from Time Wars (1987)

excerpt from
Time Wars

1987

by J Rifkin

 

(google books link)

  • I grabbed this book from a flea market because of the title and cover, both made me laugh, but as I’ve been slowly reading it I keep thinking “!” and wanted to share this excerpt from the beginning. Not that I think this is new or novel or unique or even correct in all cases, but maybe you’ll get a kick out of it, like I did.

Book Notes - Santayana

On The Philosophy of George Santayana. This is the second edition. It came out the year GS died, 1951.

(quickly re: George Santayana…I am only interested in him in proximity to William James, (similar to interest in Royce or even Henry James(!)) who I am interested in many times more. I don’t like GS or his philosophy , but I’m interested…in general, from what little I’ve read (he wrote 30+ books). But prox. to Wm James plus his weird (too lazy rn to be describe better…) way of writing is enough to get me to grab a book if I see it for cheap or for free… I bought this book because the price was right and because it looked good on the shelf… It’s an era of philosophical writing and especially book design! that I’m really into…)

The book itself is a “…answers his critics” where various heavy hitters write about GS and then he gets a lot of space to respond.

 
 

Notes on Allegory and Ideology by Frederic Jameson

under construction

-I’ll upload these pages a few at a time, as a treat (to myself).

I loved reading this book, mornings dense with epiphanies, and I hope there are some interesting tantalizing weird or funny notes in here that will brighten up things for you (skull emoji).

to be cont’d

LINKS and PLUGS


I’m in the middle of Joe Sacco’s Paying The Land and really enjoying it. Recommended!! Notice how he draws eyes. Weird! It’s consistent, often clearly looking in to the light/camera. His drawing is incredible in this book. The story itself is the main thing, though, and an incredible tale of Canada.

from Joe Sacco’s “Paying The Land”

 

The way Segar was translated into French, in terms of design and publishing, is sure weird! I like it, even though the Frechness of it at times is too French, if that makes sense? I can’t speak to the actual translation translation, but who knows, probably “Let’s you and him fight” is funny in French, too. I’ll write an essay about it someday…maybe… Several old French Segar Popeyes can be read clicking around at this link.

Books

Cataloguing the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age
by Alex Wright

-Writer of Glut: Mastering Information through the Ages. Wright wrote an article in Designing Universal Knowledge, a mind-expanding sprint through the evolution of information systems, which caused me to seek out his other work. This Otlet book, which I got for Christmas(!) a couple years ago and finally read, was interesting, a bummer to read about how Otlet’s life work was destroyed and his hopes dashed and destroyed, and not the ecstatic trip into deep wizardry I was hoping for…more like a biography and some magazine article chapters about his connection to the Internet creators. Maybe a deeper dive into the archives and theories is what I was looking for, and more pictures of the drawings and notes like this. The milieu of optimistic modernist Belgium was interesting to read about…a cool book, glad I finally got to it.

Who is Rich?
by Matthew Klam

-Novel about sad dad, former cartoonist with sex issues. Page turner, lyrical, well-written.

How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning, and Thinking—for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers
by Sönke Ahrens

-Read this in one day. More theory and justification of the system than actual practical talk about the system, but there’s enough of that in there if you hunt for it. As a book that exemplifies its own system, it’s a mixed bag. Too much linkage and sprawl, maybe?? As Tom K said “It's almost a philosophy of mind book in disguise,” and the touchstones of this are familiar to me and I was already on board, so I sped through a lot of it. There is also the fact maybe that this is just “notecard writing” which is what I was taught in AP English in high school…but there’s new stuff in there about linkages and meta-structures and how to keep it simple and useful…what NOT to do. Good book for students! I’d make it part of my teaching repertoire if I was still teaching… Anyways it made me optimistic and excited to get back into “my studies” and re-connected me with some ideas and practices I’ve let slip…I’m more into the paper and pen version than digital… This book also is a application and corrective to GTD for creative work (Souther Salazar). Next: apply this all to the process of comics making? Or maybe the daily strip constraints, the newspaper etc. is already that? The idea of this book and GTD etc. that the system is a virtuous cycle of low stress routines and tasks, out of which emerges the work… Also! connections, networks, hypertext and nonlinear textual links and metatexts etc with the Otlet book.

