closing thought on Alexandria

But I certainly had no problem daydreaming just now, when rereading Gibbon’s fine paragraph on Alexandria.

I love it up there as is, in its current state. But if I could change the condition of any city in the world, I would like to see an Alexandria today as well-preserved as Venice, Florence, or Prague. (I realize that it would be a longer haul in years from Alex’s heyday compared with the three other cities just mentioned.)

The “fifteen miles in circumference” line is what got me, because it reminds me that even the ancient city was by no means small. When you leave the train station in Alexandria, a quick right turn (passing the ruins of a Roman amphitheater) gives you maybe a 10-minute walk to the sea. And right there on the harbor is apparently where all of the main attractions were, including the royal facilities, the library, and the lighthouse on what was then an island not far off shore.

But if you head straight out of the train station and angle back to the left, you eventually come upon another field of Roman ruins, as well as the catacombs. (One part is labelled as the area where the bones of the victims of Caracalla were housed. Caracalla was the son of Septimius Severus, and a far more brutal emperor than his father. He ordered a general massacre of Alexandria at one point, just because he didn’t like the people there.)

It might be a half hour or slightly more to walk form the catacombs to the area where the library would have been, and I can sort of imagine a 15-mile perimeter of walls around the whole area.

It’s nice enough to be up in Alex and breathe that fresh sea air and observe the beautiful, chalky colors. But it’s often strange to think you are standing on perhaps the exact block that was the intellectual center of the world 2,000 years ago, because –it’s true– there’s not much trace of it remaining. And that’s why some people are disappointed by the city. For me, the air and sea plus the imagination is enough to make it a highly dramatic experience.

reading what you want to read

I’m fresh off seeing video of my brother set a pie-eating record in Portland, and I’m almost sick just from observing it. He’s still pretty thin at 35, and I guess his metabolism can handle it, but it was a tough thing to watch. If we see others yawn, we yawn. If we see one of those waterboarding demonstrations, we wince. And if we see people eat too many pies, we are nauseated.

Just a random thought on which to end the night… There are about 25 books pulled off my shelves and lying on the coffee table and a couple of chairs and a desk. These are not just books that I really want to read immediately, but books that each have a justification for why they must be read immediately. Several of them are either gifts, from authors or fans of the book, which I feel guilty about not having read yet.

But I can’t read them all right now, obviously.

If you’re still in graduate school, make sure to appreciate the fact that you’re still able to read around as you see fit. If you become busier in your writing that is one thing that gets sacrificed pretty quickly. Most of my reading these days is directly related either to teaching or to something I have promised to write, so that I must choose both teaching and writing assignments more carefully in the future (I’ve tended to just say “yes” to everything that comes my way, and it won’t be possible for too much longer).

There is room for maybe one exception at a time, and Gibbon is my current big exception just as it was the Inferno back in the early days of this blog.

Ortega has a nice line about why only young people are really able to master difficult systems of philosophy: “One needs the good will of those early years, when good will is all one has.”

Related thoughts…

Someone told me about a study of older people which turned up the interesting result that their most vivid memories were from their 20’s. If true it doesn’t surprise me. Your 20’s are the most dramatic intersection of emotional intensity and adult issues. Impressions aren’t quite as strong later on.

Yukio Mishima, in his novel Runaway Horses, has a character in his late 30’s, about whom he makes an interesting remark… He says that people in their late 30’s imagine that they’re still pretty close to their late 20’s, but only because the events of the ensuing ten years have left almost no strong impression on them. It’s a slight overstatement, but not by much.

Another observation… Freud talks somewhere about how poets are the ones who keep daydreaming, even though most people stop daydreaming when they become adults. When I read that I was about 22 and had no idea what he was talking about, since I was daydreaming as much as ever at that point. But just this year I noticed that I have to force myself to do it, such as when brainstorming. You lose the energy and free time to daydream as much– unless you’re a professional poet, I guess.

Gibbon on Alexandria

One more, since it’s a nice description of a place I like so well:

“The foundation of Alexandria was a noble design, at once conceived and executed by the son of Philip. The beautiful and regular form of that great city, second only to Rome itself, comprehended a circumference of fifteen miles; it was peopled by three hundred thousand free inhabitants, besides at least an equal number of slaves. The lucrative trade of Arabia and India flowed through the port of Alexandria to the capital and provinces of the empire. Idleness was unknown. Some were employed in blowing of glass, others in weaving of linen, others again in manufacturing the papyrus. Either sex, and every age, was engaged in the pursuits of industry, nor did even the blind or the lame want occupations suited to their condition. But the people of Alexandria, a various mixture of nations, united the vanity and inconstancy of the Greeks with the superstition and obstinacy of the Egyptians. The most trifling occasion, a scarcity of flesh or lentils, the neglect of an accustomed salutation, a mistake of precedency in the public baths, or even a religious dispute, were at any time sufficient to kindle a sedition among that vast multitude, whose resentments were furious and implacable.”

