“If you get deep enough, you get trapped. Stop calling yourself a user. You are being used.” – Jaron Lanier, on Facebook

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Last week, I explored some of my reactions to the first half of Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto (originally published in 2010; mine is the 2011 edition, which includes an afterword in which Lanier answers some commonly posed questions surrounding the book, which is where the above quote came from). I finished Gadget this morning, and figured I’d make some brief follow-up comments regarding a particular criticism I’ve encountered, namely that Lanier’s ideas – especially near the end of the book - are at times overly intellectual, or that he’s trying too hard to be philosophically speculative, or that he is too vague.

Chris Grams’ March 2010 blog post, Is Jaron Lanier just a hater, or should we be paying attention?, exemplifies what I’m talking about. I like Grams’ post (and especially  agree with him that Lanier would do better to ditch the aggressive “Maoism” terminology), and would be curious to know what he thinks of this one. However, I disagree with his characterization of Lanier’s constructive work near the end of the book as coming across as a “college philosophy term paper” that “occasionally [devolves] into nearly unintelligible (at least by me) ravings about things like ‘postsymbolic communication’ and ‘bachelardian neoteny’.” Of course, I can’t disagree that these aspects of the text are nearly unintelligible to Grams, but I do disagree that this is a cause for criticism.

I personally find Lanier’s willingness to go into the interdisciplinary territory he goes into – invoking history, economics, socio-political systems, philosophy, linguistics, math, (neuro)biology, and of course computer science – to be refreshing both in and of itself as well as in terms of how fluidly he does so. I tire of reading books and articles that focus too narrowly on any a single field. For Lanier not to have attempted some sort of constructive philosophical work would have been a disappointment for me, as the attempt to formulate original philosophical thinking is something we don’t encounter enough of these days in literature dealing with human behavior.

Rather than engaging in abstract speculation, current writers often focus on the collection and analysis of an array of statistical summaries in order to arrive at what are presented as more or less empirical conclusions about society. Some of these are well worth one’s time (a handful come immediately to mind by the likes of behavioral economist Dan Ariely, journalist Malcom Gladwell, et al.), but what they lack for me is contemplative, constructive, and even wildly speculative (though self-consciously so) propositions about what to do with the information at hand, particularly in terms of what it might tell us about how to live. What also tends to be lacking is the question of whether the information at hand is relevant at all. That is, writers tend not to question the underlying ideology that forms how information-generating research is approached in the first place, not to mention what drove the writer to select particular informational findings to the exclusion of other findings.

I don’t agree with everything Lanier writes in the book (for one thing, I think that there are some important omissions related to aesthetics in his consideration of the connection between olfaction and the development of the human capacity for metaphor), however I really do appreciate the work he’s done, and I don’t feel that it’s all that difficult to follow if one takes the time to do some additional research in order to understand what he’s talking about.

You see, Lanier isn’t just a computer scientist (nor does he identify himself that narrowly), so his references go outside of that field. At the same time, many of the book’s most interested and critical readers will no doubt be interested in concerns directly related to computer science. I believe this has caused some of the accusations of unintelligibility, as it is not my impression that that readership has taken the time to really try to figure out what Lanier is talking about at every turn. Really, it’s not hard to do, and I certainly had to look up things relating to computer science. The book would have been massive had Lanier explained every reference he made, though he does explain many of them, and for many others he cites specific sources to which one may refer for further information. Those references that he doesn’t explain, such as “Borges’ infinity,”¹ are clarified through context, or can be figured out with a Google search.

Lanier is also a real and digital world social and cultural critic (that is, not merely a hater), he’s a musician, a philosopher, and a dreamer. When these and other qualities come together productively, he becomes a visionary. With this in mind, I’m going to now choose one element that has been criticized as being overly intellectual or obfuscatory: Lanier’s aforementioned concept of Bachelardian neoteny.

In looking at this concept, I hope to impart why I think his book would be incomplete had he not included speculative ideas such as this, and not just because I find the concept thought-provoking and interesting (which I do). On a personal level, as someone interested in philosophy as a viable activity – by which I mean doing philosophy in a way that relates to current concerns as opposed to simply giving yet another interpretation of Kant – Lanier’s speculations constitute some of the most exciting aspects of the book. ²

To understand Bachelardian neoteny. We should first look at chapter two, where Lanier explains his deep respect for the neurological evolution of certain cephalopods (e.g., octopus and squid)³. For this reason, he won’t eat them, though he will eat chickens, which he describes as “little more than feathery servo-controlled mechanisms” (here he’s talking about morality and empathy, among other things). Now, fast-forward to the final chapter of the book, where he explains Bachelardian neoteny, which relates to his aforementioned respect (and fascination) for cephalopods (postsymbolic communication factors in as well, but is not necessary to get into here).

To illustrate his point about cephalopods, who (or “which”?) can “think in 3-D and morph,” he references the following startling video of an octopus in three-dimensional-morphing action:

With this in mind, as well as other stuff I’ll get to in a moment, he presents the following equation:

Cephalopods + Childhood = Humans + Virtual Reality

To understand what this means, one must understand what is meant by “neoteny,” which he explains at length. A simple explanation is that humans have an advantage over other species because of their extended childhood phase (or, alternatively viewed, delayed early developmental phase). Children must be taken care of, during which time they develop in ways that animals who have a short rearing phase cannot. Cephalopods are pretty much ready to go out into the world at birth, with no level of neoteny, instead immediately relying on instinct in order to survive. Lanier believes that if octopuses had a childhood phase in which parents could impart knowledge and experience to their young, “surely they would be running the Earth.”

That explains “neoteny,” but what about this word “Bachelardian”? Lanier describes three kinds of human neoteny, each of which Lanier uses to represent a kind of childhood: Goldingesque (after William Golding’s Lord of the Flies; that one shouldn’t be too hard to figure out), Bachelardian (after Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Reverie; more on that in a moment), and Infantile (this relates to existing notions regarding the evolutionary benefits of neoteny and human brain development).

Bachelard (1884 – 1962) was a French philosopher and scientist who wrote about the power of imagination in many contexts, including science, childhood, poetry, consciousness, phenomenology (i.e., human experience), and psychoanalysis. The book in question, Poetics of Reverie, is brows-able at Amazon.com, and there are plenty of biographies of Bachelard online. Lanier explains that his reference to the philosopher is meant to represent what is good about childhood, while the reference to Golding is meant to represent what is bad (in Lanier’s estimation, the bad kind enjoys greater online representation than the good kind).

But you don’t have to know anything about Bachelard to understand what Lanier sees in his work. Lanier spells it out himself, as follows:

“The good [childhood] includes numinous imagination, unbounded hope, innocence, and sweetness. Childhood is the very essence of magic, optimism, creativity, and open invention of self and the world. It is the heart of tenderness and connection between people, of continuity between generations, of trust, play and mutuality. It is the time in life when we learn to use our imaginations without the constraints of life lessons.”

So far, we now understand a lot of what Lanier is getting at  with the aforementioned equation, but how does virtual reality fit in? Lanier, by the way, is extremely influential in the field of virtual reality, and was an early pioneer and innovator of the technology (the back cover of Gadget describes him as the “father of virtual reality technology”). He’s never stopped in his quest to advance the field so that it might one day meet, and then exceed, his vision of the technology’s potential, the progress towards which he thinks is being impeded by current digital ideological constraints. When Lanier talks about virtual reality, he’s talking about possibilities not just for a new gaming, aesthetic or learning experience (all of which he does talk about, especially the latter two), but for contributing to the next stage of human evolution.

In Lanier’s view, in order for cephalopods to evolve to fulfill their greatest, currently unimaginable potential, they’ll need to somehow develop a childhood phase. Lanier draws an analogy between cephalopods developing a childhood and humans developing virtual reality technology. He doesn’t necessarily claim that virtual reality will be required in order for humans to continue to evolve (that is, to continue to adapt to their environment), however there is the implication that virtual reality is the best bet for humans to evolve to a place that is currently unfathomable, such as into a post-human phase.

Freed from physical limitations, virtual reality can create new environments that can enable humans to evolve – especially mentally – in unimaginable ways that could range from beautiful to bizarre, but without the threat of extinction that exists in the real world. Evolution in the real world is vicious and cruel, evolution in virtual reality would be, well, Bachelardian: an extended childhood full of imagination and wonder.

Thus the phrase “Bachelardian neoteny” and its connection to the equation, which I’ll cite once again:

Cephalopods + Childhood = Humans + Virtual Reality

(Aside: It’s interesting to contemplate the notion of dualism in this context. That is, the idea that the mind is not physical, but immaterial. The common thought these days is that the mind is physical. The implications of what Lanier is proposing is that the physical body that is in the world would continue to be prone to natural selection, while neurological content – ranging from imagination to perceptual faculties and the sense of one’s own body – would have the additional advantage of a nonviolent evolutionary process that would enable humans to do better both in the virtual and natural worlds. So, he’s not describing a Matrix-like existence in which humans abandon their bodies, but instead a self-conscious use of Matrix-like tools in order to enhance what it means to be human. For example, he refers to a mastery of certain aspects of virtual reality becoming one day required for mating rituals. He’s also very keen on its use for aesthetic purposes. This process would alter the brain physically. What would this do to the rest of the body within the context of the real, non-virtual world?)