Book Review

Ninety-nine More Maggots, Mites, and Munchers
by May R. Berenbaum
-Insects are written about in short 1-2 page entries. This is a sequel. I did not read the first book. This short form is fitting for writing about insects. The form of the entries consists of: many puns, perhaps to add some light-heartedness to descriptions of the insectoid horror-world; some discussion of how each species affects the lives of human beings; and of course Latin name, life cycle, diet, mating, unusual behaviors and memorable peculiarities, etc.. Insects are strange and beautiful and they often mess up things for human beings by biting them or messing with their crops. I enjoyed reading this book. First I read it as something to help me fall asleep but then as pure pleasure and distraction for a troubled mind.


Book Review

Science, Order, and Creativity
by David Bohm and F. David Peat

I bought this book at a sale because I thought the cover was so...unusual. Plus the title and the whole package was my kind of thing. There's stuff about fractals and Heisenberg and there's a chapter named "What is Order?" 

I didn't plan on reading it, but then one night I gave it a shot, and I saw that these guys really knew what they were talking about. They take us from physics to metaphysics, to meta-, and then on to the mystical and the cosmic and the everyday mind. By the end they're discussing Krishnamurti.

I like their idea of "false play" / "playing false:" This is when a person "is engaged in an activity that no longer has meaning in itself, merely in order to experience a pleasant and satisfying state of consciousness" but is now concerned with "reward or the avoidance of punishment." This not only screws with the "generative order of consciousness" but generates violence: the denial of the freedom of creative states of mind "brings about a pervasive state of dissatisfaction and boredom. This leads to intense frustration..." and deadened senses, intellect, and emotions, and the loss of a capacity for "free movement of awareness, attention, and thought." (I've been thinking back and forth about signing up with Patreon all week...)

A lot of thought went into this book. Reading it gave me a nice feeling of texture and struggle. It felt like good exercise for the mind AND the heart. Over-earnestness, a vision of the beyond, struggling with language — I can sympathize. 

As usual as I was reading I couldn't help but think more diagrammatic thinking would have helped, and not just thinking—more actual diagrams would have helped. I guess that's what the cover artist Andresj Dudzenski was trying to get at with the flower, cubes, etc. But the cover artist and the writers are using different metaphor-schemes, as far as I can tell. I don't remember any of those sorts of things (such as shaped holes and pegs, flowers or magnifying glasses) appearing inside the text.) Relatively speaking there are actually quite a few illustrations—fractals and geometric figures, and even the Baptism of the Ethiopian Eunuch by Rembrandt and some JW Turner. 

But how about a sense of humor, an ironic sense? This book is pretty dry. Here's a sample of the writing: "Thus, if there are rigid ideas and assumptions in the tacit infrastructure of consciousness, the net result is not only a restriction on creativity, which operates close to the "source" of the generative order, but also a positive presence of energy that is directed toward general destructiveness." It's true, but it's not exactly powerfully written. In the end, though, it's hard for me to hold this against a book so dedicated to making clear this vision of reality which makes humor and compassion possible at all, by "operating close to the source of the generative order" in a spirit of openness and creativity.



Near the end:
Consider, for example, a hypothetical individual whose consciousness had been "cleared up" both in the individual and the cosmic dimensions. Although this person might be a model of wisdom and compassion, his or her value in the general context would be limited. For because of "unconscious" rigidity in the general infrastructure, the rest of humanity could not properly listen to this person and he or she would either be rejected or worshiped as godlike. In either case there would be no true dialogue at the social level and very little effect on the vast majority of humanity. What would be needed in such a case would be for all concerned to set aside assumptions of godlike perfection, which makes genuine dialogue impossible. In any case, the truly wise individual is one who understands that there may be something important to be learned from any other human being. Such an attitude would make true dialogue possible, in which all participants are in the creative "middle ground" between the extremes of "perfection" and "imperfection." In this ground, a fundamental transformation could take place which goes beyond either of the limited extremes and includes the sociocultural dimension.