws 2,487 years after his passing. But that shouldn't be a problem to discredit him. You, who have presumably read another one of my posts. Were you prescient enough to see this coming? We weren't even that prescient and we are writing it. But, what can you do? You certainly can't step into the same river twice.

Basically this points to a really powerful and difficult issue that modern policy making faces. The digital age has exposed policy making to a break-neck speed that it simply can't cope with. This isn't any political side's fault. The policy may eventually catch up to the technology. But by the time it does, the technology will have changed. This is the exact thing that Heraclitus was telling us about all those years ago! The only thing real is the change itself. In addition to the demands that technological advances are placing on the law the political atmosphere in which this modern policy making must take place has further put time constraints on our politicians. Loud and persistent shouts on both ends on the bell curve of politics force politicians to act quickly to silence the constant ringing in their ears. Unfortunately while it makes one side silent for a moment, the silence is overcome by compensation by the other sides' haranguing. We don't want to bash Mr. Rubio. On the contrary we thank him for his honesty. Good night everyone...

SOPA PIPA

Debilitating Divisiveness, Unwarranted Anger, Vitriolic Rhetoric, the usually Wednesday in Wisconsin

Hanover Line I - XVIII

Last time on the Hanover line we concluded our riveting three part series on the Mysterious Colleen without actually revealing who she was. We promise not to pull that ruse again in the near future because it was rather dull. We however did mention the Monad. The Monad is very dear to our hearts. Our Monadology though has fallen out of fashion because people dislike the name, unless you happen to be a middle-school boy, in which case it makes you snicker. But the idea that the world is made up entirely of an infinite number of substances in and how they operate and work with in relation to God has only fallen out of fashion because of the days in which we live in. The individualism that was spawned out of the Enlightenment and the devolution to the egoism of Protagoras is symptomatic of a morally bankrupt age and not a good renunciation of our incredible theory. However, readjustments to the Monadology are under work as we speak. Check back for more posts as we retool our principles to match modern day techniques in physics, mathematics, cosmology, political theory and cosmetological concerns. I can hear the baited breath from here.

But, we shan't toot our own horn as the egoist do. Rather we shall take the high road, from which we can look down upon our inferiors. It is at this moment I'd like to draw our attention to the state of Wisconsin. The Democrats there have begun to parade their signature list of over a million people to recall governor Scott Walker. I will offer a bit of full disclosure here, I think the notion of a recall in a well-functioning Democracy is overkill. There is a separate judiciary so if the guy has done something illegal a la Rod Blagojevich the prosecutors can step in a the judges can find him guilty and they can take the position away that way. Also, governors can only hold on for four years. There is enough checks and balances to the system already. Initiating a recall in a digital age is too easy because everyone is peeved at everybody and gathering enough signatures is too easy. So, I'm stating flat out that this whole idea of a recall for someone that hasn't done anything illegal is impatience at its worst. So in this case the Democrats are to blame. But in California not too long ago the Republicans pulled the same shenanigans to oust Gray Davis to put into power Arnold Schwarzenegger who did not have the strength to save California from terminating their own economy and political processes through endless referendums and ballot initiatives. Back to Wisconsin though...

The signatures are had but their is question over who would run against the humbled Governor Walker. According to this editorial there is little consensus over who will take on the Democratic Banner and ride to victory. While Governor Walker may be the object of scorn and divisiveness at which the recall is aimed, the most angry and rhetorically irresponsible party in this process is a guy by the name of Marty Beil (pictured). This guy has a propensity to use colorful language to deride those he perceives to have wronged him. Beil is the president of the AFSCME Council 24, a union for state workers. Beil described a democrat that went to work for Governor walker as a "purveyor of the world's oldest profession". He called a Democratic state senator a "whore, W-H-O-R-E, not a prostitute" when he wouldn't push through union contracts during a lame duck session. Now that Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett is looking as a possible candidate (he lost the initial race to Gov. Walker), Beil is balking. He states that Mayor Barrett is a "non-starter" because he had the gall to not play partisan politics and worked with Republicans from time to time to get things that were needed to be done. So there you have it folks. Politics and brinkmanship at its finest. The issues here don't really matter, just the admission of Beil and his way of thinking is enough to show the state of Wisconsin's politics. I'd like to offer some optimism, especially when you have been so recently humbled by the New York Giants, but frankly I cannot. The only course of action in Wisconsin is to put on some old Liberace albums and watch it burn from Eau Claire to Kenosha. Godspeed and good luck.