As for any aspects of Lanier’s thoughts that are vague (or perhaps better put, inchoate), he owns up to them. That is, he recognizes his own inability to think outside of the ideology – the conceptual framework – within which his consciousness, experience, and self-identity have been formed. In order to escape such constraints, one must push past rational thought and attempt to approach the unimaginable, because you can only step back so far beyond the frame of the picture within which you exist, and then from the frame surrounding that new bigger picture, and on and on. There’s always another framework surrounding the one you’ve just managed to grasp.

Lanier is trying to subvert existing ideologies as much as possible in an effort to aspire to the currently unthinkable. This is one of the noblest endeavors a philosopher can undertake when done with the sincerity that Lanier evinces. When I encounter books like Lanier’s, that stretch the author’s grasp of his or her subject, I get excited.

I am disheartened by the current of anti-intellectualism that runs through American culture. This is an observation that is often made within and outside of our borders, and it’s a hard one to deny when so many of our politicians spend more time talking about God and denouncing evolution and global warming than they spend trying to solve our problems of political paralysis, social disaster, economic downturn, and catastrophic foreign policy. This isn’t just a tendency of conservatives, though. I observe anti-intellectualism among many liberals as well who are too quick to dismiss – sometimes angrily – ideas that remind them of when they were in college (not to mention that we’re no where near a liberal atheist being a viable candidate for high political office).

Perhaps I’m overly sensitive to it, but when I see reviewers wincing at Lanier’s sincere and, in my opinion, fun and thought-provoking use of made-up phrases, I can’t help but feel we’re losing the battle against manufactured and willful ignorance in this country. ⁴ To be fair, Lanier pops up in a lot of places these days talking about some of the more basic ideas in his book, and a lot of people sympathize with him, whether they’ve read the book or not. ⁵

To make it exceedingly clear, I don’t agree with everything Lanier has written in Gadget (another example: I don’t agree that the culture resulting from current software design implementation threatens a musical – or any other kind of – dark age). What I’m more concerned with here is are the conversations that Lanier’s book could inspire ending up snubbed due to a lack of interest in thinking speculatively, or due to an unyielding lack of interest in venturing outside of one’s particular area of intellectual obsession. I believe this to be a form of anti-intellectualism, though perhaps of a softer variety that, in this case, says, “a computer scientist should stick to science references and cease with the literary and philosophical and political etc. references.” Thank goodness he doesn’t, because world doesn’t work that way.

When done right, philosophy contributes to our ability to view the world holistically, as well as to explore questions concerning the nature of human experience in ways that science cannot, while science is great for exploring the mechanisms that make human experience possible (e.g., science can explain the faculty of audition, but it can’t explain why we are moved by music, or why we should or shouldn’t even care about such a question). Whether or not I agree with his views, Lanier is doing philosophy the way it should be done, and that’s something to be encouraged.

I’m hoping that over the next few weeks I’ll have time to write some articles that I’ve been meaning to get to for a while now, including a series on economics and ideology, a recent obsession of mine, some of my key ideas about which I had the pleasure of presenting to my school and local community earlier this month.

First Up, a Music Update…

I announced in my last blog post that I was planning to release two music projects around the beginning of 2012. However, school plus my aforementioned obsession with economics ended up taking up all of my productive time. I got some music done, but not nearly enough to release one album, much less two. This is ok. I believe in doing that which is most fulfilling (unless you’re a pedophile or cannibal or… you know what I mean… let’s not get into that). At any rate, I’ll be working on music in the coming weeks, after which I’ll give a new update on my progress.

That said, I’ll share some of the things I’ve been reading and watching lately in my leisure time.

Some of the Books I’m Currently Reading…

You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier

I’m only about halfway through this book, but the common theme is that current software design implementation – especially the web 2.0 internet model – tends to dissolve human individuals into a kind of collective hive-mind (sometimes a.k.a. the “noosphere”), the structure of which is influenced by the notion of the computer being a viable metaphor for the human brain and mind. He argues that software design should attempt to conform to the complexities of the human experience as opposed to reducing humans to facile computer-like systems.

I’m not quite as critical as Lanier is of the current state of things, though, as one might expect, Lanier is even more concerned with (or perhaps even terrified by) what’s to come than he is with what’s going on now. He describes a cyber-dystopia, disguised as cyber-utopia, towards which we are excitedly headed (the dividing line between dystopia and utopia, however, is not clearly drawn; for example, he pejoratively describes current cyber culture as “digital Maoism,” so, he’s using some rhetorical devices that his opponents – those who are supporters of current cyber culture and really do believe it to represent a kind of utopian ideal - would likely not appreciate). I Lanier’s assessment of what’s to come is extreme, but one thing that does ring true is that if the current design is as bad as he says it is - not just in terms of code, but also socially speaking – it’ll be that much harder to change that design as it becomes increasingly “locked in” (that is, as more and more structures are built with interdependent relationships to that initial, bad structure; he uses MIDI, which his friend invented, as an example of a bad locked-in technology).

(A current concern I won’t get into so much here, because I’d rather explore it in socio-economic terms later, is the phenomenon of internet users becoming irate at the suggestion that they should pay for content as opposed to, for example, stealing the music from a band they like. And, by the way, a lot of artists give away lots of free music because they’re advised to. For one thing, bands – especially lesser known bands – who don’t offer free music run the risk of coming across as selfish greedy jerks. It seems that users are far more interested in a libertarian cyber-society, in which everything is controlled by private interests. So, what even real-world socialists want online is a free market in which artists don’t get paid, but the people running the monopolies and olipopolies that control online content and information, such as Google, Facebook, YouTube, etc., make gobs of cash.

These users seem to THINK they’re engaging in some kind of free spirited socialism – or even communism - by keeping all content “free,” but the truth is that by eliminating the possibility for there to be a thriving entrepreneurial cyber-class, all the power goes to major corporations, not just online but offline. And, somehow, users are horrified by the notion of the government stepping in to regulate these corporations, even though those same users are currently demanding greater regulation of non-internet-based corporations. Internet-based companies have pulled off a neat trick, getting their users to see the company’s private best interest as the users’ collective best interest. This is true despite the fact that so many users think they’re the one’s manipulating Facebook – and not vice versa - by simply being aware that Facebook primarily exists as a marketing tool. Facebook likes us to think that. It keeps us coming back and empowering that tool, the accumulative result of which is that it keeps them and their colleagues in power over the attitudes users have in regards to online social and economic dynamics, such as what should be expected from musicians, filmmakers, writers, and journalists.)

At any rate, there’s a lot I agree with in Lanier’s arguments, which when boiled down are essentially anti-reductionist and anti-ideology in nature (two ideas that are important to me; note that when I referenced user attitudes above, I was referencing ideology).

Before going on, I want to be very clear about how much I like the internet. I love having quick access to so many ideas and media, and the ease with which I can communicate with people. The critique here is not of the internet per se, but of the design implementation that shapes how the internet is used. That “how” question is very important, and determines what other sorts of questions can follow (again, we’re talking about questions that relate to ideology, such as: What questions is it possible to ask within a given conceptual framework, and what questions are impossible to even imagine?).

Back to Lanier’s anti-reductionism and anti-ideology…

It’s interesting to consider how social networking sites like Facebook are set up to reduce personalities to checkbox database profiles, where you either are a thing or you are not (not to mention the reduction of friendship itself). Of course, this is done for the purposes of collecting marketing data, but there’s a deeper ideological framework at play that is related to this idea that humans are reducible to algorithms and categories of discrete experiences and, ultimately, math that can be replicated for AI and consciousness-simulating purposes. Where did marketers – and behavioral economists and computer programmers for that matter – get the idea that the Facebook-style database provides accurate information about how people function in the world, online or off? Why was that sort of design chosen as the untested starting point? Questions such as these give a peak at the extent to which ideology is at play in how the reductionist process is implemented.

In reading Lanier’s book, it occurred to me that Auto-Tune is another interesting example of the reduction of the human to match the computer-as-human metaphor. As opposed to being allowed to exist as a continuum of frequencies and other properties, the human voice is broken into discrete segments, imitating the binary computer mind as opposed to the human mind (and natural world), which is in constant conflict and dissonance with itself (this isn’t just about individual notes, but the relationship between frequencies; music, fundamentally, is about relationships, including - to name some of the building blocks - relationships of frequencies [which determine pitch and timbre], durations, intensities, and spatial dimensions). However, Auto-Tune is reshaping not just the music we hear, but HOW we hear music. Songs that sounded great to me ten years ago now sound out of key, especially the vocals.

