Which life?

In the short interval between the time when my beard began to sprout and now, when it is beginning to turn grey, in this half-century more radical changes and transformations have taken place than in ten generations of mankind; and each of us feels: it is almost too much! My today and each of my yesterdays, my rises and falls, are so diverse that I sometimes feel as if I had lived not one, but several existences, each one different from the others. For it often happens that when I carelessly speak of “my life,” I am forced to ask, “which life?"

 Stefan Zweig, in The world of yesterday (1942)

Why fun is fun

To exercise one’s capacities to their fullest extent is to take pleasure in one’s own existence, and with sociable creatures, such pleasures are proportionally magnified when performed in company. From the Russian perspective, this does not need to be explained. It is simply what life is. We don’t have to explain why creatures desire to be alive. Life is an end in itself. And if what being alive actually consists of is having powers—to run, jump, fight, fly through the air—then surely the exercise of such powers as an end in itself does not have to be explained either. It’s just an extension of the same principle.
[...]
Reconsider the lobster. Lobsters have a very bad reputation among philosophers, who frequently hold them out as examples of purely unthinking, unfeeling creatures. Presumably, this is because lobsters are the only animal most philosophers have killed with their own two hands before eating. It’s unpleasant to throw a struggling creature in a pot of boiling water; one needs to be able to tell oneself that the lobster isn’t really feeling it. (The only exception to this pattern appears to be, for some reason, France, where Gérard de Nerval used to walk a pet lobster on a leash and where Jean-Paul Sartre at one point became erotically obsessed with lobsters after taking too much mescaline.) But in fact, scientific observation has revealed that even lobsters engage in some forms of play—manipulating objects, for instance, possibly just for the pleasure of doing so. If that is the case, to call such creatures “robots” would be to shear the word “robot” of its meaning. Machines don’t just fool around. But if living creatures are not robots after all, many of these apparently thorny questions instantly dissolve away.
[...]
The very fact that you felt compelled to try to beat me in an argument, and were so happy to be able to do so, shows that the premise you were arguing must be false. Since if even philosophers are motivated primarily by such pleasures, by the exercise of their highest powers simply for the sake of doing so, then surely this is a principle that exists on every level of nature—which is why I could spontaneously identify it, too, in fish.

David Graeber explains.

Assange x Google x Privacy in internet

Commodities just become more marvelous; young, urban professionals sleep, work and shop with greater ease and comfort; democracy is insidiously subverted by technologies of surveillance, and control is enthusiastically rebranded as “participation”; and our present world order of systematized domination, intimidation and oppression continues, unmentioned, unafflicted or only faintly perturbed.
[...]
The advance of information technology epitomized by Google heralds the death of privacy for most people and shifts the world toward authoritarianism. [...]

The section on “repressive autocracies” describes, disapprovingly, various repressive surveillance measures: legislation to insert back doors into software to enable spying on citizens, monitoring of social networks and the collection of intelligence on entire populations. All of these are already in widespread use in the United States. In fact, some of those measures — like the push to require every social-network profile to be linked to a real name — were spearheaded by Google itself.[...]

Without even understanding how, they have updated and seamlessly implemented George Orwell’s prophecy. If you want a vision of the future, imagine Washington-backed Google Glasses strapped onto vacant human faces — forever.

On 1st June, Julian Assange wrote a piece to "The New York Times" about "The new digital age", book written by Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, two names connected to Google (tt seems this is the controversy book of our very-right-now moment). Assange complains about a lot of positions from Google, disagree in almost all of their ideas, makes some self-promotion, but we cannot denied: he foresaw the actual US crisis.

Istanbul right now

They came from all different backgrounds, different ideologies, different religions. They all gathered to prevent the demolition of something bigger than the park:
The right to live as honorable citizens of this country.

More here about what is happening in Istanbul right now. And here. And here.

'This is water' [again], by David Foster Wallace

THIS IS WATER - By David Foster Wallace from The Glossary on Vimeo.

