Hello Dan, and hello everybody. In a comment below I said my reading habits have changed enormously, just since a few weeks ago. Now all of a sudden, I am reading a dozen books at a time, not one by one. So I couldn't possibly have time to read them cover to cover, but finding key chapters.
On the 17th JD Vance (39) accepted the Republican nomination to run as vice president. On the 18th I read a review of his book, Hillbilly Elegy. Today I have the book, and so far have read the introduction. I think normally I would not have been much interested, but as a possible future Vice President, that interest level changes.
Vance's origin is from Appalachia. Their plight, their poverty and their mind-set about it, were who he was. It is said that Appalachia hasn't changed its stubborn adherence to stereotypes of thinking for 100's of years, from way before those Scotch-Irish migrated to the USA.
After high school Vance served for 4 years with the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point in North Carolina. He says, he learned to "give it my all" as a corporal in the news media service. After the Marines, Vance was able to "ACE" college and Law School. He is a Senator from Ohio.
From Hillbilly Elegy; Vance loves the people of Appalachia, and of course he loves the Marine core. Appalachian poverty has been unmanageable for centuries. Their common attitude about it is very disempowering. What would a Vice President be able to do to confront an intractable problem area that is one of his major concerns?
Below, Dan said, "Degradation starts when the person loses the willingness to seek solutions."
That is the primary condition revealed in Hillbilly Elegy, {I have not read it yet} but that also has to be tempered with a new opportunity landscape. What can Vance do about it if he wins as VP? That will be very interesting to watch. If something about it works; I am sure it will spill over onto other poverty "groups". It could be a big part of Trump's MAGA.
I think changing attitudes takes hands-on mentoring. The Marine core can change attitudes. Could the military become involved in civil mentoring? Retired marines could certainly fill positions in a civil project. How would Vance put it together? I think he could get it financed. Changing attitudes would take participant commitment, not just come and go as you please. Yet it couldn't be like a Chinese "re-education camp", or could it?
Here's my copy of the book, let's read it together and follow these developments. I'll make a new post for discussions.
1) The monologue. Out of my league. I read the first paragraph. Nothing there. And no explanation or introduction. Out of context. In itself. Not to say, “What about my context?” No message, no takeaway, no encouragement, no clickbait. No promise.
Normally, I’d give up right there. Not because this thing is useless. Because my perception is not in tune with it - now, here. But… out of courtesy, I forced myself to the second paragraph.
Ah, a story. What about? No idea. What for? No indications. Why? No info. A story. If my life was empty (= with no stories of my own), I’d probably read on. Actress in Paris? Who cares? That was it. End of story.
This form may work when the audience worships the monologuer, or, at least, holds them in some regard. The aura of being a unique personality helps. Like those big-time stage flights of Jobs or Musk. There is literally nothing there, but the audience paid so much that they won’t admit it. They will wait for one line of life wisdom that will turn their empty minds into “I am like him” games.
That’s it about monologue. A form that is out of tune with me. Or the other way round.
2) “Perspectives are different ways to interpret what we see.” To see, we need a vantage point. The interpretation will always depend on it. Like climbing a ladder and extending the reach of the vision, discovering new elements of the landscape. Or 3D paintings: https://mymodernmet.com/3d-street-art-illusions/
3) “Any new perspectives must be introduced gently.” So terrorizing and tyrannical. What about quick methods? Rapid onset of new insights breaking the walls of established routines? All deep transformations come only from surprise. The bypassing of the mind and teleporting the awareness into a new life.
4) “This is Substack, and we are readers and writers.” What about bots, agenda pushers, pretend scientists, fake conversations, advertising harvesters? So many personalities in play…
Hello Dan, I have wanted to reply to your comment, which I appreciate. It is clear to me, if we had elections, you would win the "most-valuable-player" at WNT.
I have been off, reading, following my interest, and researching the process of urbanization. In other words, people lived by direct contact with natural resources, for centuries, forever. But then for various reasons, natural resources are no longer sufficient to live and eat, and people are forced to migrate to cities. Maybe the first transposed generation has a degraded lifestyle, they live in poverty? Then maybe their children get the hang of it. What is that process? Often, it is initiated by some form of injustice. Like industry or mining pollutes their land and water, or dams reduce their catch of fish. It's progress, right? That aspect directly relates to this piece that we are commenting on. (And maybe injustice is the only way toward modernization??) Is modernization good? It seems necessary.
1) I was not attracted to this monologue, perhaps just as you stated. I have not, and would probably never watch the Youtube where it is performed. I am not able to pick up all the speaking in the recording. I think you say that the speaking is not so important, just get what the actions are. In a theater monologue, there are no actions. Only a person standing there, talking, (maybe with emotion).
Of course theater does not start with a written abstract, nor an executive summary. You have to get into it to discover what the objective is.
In the other comment, I explained about an interview with the playwright, Wallace Shawn. He even says, "nobody likes my plays". So I looked one up, just to see why nobody likes them. "The Fever", it comes 10 years after the story in that interview, but I didn't "like" the Fever either. It drones on.
It uses fantasy to arrive at a message, maybe subtly received, maybe with a hammer blow, depending on how open to it the audience is. But I think that it does arrive. Fantasy often ends with, "oh it was all a dream", but his device is to make it an hallucination from the beginning, by saying this guy was in an intense immune system reaction, a fever. Not so sophisticated of a device, but just accept it for what it is.
I saw the inner message, and I edited the script from 15,000 words to 5,000 and sanitized most of the unneeded images. It is a realization about colonialism and civilization, and that the colonial mind-set is just as strong (or stronger) than ever, it's pure chauvinism.
Really; it clearly explains everything you see in both the domestic and international world of today, everything. Chauvinism.
You made it down to the story in the theater piece, where the heroine was losing her family estate, and one of her ex-serfs was actually buying the place for a song. "What an injustice" she cried, all the way to her condominium in Paris. And the bourgeoisie audience was actually move to tears.
2) Perspectives are based on a vantage point, like you say. In this piece, the vantage point that is exposed is, chauvinism equals high civilization, as proven by the prosperity of colonialism. We're rich, so we're right.