Note that this isn’t just because of the use of Auto-Tune in and of itself. It’s that Auto-Tune and similar digital technologies have set a standard that’s impossible to reach in nature. Many artists don’t use automated tuning detection, but instead use digital pitch correction, where they retune individual manually. Other artists will record a dozen takes or more, and will piece those takes together. This has always been done to some degree, including in the pre-digital world of tape recording (the standard has generally been to perform about three takes, which would be spliced into one solid performance), but what is considered the best take of any given passage – or even syllable – is now influenced by the idea that it’s more important to be in tune than it is to be expressive.

At any rate, there are many consequences of this process of human reduction, to name just three of the many that Lanier touches on:

(1) Impediments to individual creativity in favor of crowd wisdom. I agree that crowd wisdom is good for democracy and, maybe, guessing how much an ox weighs. It’s not good, however, for writing a song or a symphony, developing a philosophical perspective, or inventing a light bulb. We can see this at play at Wikipedia, where there are no individual authors, and instead there is a mashup of fragments from various sources. I greatly prefer something like the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the entries for which are written by individual authors who own up to their own bias. Bias is unavoidable, and Wikipedia tries to create the illusion of not having one by erasing the author from the equation, but it doesn’t work.

(2) AI begins to look more real – and more possible – than it really is, due to humans adopting computer-like personae that make computers seem more human in comparison, thereby fueling overblown reverence for the computer-as-superior-being fantasy. For more info on this, check out the Singularity Institute’s FAQ on singularity (the notion that computers will one day grow superior to humans, for better or for worse) and The Turing Test (tests for convincing cognition in computers).

(3) Software design, especially such that allows for easy and temporary pseudonym creation, has a tendency to bring out the inner-troll (i.e., meanness) in all of us. We’ve all seen this, and most of us have been guilty of it at some point, at least on some level, where we address an online stranger in a less polite manner than we would a stranger in the real world.

(4) Here’s one of my own, related to my above thoughts on Auto-Tune, but which can be broadened to include the general belief in the idea that computers expand innate human capability: In the case of Auto-Tune, there is created an expectation for singers to sing perfectly in key (something that’s not even possible for acoustic non-voice instruments, such as violin or piano). This expectation exists despite simultaneously existing criticisms of the fact that singers need Auto-Tune to reach that perfection. In other words, people recognize that Auto-Tune doesn’t give singers the ability to sing perfectly in key; it is a fiction.

That said, let’s consider the increasingly widespread idea that computers extend and enhance human intelligence. For example, having millions of facts at one’s fingertips is considered to virtually – or even literally – expand one’s knowledge.

As you can imagine, I consider this idea to be wrong. No amount of random, easy access to fragments of information is going to improve critical thinking skills or the ability to draw connections between the information represented in those fragments. The so-called expanded intelligence of a person who cannot intelligently discuss his or her area of interest – much less expertise – without consulting a digital Wiki is a fiction. The notion that the internet extends human intelligence is just something that was decided to be the case by some people who are overly enthusiastic about technology. It is an exciting idea, but it’s not real.

I should clarify here that there is an important distinction to be made between the above and, for example, using a website like Lumosity.com to exercise one’s cognitive skills. There are a number of ways to reinforce one’s mental capacities (get enough sleep and exercise, eat lots of blueberries, do cognitive puzzles for a while each day, et al.), but merely knowing how to do a Google search is not one of them. The internet is an amazing tool for the ambitious researcher (that is, the sort of researcher who also still reads books and talks to people in person), but it also contributes to many a person’s tendency towards intellectual laziness.

Perhaps a positive consequence of all of this is that it makes public debate – with no ‘net to fall back on – all the more important, just as the ability for musicians to perform well live increases in importance as people trust their ears less and less when listening to recordings (people’s expectations are highest when evaluating recordings, including live recordings; when someone’s in front of them in the room, many factors other than singing perfectly in tune come into play that make or break a show).

Back to Lanier’s book… He sometimes gets a little shaky, in my view, in his observations surrounding historical events, both in terms of the mechanisms behind how those events went down and the subsequent analogies he draws between digital and bricks-and-mortar life. However, I love it when he points out that, before the computer, the train was the techie metaphor for how humans function, and this affected how people (including doctors) treated other people. We see this now, with the human brain so often being referred to as though it were a computer, and I simply don’t accept that model.

This starts to get into a lot of other areas, especially consciousness, which I’ll touch on only briefly, just to give a sense of some of the complexity behind the idea of a computer – or human for that matter – being conscious. Four things come to mind:

(1) My view of human consciousness and mind can be characterized as non-reductionist materialism. That is, I believe that the mind is physical (not immaterial or, as philosophers call it, epiphenomenal), but at the same time, I don’t believe that the mind, or human behavior in general, can be reduced to discrete objects that can be transliterated into math or explained in terms of mere evolutionary properties. So, I don’t accept comments such as, “we respond to music merely for some vestigial evolutionarily beneficial biological reason,” or, “music is just a series of isolated sound events that we happen to experience and respond to as if it were a thing in itself,” or, “love is an illusion; it’s just chemicals guiding you towards procreation.” There are a number of reasons I don’t accept these statements, but I won’t get into that here.

There is a growing concept that contrasts with reductionism, referred to as “emergence,” in which it is recognized that the chemical biologist (or other sorts of observers) can look at the function of smaller parts of the whole for the sake of emerging back up to attempt to understand that whole with the function of those smaller parts in mind. The complexity involved in the system of interdependent relationships between the parts and their resulting whole is called “supervenience. “ This is where the mystery (or indecipherable complexity) exists, and the binary mind of a computer is nothing like that. For example, one can just look at how human memories work, insofar as we understand that process, and one sees that it’s nothing like how a computer stores information and makes that information accessible. (Here’s a fun and quite fascinating Radiolab podcast on memory.)

(2) Nick Bostrom’s Simulation Argument. I find this argument problematic for a host of reasons (such as the notion of substrate independence) I won’t get into here because it would be a lengthy. I figured I’d mention it, though, as it’s worth checking out before reading Lanier’s book, at least for anyone interested in the idea that we might be computer simulations (which, if that’s the case, then those post-humans who are simulating us are likely simulations as well).

(3) I am reminded of another Radiolab podcast, in which the creator of the Furby pet robot thingy argues passionately that the Furby is conscious, and that the only difference between a human and a Furby is complexity.

(4) Going even simpler than the Furby, philosophers of mind sure love to talk about thermostats in their debates over the nature of consciousness. Here I feel compelled to comment a little further on my view of this subject. I do not agree that stimuli-responsive dolls and/or thermostats are conscious. An example I like to use is a spinning quarter. Here we have an object that has been set into motion and subsequently follows a path determined by its environment. The relationship between the spinning quarter and its environment results in a kind of mechanized behavior, but this does not mean that the quarter is conscious.

It could be argued that the difference is that the quarter is following the path of least resistance according to physical laws and principles, while the doll is doing something more complex that requires something closer to a personality and that contains variation. I, however, don’t believe that the behavior of the quarter and doll are really all that different. What’s really going on here is that the doll is being inappropriately anthropomorphized because of the shape of its physical and behavioral design. The doll cannot resist its own nature, cannot fight against the path of least resistance. When programmed to say some phrase upon detection of a certain kind of sound, it will say some phrase. If the phrase changes, that’s only because there is a computer chip inside of it running a program designd to give the impression of spontaneity. Also consider that, when turned upside down, the Furby goes into a noisy, unceasing fear-like state. It has to do this unless it is broken.

Some might argue that humans are the same way, and are only capable of following their programming, even though it’s more complex in nature. My response to this is the following: Humans may not be able to fully escape their nature and conditioning, but they can be aware of this fact on some level, and that makes all the difference. The human can fight, or TRY to fight, his or her nature, conditioning, tendencies, desires, reflexes, et al. on some level.

If this argument isn’t sufficient for those who’d claim that Furbies and humans are just different scales of the same phenomenon (for example, that both only give an illusory appearance of free will), then I’d say that neither is conscious. It then begins to become a ridiculous semantic argument, even more ridiculous than it’s already been thus far. (A real challenge here is to look at the consciousness of other animals in this context. It’s not a subject I’ve spent a lot of time with, but I’ve definitely come across some interesting current work going on in that field.)

Back again to Lanier’s book… One last thing I wanted to mention is a list of proposed suggestions that Lanier gives early on in the book for what individual users can do to remedy the issues he’s diagnosing. They are all more or less in line with my own thinking, and I could write a whole blog post about each of them (partly because we creative types with an online presence are usually advised to do the opposite of what’s advised here), but I’ll resist the urge as I think we all recognize the phenomena being addressed by these suggestions. Here are two examples from the list:

- Post a video once in a while that took you one hundred times more time to create than it takes to view.

- Write a blog post that took weeks of reflection before you heard the inner voice that needed to come out.