Eirik's Saga, some boob action, zombies and a short treatise on time. What more could you ask for?

This is our second literature post and we've decided to stick to Viking sagas. Why? Well because The Vinland Sagas/The Norse Discovery of America has two tellings. The first is the Grœnlendinga Saga, which we already summed up and gave some thoughts on. The second is Eirik's Saga, which is what we're about to deliberate on. Eirik's Saga and the Grœnlendinga Saga are pretty similar in content and relate basically the same story. But, there are some contextual differences and some clear differences in what is emphasized. Both are probably idealized histories to be taken with a grain of salt, but shouldn't be dismissed out of hand either. We'll eventually get around to posting about some of the real life characters and historicity of the sagas, but don't set a calendar out for this post's arrival. It may be decades before we get to it. One thing I miss about existing upstairs is the absence of time. Bad Religion once commented, "eternity, my friend is a long f*ing time". But they were wrong. It is not a long time, it is beyond time.

On to the saga. Eirik's Saga begins with the story of Aud the Deep-Minded, one of the best monikers around. She is married in Dublin but events force her on to the Hebrides and eventually to Orkney. Then the story of Eirik the Red begins in a way that is slightly more detailed than the Grœnlendinga Saga, but eventually sees him in Greenland. It then goes on a tangent to tell of Gudrid, a lovely woman who has many pursuers. Gudrid is pursued by a low birth, wealth merchant. When it is suggested to her father that Gudrid marry the low born man named Einar, Gudrid's father up and leaves Iceland for Greenland. On his voyage from Iceland to Greenland a lot of the explorers and would-be settlers die of disease. But, some of the party eventually make it to Greenland.

On Greenland a terrible famine is breaking out so the people call out a pagan prophetess to see when the hard times will end. The prophetess asks everyone if they know some songs to enhance the spell. Only Gudrid knows the songs but she is unwilling to sing them as she is a Christian. However, she is pressured into singing the songs and it works. The prophetess then prophesies for a number of people, including Gudrid.

About this time Eirik the Red has a couple of sons growing up to be promising young dudes, Thorstein Eiriksson and Leif Eiriksson. Thorstein stays in Greenland with his pops and Leif travels to Norway to live with King Olaf Tryggvason. On his way though he's blown off course and has a child to a woman named Thorgunna in the Hebrides. When Leif makes it to Norway, King Olaf persuades him to go back to Greenland to preach Christianity, which he does. But on his way back he discovers Vinland by accident.

Meanwhile Thorstein Eiriksson ends up marrying the pagan song-singing Christian Gudrid. Gudrid and Thorstein end up moving about the country and settling nearby Eirik the Red. Then the strange stuff begins to happen. Disease breaks out and a bunch of people die. Sigrid, the wife of Eirik dies. Sigrid is important to the Christian world because she built the first church in Greenland; it was found in 1962 during excavation, proving a lot of Eirik's Saga that was once thought to be propaganda. But, Sigrid's corpse decides to come back to life and goes for Thorstein. It continues in this zombie fashion until Eirik buries an axe in his wife's corpse. Thorstein ends up dying and his corpse comes back to prophesy to Gudrid, his widow.

Then a pretty wealth dude named Thorfinn Karlsefni comes onto the scene in Greenland and stays with Eirik. Karlsefni ends up marrying Gudrid. When the winter ends Karlsefni takes 160 men and goes to Vinland where they try to explore and settle. During this experience a brute of a man named Thorall the Hunter prays to Thor and proclaims Thor's superiority to Christ. Thorall ends up splitting from the group to a brutal death in Ireland. Karlsefni goes on to greatness because of his commitment to Christ.