[BTW I have a 3-D art museum in my city. They just built their own building and re-did the whole thing. Tourists go through the different rooms, and standing in a certain spot (the perspective), they take a picture of themselves in the scene.]
3) That vantage point (above) is so deeply woven into the western culture that, yes, any opposing message has to be "snuck in sideways". Nobody wants to read it. It is unsettling. This piece does exactly that.
What rapid new insights can break walls of established routines? Well, floods, droughts, hurricanes, and WAR, imposed by guess who? He who donates the bombs. Also the small farmers that are bankrupted off of their land. I just talked with a New Zealand sheep farmer yesterday. Over a few years they increased his land tax 400%, and he was forced to sell-out. It is modernization.
4) You have a wider Substack experience than I do. Actually I have never met a bot. Agenda pushers ?, pretend scientists (probably), conversations are the best that we can muster, and I haven't been exposed to advertising harvesters.
Hi, Perspectives. Another good day has just started with the reading of your work.
> a degraded lifestyle, they live in poverty
Is it degraded? I’d say it is much more empowering and beneficial for the person. At one point, theoretically, we all were in poverty and we didn’t have any comfort or luxury. So, it is the departure point for personal growth. The basic soil, if you will. You don’t even need to accept it, it’ right here, day in day out. For free. You don’t have to pay absurd fees to see some Robbinses and Ziglars to learn everything you need to be successful in life.
I’d say degradation starts when the person loses the willingness to seek solutions. Collapsing in easy and ready-made, it’s where we die. Then, dead, we are waiting for 30, 50, or 70 years to be buried.
> In a theater monologue, there are no actions. Only a person standing there, talking, (maybe with emotion).
That’s why it is the most artificial hobby of all. No fun, mere repetitions. No emotions, because you can’t have (real) emotions when you perform for others to appreciate you. It’s just manipulation. No actions, although the bodies on the stage throw themselves here and there quite a lot. Empty. Nothing there. Plus, limited and very very safe environment, which dulls down experiencing.
> the playwright… even says, "nobody likes my plays…
Maybe there is something to it :-) If he doesn’t ask people “why”, then he misses the point of living.
> What rapid new insights can break walls of established routines? Well, floods, droughts, hurricanes, and WAR
No, nothing of this sort. These are simply integral elements of our life environment.
Falling in love. #1 ever. You are seeing somebody (including animals and plants) or something and you are melting into oneness with it. The mind stops and quickly disappears. No words. Time is not relevant any more. Food is not needed. Rest and sleep are not needed. Work or family duties go away. The transformation in the falling in love is absolutely unique.
It’s not about love - I mean only the first stage, the sliding down from the mind’s games into being there. It may take some time. The more courageous the person, the longer.
And it’s not about relationships, at all. It’s like a thunderstorm running close to you. It’s happening, it is transforming you, and it will live in you forever. What the other person/object does or does not is irrelevant.
My feeling is that it’s becoming more rare and harder to find. When I see a person with earphones or a smartphone, there is nobody there, a dead corpse walking, how am I to fall in love with it? It may be nice to look at, with interesting dynamics of movement or behavior, just like any other robot.
#2. Happenings. Split-second events which you would have never expected, planned, hoped for. Usually with strangers. Very rare with people we know or are accustomed to. Miracles, you can call it. Extremely short developments which penetrate you in an instant and make you wonder. Tell-tale sign in you: goosebumps, crumbling voice, tears, stopped breathing.
#3. One-liners. When your mind is so active and has been building so many arguments and (de)fences, a 3-word question is simply destroying all this right away. Or a short sentence which bypasses all mind’s games. Like:
Perspective: what we find depends mainly on what we are looking for.
I used a couple of words in my last comment, degraded and poverty. In a western sense, (we were all in poverty), personally or as the human race. Well, we didn't have a bank account, or what the west might deem as riches, comforts or wealth. But my definition of "poverty" in that comment was; were our needs being met? Principally, could we eat every day? I say yes, that mankind was sustainable for many 1,000's of years, (tens of thousands). Of course there were interruptions. Some people died from them, but the race moved forward to procreate.
Not even the ancients. I said I was just researching (not directly, I was reading about other's research). One subject was rivers, an ecological context, and dams, a man-made obstruction. One place where they write about this is SE Asia and the Mekong basin. Large full-river dams are relatively recent, 30 or 40 years ago to start with. I am not going to talk about the benefits of dams. The Mekong has 150 species of fish, 100 of which are migratory. Upstream to spawn and down stream to feed and grow. Even 40 years ago (no big dams), villages on the river bank could catch enough fish in one day to feed the family for 3 days. These people are still alive, you can ask them. There were other free benefits of the surrounding forests.
I say these people were RICH. They didn't read or write, or involve in the nation. They didn't have paved roads, no electricity, maybe a motorcycle and a kerosene lantern, cows and horses. They had their ecological domain, the natural resources. They could come up with some things for sale, but needed very little. Houses and furniture were free bamboo, rattan and thatched roofs. They grew some rice, minded the irrigation canals and such. Vegetables and fruits came from the forest. They had knowledge of all the things they needed to know. They had social connections both in the village and in the religion, festivals, parties, weddings, (and funerals).
The man-made dams blocked the fish migration. Now they could catch fish for dinner, maybe every day, or maybe nothing. Other things too, logging, changing water levels, sand mining, destroying the river banks.
Now they couldn't eat like before. They had to find employment, buy food, but they only had their traditional skills. Now they were POOR. The ecological context could no longer support a family, over a generation, kids needed to migrate to the city, first working in textiles (sewing machines), paid just a subsistence. They were poor too.
I like what you say and I agree, the willingness to seek solutions. But the modern context has more options.
_____________
What new insights can come suddenly: I like what you say here too. Melting into oneness. Your whole description is great. "It is harder to find", but also the knee-jerk reaction is to come out of it immediately. It helps if somewhere they suggested to stay with it for a little while, give it a chance.
I feel lucky about this realization, a couple of times, and it changed me forever. Now I don't live like that, but it is inside me, so I don't yearn for a repeat.
Things that make you wonder: Still I see a tendency to come out of that immediately too. I can rest in it and enjoy. But I can also take notice and move on. I believe I can enter a situation not looking for a particular expectation, and I can be surprised too. I don't claim I have it all "wired". Just call it a knack or luck, (just a superficial acceptance). I am not superstitious, not that kind of luck. I don't play lotto.
