William James and Tom Stoppard

Sorry, if I am missing email responses. Been busy. If you all get a $100 a month subscription, I will be more responsive and actually research things. Indeed, I will buy the coffee.

I worked through much of William James' speech, which I linked to previously per Greg, and remember why I don't like reading Victorians.

They can't speak in a straight line with common words.

James began by saying people at Harvard, his audience, may still have an interest in vital subjects regardless of their general indifference, so he would broach the subject of his speech.

I suppose this is an amusing introduction one could get away with when attempting to communicate with the indifferent, self-appointed superior class from within. It is both a little jab, chuckle, and a confirmation of the audience's superiority. I suppose in those days, at least, Harvard was really a place of higher learning for the bright and wealthy, not the bright or the wealthy.

Anyway, one item of note I recommend of James is that an "hypothesis" that one presents to the intellect may be live or dead. I would say the TV volume switch is on or off....

One gets the impression that the club members are pretending to be smart for other members by using pointlessly complex, interwoven sentences dotted with words that seem colorful and intelligent, though meanings slide around and slow down the listener. I guess if someone has to stop to figure out what you are talking about, then they lose you train of thought and have to assume you are saying something. This is a variation on the King Has No Clothes. Of course, James was giving a speech and did not think his words would be read carefully.

I spend much time reading legal opinions from the era and those writings are often complex, but precise, and the logic runs in a straight line. There is no "hrupmhing" self indulgences or snide remarks to the enlightened. I should think the formality and thoroughness of thought evident in those days that had to be artfully jumbled up by those pretending to be the most clever. Seems like an English tut-tut thing. One has no trouble following Cardozo or Learned Hand:

"Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as

possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the

treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes.

Over and over again the Courts have said that there is nothing sinister

in so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everyone

does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes any

public duty to pay more than the law demands."

I am not sure we owe what the law demands, today, as in Learned Hand's day the government represented the people. So the notion of the citizen's "duty" becomes one of "avoiding jail."

Anyway, one item of note I recommend of James is that an "hypothesis" that one presents to the intellect may be live or dead. I would say the TV volume switch is on or off.

If you are told to decide something you don't care about, then the instruction and operation demanded are dead to the listener. So, if someone says, "Do you think Keefer Sutherland will die in 24?" That connects to people with a TV and who turn it on to see the show from time to time. If you don't watch and don't care, then one is actually hearing what Homer Simpson hears all the time: Bla, Bla, Bla, Beer, Bla, Beer.

This view of "liveness" means people, basically, are ass holes and not interested in trying to figure out what you are asking, if it is of no live interest; they just nod and move on. I note this when talking about UFOs. Not only is there no response, there is no interest in why you would ask.

If you ask about a live hypotheses, one that the listener is sensitive, then the whole conversation has meaning, if not interest.

As an example useful in both directions, I can offer one that gets both reactions: Obama is a socialist. Those who are sensitive to political history and theory understand the statement and can agree or not.1 Those who have the perspective and comprehension of an American in the 9th grade just stare and ask about UFOs, a valid change of direction.

An interesting conclusion, as I take it to be regardless of the elitist snide remarks:

As a rule we disbelieve all facts and theories for which we have no use... This very law which the logicians would impose upon us--if I may give the name of logicians to those who would rule out our willing nature here--is based on nothing but their own natural wish to exclude all elements for which they, in their professional quality of logicians, can find no use.

Literature provides much better examples and language than any hard or soft scientists can devise in their paradigm. It is too bad the mediocre show scorn for that which they do not know.

Tom Stoppard in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead:

“The audience knows what to expect and that is all they are prepared to believe."

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1. 1996 New Party publication report (Socialist):

Illinois: Three NP-members won Democratic primaries last Spring and face off against Republican opponents on election day: Danny Davis (U.S. House), Barack Obama (State Senate) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary).

This information was purged from some active sites last year, apparently, but archives still exist. Ask yourself why the information was purged from the active site.

The clear reference to socialism would only be of interest to the 9th grader, well college junior, to whom the concept is dead. They cannot perceive socialist action, having no perspective. We store away factoids, poorly defined, in our little school brains and few are "live."