To summarize, whether you agree with him or not, Lanier’s book is an important read at a time when very few people understand the implications of the cosmology and implementation of the cyber-world in which they spend more and more of their lives. (Keep in mind that a lot of what I’ve touched on here isn’t actually in the book, but is inspired by its subject matter. Also, he gets into more than what I’ve mentioned here, including economics, speculative finance, and the music industry.)

Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy by Alejandro Jodorowsky

My good friend Coe Douglas sent me this book a few days ago. I’ve only gotten about forty pages in, so it’s a little early to be commenting on it, but so far it’s fascinating, and there are a few things I’d like to mention.

In my 20s, Jodorowsky was known to me as a mysterious filmmaker whose movies managed to be thoroughly, surreally poetic while simultaneously being saturated in (sometimes quite grotesque) humanity. Santa Sangre was my favorite. I didn’t know much about the man himself, though, and, in retrospect, I think I liked it that way because it added to his underground cachet. Part of the fun was sitting around with friends exclaiming, “I love the fact that someone actually made this.”

(Does this sort of thing occur with young people today? Are there mysterious contemporary creative types doing weird work that young people look up to for their obscurity? Bansky comes to mind, but his anonymous celebrity is manufactured, and it’s everywhere. Interesting to contemplate…)

I was well familiar with Un Chien Andalous back in the day, but Santa Sangre was in color, and the freakishness seemed more real, and it didn’t make a pretentious declaration of a new art movement on the rise, such as Dali claimed of Un Chien. It wasn’t history, it was both now and it was timeless. Jodorowsky is still where my mind goes when I think of “surreal filmmaking.”

Thanks to Psychomagic, I’m learning about a whole new side of Jodorowsky as a kind of physical mystic who sees illness as a physical dream that can be interpreted. Or perhaps, better said, I’m getting a more complete picture of him, because there seems to be no seams between Jodorowsky the filmmaker and Jodorowsky the whatever else he is. As a Chilean youth, he was all about poetry and what has been called “environmental theatre” by some (not him, I don’t think, because he calls it “poetry,” though he certainly recognizes the theatrical elements of his methods). He and his friends back in Chile were physical poets, freaking people out (or perhaps just heavily annoying them) in restaurants and on the street with absurd acts that I hesitate to characterize as surreal or Dadaist. I suppose “poetry” is as good a term as any to use.

This desire to infiltrate one’s life with poetry by a Chilean back in the 1950s is particularly interesting to me right now as I am in the midst of an obsession with all things economics. Chile of course plays a critical early role in the history of the shift from Keynesian to neoliberal economic policy in the U.S., a far-right-leaning experiment in capitalism that resulted in disaster for the Chilean people as Allende was ousted by the murderous, U.S.-backed regime of Pinochet.

Jodorowski, as he speaks of his childhood, speaks of a handful of national poets, explaining that everyone in Chile wanted to be a poet. The most influential of them was Pablo Neruda, who has became an icon for the air of poetry and adventure that characterizes the time and place Jodorowsky describes (surely he’s romanticizing to a degree, but that romance was inspired by that time and place, and that’s not insignificant). It’s also timely to be reading Jodorowsky’s book in light of recent revelations that Neruda very well might have been assassinated by Pinochet via a doctor while Neruda was hospitalized.

Some of the Next Books in the Stack Are…

The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone de Beauvoir - Someone recommended this to me based on my deep interest in the connection between metaphysics and ethics. Particularly the question of how it’s possible to approach ethics from a place in which there is a lack of satisfactory metaphysical conclusions. I’m also interested in her classic text, The Second Sex.

Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience by M.R. Bennett and P.M.S. Hacker – I’ve been meaning to read this for a good while now. I’m especially interested, not because of questions relating to philosophy of mind or the nature of consciousness, but instead because I want to see what the philosopher and neuroscientist who wrote the book have accomplished in this interdisciplinary endeavor. Such merging of academic disciplines is often frowned upon, not just because of intellectual rivalry (though, believe me, I’ve had my fair share of science and math types get visibly frustrated – even angry – when I tell them I’m studying philosophy), but because of departmental competition for funding. At any rate, I feel that interdisciplinary work is where it’s at. People from different fields should work together to tackle the same problems from multiple perspectives.

On What Matters by Derek Parfit – Parfit was brought to my attention in a New Yorker article that came out earlier this year. He is concerned with some of the things that concern me, such as difficult questions surrounding identity and even more difficult questions surrounding the paradoxes that arise when considering the moral relationship between humanity and the world humanity inhabits. One thing that really struck me is that Parfit cannot create visual images in his mind. He cannot visualize his wife’s face when away from her, for example. It seems this would give him some interesting ideas on identity. For a sample of his thinking, here’s an ethical formulation he came up with known as the “repugnant conclusion.”

The Way of Zen by Alan Watts – This book was really influential on my thinking back when I was in high school, a little over twenty years ago. There were several passages that gave me chills, in fact. I’m curious to read it again now that I’ve been exposed to other schools of thought from within and outside of my own culture. It would be a lengthy endeavor to write about my impressions of Zen Buddhism, so for now I’ll just copy this quote from the first paragraph of the first chapter of the book, and which appeals to me: “Zen Buddhism is a way and a view of life which does not belong to any of the formal categories of modern Western thought. It is not religion or philosophy; it is not a psychology or a type of science. It is an example of what is known in India and China as a ‘way of liberation,’ and is similar in this respect to Taoism, Vedanta, and Yoga.”

(Next time, there will be some fiction on here… I’m hoping.)

Currently Watching from TV Land…

Avatar: The Last Airbender – (Click on the image to the right to see this fantastic portrait of Zuko and Mai at full size!) I just finished this series last night. I almost never go for animated shows or movies that aren’t specifically for adults (even then, it’s rare), but this one is fantastic. It is marketed for children, for which I found varying age recommendations from as young as 8 to as old as 17. The show does have a strong adult fan base, however, a glimpse of which can be had at the Avatar blog at the Onion A.V. Club.

It’s an epic, American-made series with anime influence, and whose world-worn characters (who range from very young to very old) and stories are complex, touching, drenched in the human experience, and hilariously funny. Themes such as love, hate, rage, death and war are treated with a gravity that not only adults can appreciate, but, more importantly, respects that children are persons who have to deal with these difficult topics even at their early age, despite the best efforts of some parents and despite what the content of most children’s shows might lead one to believe. Indeed, it won a 2008 Peabody Award for “Unusually complex characters and healthy respect for the consequences of warfare.”

I also appreciate the influence of Eastern philosophy on the show. The title character of the show is Avatar Aang (though this is definitely an ensemble show), and one of his goals on the show is to clear his chakras. The final chackra, which requires letting go of attachment, is treated with surprising philosophical complexity. Also, he faces a tremendous moral dilemma near the end of the series, which is not treated lightly, and for which there is a great payoff.

Oh, and one quick qualifier about the series. Around the middle of the first season, it started to seem like it was getting too childish - too simple in its conclusions and moral lessons. This lasted a few episodes and began to worry me, but then the show grabbed my attention again and held it pretty much to the end of the series run. Some might actually consider the subject matter to be too mature for younger audiences, especially starting near the end of the second season.

Louie – Set in New York City and written, directed, edited, executive produced, and starred in by Louis C.K., this show covers a lot of ground while remaining small and intimate. I remember C.K. talking (on the now legendary two-part WTF interview with Marc Maron) about how he used to make weird little movies – some funny, some dark – when he was younger, around the time he started writing for Conan O’Brien. This love of filmmaking comes out in Louie, where the tone ranges from dreamlike to painfully realistic. The show is definitely funny, but there are long stretches of drama that are often the most effective scenes in an episode. In fact, there’s a scene involving a garbage truck that is downright horrifying, and not because of anything trash-related.

The show draws comparisons to Seinfeld (a show I love, by the way) because C.K. plays himself as a working comedian in New York City, and interspersed within each episode are scenes in which C.K. is performing his comedy. There are some key differences to be observed, however. For one thing, C.K.’s comedy is darker, more philosophical and more personal than Seinfeld’s, and reveals much more about the character and C.K. himself. Also, C.K. actually repeats material that has been shown on earlier episodes, because that’s what comedians do in real life. Louie doesn’t really have plots in the way Seinfeld does (partly because it isn’t an ensemble show), often just ending without any kind of real resolution. I think you have to experience this to understand what I’m referring to. The events on the show just kind of happen and then stop happening. Finally, Louis has a strong streak of artiness that is intelligently and tastefully implemented into the sitcom format, has no laugh track, and not only blurs the line between the character and the man, but crosses it (especially in the recent episode featuring Dane Cook).

Parks and Recreation – I watched the pilot for this when it first came out… and hated it. I couldn’t stop cringing. Recently I decided to give it another chance based on repeatedly hearing about what a great show it is. The first season, which is only six episodes, grew on me by the fifth or sixth episode, and it didn’t take long into the second season for me to fall completely in love with the show. Amy Poehler is magnificent as Leslie Knope, who, yes, starts out uncomfortably reminiscent of Michael Scott, but quickly comes into her own. Knope is a loveable overachiever who excels at just about everything she puts her mind to, and she expects nothing less of her friends and coworkers (there is little distinction between the two). Those around her are often annoyed by her intensity, but also love her for it.