Every little thing that I do usually expands into a new path. Even that little river and urbanization investigation now has multiplied into a dozen books on China's development, Iran, the foundations of the EU, the Yellow Vest protests. I just did tons of reading on Zionism, where it came from. Where it is going.
Definitions. Ha, the big stuff. On one hand, the life of the mind is impossible without them. We are obsessed with and addicted to labeling. When we manage this part, we rush into elaborating, classifying, categorizing, and further naming. And we spin a lot of definitions along the way. The mind is so uneasy. It has to spread its rubbish all over the place. Finally, we arrive at definitions, pretty much clear and descriptive. For how long? We are not good with these long-developed definitions, so we change, modify and amend them. Never ending story.
Law is the best example. Legal definitions are best because we expect them to be precise and unanimous. Are they? Never. We amend the laws, multiple times, and then we publish consolidated texts. Which are again amended now and then. This is the ultimate tragedy of the mind.
On the other hand… If we are to understand each other, we need to share definitions. Is it possible? Never. The moment I define something, the listener’s / reader’s mind is trying to interpret it according to its own needs, biases, prejudices and expected profits and losses. An impossible task.
Animals are focused on what they do. All animals at all times. You won’t find an animal with a mind suffering from the smartphone syndrome. Sometimes you can see an animal apparently distracted, like a cat at your house. No, it never is distracted. Try an out-of-context sound and you will see an immediate reaction: total alertness, total attention, full focus.
We are never like this. Even in love, we are floating on the surface, neglecting Life at large. This is one of the proofs that we have not originated on the Earth and we have been a genetically modified organism. We are not ready to live here. We are not fit to live here. We survive, now and then, but our minds have not been structured to live here.
The ultimate of this mis-alignment is: hobbies, entertainment, the “fun” stuff. It’s the total escape from the only reality we have. Lullabies to the mind. And we love it. We will collect anything we can grab. We will write histories, change histories, object to histories, revise histories, the utter stupidity of the mind - as if it could help in anything…
Hi Dan, I ended my last comment saying most everything I involve with leads me (organically) to the next thing, and even to an expanded version. I will start a new comment thread about it from the top.
As I said "The Fever" is a 1991 play (theater monologue), written by Wallace Shawn. This was 10 years after the My Dinner with Andre movie was produced, in 1981. The character is in some way fascinated by "the-poor", and he finds himself traveling in more and more countries of the-poor. ["The-Poor" is my editing convention, not always used in the piece. I use it as sort of a "marker" for racism.] It fits.
So in one of these countries this character comes down with a violent fever, and is immobilized on the bathroom floor of his hotel, vomiting and having these hallucinations. He has no power, not even to stand up. The play traces through these delusions, in about 15,000 words. I cut it down to 5,000 words, and I took out most of the caustic images that were deemed necessary by Shawn in 1991. (About torture and such). I don't think that they are necessary in today's age, when killing and war are commonplace in the news and in life.
This play is on Youtube in at least two places. One is just reading, where you don't see the performer, and one is actually recited in a living room by Jim Luken. If you have time and want to see this performance, it is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-bWuxrKLKw
Like with all theater, (for me) it is difficult to pick up all of the dialog. I suggest that you open the script of the play, and read along with him. He remembers most of it pretty well. Here is the script:
This play is called THE FEVER, by Wallace Shawn, written in 1991. I’ll tell more about it in another comment. Wallace Shawn has written many works and acted in 100 movies or plays. He is most well known for co-writing and acting in the “cult film” My Dinner with Andre, 1981. It is a cult film because it was a breakthrough, and it still has a following, 45 years later.
Here are some things Shawn says about the process with My Dinner with Andre. Quote:
Let's say that it was 1969 or 1970 and I was about 27 I had very strong feelings about theater and I also had the feeling that I would be very influenced by anything that I saw and I was afraid of seeing productions, because I thought they would harm me or something, that I would be vulnerable and perhaps just deflected from the true path that I was following, by seeing certain things that might be too strong for me. I was afraid of everything anyway.
I mean in life, about practically everything. Fear has played a big part in my life and of course, in My Dinner with Andre it's all about Fear. So, Ranata Adler called me and she said this play “Alice in Wonderland” is incredible you have to see it, the actors fly through space and they do unbelievable things, and I said I don't want to see that. That will be, - it's just not the type of theater I can accept I'm against it and I don't want to see it.
And Ranata knew me very well and she had read the plays that I'd written and there were only a couple of people who liked my plays, and she was one of them. She said no, but you really should see this because it's really so amazing and she mentioned it, you know many times, so finally I said well, all right.
I guess I have to go to it and so I went to it and it really was, it was so astounding.
This is the amazing thing about theater and you know, you cannot describe it, really and you can't even see it, even though there are videos of it and the photographs of it, you just can’t know it.
I mean in the cliché, poetry is what is left out of the translation, and Theater is what's left out of the photographs and even the video.
You can't describe it, but people involuntarily screamed during the play in the way that people do on a roller coaster, it was so terrifying and thrilling and you thought the actors would be killed, it was like the circus and it was also the funniest thing you've ever seen in your life, and it was the most polished piece of theater that I had ever seen.
And then I went to see it a third time when they were doing it in Connecticut, and at that time I brought Andre (Gregory), an envelope of my plays which I did to everybody. I mean I carried envelopes of my plays; how many were there at that time, well I'd probably written about five plays.
I believed in myself as a playwright at that time, more than I really was. I really believed in myself and I presented these plays to everybody and no one in the professional theater liked them, no one, and no one outside of the theater liked them, except for a couple of people but then Andre.
I gave him the plays but I didn't expect to ever hear from him, any more than I had heard from other people. And he called me several months later, I was staying in Cedar Falls Iowa by myself writing a play, and he called and said, I love your plays and you know, I want you to come work with my company.
