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2004-01-31

Clarification

Art as a form of knowledge.

Robert Frost, in his essay "The Figure a Poem Makes" (Robert Frost on Writing, p. 126), writes that a poem (and by implication every work of art) "ends in a clarification of life -- not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion." His thought is quite in line with my views on art, and contrasts strongly with my old muse Ayn Rand, who claimed that all art has "metaphysical" import and consists in (or reflects) a great clarification. However, in one respect I incline more to Rand than to Frost: in my experience, a work of art can provide something more permanent than a "momentary stay against confusion", and indeed can provide even something approaching "the courage to face a lifetime" (The Fountainhead, Part IV, Chapter 1).

Posted on 2004-01-31 at 19:53. File under literature.

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Free Works

The power of giving things away.

Three weeks ago, Instapundit adduced evidence suggesting that free downloads don't inhibit physical sales of so-called intellectual property, and Eric Raymond seconded the thought by describing his experience with exposing the text of his books for free on the net. It's worth pondering the implications.

Posted on 2004-01-31 at 19:39. File under society.

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2004-01-29

One Down

XMPP moves ahead at the IETF.

Yay! The IETF has approved the XMPP Core Internet-Draft as a Proposed Standard. I guess the last two years of my life have not been in vain (and yes, we've come a long way since draft-miller-jabber-00). Next up: the XMPP IM draft.

Posted on 2004-01-29 at 20:03. File under jabber.

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2004-01-28

Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.

Travelling blues.

The wake-up call at my hotel in Austin, Texas came at 3:00 body time this morning (4:00 local), so that I could make an early flight to Denver in time to run a JSF meeting and put in a full day's work on XMPP Working Group tasks. Yow!

BTW, I was in Austin for a Liberty Alliance meeting. And yes, the title of this entry is a Simon & Garfunkel reference...

Posted on 2004-01-28 at 20:25. File under personal.

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2004-01-26

The Aesthetic Impulse

Recent readings.

Over the weekend, I read two books: The Substance of Style by Virginia Postrel and An Introduction to a Philosophy of Music by Peter Kivy. Postrel explores the rise of "look and feel" within advanced societies in the last 50 years, and argues that the aesthetic is an independent realm of value, separate from ethical values but important nonetheless. Kivy's book provides an overview of his views on the nature of music (on which topic he has been prolific), specifically his view that instrumental music neither paints a picture nor tells a story, but derives its meaning and importance from the grammatical connections between musical tones. He calls this "enhanced formalism" or "musical purism": the meaning of music is to be found in its own sounding and syntax, not in referents to extra-musical events, ideas, or emotions. Unfortunately I don't have time to write on these books in depth at the moment, but I hope to return to the philosophy of music in the near future.

Posted on 2004-01-26 at 08:32. File under philosophy.

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2004-01-23

Heart and Mind

From right to left?

Winston Churchill is widely quoted as having said:

If a man is not a socialist by the time he is 20, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 40, he has no brain.

Never mind that Churchill said no such thing -- the thought lingers on. The funny thing is, I was a proud member of the Randian right ("big business is America's persecuted minority" and all that) when I was 20, and now that I'm approaching 40 I find that I'm much more of a left-libertarian (truly, the spectacle of countless industries feeding at the trough of government handouts, preventing competition through regulation, and generally colluding with legislators and bureaucrats to extend government power in all directions, is unseemly in the extreme). What does it say about a person if he moves from right to left over time? Perhaps I've simply cycled through the viewpoints faster than others (I've always thought and acted beyond my years), reaching the usual 40-year-old conservatism at age 20 and progressing to a seasoned left-libertarianism or market anarchism by age 40. Or maybe I'm just weird!

Posted on 2004-01-23 at 21:34. File under politics.

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Colloquiality

Frost on Emerson and the living language.

In a letter to Emerson scholar Regis Michaud of January 1918, Robert Frost writes as follows:

Some twenty-two lines in "Monadnoc" beginning "Now in sordid weeds they sleep" (I don't need to copy them out for such an Emersonian as you, Michaud) meant almost more to me than anything else on the art of writing when I was a youngster; and that not just on the art of writing colloquial verse but on the art of writing any kind of verse or prose. I suffer from the way people abuse the word colloquial. All writing, I don't care how exalted, how lyrical, or how seemingly far removed from the dramatic, must be as colloquial as this passage from "Monadnoc" comes to. I am as sure that the colloquial is the root of every good poem as I am that the national is the root of all thought and art. It may shoot up as high as you please and flourish as widely abroad in the air, if only the roots are what and where they should be. One half of individuality is locality: and I was about venturing to say the other half was colloquiality. The beauty of Emerson's "Uriel" and "Give All to Love" is that it is well within the colloquial as I use the word....