Parks and Recreation stands out in contrast to so many other shows because the main characters actually genuinely like each other. Two characters on the show, however, are unfairly reviled (as opposed to the understandably disliked – and hilarious – Jean-Ralphio), but this is done with such emphasis, including by nice characters, that it seems clear that it’s a commentary on the current trend of meanness as comedy (Knope’s disdain for salad is noteworthy in this context as well).

(As I write this, I’m reminded of the silly TV trend we are seeing lately in which a stupid husband is constantly being corrected by his much smarter and together wife; but, about once per episode, the husband has to do something endearing to remind the wife – and viewer- of why she doesn’t just leave the guy).

Oh, and I Need to Catch Up on from TV Land…

“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” Season 7 – This series has something in common with Louie in that it goes into some pretty dark dramatic territory (and as a show that tends to subdivide its ensemble cast into distinct, but often overlapping subplots, it can also rightfully be compared to Seinfeld), but I think what distinguishes it is that there are dramatic moments that, while shorter than those on Louie, sometimes involve a level of gut wrenching emotional intensity that I don’t think I’ve seen on any other sitcom (this might be because some of the cast members were originally aiming for careers in dramatic theatre). It’s also a show full of risks that often pay off with tremendous comedic value. To the left is a picture of the brilliant Kaitlin Olson, who plays Sweet Dee.

Finally, Some Movies I Look Forward To…

To name three: The Future by Miranda July, The Tree of Life by Terrence Malick, and Midnight in Paris by Woody Allen. And to name three more: just kidding… I’m noticing that this post is getting long.

Wait, did I mention how much I loved the movie Kick-Ass and the television series Party Down? Ok, ok… stopping now.

Take care, have a great holiday season!!

-Dan

Verbum Sap

Back in 2001, I recorded an album entitled Verbum Sap that I shelved for reasons that I won’t get into just yet. I’m excited to announce that I’m finally mixing it for release, with a planned drop date of February 7, 2012.

I won’t say much about it now except that the driving instrumentation is primarily classical guitar-oriented, and it has a distinct intimate and emotional vibe that distinguishes it from my other albums. More about all that later.

 Chemical Bath

I’m also currently writing and recording a 5-song EP for a band called Chemical Bath that I have formed with my sister, Ambria Nicole. She and I are sharing singing duties, and I’m producing.

Chemical Bath are (left to right): Ambria Nicole and Dan Wallace

For now, we’re calling the genre Indie Electropop. I don’t like the word “indie,” but it seems be the closest genre label in terms of getting across what we’re doing for marketing and PR purposes, which is what such labels exist for. This is underscored by the fact that no two “authoritative” websites seem to agree on what genre a given current artist belongs under.

Otherwise, what would be the genre name for how I think of and describe us?: 

Melodic, song-oriented, synth-based pop-rock with varying levels of musical and lyrical simplicity and complexity, often with an edgy left-field influence and occasional moments of wispily ethereal beauty. And you can dance to it; well, most of it.

We’re planning on releasing the EP in January or February of 2012.

Other Projects

I’m slowly writing a new solo album that I’ll probably start recording in the fall of 2012. I’ve also got material written for another album that I’ll record after that one.

I’m also going to school with the intention of pursuing a PhD in philosophy. My interest is in the ethical implications of metaphysical inquiry. For example, the answer – or, most importantly, lack of a satisfactory answer – to the metaphysical question, “What is the meaning of life?”, has an essential relationship with the ethical question, “How should I live?”. I am passionately interested in the relationship between these sorts of questions and the propositions they inspire.

I am also interested in aesthetics, jurisprudence, social concerns, cognitive science, et al., though I can’t help but feel that the values that contextualize our approach to dealing with those areas are derived from conclusions that are metaphysical and ethical in nature.

There’s the update! So, what can I write about entertainment or (pop) culture-wise?

Entertainment and (Pop) Culture

I recently finished up watching Battlestar Galactica. I really enjoyed it. Serial drama TV storytelling is tough because unlike with novels and movie scripts, once the first draft is written of a TV series, you can’t go back and clean it up. This is one of the reasons they have such a hard time producing endings that don’t piss off half the fans. Most great shows suffer from this dilemma, and BSG is no exception, though I was satisfied with how it ended (unlike A.V. Club’s Chris Dahlen, though I sympathize with many of his complaints). Still, BSG is an insightful, smartly written, well-acted show that covers a surprisingly wide breadth of philosophical and resonantly human ground.

Also, I’m no expert, but I’d wager that Dr. Gaius Baltar is the one male character in contemporary American television with more active tear ducts than Dr. Jack Shephard from Lost. Seriously, though, James Callis was fantastic as Baltar throughout BSG’s run.

Speaking of series finales, my favorite is one of Joss Whedon’s: Angel‘s “Not Fade Away.” Another Whedon finale runs a very close second: “Objects in Space” from Firefly. Jubal Early’s final words win best closing line of a series seen by me (a small group, admittedly).

Most recent sitcom I got into: The IT Crowd. The first episode didn’t really draw me in, but I followed the advice of reviewers and went on to the second episode, which hooked me. It’s a very funny show.

That’s the last TV I’ll be watching for a while. I have movies and, especially, documentaries and video lectures to catch up on. Browsing the documentaries at Netflix, I see there is no dearth of entries centered on Adolph Hitler. Is there any other 20th century figure with whom we in the West are more obsessed? We certainly seem to be obsessed with his resurrection, or at least with finding his replacement.

I’ve often heard that Barack Obama is Hitler, though that’s slowed down. At any rate, I no longer see the “Obama = Hitler” sandwich board guy hanging out at my train stop; maybe he’s conserving energy for 2012.  In case there’s any question, I do not believe that Obama is remotely ideologically - or othwerise – hitlerian.

It’s interesting to consider the extent to which we are still living in the wake of WWII, though. For instance, the relationship between post-WWII consumerism and pop culture is the same relationship that exists between those things today, and, interestingly, ironic cultural sensibilities about consumerism have strengthened that relationship as opposed to having weakened it.

That’s it for now. More soon… -Dan

The gist of the Intelligent Design argument – of which irreducible complexity is an important part – is that the universe is too complex, too fine-tuned and too statistically unlikely to have come about without a designer. Even the simplest life forms are far too complex to have come into being out of natural causes.¹ The existence of a designer is, therefore, the most plausible theory, they claim.

Many (practically all, in fact) supporters of Intelligent Design use the theory to support belief in God.² Behe himself, however, has pointed out that the theory does not tell us much about the nature of the designer or designers.³ After all, to apply one of 18th century philosopher David Hume’s many ideas on the subject, a skyscraper is designed and built not by a single entity, but by a large group of workers who are dead within a hundred years of building the thing.

There are many strong arguments against Intelligent Design, but the one great big question that completely destroys the theory is the following (note that I’ve worded this to emphasize notions of complexity):

If the universe is too complex to have come into being on its own and therefore required a designer, and if God himself is infinitely more perfect and complex than the universe, then is it not required that a designer designed God?

In other words, there is the implication in Intelligent Design that at some point, a complex un-designed designer came into existence, presumably – Behe’s qualifiers notwithstanding – one who is perfect, all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful, etc. Most Christians, however, will point out that God is infinite and has no starting point.⁴

That’s fine, but it only further takes the steam out of Intelligent Design theory, which presents itself as a more rational, scientifically plausible explanation for the existence of the universe and life than what most scientists currently accept. That is, it’s harder to accept an infinitely complex and perfect sentient creator coming into being without a designer than it is to accept a far less complex and less perfect finite universe coming into being without a designer.

I propose an alternative perspective: That the complexities of the universe are beyond human understanding says more about the simplicity of the current state of the human mind than it does about the nature of the universe. I have a hard time believing that a species that has not yet even figured out how to live peacefully and nondestructively has evolved anywhere near the point of being able to make accurate declarations about what qualifies as impossibly complex.

I’ll close by saying that my favorite argument for the existence of God is the simplest: “I look at the world and, inexplicably, I feel His presence.” It seems to me that to acknowledge the possibility for science to threaten such a feeling is to point to the possibility that the feeling is dependent upon special conditions in which there exists the idea that God exists. If God exists, the effects of God’s presence should exist regardless of explicit philosophical or implicit scientific metaphysical claims to the contrary.

Back in October, Marnie Stern’s dense guitar, frenetic energy, and songcraft grabbed my attention. While sounding of her time, she also sounded unique and fresh. I made a mental note of her, but didn’t investigate further until coming across a recent article by Sasha Frere-Jones in the New Yorker (Jan 3, 2011). The article introduces Stern as a virtuosic guitarist, and groups her with indie rock contemporaries Annie Clark (nom de plectre, St. Vincent) and Marissa Paternoster (of the band Screaming Females), who are also invariably lauded for their guitar prowess whenever mentioned by the press.