I would say we got to know each other later, really in making the film MDwA. What gave me the idea for the movie was he had told me some of his experiences and I had listened to him. Obviously, I was skeptical of some of his beliefs, but in daily life I wouldn't have expressed that. Even in the movie, my character, I say something like “do you really want to know? I'm really going to tell you what I think” like I sort of wind up, it's like you prepare him for it. It's in some ways, I guess acknowledging that it's not what people generally do. Yeah, but it did seem like a very very funny idea to me to just have the one guy who so passionately trying to make something of his life and the other guy who was thinking only of surviving.
I suppose when we began, what seemed funny was that my character was skeptical, as we continued the process, I was getting more and more into it and taking it more and more seriously, and seeing that it was not skepticism so much as that character was very defended.
He was defending himself; he was terrified by the things that his friend was saying and then the film came to have a different meaning for me, but the original idea was that it was funny, and that somehow then there would be a third element which would be the real world going on while the two different types of bourgeoisies or whatever, were chatting.
I mean that maybe we would be walking and we would be passing people who were digging a ditch and working or I don't know, one of the many really interesting things about the movie for me is sort of the notion of what's conscious and what's unconscious.
I mean first and foremost what is not conscious what is not conscious and what is not said is that we're two upper class guys spending hours talking about life, while others are working, maybe suffering, and so the most unconscious thing is our political environment, right?
I actually had a purpose as I was writing this movie, a personal goal, I had a personal purpose in this as it developed. It didn't begin that way but as we worked on it, the filming of it, and particularly during the writing process, I wanted to destroy that guy that I played, to the extent that there was any of the real me in there. That was the side of me that I wanted to get rid of.
I wanted to kill that side of myself by making the film, really, because that guy is totally motivated by fear, and he's defending himself and he's a very; - well, he's, he is the bourgeoisie human being.
With some things I feel just like Wallace Shawn describes. I don't want to see any movies, or hear many people's opinions. But with me it is not based on fear, but to keep a consistency in my experiment. I believe that my today unfolds from my interpretation of my yesterday. I call that a unique personal path. Of course there are influences from the outside. This I don't deny, but I am not searching for the truth of "the other". I am not looking for the authority. Enough of it gets in here anyway, not to be so curious about more of it.
I am saying that in my opinion the values that other stories are based on are the main problems in personal and communal life. These are the duplicitous ideas that all contradictions and dilemmas are based on. what can you learn? Why society is a mess.
This is a pretty good representation of the history of western man, (sort of in a dream / nightmare format). It starts with the local elite, those with a militia, and when they conquer larger and larger populations, that full force is applied to their colonial empire. Those militias were initially necessary since they were continually attacking each other to take what they could get. Starting with Rome and earlier.
How will the reader accept this or even bother with it. In other words we all know ancient history, if only in shreds. And we have all DISMISSED IT as "that used to be the (killing) nature of mankind". But now; as expressed beautifully in the piece, we believe that this is civilization. We can stop all the killing and just offer gradual homogenization, human rights. (How gradual?) Really it is expressed very well in the piece.
"I am not going to open my eyes to anything else."
I think this was written 30 or more years ago. Little did he know that today (and every day), 150 more innocent people are killed in Gaza, and many tortured. Little did he know that today, and every day 1,500 human beings are blown apart in the Ukraine. Of course, they are not human beings. Once you put a uniform on, you are a soldier. Soldiers are meant to be killed.
And all of this, so that when I reach for my coffee on the kitchen shelf, IT IS SURELY THERE, as I expect it will be. We will be secure, once our NATO base is installed on the Russian border, and once we have the Crimea Naval Base, so that Russia is forced out of the Black Sea.
Then we will go to concerts, discuss movies, buy artwork, eat in fine restaurants, drink fine wine, take little trips, and have solace and consolation every day of the year. It is a goal worth killing a few rebels for.
No reader is going to digest this! (Or let's hear from them.)
Something begs to be said here, but how would we know what expression will suffice? This is a theater piece, a one person drama with a very strong interior message. This play is several decades old, but I believe it is very timely today. Even 10 years ago it would have had much LESS impact. Now it will be dismissed on various grounds, but some parts of the core speak the obvious.
If you tried to transmit this message directly, it would surely fall flat. But the theater device has a way of penetrating. So the idea gets in, and the repercussions and connections are felt. The main reaction is probably; "so, what can I do about it"? Well, there is no real "peace movement" that I can see, so I can't join it. Or it's difficult to start your own drive for world conciliation. (Librarian did).
Is it left off there then?
Let's say that righting wrongs is a gradual process. (It is said so in the play). But where is the progress? China claims it has solved domestic poverty last year. I don't know how that is calculated. It seems the west is getting more divisive, which means western poverty must be growing. Or what is poverty? Someone actually mentioned to me, yesterday in a random conversation, that the poverty level in San Francisco, for a working couple is $140,000 per year. (How disconnected am I?)
We are told that all our prosperity comes from our Democracy, our freedoms and universal human rights. So is it the "free market" that is a positive for everyone who accepts the World Trade organization. I believe it. But on closer look at today's news, Mexico is finally winning a four year court battle against Monsanto, to curb the dumping of GMO Corn in Mexico. GMO Corn is heavily subsidized by the US government, so that Mexican corn prices have dropped 66%. Mexico does NOT subsidize agriculture.
But the real reason for GMO is it is immune to the "Roundup" weed-killer, the glyphosate poison that is forced into the human food chain. Keep in mind that Mexicans eat 1,000% (ten times), the quantity of corn that Americans eat. So they are eating 1,000% of the glyphosate. Is your prosperity connected with the Mexican consumption of glyphosate? Well, yes it is. It is Freedom and Democracy in action.
Why is there all this hostility in the world? What does it have to do with me? If I don't inform myself about it, am I even further detached? Those bad people are doing all those bad things. Which bad people? I don't know who, they must all be bad.
Here's a link about the Mexican corn war, but I don't want to transform this comment into forced world trade.
Hello Dan, and hello everybody. In a comment below I said my reading habits have changed enormously, just since a few weeks ago. Now all of a sudden, I am reading a dozen books at a time, not one by one. So I couldn't possibly have time to read them cover to cover, but finding key chapters.
On the 17th JD Vance (39) accepted the Republican nomination to run as vice president. On the 18th I read a review of his book, Hillbilly Elegy. Today I have the book, and so far have read the introduction. I think normally I would not have been much interested, but as a possible future Vice President, that interest level changes.
