Lapham's Quarterly: States of Mind

 

 Lapham’s Quarterly XI-1: States of Mind Psychology. The most common idea is that the Mind is somehow non-physical, separate and different from the brain and body in which it resides. As in the doctrine of the soul, which is embedded in Christian and other theologies. I find that odd, since the Creeds affirmed by most Christians refer explicitly to the resurrection of the body, not the survival of the immortal soul.
     But to get back to the book: Assuming that Lapham and his staff have assembled a representative collection of snippets, Mind and Self are often conflated, as are Consciousness and Self. This too strikes me as odd. Define “mind” as the ability to reason, to solve problems, to formulate goals and methods of achieving them. Then creatures (and machines) with brains clearly have some kind of mind, but not necessarily a sense of self, and most of them apparently not even consciousness.
     What this collection shows us more completely than the textbooks is that the notions of mind, self, and consciousness are inextricably bound up with each other. More, whatever mechanisms account for one will in part account for the others. These three concepts depend on each other. It’s a simple (but I think fallacious) step to infer that the phenomena labelled by these words must also depend on each other. “Soul” is an attempt to account for their apparent mutual dependence.
     Anyhow, “consciousness” is the “hard problem”. How can one and a half pounds or so of living matter the consistency of Jello give rise to the certainly that “I” exist? I think the answer begins with the observation that brains make sense of the data acquired by the sense organs. All living things interact with their environment in order to harvest the energy that sustains them and the substances that enable them to reproduce.
     Brains enable organisms to do so more effectively by solving a wider range of problems, by overcoming a wider range of obstacles to continued existence and reproduction. Brains create something like an image or map of the environment. At some level of complexity, the brain creates an image of the organism itself. More complexity, and the brain creates an image of the organism within the environment. The next level of complexity creates an image of the organism creating that image. (This may be why we use the metaphor of a mirror when we “reflect upon our experience”.)
     Or something like that. When it comes to understanding our minds, our conscious selves, there’s much handwaving in the explanations. All of them offer some insight. All of them help the reader (me) extend and clarify their own notions and insights.
     One of the essays recounts how Jung arrived at the concept of “psychological types”, and its consequence that we are fundamentally unable to understand people who are not the same type as we ourselves. It’s the same reason that we can’t imagine what it’s like to be a bat. ****

Kaleidscopes in the 1980s

 

  Cozy Baker. Through the Kaleidoscope... and Beyond (1987) Second, expanded edition of a catalogue of US kaleidoscope makers and vendors in the 1980s. Some history of the toy, including a copy of the inventor’s patent application. Some colour plates, a handful of nicely done black and white drawings, and photos of most of the artisans. The book seems to be a vanity project by Ms Baker. No doubt useful for kaleidoscope fans at the time, and possibly useful for anyone wanting to write a history. Printed on heavy paper in a well-made cloth case. The colour plates are well printed, but do not add as much information as I would like. Not a keeper. **

Del Rey's Mortals and Monsters

 

Lester del Rey. Mortals and Monsters (1965) Del Rey was a good journeyman writer. He supplied the pulp fiction trade with reliably entertaining tales, many of which suggested deeper questions than his protagonists tangled with. The irony wasn’t lost on his readers, though: The guy who invented time-travel by stealing a time-travel machine from a museum erected in his memory gets himself trapped in an eternal loop, a whirlpool in the river of time. The reader exists outside the fictional universe and sees the loop that’s hidden from the thief.  So who or what is the observer of our universe, watching us drifting on the river of time?
     A man whose body rejects the rejuvenation treatments realises that a limited life-span has more value than an unlimited one. An autonomous robot who doesn’t understand instinct learns what it is when his team recreates a human. An alien stranded on Earth manages to persuade a human to help him get home (but it’s a tougher story than the movie ET). And many more. Pulp fiction is underrated: the authors use the expected tropes and stereotypes, but the must make their tales newer than last month’s publications, so they ask questions that can lead us into the most subtle and profound of the enigmas that puzzle us.
     A good collection. ** to ***

Aliens and Other Strangers: Dickson's The Stranger.