This movement of female guitar badasses is really interesting to me. Though it might seem prima facie to be largely the construction of the media, it really does appear that, at least in the world of mainstream indie rock music, most of the guitarists pushing at the customary boundaries of the instrument are girls (the article points out that boys are more concerned with their samplers). My favorite guitarist working today is probably Shannon Wright, come to think of it.

Marnie Stern herself, though, is always quick to point out that she doesn’t see herself as a great guitar player. She opts for her technique of choice – finger tapping – because it’s “easy” thanks to using two hands instead of one on the fret board. Here’s a video of Stern talking about it. If you don’t watch it, note that she also points out that, despite not considering herself a great guitar player (though she does, in another video, refer to one of her tapping riffs as a “shred,” an idiosyncratic use of the word, perhaps naively so), people on the internet are very mean in their attacks on her playing.

So, what’s with the discrepancy between the media who revere Stern and the online public who tears her apart?

Finger tapping, the most focused upon feature of her playing, is broadly associated with 1980s rock guitar icon Eddie Van Halen, though Stern, who’s self-taught, has said that she got it from Ian Williams of the band Don Caballero (and I once read an interview with Eddie, who is also self-taught, in which he said that he got it from trying to duplicate what jazz fusion uber-virtuoso Alan Holdsworth was doing with his left hand alone). Lots of guitarists used the technique in the ‘80s, however, and some of them developed it well beyond Eddie’s approach. Check out Jennifer Batten’s 8-finger performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee”; it’s quite the feat (she was Michael Jackson’s guitarist for a spell, by the way, which meant Jackson got a fantastic live rendition of Eddie’s solo for the song “Beat It”):

Stanley Jordon, another guitarist who came up in the ’80s, took tapping even further, playing bass lines and chords with the left hand while simultaneously playing melodies or improvising solos with the right. But he’s a jazz player. This is an important distinction. Most people expect jazz players to be capable of playing virtuosically, at least since music critics warmed to bebop. The same is not only expected, but demanded of classical musicians, at the very least of the soloists. And flamenco guitarists… a flamenco guitarist who can’t shred isn’t a flamenco guitarist.

Marnie Stern is an indie rock guitarist, which comes with its own technical expectations. As is Annie Clark (a.k.a St. Vincent). But Clark, though often referred to as a guitar genius, shredder, virtuoso and the like, doesn’t play with techniques or effects that would be typically be associated with virtuosity. She therefore doesn’t seem like she’s trying to be a shredder, and as a result will be largely ignored by the shredder community (I spent some time searching and couldn’t find the sort of guitar-centric vitriol you find for Stern). Stern, on the other hand, does play fast, and she does it with tapping, a technique associated with virtuosity. But, in pure shred guitar terms, what she’s doing isn’t nearly as difficult, ambitious, fast, or cleanly executed as what the best rock guitarists were doing in the ‘80s, nor what many of their (generally perfunctory) successors are doing today.

So, despite the fact that she’s an “indie rock guitarist,” Stern’s utilizing a virtuoso technique, getting media attention for it, and using that attention to her commercial advantage, which firmly puts her into the guitar player scrutiny ‘gator tank. One of the first criterion young guitarists look at when determining if someone is any good is whether they can reasonably say, “I could play that.” Most guitarists who aspire to shredder status would consider themselves to be able to play what Stern is playing, even though most of them would have a hard time imitating what she does. Getting through the entirety of such songs as “This American Life” and “Precious Metal” (from 2007′s In Advance of the Broken Arm) would take quite a bit of practice due to the stamina and accuracy that her idiosyncratic (especially phrasing-wise) self-taught style requires (especially considering that to really be true to the challenges she has set for herself, the parts should be played while singing). Still, ambitious guitarists figure that, with practice, they could play the guitar parts without too much trouble.

(As for her opponents who, even with practice, know they couldn’t play those parts… well, these types of guitarists consider even most of the people better than them to suck. They might say, in long impassioned message board debates, that Jimi Hendrix or Steve Vai suck due to not meeting some arbitrary technical or aesthetic criterion such as, “To be a good guitarist, you have to be able to uniformly pick every note with your balls.” Such haters don’t deserve more mention than this parenthetical blurb.)

Therefore, I can say with confidence that Marnie Stern is a badass musician in her own right, at the very least for the way her intricately weaved tapping riffs are part of a greater musical structure that includes the juxtaposition of vocal melody, harmonic environment, and fret board movement (it’s generally unfair to reduce a musician to a single instrumental technique, even if that musician focuses on that technique as a marketing hook; we shouldn’t conflate “musician” and “marketer”). Her music is fantastic, I love her playing, and I’m happy she’s made the scene.

That said, I’d like to dig a little deeper into our cultural conceptions of the guitar without venturing too far from the context of girl badasses. These regions may be more dimly lit than the above, so bear with me as I attempt to separate and identify the obfuscated shapes and forms dwelling there.

By employing her techniques primarily on distorted electric guitar (as opposed to acoustic guitar, as guitar wiz Kaki King does),Stern has landed on the radar screens of shredders from all walks of life: heavy metal, metal prog, jazz, fusion, neoclassical fusion, etc., despite the fact that what Stern claims to really want more than anything is to play guitar in the way that best facilities the realization of her musical vision. These other genres and subgenres continue to encourage virtuosic technique, but mainstream pop and rock music abandoned the virtuosic guitar solo when Nirvana came onto the scene. Kurt Cobain soloed, but his solos served other purposes than that of the shredders. Virtuosic rock guitar solos became quickly stigmatized in the early 1990s (Billy Corgan, however, played shredder guitar solos on the early Smashing Pumpkins stuff, but less so as time went on, and certainly not on any of their hits).

In the last several years, however, I have noticed an increasing appetite for virtuosic rock guitar playing. You can find loads of young shredders of varying skill levels on YouTube, most of whom are playing along with the same stuff I did in the ‘80s because, having gone out of style, there’s not much interesting music to choose from that’s new to the field. Even the former metal shredders who are still around have taken to holding back (compare solo Marty Friedman in the ‘80s to his solo output in the ‘00s). Media and audience praise for Stern’s playing exemplifies this renewed appetite, though, to be clear, it’s coming from people who also expect to hear their idea of a good song.

I myself get mostly positive response to my guitar solos, though there has been some anger as well. On the other hand, no one has ever objected to my playing fast, complicated music on a classical guitar. This difference in reaction is in line with our cultural conceptions of musicianship in general: it’s perfectly fine to play “Flight of the Bumblebee” on violin or classical guitar, it’s revered as high art and craft in fact. Play it on a distorted electric guitar, however, and suddenly we have an affront to taste, a soulless exercise. We praise the classical and jazz (the “purer” the better) virtuosi, and denigrate the same in rock music because of what it supposedly stands for (to be clear, in non-cultural, simple musical/sonic terms, playing a piece on one instrument rather than another is in large part merely a change in timbre; interestingly, the change from violin to electric guitar is smaller than going from violin to classical guitar, because the former two are closer in timbre). As a result, many electric guitarists who aspire to virtuosity have developed the sort of defense mechanism we see in action when people are tearing Stern apart.

These haters are, on some level, reacting to the fact that they themselves have been demonized for that which they do better than Stern, but for which Stern is being praised (Rhapsody music service describes her as the “candy-coated Yngwie Malmsteen of freak rock,” which is way off the mark any way you look at it, and doesn’t help anybody). There is certainly going to be some resentment for the likes of Stern on the part of accomplished guitarists who have not managed to have a career. It’s unfortunate, but there is an incredible amount of bitterness among many guitarists who spent years of their lives practicing eight hours a day only to be dismissed by the public as being cheesy showoffs. Their therapy is to congregate at message boards and talk shit about people who are famous. And you don’t have to be an accomplished player to join in, you just have to be a fan of the sentiment (see above parenthetical blurb). It’s not healthy. People with thriving careers don’t do this.

What the haters aren’t getting, though, is that Stern’s musical sensibility is essentially a marriage of the dirty philosophy of melodic post-punk with the technical approach of prog and metal, and that’s something the sensibility of the current (recently mainstreamed) indie rock media is going to respond to (a great example of this marriage is the song “Nothing Left” from her 2010 album, Marnie Stern). Her instrumental technique gives those journalists something new to think and write about in their field, but they wouldn’t care about it at all if they didn’t relate to the music that came out of it. Personally, I like that she’s touted by the media as a virtuoso because it might help open some doors for my own music and playing.

Before closing, I want to comment on the other guitarist mentioned in the New Yorker article, Marissa Paternoster. She shreds in an essentially blues-based rock style, and does it quite well. There has for some time been a debate amongst factions of (mostly narrow-minded) rock guitarists about the merits of such a style (famous examples of such players are Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Slash, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughn, John Frusciante, Angus Young, Eric Johnson, and Orianthi Panagaris) vs. a more modal or technically honed rock style that also draws from blues, but more predominantly takes from jazz and/or classical music. Examples of this second type, to name a small few, are Randy Rhoads, Frank Zappa, Jennifer Batten, Jason Becker, Vinnie Vincent, Marty Friedman, Paul Gilbert, Eddie Van Halen, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, and, of course, Yngwie Malmsteen. (NB: I’m loosely categorizing some of these for the sake of making a point, not as an attempt to make some hard bifurcation of rock guitardom.)