The lines from Emerson's poem "Monadnoc" to which Frost refers are as follows:

Now in sordid weeds they sleep,
Their secret now in dulness keep;
Yet, will you learn our ancient speech,
These the masters who can teach.
Fourscore or a hundred words
All their vocal muse affords;
These they turn in other fashion
Than the writer or the parson.
I can spare the college-bell,
And the learned lecture, well;
Spare the clergy and libraries,
Institutes and dictionaries,
For the hardy English root
Thrives here, unvalued, underfoot.
Rude poets of the tavern hearth,
Squandering your unquoted mirth,
Which keeps the ground, and never soars,
While Jake retorts, and Reuben roars;
Tough and screaming, as birch-bark,
Goes like a bullet to its mark,
While the solid curse and jeer
Never balk the waiting ear.

What is this "colloquiality"? It is the living language of conversation, the "hardy root" and grounding of any language in its day-to-day use by individuals speaking together.

Posted on 2004-01-23 at 19:49. File under literature.

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2004-01-16

Desert Island Discs

Essential listening.

Last night I put all my desert island books on one shelf in my office. In fact I removed two because they didn't seem essential (Rand's Anthem and the poems of Horace). I'd have a harder time coming up with a really short list of music, though. Only ten CDs? Impossible! Certainly Bach's Goldberg Variations, Art of the Fugue, and Cello Suites would be on the list, as would Chopin's Nocturnes and Dvorak's Cypresses. Something from Duke Ellington would be essential, probably And His Mother Called Him Bill (which has a kind of elemental passion that some of his other recordings lack). I'd need some Yes -- Close to the Edge for sure and perhaps a self-made compilation of my favorite pieces from their other recordings. I find myself listening a lot to If I Could Be With You by Marcus Roberts -- it's a great compendium of jazz piano styles (from Joplin and James P. Johnson to Ellington and Monk) -- so I think I'd bring that to my desert island. Well, that's only nine. Maybe I could whittle it down to such a short list. But I'd still be missing Dylan, Aretha, Ella, and so many others...

Posted on 2004-01-16 at 21:47. File under music.

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The A-Word

On the lack of a ruler.

I continue to flirt with philosophical anarchism. I'm not there yet (partly because subscribing to any "ism" seems foreign to me now), but I do find much of the thinking behind anarchist thought to be appealing. (And no, of course I'm not talking about the bomb-throwing "anarchists" who are continually brought forward as exemplars of the theory -- we won't go into that historical scare-tactic here. But you could probably count on two hands the number of people who died at the hands of such "anarchists" in the 20th century, whereas the best estimates are that 200 million people died at the hands of the state in that same period.) Here are some recent essays of interest on the topic of a fully voluntary society:

• Do It Your Way
• Individual and Group
• Taoism and Anarchy
• There is No Central Plan for Winning Liberty
• What is Anarchy?
• micropiece (yes, I'm linking to it again)

Anarchy literally means "no ruler", but unfortunately most people seem to equate that with "no rules". Yet one can have rules (customs, laws, etc.) without having a strongman or big boss to act as the final arbiter and enforcer....

Posted on 2004-01-16 at 21:33. File under politics.

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Dancing About Architecture

Some thoughts on music.

I recently came across a fun quote from Laurie Anderson: "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture." Taken literally, that's guano -- we might as well say that talking about architecture is like painting about poetry, or that talking about poetry is like sculpting about dance. We're conceptual, linguistic beings, and it makes sense for us to talk about things. But the part of her quote that I like is that it respects the autonomy of the aesthetic realm (a point made also by Virgina Postrel in this interview). You can't simply reduce music or painting or dance to some discursive explanation, because the point of art is that it captures and communicates things that aren't easy to put into words. Or, as Mendelssohn put it: "It's not that music is too imprecise for words, but too precise."

Posted on 2004-01-16 at 21:19. File under music.

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Braying

Some ongoing thoughts.

One blog I've really been enjoying of late is produced by XML god Tim Bray. His recent posts on the 80/20 rule and two laws of explanation are spot on!

Posted on 2004-01-16 at 21:09. File under technology.

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Friendster

Distinctly unfriendly.

So I read this article about Friendster today and decided to sign up. Turns out the service is absolutely useless as a way to find people who might have interests similar to yours, because you can search only in your network. But I'm trying to go outside my network. Sheesh! God forbid someone should try to think outside the box...

Posted on 2004-01-16 at 21:07. File under technology.

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2004-01-13

The Conceptual Nature of Art

From entities to art-works.