But, the road isn't easy for Karlsefni. When famine strikes in Vinland the settlers pray to God, "then they prayed to God to send them something to eat, but the response was not as prompt as they would have liked". Karlsefni goes on to make contact with the Native Americans in Vinland and does battle with them, prompting Karlsefni to leave. Karlsefni then does battle with a Uniped before returning home to Greenland to produce no less than three important Bishops in his progeny.

In some way's Eirik's Saga is more compelling than the Grœnlendinga Saga because of the mystical and magical properties. In other ways it seems more outlandish. But, if you liked the Grœnlendinga Saga you will like Eirik's Saga. If you didn't like the Grœnlendinga Saga then you won't like Eirik's Saga. As always, I prefer Penguin Classics because of their in depth background checks and minimalistic yet classy covers.

The first failure

Failed attempt. I apparently double blogged. So I am reconciling that.

Having been dead long before the invention of Internet the fact that I have had only one such fail since the beginning of Leibnizian Ramblings I must say that I am pretty proud. I bet you if Newton came back he'd have more errors. God only knows how many errors Spinoza and Descartes would have.

Newton would have merely copied my drafts and published them more quickly.

Spinoza would have put all of his blogs in a format that was so boring it would have put you to sleep.

Descartes would have been frozen with fear of making some unforeseen error in his quest for an indubitable starting point.

So compared to my contemporaries I think I'm spot on.

The Demythologizing of the Hipster

Hipsters like to shroud themselves in myth. They want to be an enigma. But they aren't enigmatic. We've talked a lot about hipsters on this blog so I thought it high time to demythologize the hipster.

Hipster began where most countercultural revolutions begin, in affluent suburbs. It also was started by people who often start subversive cultural rifting, teenagers of well-to-do parents that have nothing to really rebel against. Thus, you have incredibly plastic origins of the hipster. To be fair though, the hipster movement is not the only counterculture movement to spring from affluence.

1) The Beat Generation: William S. Burroughs came from money and went to Harvard. Jack Kerouac got a scholarship to Columbia to play football. Ginsberg also went to Columbia. Ivy League rebellion.

2) The Dialectic of Enlightenment: Max Horkheimer was born to a wealthy Jewish family and went on to discuss suffering in great detail. Theodor W. Adorno was born to a successful wine-export entrepreneur and railed against the system that nobody can escape. What are you running from???

3) The Apple Macintosh Revival: Steve Jobs was adopted by parents with early jobs in the Silicon valley. Why are you so anti-IBM?

So the Hipster movement is not alone in being rebellious for no apparent reason. But the hipsters love anything that they deem as authentic. They have a sick obsession with it. Not with the authentic itself, but with what they deem is the real deal. So where does originality come from in the 1990's or the 2000's? From past decades of course. The hipsters have appropriated a number of influences and blended them together. They like ethnic things like African patterns made in London. They like the beatniks if they're read over digital media out of context. They like metrosexuality as long as its ironic in their eyes. Take all of this mash it together with sorrowful, whiny music and you have the birth of hipsterdom.

But with this striving for originality comes a cynicism known as the snark. Basically anything that anyone deems cool must be mercilessly ridiculed with snide comments by hipster. This is why hipsters can never get along with anyone, especially one another. A hipster must mock the cool kid or the nerd equally to qualify for metacoolness. But, even if a hipster were to think that some other hipster's appropriated styling was worthy of praise he must snark it out of principle, or out of envy of not discovering the current milieu of what the other hipster is doing.

So the hipster is a cynical vomitorium of style. But, one thing that hipster does well is to be informed. In order to have the thin veneer of originality the hipster must know a little bit about a lot of things. How can hipster deem something ironic if hipster does not know the meaning of ironic? How can hipster seek out emergent music if hipster does not know what music would never be considered original or authentic? How can hipster snark non-hipster with literary quips if hipster is not well read? Hipster cannot. Therefore, hipster reads Vice magazine religiously and memorizes obscure artists and authors wikipedia articles.

