To the happy few

I’ve been reading “What is your dangerous idea?”, a book edited by John Brockman and comprising the dangerous ideas of so called leading thinkers. Some of the texts are certainly thought-provoking, but I don’t believe scientists possess any privileged information regarding the “deeper meaning of our lives”, as Brockman seems to imply in the introduction; in some cases, the opposite might be true, because of an obssessive focus on narrow subjects. That right there would be my first dangerous idea: scientists may know enough to take over the world, but I doubt they will figure what to do with it. Secondly, I don’t think humanity has felt the full force of Darwin’s idea yet, and even some of those who grasp the concept tend to worry about fitness, surrendering to the selfish gene; the theory of evolution stripped organic life of meaning, granting us the freedom to choose our own meaning. We had already done that, to an extent, by building a cultural layer on top of our raw selves, and that leads to the third idea: memes supersede genes, and as soon as the former can be encoded in a reliable and durable way, mankind will be obsolete, for all practical purposes.

(Fortunately, practical purposes allow us to live but are not what we stay alive for, as Keating said in Dead Poets Society.)

I’ve always known that Fall, the common term for Autumn in the United States, referred to the fall of the leaves, but only recently has it occurred to me that Spring is a synonym for leaping (thus, jump and fall). Of course the true meaning of Spring is the springing of crops, just as Autumn was formerly known as Harvest, a designation that seems much more optimistic than ‘Fall’. I wonder how these choices of terms may psychologically affect people, or how, on the other hand, they may reflect the mood of the times. Is it even measurable? To put it in a different way: imagine that life is affected by the day of the week in which one is born; birth on a Friday, first birthday on a Saturday, second on a Sunday, with all the particular experiences those days may entail, depending on cultural background. Could it be that such details will influence personality and the course of life? The effect would probably be diminute, to be sure, perhaps lost on us as random noise, but there is a difference between that and no influence at all.

(I do realize this could provide some sort of scientific basis for Astrology, although in this case it would not be ‘astrology’, but rather an effect based on time frames for certain developmental events that would help shape people’s traits and lives)

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men – that is genius.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

When I read this quote, Pinky and the Brain quickly sprang to mind. Are you pondering what I’m pondering? If one were to be cynical… perhaps it is common that genius and delusion go hand in hand. Ay, there’s the rub: true genius is to eschew those delusions and embrace reality.

Die meisten Dinge im Leben enden reichlich unspektakulär.

— Nina Ruzicka, in Der Tod und das Mädchen

I’ve been reading a webcomic that can be almost vulgar in its simplicity, and yet I find it funny and charming. It touches upon a subject I was musing about earlier, because of Buffet Froid; there was one scene that particularly amused me, when Morvandieu wants to shoot Depardieu’s character, only to find his gun is empty; Depardieu turns on him with his knife, “Tu ne ferais pas ça?” “Pourquoi non? Entre copains?”. The whole movie is made of surreal bits and pieces, with a few connecting threads providing meaning. I don’t know if the whole has a meaning or if the parts do, which brings me back to Tod und das Mädchen: the end needs not be spectacular, if the parts were good enough, and that is why both planning and attention to detail bring about excellence.

The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.

— Vince Lombardi

Aos pés do burro que olhava para o mar
depois do bolo-rei comeram-se sardinhas
com as sardinhas um pouco de goiabada
e depois do pudim, para um último cigarro
um feijão branco em sangue e rolas cozidas

Pouco depois cada qual procurou
com cada um o poente que convinha.
Chegou a noite e foram todos para casa ler Cesário Verde
que ainda há passeios ainda há poetas cá no país!

— Mário Cesariny

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

— Nursery rhyme

Robert de Niro used this line in Taxi Driver, when he convinced himself that he would make a difference (a thought that is the source of much trouble in the world): “All the king’s men could not put it back together again”. I like that expression, “all the king’s men”. It’s forceful and broad; soldiers and generals, no matter. The cream of the crop.