I've been emailing a bit with Dave Jilk about his essay on the nature of entities. In thinking about a few points, I dove into my ancient copy of Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (the old, small-form paperback edition, rather than the expanded second edition), and therein I found some notes I'd made regarding similarities and differences between art and language. One thing led to another and soon I found myself re-writing from scratch an essay I started many years ago entitled "The Conceptual Nature of Art". When not working on Jabber of late, I've been devoting time and thought to this essay, which consists in something of a reconstruction of Ayn Rand's philosophy of art. Stay tuned for the final version.

Posted on 2004-01-13 at 21:17. File under philosophy.

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Nomarchy

Freedom and the rule of law.

I've been following somewhat a recent debate between Roderick Long and Robert Bidinotto on voluntary society vs. limited government (I say "somewhat" because I'm so busy that I don't have time to linger over such long posts, let alone to write them!). Basically all the arguments and counter-arguments come down to the Open Letter to Ayn Rand written by Roy Childs in the late 1960s (ably updated in essays such as this one by Bryan Caplan). The limited-government argument says that only government can ensure the objectivity of law; the voluntary-society argument says that objectivity is impossible when there is a coercive monopoly in legal matters. Both minarchists and anarchists desire objective law, but they disagree on the best means for obtaining it. (I see this more as a scientific or experimental issue than as a philosophical issue: we need to try it and see; unfortunately, the American experiment in limited governmenthas not turned out so well, since the powers of the American government are nearly unlimited now.) Perhaps the focus on anarchy vs. minarchy is misguided, since the adherents of both positions claim to be in favor of the rule of law -- or, to mint a word, nomarchy.

Posted on 2004-01-13 at 21:12. File under politics.

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2004-01-08

King George

Bush and freedom.

The Bush administration talks about fighting terrorism for the sake of freedom, but their actions reveal their true intentions. See, for instance, Free-Speech Zone by James Bovard (published, I note, in American Conservative magazine). Disturbing.

Yes, I heard about this article on the Libertarians for Dean email list (not to be confused with the eponymous weblog). But no, I am not a Dean supporter -- he is, after all, a politician. Unfortunately, it seems that our only hope right now is to vote the "American Socialist Party" (Democrats) into at least one of the House, Senate, or Presidency so that we can slow down the juggernaut of the "American Fascist Party" (Republicans). Sigh.

Posted on 2004-01-08 at 19:55. File under politics.

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2004-01-05

Gridlock

In favor of divided government.

Roderick Long notes that America seems to be stuck with the two-party system. Although I would prefer to have the option of a true alternative for freedom (rather than the tweedledee and tweedledum of interventionism that we have now), William Niskanen makes a pretty strong case that divided government is better than united government, at least when it comes to holding back the tide of state power. After all, our currently united government (House, Senate, and Presidency all held by the Republicans) has betrayed its small-government rhetoric (as if that was ever sincere!). Is there a libertarian case for voting Democratic? The Libertarians for Dean seem to think so, and I tend to agree -- not out of any great love for the Democratic Party, but because voting these days is more a matter of self-defense than anything else. Two cheers for gridlock!

Posted on 2004-01-05 at 22:05. File under politics.

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On Torsey Pond

A tale of giving.

The Kennebec Journal recently ran a story about a nature preserve on Torsey Pond in Readfield, Maine. Why do I care? Because my mother donated the land for it. I first walked the property with my father soon after my parents purchased it, and it's a beautiful lot, sloping from the ridge down to the pond, with a fine boggy area on the lake that is home to many birds and other creatures. After my father died, my mother donated the land to the town of Readfield, and most recently volunteers have cut some trails so that future generations can enjoy this area. I'm looking forward to walking the land again next summer when I head up to Maine for a visit.

Posted on 2004-01-05 at 21:57. File under personal.

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Fast Country

Savings vs. innovation.

The long-awaited Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History, edited by Joel Mokyr, is finally out (and only $695 for all five volumes!). The entry on religion cites studies that "attribute 90 percent of income growth in England and the United States after 1780 to technological innovation, not mere capital accumulation." I've long been skeptical about the doomsters who say that America's low savings rate is a huge liability, compared to the high savings rate in countries like Japan. Sure, some savings is important, but I think it's more important to create wealth than to hoard capital. My hunch is that America is set apart from many other nations by the premium its citizens place on innovation, change, and sheer speed. I used to read a magazine called Fast Company. Fast Country, anyone?

Posted on 2004-01-05 at 21:51. File under society.

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JJ #16

The latest Jabber Journal.

Yesterday was the fifth birthday of Jabber (I count everything before the Slashdot story as gestation in Jeremie's brain). To celebrate, I wrote Jabber Journal #16.

Posted on 2004-01-05 at 21:44. File under jabber.

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