 

Gordon R. Dickson. The Stranger (1987) It seems our obsession with extra-terrestrial life has needed assuaging for centuries. One of the earliest fantasy fictions was written in the 1600s. The traveller used geese to fly him to the moon, where he encountered aliens. Of course, in that century Europeans encountered many new peoples. Travellers’ tales were very popular. Extending the itch for exploration stories to the Moon was I think an inevitable step, even though the technology of the time mean it was speculative fiction.
     Dickson, like most SF writers, riffs on the Alien, and does so better than most. Some are stranded on Earth, some are sought by Earthlings, some are denizens of the far future, one is a machine that manages global life (and tolerates no opposition). Like all tales about encounters with the Stranger, they tell us as much about the teller as the told. Dickson has a generally optimistic view of humankind: his protagonists usually prevail. The dangers come from human hybris, stupidity, or moral lethargy.
     The collection includes work from the 1950s to the 80s. The earliest stories can be read as expressions of the Western fear of Communist domination: the Stranger disguises appearance and intention. The later stories explore the notion of “stranger” in the widest sense: we humans are the strangest critters we know. Worth reading. ** to ****

215 Graves

 

I wrote this a week ago, it's a little rough around the edges.

 215 Graves

215 Graves with no names
215 names lost forever
215 sparks of God's fire
drifting away on the river.

They were worlds of wonder loving God's bounty
Loving the earth and the sky and the river.
It carried them on, it swept them away,
Time’s cruel waters drowned love's fire.

215 Graves with no names...

Pride and power took them from family
Took them for shaping as if they were clay
But God's spark within them resisted the potter
Flamed bright and loving until they gave way.

215 Graves with no names...

Then they were buried, discarded, forgotten;
The warm earth received them and held them safe,
Safe from the beatings, the scoldings and pain,
Dreaming of fathers and mothers and home.

215 Graves with no names...

Now we have found them, now their bones cry to us,
Were you the ones who talked of Christ’s love?
Now we must reckon with guilt of our ancestors,
But power and pride live on in us.

215 graves with no names....

We’re all one family, children of Earth,
Earth-mother who offers us love of each other,
Love that can heal us, love that can lift us
Above pride and power, above guilt and fear.

215 graves with no names....

When we let go of the greed that defines us,
The greed that we think will free us from fear,
Then the bones of the children will rise up and embrace us
And love will reshape us into children of light.

215 graves with no names
215 names to recover
215 sparks of God’s fire
lighting the way to love.

 

© 2021 W. Kirchmeir

Monty Python and Others: scripts by John Cleese

 

John Cleese. The Golden Skits of Muriel Volestrangler EHRS & BAR (1984) Cleese wrote or collaborated on sketches for several TV shows, Monty Python’s Flying Circus being the one best known in North America. This sampling demonstrates his skills, but as with most printed scripts, it helps to have seen at least some of them performed. Tones of voice, pregnant pauses, furrowed brows etc don’t show in print. The book is great fun, with repeated reminders of the absurdities hidden in what we think of as normal behaviours.
      Most of the time, it’s habit and context that makes us behave as we do. Switch to different contexts, and the habitual behaviours become absurd. Consider the flying sheep sketch: the observers behave as “observers”, and so see nothing odd about the sheep’s attempt at flying. Other writers have used to the same trick to show how habits can be lethal. I recall a Christie story whose plot turns on the insight that we habitually see a “policeman”, not a human being with passions.
      Much of what we think of as our (and other people’s) personality is merely the behaviour expected of us in some specific context. (See Leo Ross’s “attribution error”). We play the roles we feel are expected of us, which include expectations of our idiosyncrasies. One of the blessings of comedy and satire is that it reminds us of how much of what we think of as free choice is merely rote reaction. Recognising that may help us achieve a few degrees of autonomy.
      The Dead Parrot sketch is _not_ included. ***

Schoolmasterly Memoir: Swan Song of A. J. Wentworth

 

H. F. Ellis. Swan Song of A. J. Wentworth (1982) The second (and final) chronicle of Wentworth’s life and career, as told by himself. It’s a mildly amusing and occasionally sharply skewering satire of the naively blinkered fool, in the peculiarly English tradition of Diary of A Nobody. Several of its parts appeared in (the now defunct) Punch, a magazine that appeared as if by magic in my Grandfather’s house when I was a boy barely capable of understanding the cartoons, let alone the prose pieces.
     I enjoyed this book, but I suspect that it’s a specialised taste. Too many of the jokes depend on allusions too very English traits and attitudes, most of which were already obsolescent when this book was written. Wentworth is given a trip to the USA; it seems his experience as a maths teacher at Burgrove prep school qualify him for a lecture tour. He ends up a married man, but the causative events leading up that blessed state were recounted in the first volume, which I haven’t read. Drat! **½