Vance's origin is from Appalachia. Their plight, their poverty and their mind-set about it, were who he was. It is said that Appalachia hasn't changed its stubborn adherence to stereotypes of thinking for 100's of years, from way before those Scotch-Irish migrated to the USA.
After high school Vance served for 4 years with the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point in North Carolina. He says, he learned to "give it my all" as a corporal in the news media service. After the Marines, Vance was able to "ACE" college and Law School. He is a Senator from Ohio.
From Hillbilly Elegy; Vance loves the people of Appalachia, and of course he loves the Marine core. Appalachian poverty has been unmanageable for centuries. Their common attitude about it is very disempowering. What would a Vice President be able to do to confront an intractable problem area that is one of his major concerns?
Below, Dan said, "Degradation starts when the person loses the willingness to seek solutions."
That is the primary condition revealed in Hillbilly Elegy, {I have not read it yet} but that also has to be tempered with a new opportunity landscape. What can Vance do about it if he wins as VP? That will be very interesting to watch. If something about it works; I am sure it will spill over onto other poverty "groups". It could be a big part of Trump's MAGA.
I think changing attitudes takes hands-on mentoring. The Marine core can change attitudes. Could the military become involved in civil mentoring? Retired marines could certainly fill positions in a civil project. How would Vance put it together? I think he could get it financed. Changing attitudes would take participant commitment, not just come and go as you please. Yet it couldn't be like a Chinese "re-education camp", or could it?
Here's my copy of the book, let's read it together and follow these developments. I'll make a new post for discussions.
https://braxwest.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/690296499_6699d1e5b3f07.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIPW3G47VXLJOZITA&Expires=1721383771&Signature=GoMD5601BrHSBpY%2FgvDJ%2F0yXv84%3D
Link now works.
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THIS LINK IS FIXED NOW.
1) The monologue. Out of my league. I read the first paragraph. Nothing there. And no explanation or introduction. Out of context. In itself. Not to say, “What about my context?” No message, no takeaway, no encouragement, no clickbait. No promise.
Normally, I’d give up right there. Not because this thing is useless. Because my perception is not in tune with it - now, here. But… out of courtesy, I forced myself to the second paragraph.
Ah, a story. What about? No idea. What for? No indications. Why? No info. A story. If my life was empty (= with no stories of my own), I’d probably read on. Actress in Paris? Who cares? That was it. End of story.
This form may work when the audience worships the monologuer, or, at least, holds them in some regard. The aura of being a unique personality helps. Like those big-time stage flights of Jobs or Musk. There is literally nothing there, but the audience paid so much that they won’t admit it. They will wait for one line of life wisdom that will turn their empty minds into “I am like him” games.
That’s it about monologue. A form that is out of tune with me. Or the other way round.
2) “Perspectives are different ways to interpret what we see.” To see, we need a vantage point. The interpretation will always depend on it. Like climbing a ladder and extending the reach of the vision, discovering new elements of the landscape. Or 3D paintings: https://mymodernmet.com/3d-street-art-illusions/
3) “Any new perspectives must be introduced gently.” So terrorizing and tyrannical. What about quick methods? Rapid onset of new insights breaking the walls of established routines? All deep transformations come only from surprise. The bypassing of the mind and teleporting the awareness into a new life.
4) “This is Substack, and we are readers and writers.” What about bots, agenda pushers, pretend scientists, fake conversations, advertising harvesters? So many personalities in play…
Hello Dan, I have wanted to reply to your comment, which I appreciate. It is clear to me, if we had elections, you would win the "most-valuable-player" at WNT.
I have been off, reading, following my interest, and researching the process of urbanization. In other words, people lived by direct contact with natural resources, for centuries, forever. But then for various reasons, natural resources are no longer sufficient to live and eat, and people are forced to migrate to cities. Maybe the first transposed generation has a degraded lifestyle, they live in poverty? Then maybe their children get the hang of it. What is that process? Often, it is initiated by some form of injustice. Like industry or mining pollutes their land and water, or dams reduce their catch of fish. It's progress, right? That aspect directly relates to this piece that we are commenting on. (And maybe injustice is the only way toward modernization??) Is modernization good? It seems necessary.
1) I was not attracted to this monologue, perhaps just as you stated. I have not, and would probably never watch the Youtube where it is performed. I am not able to pick up all the speaking in the recording. I think you say that the speaking is not so important, just get what the actions are. In a theater monologue, there are no actions. Only a person standing there, talking, (maybe with emotion).
Of course theater does not start with a written abstract, nor an executive summary. You have to get into it to discover what the objective is.
In the other comment, I explained about an interview with the playwright, Wallace Shawn. He even says, "nobody likes my plays". So I looked one up, just to see why nobody likes them. "The Fever", it comes 10 years after the story in that interview, but I didn't "like" the Fever either. It drones on.
It uses fantasy to arrive at a message, maybe subtly received, maybe with a hammer blow, depending on how open to it the audience is. But I think that it does arrive. Fantasy often ends with, "oh it was all a dream", but his device is to make it an hallucination from the beginning, by saying this guy was in an intense immune system reaction, a fever. Not so sophisticated of a device, but just accept it for what it is.
I saw the inner message, and I edited the script from 15,000 words to 5,000 and sanitized most of the unneeded images. It is a realization about colonialism and civilization, and that the colonial mind-set is just as strong (or stronger) than ever, it's pure chauvinism.
Really; it clearly explains everything you see in both the domestic and international world of today, everything. Chauvinism.
You made it down to the story in the theater piece, where the heroine was losing her family estate, and one of her ex-serfs was actually buying the place for a song. "What an injustice" she cried, all the way to her condominium in Paris. And the bourgeoisie audience was actually move to tears.
2) Perspectives are based on a vantage point, like you say. In this piece, the vantage point that is exposed is, chauvinism equals high civilization, as proven by the prosperity of colonialism. We're rich, so we're right.
[BTW I have a 3-D art museum in my city. They just built their own building and re-did the whole thing. Tourists go through the different rooms, and standing in a certain spot (the perspective), they take a picture of themselves in the scene.]