This leads into a discussion of a 12-year civil war within the city, during which the various neighborhoods of Alexandria were carved up among factions and mutually cut off by walls and barricades.

due for some Gibbon

Here he is talking about the chaotic period in which 19 pretender emperors (“the thirty tyrants”), many from menial professions, competed chaotically with Gallienus for the throne:

“The rapid and perpetual transitions from the cottage to the throne, and from the throne to the grave, might have amused an indifferent philosopher, were it possible for a philosopher to remain indifferent amidst the general calamities of human kind.”

Benjamin Franklin

And it occurs to me that I’ve picked up all the American Protestant self-improvement genes, found most clearly in Ben Franklin… Just did a quick tally of the early part of the is decade, and it looks like 60%-65% good is the norm. That’s a lot better than it sounds, I think… The excess of matter over anti-matter at the time of the Big Bang was far smaller a percentage than that.

department of optimism statistics

With a day and a half to go, I count 26 good events and 15 bad events in May, with the good ones better than the bad ones are bad. I’ve said this before– we just tend to fixate on the bad ones a lot more. The nearly 2:1 ratio has been pretty typical since I started keeping track about 9 years ago.

I think there was only one month with more bad stuff, as well as another month where 11 trivial good things were crushed by 4 horrific bad ones. And that’s the extent of the badness, in the span of nearly a decade.

it bears repeating

There are really only two kinds of people: those who look for excuses to do things, and those who look for excuses not to do them. You have to cut off the alibi-makers, or they will corrupt and demoralize you. Everything else we might say about a person (such as “brilliant”) is secondary to the question of whether they are moving forward, or rather looking for excuses to delay and sabotage themselves and others.

And to repeat, this is simply a health issue, not a snobbery issue. Probably everyone has a few areas of life where they tend to manufacture alibis rather than dealing with reality, and people who are parasites and obstructors when it comes to academic work could possibly be life-enhancing angels in other areas. (Though the chances may not be very high.)

PDF available

Just seconds ago I was told that my article “Heidegger on Technology, Objects and Things” has appeared in the online version of the Cambridge Journal of Economics. I’m assuming anyone can access this free of charge, but don’t know that for a fact.

This article was submitted by request to deal with a specific audience/theme issue. I’ve probably said most of these things elsewhere; it was a designed as a short, clear, simple summary.

I don’t think the print version will appear until January 2010, but I like this system of putting the articles on the web well before the paper journal appears.

Bloom, Isis, Iowa

This post by Gary Smith was enjoyable. I like it partly because he may be right about the “anxiety of influence” point (I’m well aware that I’ve given a “misreading” in the sense that Heidegger himself would never have signed off on it). But also I like his casual reference to the Herbert Hoover Library. (Smith is from the Iowa City area too, and thus is able to get away with inside references to Iowa’s only Presidential Library. Unfortunately, I only went to the Hoover Library during childhood and haven’t the faintest recollection of an Isis statue. Time to go back, I guess.)

But wow, that was a pretty good “insipid physical bulks” passage. I don’t remember writing that one, but it sounds like something I’d say.

“Graham Harman has given us an interpretation of Heidegger, a good, strong interpretation. And it is, just as Harold Bloom has taught us in The Anxiety of Influence, a mis-interpretation. A mis-reading, a misprision, the whole road. This ‘ephebe’ is thus a good disciple of his precursor. He may think otherwise, as the belated follower always would, but life is life and ‘objective’ scholarship is simply bad scholarship.

He wrote, ‘I will show that objects themselves, far from the insipid physical bulks that one imagines, are already aflame with ambiguity, torn by vibrations and insurgencies equaling those found in the most tortured human moods.’ And therein is the rub. The tool-being he so casually speaks of, this insurgency that lies beneath the manifest presence of the object is not the fit subject for a scholar/professor. This Thing is too wild and terrible for the innocent student in a classroom or a journal’s board of directors. Only a rabid poet could rightly depict it. Still, Mr. Harman has pointed to something that is mighty interesting and he has himself blithely and innocently approached the under-thing that we may know that it exists.

I’m sure he has seen the statue of Isis on the grounds of the Hoover Presidential Library. That veiled thing is what he is after. That terrible goddess. Here is a quote from Proust, ‘Quand je voyais un object exterieur, la conscience que je le voyais restait entre moi et lui, le bordait d’un mince lisèrè spiritual qui m’empechait de jamais toucher directement sa matière.'”