“Tasteful” and “feel(ing)” are the words that gets bandied about the most in arguments over which of the above approaches is best, though I think it’s a pointless argument, the real purpose of which is to support tastes that are too elusive to concretize. I prefer defending my taste (if forced to) with the famous old Duke Ellington tautology because of how it underscores the aforementioned elusiveness: if it sounds good to me, it’s good. At any rate, Paternoster might be put down by the latter faction but supported by the former, though overall she will be considered a good soloist by most fans of rock guitar. I know I dig her.

I’ll leave you with another excellent musician (and songwriter), whom I referred to earlier as my favorite guitarist working today, Shannon Wright. I’ll let the music speak for itself:

To clarify, insightful critical analysis delivered in a *nonthreatening environment, generally as a feature of an ongoing dialogue with one’s mentors, peers, qualified journalists and audience (though in these last two cases the dialogue is often more figurative than literal), can be a vital, essential part of the development of an artist’s craft and creative vision. Conversely, yelling “you suck” at a show or writing “eat shit and die” at a message board is just being an asshole, and in many cases has the opposite effect of insightful criticism.

But, such assholery does exist, and it does seem that many artists have no choice but to get out of the business or learn to deal. However, the only reason performers need to be able to handle asshole behavior is because of the existence of assholes. If this seems obvious, it should. It is, by extension, equally obvious that when you write “eat shit and die” or “she looks like a retarded baby” at a message board, and then find out that it hurt the actor, writer, director, comedian, or musician’s feelings and you feel bad about it and try to justify it by saying, “if she can’t take it she shouldn’t be in the business,” what you really should be saying is, “yes, I’m an inexcusable asshole and it’s people like me who make the world a harder place to live in; I should apologize and never do it again.”

If that doesn’t convince you, keep the following in mind. Even if you feel that the person you are heckling is terrible at his craft and deserves to be berated publicly, the prevalence of this sort of behavior keeps a lot of especially sensitive performers, some of whom you might actually like, from even trying to get into the business. By contributing to an environment of meanness, you are creating a Darwinian situation in which the only performers who are able to thrive are those who are able to dish it back (especially in comedy) and those who are able to withdraw from general public contact, sticking as closely as possible to their adoring fan base and professional colleagues. These attitudes become part of the cultural fabric and substantially contribute our collective zeitgeist, unfortunately.

So, don’t be mean to your performers, generally even if they themselves are deluded jerks (you’ll have to use your judgment in this regard, but keep in mind that the consequences of that judgment are your responsibility, not the performer’s; for example, if you feel someone’s work is in the service of an ideology you wouldn’t be able to live with yourself for ignoring, attack the ideology, not the person, and not at a staged performance if at all possible). People working in the arts and entertainment industries are struggling through their lives and careers just like everyone else, and by launching insults at them you’re only adding more misery to the world.

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*Yes, sometimes insightful criticism itself is brutal, and there are differing opinions about just how nonthreatening venues for evaluative criticism should be, but that’s a different – and very long – conversation.

I. Overview: Philip Pettit on Group Agency

The other day, I heard a fascinating interview with philosopher Philip Pettit on the Philosophy Bites podcast. The topic was group agency (the subject and title of Pettit’s as-yet unreleased new book), described thus on the podcast’s website:

How do groups act? We hold them morally and legally responsible, but are their decisions simply a majoritarian sum of individuals’ decisions? Princeton philosopher Philip Pettit, who has written a book on this topic with the LSE’s Christian List, explores these questions in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast.

Here’s the Amazon.com book description (full title: Group Agency: The Possibility, Design, and Status of Corporate Agents):

Are companies, churches, and states genuine agents? Or are they just collections of individuals that give a misleading impression of unity? This question is important, since the answer dictates how we should explain the behaviour of these entities and whether we should treat them as responsible and accountable on the model of individual agents. Group Agency offers a new approach to that question and is relevant, therefore, to a range of fields from philosophy to law, politics, and the social sciences. Christian List and Philip Pettit argue that there really are group or corporate agents, over and above the individual agents who compose them, and that a proper approach to the social sciences, law, morality, and politics must take account of this fact. Unlike some earlier defences of group agency, their account is entirely unmysterious in character and, despite not being technically difficult, is grounded in cutting-edge work in social choice theory, economics, and philosophy.

And, “agency,” as defined in its philosophical and sociological connotations, taken from Wikipedia:

Agency is the capacity of an agent to act in a world. In philosophy, the agency is considered as belonging to that agent even if that agent represents a fictitious character, or some other non-existent entity. The capacity to act does not at first imply a specific moral dimension to the ability to make the choice to act, therefore moral agency is a distinct concept. In sociology, an agent is an individual engaging with the social structure; the structure and agency debate concerning the level of reflexivity that agent may possess.

II. The Problem with Voting

Before I touch on the podcast discussion, some comments:

I have for a long while had a problem with voting as a means of deciding what’s best for individuals. Here are some of the issues I find most bothersome:

- when a democracy is established, nobody votes on who gets to vote; that right is designed by those with power and given as they see fit to serve their own interests

- what’s best for the group is not necessarily best for each individual in the group, which is to say, most people are voting for their own best interest, and those who happen to share the most similar self-interests win; often people will band together simply for the sake of winning; all of this falls more or less under the Tyranny of the Majority problem, a recent example of which is same-sex marriage (I’ll get back to that)

- no group ever gained the right to vote by voting, they gained that right through protest (which is true of most progressive social victories); once the right to vote is won in an already established democracy, most protest movements wane and are reduced to those few who understand that that particular victory is one step in a longer journey

- it seems to me that voting in the U.S. (with its Electoral College, judicial system, etc.) is a largely symbolic gesture of expressing one’s voice (as uninformed as it may be, in which case voting is not the practice of voicing one’s opinion on a particular philosophical, social, or political ideology, but, instead, is the practice of asserting the right to vote per se as a symbol of living in a free country; in this symbolic form, voting is treated more like badge/duty than a right); the political process too often serves to placate and exploit those eligible to vote by giving them the impression of voter/civil influence

- in the broader sense of group agency, I am not convinced of individual moral impunity: if you are a part of a group, and are aware of the ethical implications of the group’s actions, you are responsible for your actions despite personal gains or perils that might come with complying or not complying with the group’s belief system/policies/etc. (a fantastic morality play [to use the term loosely] on this subject is Sam Raimi’s 2008 film, “Drag Me to Hell,” which deals with a bank loan officer who, against her guilty conscience, forecloses on a sick elderly woman’s house in the hopes of winning herself a promotion).

There are disconcerting problems with how large groups tend to be organized. In most corporations, for example, members of upper management make policy but don’t have to deal face-to-face regularly with low level staff or customers (especially significant in the case of essential services such as health care, credit lending, heating gas, et al.), while lower level staff deals out the bad news to those customers, citing policy and saying “I’m just the messenger, just doing my job to feed my kids.” Thanks to this arrangement, the individual members of the group have manageably clear consciences, however, this arrangement does not translate into moral impunity for the group or, frankly, for the individual members (though, considering that I only believe in morality as a human conception, I would have to make a fine distinction between conceptions of moral duty and practical social accountability to fully argue this premise). These members might have elaborate and justifiable explanations for their actions, but those explanations don’t automatically remove the moral implications of actions and their consequences. I myself have worked for a major insurance company and health care network, and have seen the consequences of such group organizing on both lower level staff and clients/patients; “disconcerting” is putting it lightly.

With all this in mind, however, I’m not actually convinced that the low level employee, the low ranking soldier, or the least affluent of the voter classes are genuine members of the group they serve (I say this keeping well in mind the possible differences as well as similarities between being born into a group and purposively joining one). One of the reasons companies need to put the effort they do into employee morale is to compensate for the tremendous discrepancy between that which the lower level employees accept to be the case and that which the middle and upper management employees accept to be the case. Lower level employees have little to no say in the group’s belief system (how the company is run) and are therefore prone to morale problems. As you move up the ladder, these problems are less prevalent because of the control and influence held by those positions (it is generally accepted, and borne out by studies, that employee satisfaction is more related to a sense of personal control and autonomy than pay scale, just as customer satisfaction is more influenced by customer service than product cost).

These are general issues I have with voting practices. To be clear, I’m not against the idea of voting per se, but at the same time, I see these flaws in its practice and they bother me. It seems obvious to me that voting’s only one small part of a flourishing democratic life, despite its status as the be-all and end-all symbol of American democratic freedom. In fact, voting often seems more like a justification for laziness, which those who are more socially active either exploit, or towards which they adopt a, “well, it’s the least you can do,” attitude.