3) That vantage point (above) is so deeply woven into the western culture that, yes, any opposing message has to be "snuck in sideways". Nobody wants to read it. It is unsettling. This piece does exactly that.
What rapid new insights can break walls of established routines? Well, floods, droughts, hurricanes, and WAR, imposed by guess who? He who donates the bombs. Also the small farmers that are bankrupted off of their land. I just talked with a New Zealand sheep farmer yesterday. Over a few years they increased his land tax 400%, and he was forced to sell-out. It is modernization.
4) You have a wider Substack experience than I do. Actually I have never met a bot. Agenda pushers ?, pretend scientists (probably), conversations are the best that we can muster, and I haven't been exposed to advertising harvesters.
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Hi, Perspectives. Another good day has just started with the reading of your work.
> a degraded lifestyle, they live in poverty
Is it degraded? I’d say it is much more empowering and beneficial for the person. At one point, theoretically, we all were in poverty and we didn’t have any comfort or luxury. So, it is the departure point for personal growth. The basic soil, if you will. You don’t even need to accept it, it’ right here, day in day out. For free. You don’t have to pay absurd fees to see some Robbinses and Ziglars to learn everything you need to be successful in life.
I’d say degradation starts when the person loses the willingness to seek solutions. Collapsing in easy and ready-made, it’s where we die. Then, dead, we are waiting for 30, 50, or 70 years to be buried.
> In a theater monologue, there are no actions. Only a person standing there, talking, (maybe with emotion).
That’s why it is the most artificial hobby of all. No fun, mere repetitions. No emotions, because you can’t have (real) emotions when you perform for others to appreciate you. It’s just manipulation. No actions, although the bodies on the stage throw themselves here and there quite a lot. Empty. Nothing there. Plus, limited and very very safe environment, which dulls down experiencing.
> the playwright… even says, "nobody likes my plays…
Maybe there is something to it :-) If he doesn’t ask people “why”, then he misses the point of living.
> What rapid new insights can break walls of established routines? Well, floods, droughts, hurricanes, and WAR
No, nothing of this sort. These are simply integral elements of our life environment.
Falling in love. #1 ever. You are seeing somebody (including animals and plants) or something and you are melting into oneness with it. The mind stops and quickly disappears. No words. Time is not relevant any more. Food is not needed. Rest and sleep are not needed. Work or family duties go away. The transformation in the falling in love is absolutely unique.
It’s not about love - I mean only the first stage, the sliding down from the mind’s games into being there. It may take some time. The more courageous the person, the longer.
And it’s not about relationships, at all. It’s like a thunderstorm running close to you. It’s happening, it is transforming you, and it will live in you forever. What the other person/object does or does not is irrelevant.
My feeling is that it’s becoming more rare and harder to find. When I see a person with earphones or a smartphone, there is nobody there, a dead corpse walking, how am I to fall in love with it? It may be nice to look at, with interesting dynamics of movement or behavior, just like any other robot.
#2. Happenings. Split-second events which you would have never expected, planned, hoped for. Usually with strangers. Very rare with people we know or are accustomed to. Miracles, you can call it. Extremely short developments which penetrate you in an instant and make you wonder. Tell-tale sign in you: goosebumps, crumbling voice, tears, stopped breathing.
#3. One-liners. When your mind is so active and has been building so many arguments and (de)fences, a 3-word question is simply destroying all this right away. Or a short sentence which bypasses all mind’s games. Like:
Perspective: what we find depends mainly on what we are looking for.
Hi Dan, and thanks for your insights.
I used a couple of words in my last comment, degraded and poverty. In a western sense, (we were all in poverty), personally or as the human race. Well, we didn't have a bank account, or what the west might deem as riches, comforts or wealth. But my definition of "poverty" in that comment was; were our needs being met? Principally, could we eat every day? I say yes, that mankind was sustainable for many 1,000's of years, (tens of thousands). Of course there were interruptions. Some people died from them, but the race moved forward to procreate.
Not even the ancients. I said I was just researching (not directly, I was reading about other's research). One subject was rivers, an ecological context, and dams, a man-made obstruction. One place where they write about this is SE Asia and the Mekong basin. Large full-river dams are relatively recent, 30 or 40 years ago to start with. I am not going to talk about the benefits of dams. The Mekong has 150 species of fish, 100 of which are migratory. Upstream to spawn and down stream to feed and grow. Even 40 years ago (no big dams), villages on the river bank could catch enough fish in one day to feed the family for 3 days. These people are still alive, you can ask them. There were other free benefits of the surrounding forests.
I say these people were RICH. They didn't read or write, or involve in the nation. They didn't have paved roads, no electricity, maybe a motorcycle and a kerosene lantern, cows and horses. They had their ecological domain, the natural resources. They could come up with some things for sale, but needed very little. Houses and furniture were free bamboo, rattan and thatched roofs. They grew some rice, minded the irrigation canals and such. Vegetables and fruits came from the forest. They had knowledge of all the things they needed to know. They had social connections both in the village and in the religion, festivals, parties, weddings, (and funerals).
The man-made dams blocked the fish migration. Now they could catch fish for dinner, maybe every day, or maybe nothing. Other things too, logging, changing water levels, sand mining, destroying the river banks.
Now they couldn't eat like before. They had to find employment, buy food, but they only had their traditional skills. Now they were POOR. The ecological context could no longer support a family, over a generation, kids needed to migrate to the city, first working in textiles (sewing machines), paid just a subsistence. They were poor too.
I like what you say and I agree, the willingness to seek solutions. But the modern context has more options.
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What new insights can come suddenly: I like what you say here too. Melting into oneness. Your whole description is great. "It is harder to find", but also the knee-jerk reaction is to come out of it immediately. It helps if somewhere they suggested to stay with it for a little while, give it a chance.
I feel lucky about this realization, a couple of times, and it changed me forever. Now I don't live like that, but it is inside me, so I don't yearn for a repeat.
Things that make you wonder: Still I see a tendency to come out of that immediately too. I can rest in it and enjoy. But I can also take notice and move on. I believe I can enter a situation not looking for a particular expectation, and I can be surprised too. I don't claim I have it all "wired". Just call it a knack or luck, (just a superficial acceptance). I am not superstitious, not that kind of luck. I don't play lotto.