Good video to contextualize Wallace famous paranymph speech. [More about the text here, in Portuguese.]

To pun or not to pun

Jesus himself was a prodigious punster. His declaration that "upon this rock I will build my church" famously played on the way Peter's name echoed the Ancient Greek word for rock, "petra".

If even He likes to pun, who would be against this ideal of life? Good article in BBC about paronomasia.

Hipster and the excess of irony

[...] I somehow cannot bear the thought of a friend disliking a gift I’d chosen with sincerity. The simple act of noticing my self-defensive behavior has made me think deeply about how potentially toxic ironic posturing could be.
First, it signals a deep aversion to risk. As a function of fear and pre-emptive shame, ironic living bespeaks cultural numbness, resignation and defeat. If life has become merely a clutter of kitsch objects, an endless series of sarcastic jokes and pop references, a competition to see who can care the least (or, at minimum, a performance of such a competition), it seems we’ve made a collective misstep. Could this be the cause of our emptiness and existential malaise? Or a symptom?

[...]

This ironic ethos can lead to a vacuity and vapidity of the individual and collective psyche.

[...]
Attempts to banish irony have come and gone in past decades. The loosely defined New Sincerity movements in the arts that have sprouted since the 1980s positioned themselves as responses to postmodern cynicism, detachment and meta-referentiality. (New Sincerity has recently been associated with the writing of David Foster Wallace, the films of Wes Anderson and the music of Cat Power.) But these attempts failed to stick, as evidenced by the new age of Deep Irony.

[...]
The ironic life is certainly a provisional answer to the problems of too much comfort, too much history and too many choices, but it is my firm conviction that this mode of living is not viable and conceals within it many social and political risks.

Professor Christy Wampole writes in the "NYT" about how the excess of irony can be too harmful for the society.

Via Tamba.

The double fight against evil

When misfortune overtakes us we can either pass over it so lightly that its cause is removed, or so that the result which it has on our temperament is altered, through a changing, therefore, of the evil into a good, the utility of which is perhaps not Visible until later on. Religion and art (also metaphysical philosophy) work upon the changing of the temperament, partly through the changing of our judgement on events (for instance, with the help of the phrase " whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth "), partly through the awakening of a pleasure in pain, in emotion generally (whence the tragic art takes its starting-point). The more a man is inclined to twist and arrange meanings the less he will grasp the causes of evil and disperse them; the momentary mitigation and influence of a narcotic, as for example in toothache, suffices him even in more serious sufferings. The more the dominion of creeds and all arts dispense with narcotics, the more strictly men attend to the actual removing of the evil, which is certainly bad for writers of tragedy; for the material for tragedy is growing scarcer because the domain of pitiless, inexorable fate is growing ever narrower, —but worse still for the priests, for they have hitherto lived on the narcotisation of human woes. - Nietzsche, "Human, all too human", fragment n. 108.

"Ulysses": humour excerpt

You don't know yet what money is. Money is power. When you have lived as long as I have. I know, I know. If youth but knew. But what does Shakespeare say? "Put but money in thy purse".

—Iago, Stephen murmured.

He lifted his gaze from the idle shells to the old man's stare.

—He knew what money was, Mr Deasy said. He made money. A poet, yes, but an Englishman too. Do you know what is the pride of the English? Do you know what is the proudest word you will ever hear
from an Englishman's mouth?

The seas' ruler. His seacold eyes looked on the empty bay: it seems history is to blame: on me and on my words, unhating.

—That on his empire, Stephen said, the sun never sets.

—Ba! Mr Deasy cried. That's not English. A French Celt said that. He tapped his savingsbox against his thumbnail.

—I will tell you, he said solemnly, what is his proudest boast. I paid my way.

Good man, good man.

—I paid my way. I never borrowed a shilling in my life. Can you feel that? I owe nothing. Can you?