III. Same-Sex Marriage and Rights Distribution (States of Being vs. Kinds of Persons)

To look at a specific example of problems with voting practices (whether at the popular or governmental/higher courts/etc. levels), we have the recent controversy of same-sex marriage. The problem in this case is that we have established that any two consenting adults of a certain age who aren’t too closely blood-related and who aren’t already married etc. have the right to marry one another, and those who wish to not get married don’t have to. To establish such a set of criteria toward the goal of determining the scope of a civil liberty is, in effect, to establish a right. Surely there are people who feel they should be able to marry their brothers or have 12 wives, and, for their loss, I see no solution. They are out of luck. But I do feel that once a right is established (including the right to a privilege, for those of you who like to argue that marriage is merely a privilege*), that right should be viewed as a shared, inviolable vision for the group as a facet of free agency within a democracy.

Violation of that vision occurs when people begin to decide exactly which KINDS of consenting adults of a certain age (and so forth) have the right to marry. This is a step too far, and is where problems arise: in some states, a majority of people (again, either at the popular or governmental levels) won’t allow for same-sex marriage because they don’t believe that “self -evident” human rights apply to every kind of person. This is, in fact, a blatant violation of human rights as we conceive of the idea in the Western world (see the below footnote). They are applying specific as opposed to general criteria to which they themselves could never be subject.

To resolve this, it’s necessary here to make a critically important distinction. It could be argued that, especially as these criteria originate at the state level where age, blood-relation and other such criteria may vary, so may the criterion of gender. That is a groundless argument, however, just as it’s groundless to argue that liberty should be determined by a criterion of race. I will make a distinction here between two types of criterion: (1) kinds of persons; (2) a state of being in which any kind of person can exist or find him/herself.

Elaboration:

Age does not designate a kind of person, but instead a state of being in which any kind of person can exist or find him/herself. So, an African American, homosexual and heterosexual can all find themselves at the age of 17 or 18. In marriage laws, state of being criteria are covered by the stipulation of consent between both individuals. We determine states of being in which any kind of person is unable to consent: children, the comatose, severely mentally disabled, dead… these are all states of being in which any KIND of person can find themselves or exist (or, in the case of death, be found by others).

Incest, polygamy, et al. are also states of being that are not restricted to kinds of people, but they are states of relationships as opposed to states in which a single individual can exist. They are often evaluated based upon cultural taboos with varying levels of rational support, but this is irrelevant to the question of to whom we should apply established human rights. Counterarguments invoking cultural taboos in the same-sex scenario often have to take the slippery slope route because, unlike incest, polygamy (especially polyandry), bestiality and, for that matter, cannibalism, homosexuality is not a genuine cultural taboo and is not a relationship state of being: a homosexual can, just as a heterosexual, find him/herself in a relationship state of incest or polygamy. (Citizenship falls into the relationship state classification as well, but that’s a case that comes with its own special prickliness not worth getting into here.)

IV. Back to the Podcast: Group Agency and the Discursive Dilemma

Ok, back now to the abovementioned podcast in which Pettit discusses group agency. Most interestingly, he describes a paradox which he calls the discursive dilemma (a generalized version of the jurisprudential doctrinal paradox) in the voting process within a group (or, more specifically, the means by which a group’s beliefs are established). He doesn’t have time to fully explain his proposed solutions, but does point out that groups should be treated like individuals (as “institutional persons”), and that the group should have a shared vision toward which it works and which is not dependent on majoritarian support that can lead to incoherence in the group’s beliefs. Here’s the paradox, followed by his example (edited for the sake of simplicity/clarity):

Tom, Joan and Ed are to vote on P and Q:

Tom believes P and Q
Joan believes P not Q
Ed believes Q not P

Result: The group believes P and Q as being disjunctively true, but not P and Q as being conjunctively true = paradox

Example:

A tenant has a faulty heater in his apartment. He complains to the landlord that it’s malfunctioning and needs to be fixed. The landlord does nothing. The heater explodes, which the tenant claims has caused him trauma, for which he sues the landlord. The case is taken to the housing board. The questions at hand are: Was the explosion the landlord’s fault? and Did the tenant really suffer trauma? If both things are true, then, presumably, the man has grounds for suing the landlord. They vote:

Tom believes that the landlord is responsible for the explosion (P) and that the man suffered trauma (Q)
Joan believes P but not Q
Ed believes Q but not P

Result: the group believes that the landlord is responsible for the heater exploding (P), and that the tenant was traumatized as a result (Q), but the group does not believe both P and Q together: that the landlord should be held accountable. In other words, viewing the group as possessing a single mind (an “institutional person”), the group believes that, as two separate ideas, the landlord is responsible AND that the man experienced trauma, but the group as a single mind doesn’t believe those things together: that the landlord is responsible and that the man experienced trauma. In which case, the landlord is off the hook, and the group’s beliefs are clearly incoherent.

Pettit and List’s book is not out yet, though I did find an article in which Pettit describes the basic problems of the discursive dilemma and some proposed solutions: Groups with Minds (I am also interested in his paper, Rawl’s Political Ontology in this context, but haven’t read it yet). He also explains (in Groups with Minds) that he believes that groups should be viewed as individuals in their own right.

Whether or not the group is to be treated as having a single mind, it seems clear to me that sharing a common vision would be essential for coherence. In cases such as the above, it seems that such a vision would be: if both P & Q are considered true by a majority of the group, then P & Q together will be considered true by the group, and P & not Q will be considered false. This is very sticky, and is ultimately an ethical problem (I take “vision” to mean “moral stance,” really) because it would seem to be just as easy to say that if each P & Q separately are not considered true, then P & Q together will be considered not true by the group.

The group would need to decide beforehand the ethical thrust of their purpose. To be clear, what I’m interested in are the ethical implications of group agency and determining case outcome in general (itself something of debate in law… natural law vs. legal positivism vs. soft positivism… namely, the role of ethics in jurisprudence). Pettit’s article deals mainly with the metaphysical idea of the group forming a single mind, so I’ll need to read his book to understand his take on ethics and accountability (I get the impression that the book does deal with ethics to some extent, which it should, considering that agency is tied to ideas about moral accountability).

Anyway, in order to determine the thrust of their vision before voting, the group will first decide if it is their belief AS A GROUP that if it’s the landlord’s fault and if the tenant did suffer, then the tenant has grounds for being compensated by the landlord (what’s referred to as a premise-centered procedure, as opposed to conclusion-centered). Which approach to take should be decided based on considerations of ethical thrust and group agency coherence (metaphysically, I’m not convinced of the single-mindedness of the group, but, either way, the incoherence exists). With these considerations in mind, the outcome then becomes a matter of how the culture of that group affects the group’s evaluation of the ethical grounds for holding the landlord accountable for a breach of duty of care, which, in our society, I think the outcome would most likely be that of the premise-centered procedure.

(Of course, this still doesn’t take care of the problem of a majoritarian ethical perspective ["tyrranically"] beating out a less prevalent one, which is why I’m more concerned with the ethical than metaphysical implications, though I do understand the importance of the metaphysical question when determining the accountibility of the group itself as well as the members that constitute it. I’ll be curious to see how Pettit and List approach this problem. I’m skeptical of there being any practical solution to the ethical problems of voting [including the notion I suggest, that some members are really only ostensibly such], despite achieving group coherence.)

To make things more complicated, voting isn’t always laid out as it is in the above example. P and Q are not always voted on separately. For example, the housing board might vote individually simply on whether the landlord should be held accountable (a conclusion-centered procedure). In this case, you’d have one yes and two nos. However, that doesn’t change the fact that, AS A GROUP, there is still incoherence, whether it’s as apparent as it is in the earlier example or not. Even trickier is the incoherence resulting when P and Q are voted on at different times (Pettit calls this scenario the diachronic generalization), perhaps even by different members of a group fulfilling the voting quota at different times (a problem tackled by 18th century philosopher Marquis de Condorcet).

V. Wrapping it Up

I look forward to reading Pettit and List’s book to see how they deal with the concept of group agency in and outside of the jurisprudential context, and I am happy to have learned about the discursive dilemma (which is the relative of quite a few similar voting paradoxes, just google “doctrinal paradox” and you’ll see what I mean; if you’re interested in economic theory, you’ll notice some shared ideas between voting paradox and game theory).

One last bit of clarification: I am very frustrated by political practice, and am therefore not interested in politics. I am, however, very concerned with those things which politics are supposedly in place to address. But, given the way the political machinery actually works, I have little interest in it for reasons which, were I to point them out, would seem too obvious to even bother stating. The best cure for this frustration seems to be writing about it. If you made it this far, thanks for reading and please feel free to share your own ideas.

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FOOTNOTE:

*The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights lists marriage as a right, and there is nothing in it that explicitly states people can only marry those of the opposite gender, though I could imagine someone arguing that it is implied:

Article 16:
(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Article 2:
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.