Every little thing that I do usually expands into a new path. Even that little river and urbanization investigation now has multiplied into a dozen books on China's development, Iran, the foundations of the EU, the Yellow Vest protests. I just did tons of reading on Zionism, where it came from. Where it is going.
It is an upward widening spiral.
Thanks for visiting WNT.
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Definitions. Ha, the big stuff. On one hand, the life of the mind is impossible without them. We are obsessed with and addicted to labeling. When we manage this part, we rush into elaborating, classifying, categorizing, and further naming. And we spin a lot of definitions along the way. The mind is so uneasy. It has to spread its rubbish all over the place. Finally, we arrive at definitions, pretty much clear and descriptive. For how long? We are not good with these long-developed definitions, so we change, modify and amend them. Never ending story.
Law is the best example. Legal definitions are best because we expect them to be precise and unanimous. Are they? Never. We amend the laws, multiple times, and then we publish consolidated texts. Which are again amended now and then. This is the ultimate tragedy of the mind.
On the other hand… If we are to understand each other, we need to share definitions. Is it possible? Never. The moment I define something, the listener’s / reader’s mind is trying to interpret it according to its own needs, biases, prejudices and expected profits and losses. An impossible task.
Animals are focused on what they do. All animals at all times. You won’t find an animal with a mind suffering from the smartphone syndrome. Sometimes you can see an animal apparently distracted, like a cat at your house. No, it never is distracted. Try an out-of-context sound and you will see an immediate reaction: total alertness, total attention, full focus.
We are never like this. Even in love, we are floating on the surface, neglecting Life at large. This is one of the proofs that we have not originated on the Earth and we have been a genetically modified organism. We are not ready to live here. We are not fit to live here. We survive, now and then, but our minds have not been structured to live here.
The ultimate of this mis-alignment is: hobbies, entertainment, the “fun” stuff. It’s the total escape from the only reality we have. Lullabies to the mind. And we love it. We will collect anything we can grab. We will write histories, change histories, object to histories, revise histories, the utter stupidity of the mind - as if it could help in anything…
Hi Dan, I ended my last comment saying most everything I involve with leads me (organically) to the next thing, and even to an expanded version. I will start a new comment thread about it from the top.
As I said "The Fever" is a 1991 play (theater monologue), written by Wallace Shawn. This was 10 years after the My Dinner with Andre movie was produced, in 1981. The character is in some way fascinated by "the-poor", and he finds himself traveling in more and more countries of the-poor. ["The-Poor" is my editing convention, not always used in the piece. I use it as sort of a "marker" for racism.] It fits.
So in one of these countries this character comes down with a violent fever, and is immobilized on the bathroom floor of his hotel, vomiting and having these hallucinations. He has no power, not even to stand up. The play traces through these delusions, in about 15,000 words. I cut it down to 5,000 words, and I took out most of the caustic images that were deemed necessary by Shawn in 1991. (About torture and such). I don't think that they are necessary in today's age, when killing and war are commonplace in the news and in life.
This play is on Youtube in at least two places. One is just reading, where you don't see the performer, and one is actually recited in a living room by Jim Luken. If you have time and want to see this performance, it is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-bWuxrKLKw
Like with all theater, (for me) it is difficult to pick up all of the dialog. I suggest that you open the script of the play, and read along with him. He remembers most of it pretty well. Here is the script:
https://brax.me/f/The%20Fever%20--%20Wallace%20Shawn%20--%201991%20--%20The%20Noonday%20Press.pdf/T4AZ668616ea4c6c31.84227751
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This play is called THE FEVER, by Wallace Shawn, written in 1991. I’ll tell more about it in another comment. Wallace Shawn has written many works and acted in 100 movies or plays. He is most well known for co-writing and acting in the “cult film” My Dinner with Andre, 1981. It is a cult film because it was a breakthrough, and it still has a following, 45 years later.
Here are some things Shawn says about the process with My Dinner with Andre. Quote:
Let's say that it was 1969 or 1970 and I was about 27 I had very strong feelings about theater and I also had the feeling that I would be very influenced by anything that I saw and I was afraid of seeing productions, because I thought they would harm me or something, that I would be vulnerable and perhaps just deflected from the true path that I was following, by seeing certain things that might be too strong for me. I was afraid of everything anyway.
I mean in life, about practically everything. Fear has played a big part in my life and of course, in My Dinner with Andre it's all about Fear. So, Ranata Adler called me and she said this play “Alice in Wonderland” is incredible you have to see it, the actors fly through space and they do unbelievable things, and I said I don't want to see that. That will be, - it's just not the type of theater I can accept I'm against it and I don't want to see it.
And Ranata knew me very well and she had read the plays that I'd written and there were only a couple of people who liked my plays, and she was one of them. She said no, but you really should see this because it's really so amazing and she mentioned it, you know many times, so finally I said well, all right.
I guess I have to go to it and so I went to it and it really was, it was so astounding.
This is the amazing thing about theater and you know, you cannot describe it, really and you can't even see it, even though there are videos of it and the photographs of it, you just can’t know it.
I mean in the cliché, poetry is what is left out of the translation, and Theater is what's left out of the photographs and even the video.
You can't describe it, but people involuntarily screamed during the play in the way that people do on a roller coaster, it was so terrifying and thrilling and you thought the actors would be killed, it was like the circus and it was also the funniest thing you've ever seen in your life, and it was the most polished piece of theater that I had ever seen.
And then I went to see it a third time when they were doing it in Connecticut, and at that time I brought Andre (Gregory), an envelope of my plays which I did to everybody. I mean I carried envelopes of my plays; how many were there at that time, well I'd probably written about five plays.
I believed in myself as a playwright at that time, more than I really was. I really believed in myself and I presented these plays to everybody and no one in the professional theater liked them, no one, and no one outside of the theater liked them, except for a couple of people but then Andre.
I gave him the plays but I didn't expect to ever hear from him, any more than I had heard from other people. And he called me several months later, I was staying in Cedar Falls Iowa by myself writing a play, and he called and said, I love your plays and you know, I want you to come work with my company.