Mulligan, nine pounds, three pairs of socks, one pair brogues, ties. Curran, ten guineas. McCann, one guinea. Fred Ryan, two shillings. Temple, two lunches. Russell, one guinea, Cousins, ten shillings, Bob Reynolds, half a guinea, Koehler, three guineas, Mrs MacKernan, five weeks' board. The lump I have is useless.

—For the moment, no, Stephen answered.

Os cínicos

Ontem assisti novamente a "Casablanca" e fiquei me perguntando por que todo mundo acha Rick "o cara". Mesmo sendo mostrado como o homem que "não arrisca o pescoço por ninguém", que não se senta nas mesas com os clientes de seu bar, não dá trela para gente desconhecida, barra estranhos no seu estabelecimento, ele é visto como um homem charmoso e até irresistível.

Ugarte, o homem que tem os passes-livre e os deixa com Rick, diz inclusive que só confia nele porque ele o despreza. E não é só ele que fica hipnotizado pelo novaiorquino que tem respostas para tudo, sempre afiado numa ironia desconcertante. Ele é "apresentado", por exemplo, para Ilsa pelo capitão Renault como o homem por quem, se o policial fosse mulher, seria apaixonada. Também vemos, ainda bem no início do filme, outra mulher, Yvonne, que nitidamente ama o dono do bar-cassino. Além da própria Ilsa, que é casada com um líder da resistência aos alemães, um herói de guerra, mas, mesmo assim, se confessa caída pelo sujeito.

Rick, como todo mundo sabe, foi imortalizado na pele de Humphrey Bogart, um ator cujos papéis - se não todos, pelos menos uma boa parte - eram uma mistura de homens cínicos, irônicos, durões, inteligente, com tiradas incríveis e um senso de humor que não perdoava ninguém. Era um perfil, um arquétipo masculino, bastante valorizado até metade do século passado, antes dos homens descobrirem que as mulheres também gostam de sensibilidade do outro lado.

Mas o curioso sobre Rick é que Renault, que vai se tornar uma espécie de amigo para Rick, fica, durante todo o filme, tentando entender que tipo de personalidade é aquela. Se por um lado, o dono do bar não gostava de se envolver com outras pessoas, ele tinha um histórico de apoiar em guerras o lado "dos mocinhos", ou seja, contrário aos fascistas. O que demonstrava que, se ele não se importava agora, ele já tinha se importado em outros tempos.

Renault acredita que esse cinismo de Rick é apenas uma fachada para o seu "eu-verdadeiro", alguém sentimental. Rick se fechou dentro de uma carapaça após ter sido abandonado por Ilsa, em Paris, logo que os alemães entram na cidade. A partir daí, decide viver sozinho. Ilsa, por sua vez, acredita que ele, apenas, sente pena de si mesmo, e prefere sofrer a enfrentar o mundo. Assim, evita o primeiro contato, para não ter mais nenhum outro.

Acredito que Rick desperta essa admiração por onde passa por uma combinação de fatores. Em primeiro lugar pelo ar de mistério. Já que ele não se envolve, ninguém sabe ao certo quem ele é. Depois, vem o fato de ele ser inteligente e irônico, o que alimenta a vontade dos outros em ouvir sua próxima tirada. Mas o principal, talvez, seja esse sentimento que Renault consegue exteriorizar. É como se todos soubessem que ele não é assim, que não é possível haver um sujeito apenas irônico, cínico, que isso é um disfarce para algo mais profundo, e esse outro ser não vem à luz facilmente. As pessoas, talvez, queiram escavar esse exterior para encontrar a verdade que está lá dentro e por isso ficam encantadas. Como se esses personagens tivessem uma segunda dimensão a mostrar, enquanto os demais são mais simples de entender. Os cínicos somos assim.

ps. a cena em que os alemães começam a cantar no bar e os demais começam a responder com a Marselhesa é, talvez, a melhor de todo o filme.