Voltaire on Abbé

Voltaire I-I

Voltaire, oh my poor lost soul Voltaire. Upon reading Candide I find myself shaking my head. Such a brilliant wit, such a brilliant mind, so full of negativity. The Pangloss you have employed so well is unfortunately a straw man. But, your work is of no doubt, genius. You have made the Western Canon and you are still taught today to be imitated by lesser minds with more dangerous and disastrous consequences. While your jaded confrontations have spurned meaningful reform and your pointed criticisms has caused a great deal of informed debate, in the hands of the unscrutinized mind you have created the exact opposite of what you intended. Rather than creating thinking minds, critical of everything you have created critics of no accord. They spew vile without an intention for change, only hoping to uphold the status quo. But, alas, whenever I pick up a book of yours I find myself reading until the very end, such is your work of great talent and skill. My thoughts on your magnum opus will come later. For now let us suffice by growing through your Dictionnaire philosophique.

Abbé, Monsier l'Abbé

'Tis true the corruption of the true doctrine of Christ is brought about by vicious and selfish men. The fathers of monks in our days had grown envious of the bishops and the power and wealth they had. The fathers of monks had grown rich beyond what ought to have been proper to them. Today, as I look around the Christian landscape I see many of the abuses that plagued our days. There is rampant selfishness, wanton abuse of power, and shameless twisting of Scripture. You rightly forewarned these men, "tremble, lest the day of reason arrive".

The day of reason has arisen and the power of the Church and the true Gospel has waned in the eyes of men. But that reason, once a champion of the oppressed has become itself the oppressor. Everywhere the men of faith face challenges once thought long abolished by Roman Emperors (whose reasons may or may not have been godly and motivated by love of Christ). The proud secular heritage of the newest endowment of France, the Republic and the Indoctrinating cry of separation of Church and State served well to curb the powers of corrupt bishops and abbés. But now that secularizing has left men corrupt themselves.

Voltaire, you railed against the oppression of the weak by the strong. You harangued against intolerance where ever you perceived it. Now, as the secularists push religion to the margins of society are you satisfied? I think not. I think that your tolerance, such a valiant goal in theory has given birth to a very unfortunate consequence. The association between religion and oppression has been hammered too hard and now faith is synonymous with uncritical assessments of life. But, I wonder, how many uncritical minds have come to this conclusion? However, what remains still in spite of the undiscriminating skepticism of this age is thankfully, faith, hope and love. Optimism has already won the day.

In times of financial stress we turn to the stabilizing force that is Gerhard Richter

2011 was admittedly a pretty volatile year for investing. It was up and down and up and down to the point that I felt a little bit sick watching my modest investments plummet and recover. But, the überinvestors, the Übermensch of the financial world, while no sympathy is necessary, were all over the place. If I lost 20% and then gained it back we are talking about $20 daily swings. For them, we're adding six zeros. On a daily basis! Again, I'm not advocating sympathy for these guys, just admitting my astonishment at that number.

All this market volatility has made speculators move from stocks and bonds into art and wine. I'll never understand collecting wine. Wine in my view is better or worse only when one tastes it. It's financial value is in some ways detrimental to its intrinsic value. Purchasing wine for collection purposes also has no instrumental purpose as it does not enhance the intrinsic value. If that $1,000 dollars worth of wine, say, a case of 1978 Léoville Las Cases sits only in a cellar and is never enjoyed for its intended purpose its intrinsic value is lost entirely. The buying and selling of wine for collection purposes only therefore destroys its intrinsic value and creates a purely artificial one. Artificial value is utterly meaningless, rendering wine pointless. But, I have digressed.

Art purchasing is something I understand a bit more. Fine art and fine art collectors have been around for nearly as long as each other. Generally speaking art investment is a good idea. In these financially tumultuous times, wealthy investors have turned to art as a safe haven. The contemporary art market has surged to a $1.7 Billion dollar industry this year, up 35%. Who tops this list? None other than our good friend Gerhard Richter. Richter set records at both Sotheby's and Christie's this year. Fair play Gerhard.