I would say we got to know each other later, really in making the film MDwA. What gave me the idea for the movie was he had told me some of his experiences and I had listened to him. Obviously, I was skeptical of some of his beliefs, but in daily life I wouldn't have expressed that. Even in the movie, my character, I say something like “do you really want to know? I'm really going to tell you what I think” like I sort of wind up, it's like you prepare him for it. It's in some ways, I guess acknowledging that it's not what people generally do. Yeah, but it did seem like a very very funny idea to me to just have the one guy who so passionately trying to make something of his life and the other guy who was thinking only of surviving.
I suppose when we began, what seemed funny was that my character was skeptical, as we continued the process, I was getting more and more into it and taking it more and more seriously, and seeing that it was not skepticism so much as that character was very defended.
He was defending himself; he was terrified by the things that his friend was saying and then the film came to have a different meaning for me, but the original idea was that it was funny, and that somehow then there would be a third element which would be the real world going on while the two different types of bourgeoisies or whatever, were chatting.
I mean that maybe we would be walking and we would be passing people who were digging a ditch and working or I don't know, one of the many really interesting things about the movie for me is sort of the notion of what's conscious and what's unconscious.
I mean first and foremost what is not conscious what is not conscious and what is not said is that we're two upper class guys spending hours talking about life, while others are working, maybe suffering, and so the most unconscious thing is our political environment, right?
I actually had a purpose as I was writing this movie, a personal goal, I had a personal purpose in this as it developed. It didn't begin that way but as we worked on it, the filming of it, and particularly during the writing process, I wanted to destroy that guy that I played, to the extent that there was any of the real me in there. That was the side of me that I wanted to get rid of.
I wanted to kill that side of myself by making the film, really, because that guy is totally motivated by fear, and he's defending himself and he's a very; - well, he's, he is the bourgeoisie human being.
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With some things I feel just like Wallace Shawn describes. I don't want to see any movies, or hear many people's opinions. But with me it is not based on fear, but to keep a consistency in my experiment. I believe that my today unfolds from my interpretation of my yesterday. I call that a unique personal path. Of course there are influences from the outside. This I don't deny, but I am not searching for the truth of "the other". I am not looking for the authority. Enough of it gets in here anyway, not to be so curious about more of it.
I am saying that in my opinion the values that other stories are based on are the main problems in personal and communal life. These are the duplicitous ideas that all contradictions and dilemmas are based on. what can you learn? Why society is a mess.
I already know that.
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If you have any stories of "wisdom", let's look at them. If there is truly wisdom, I will certainly acknowledge it.
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This is a pretty good representation of the history of western man, (sort of in a dream / nightmare format). It starts with the local elite, those with a militia, and when they conquer larger and larger populations, that full force is applied to their colonial empire. Those militias were initially necessary since they were continually attacking each other to take what they could get. Starting with Rome and earlier.
How will the reader accept this or even bother with it. In other words we all know ancient history, if only in shreds. And we have all DISMISSED IT as "that used to be the (killing) nature of mankind". But now; as expressed beautifully in the piece, we believe that this is civilization. We can stop all the killing and just offer gradual homogenization, human rights. (How gradual?) Really it is expressed very well in the piece.
"I am not going to open my eyes to anything else."
I think this was written 30 or more years ago. Little did he know that today (and every day), 150 more innocent people are killed in Gaza, and many tortured. Little did he know that today, and every day 1,500 human beings are blown apart in the Ukraine. Of course, they are not human beings. Once you put a uniform on, you are a soldier. Soldiers are meant to be killed.
And all of this, so that when I reach for my coffee on the kitchen shelf, IT IS SURELY THERE, as I expect it will be. We will be secure, once our NATO base is installed on the Russian border, and once we have the Crimea Naval Base, so that Russia is forced out of the Black Sea.
Then we will go to concerts, discuss movies, buy artwork, eat in fine restaurants, drink fine wine, take little trips, and have solace and consolation every day of the year. It is a goal worth killing a few rebels for.
No reader is going to digest this! (Or let's hear from them.)
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Something begs to be said here, but how would we know what expression will suffice? This is a theater piece, a one person drama with a very strong interior message. This play is several decades old, but I believe it is very timely today. Even 10 years ago it would have had much LESS impact. Now it will be dismissed on various grounds, but some parts of the core speak the obvious.
If you tried to transmit this message directly, it would surely fall flat. But the theater device has a way of penetrating. So the idea gets in, and the repercussions and connections are felt. The main reaction is probably; "so, what can I do about it"? Well, there is no real "peace movement" that I can see, so I can't join it. Or it's difficult to start your own drive for world conciliation. (Librarian did).
Is it left off there then?
Let's say that righting wrongs is a gradual process. (It is said so in the play). But where is the progress? China claims it has solved domestic poverty last year. I don't know how that is calculated. It seems the west is getting more divisive, which means western poverty must be growing. Or what is poverty? Someone actually mentioned to me, yesterday in a random conversation, that the poverty level in San Francisco, for a working couple is $140,000 per year. (How disconnected am I?)
We are told that all our prosperity comes from our Democracy, our freedoms and universal human rights. So is it the "free market" that is a positive for everyone who accepts the World Trade organization. I believe it. But on closer look at today's news, Mexico is finally winning a four year court battle against Monsanto, to curb the dumping of GMO Corn in Mexico. GMO Corn is heavily subsidized by the US government, so that Mexican corn prices have dropped 66%. Mexico does NOT subsidize agriculture.
But the real reason for GMO is it is immune to the "Roundup" weed-killer, the glyphosate poison that is forced into the human food chain. Keep in mind that Mexicans eat 1,000% (ten times), the quantity of corn that Americans eat. So they are eating 1,000% of the glyphosate. Is your prosperity connected with the Mexican consumption of glyphosate? Well, yes it is. It is Freedom and Democracy in action.
Why is there all this hostility in the world? What does it have to do with me? If I don't inform myself about it, am I even further detached? Those bad people are doing all those bad things. Which bad people? I don't know who, they must all be bad.
Here's a link about the Mexican corn war, but I don't want to transform this comment into forced world trade.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/07/mexico-scores-major-victory-against-bayer-owned-monsanto-as-corn-war-with-us-reaches-decisive-moment.html
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