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Foolishly, I watched the Republican debate last night. There was little of interest said, but perhaps the most useless question was about Newt Gingrich’s statement that the Palestinians are an “invented people”.

First of all, this statement has almost no relevance to anything. The group that calls themselves “Palestinians” will continue doing what they have been doing, regardless of what Gingrich says. Gingrich said that the Palestinians “are in fact Arabs”. Well, that doesn’t alter anything meaningful. In that case, the people formerly known as Palestinians will just say it’s part of Arabia and that “Arabia’s for the Arabs”. (Where have I heard that before?)

But what is an “invented people”? Perhaps an even better question is: what is a non-invented people? For instance, you could argue that Americans are an “invented people”, coming as they do from all different parts of the world. One might even wonder if the American identity was invented so the colonists with an interest in opposing the British Empire could have a label to unite under. But that would be very cynical, so I will not pursue it.

I am hard-pressed to think of a people that was not, to some extent, “invented” for the purpose of presenting a united front in pursuit of something. That does not mean that all such groups are equal, of course, because some groups have been united in the pursuit of noble goals, and others in the pursuit of ignoble ones, but whether “a people” is invented and what it was invented for are completely different questions.

President Reagan, who is much admired by all the participants in the Republican debate, including Gingrich, once said:

“In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.” 

Just so. People will unite when faced with an external threat, or, if not a threat, then a common problem. Arabs who may have very little common may easily be united by their shared desire to take what land Israel currently possesses. This does not, of course, make them “right” or “legitimate” or in any way give them some sort of moral advantage. But they are going to do it anyway, so to actually solve the problem requires a bit more serious thought than Gingrich seems to have applied.

I’m pretty sure you will come to the same conclusion regardless of your opinion on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. It does not matter whether they are an invented people or not. No matter what your answer to this is, it changes nothing about the actual situation. Newt Gingrich’s statement is almost meaningless, except that it reveals he doesn’t much like the Palestinians, which everyone already knew, because that is a standard Republican position.

Which begs the question: why is everyone talking about it?

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Continuing this blog’s discussion of Art and artists…

I remember reading in a book of H.P. Lovecraft’s letters–one of the S.T. Joshi ones that I sadly no longer have, and wish I did–a letter where he stated something like “all Art is nationalistic”. He went on to describe how he thought all true Art must be influenced by a person’s feeling for home, by the soil and history of the place. (I apologize for being forced to paraphrase here–he put it much better, I’m sure.)

However, I think he was wrong. His own works go to prove him so. I suspect that when most people hear the name “Lovecraft”, they immediately think of Cthulhu. “Lovecraftian horror” is a genre of weird monsters from other dimensions, of unknown and incomprehensible beings.

Certainly, Lovecraft’s New England heritage appears in his stories, and no doubt his familiarity with the place was why he set most of his tales there. But the reason that anyone reads Lovecraft today isn’t because of his descriptions of New England towns and countryside, but because of his well-realized depictions of monsters and bizarre phenomena.

I’m fairly confident that Lovecraft never saw Cthulhu, except in his mind’s eye. I doubt very much if he went out for a walk in Providence and something about the place just made him think of the Great Race of Yith. And even if it did, many people lived in Providence, and yet only one of them ever came up with Lovecraftian horror. Now to me, that says it was the man, not the place, that made the stories what they are.

Truly, Lovecraft’s horror is very non-nationalistic because his monsters were creatures designed to be utterly alien to all human experience.  No matter where in the world you live, if Yog-Sothoth rolls into town, it’s going to be scary. That makes it a widely-accessible story.

The nature of Art and of Literature is that it addresses something fundamental about the Universe. It’s similar to the idea of the “monomyth” of Joseph Campbell. There is not only the one myth, I don’t think, but there are similar stories and concepts that resonate across time and space. Art is something that people still recognize, even when the circumstances that created it are gone.

There are always barriers to the understanding of Art–language, for an obvious one–but I believe Art represents the straining against such barriers, rather than the embrace of them.

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Awhile back, I posted half-jokingly about the possibility of space travel to gather materials for production of goods. I think it would make the economy less confined to the resources of Earth alone. That kind of supply shock could help us out a lot.

I mention this because today I saw this L.A. Times interview with a man whose company is working on building robots to mine the moon for resources. It sounds pretty cool.

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A week ago, I posted about Oscar Wilde’s essay The Soul of Man Under Socialism, and the vision proposed therein of a society in which people were freed from poverty (and property) to express themselves to the best of their artistic and intellectual potential.

While I do not see how abolishing private property would help matters even slightly, I think that Wilde’s overall goal here was laudable. It is for these same reasons that I support government poverty-relief efforts, which I think nowadays qualifies me as a socialist, at least in the minds of some.

However, there is an alternative viewpoint–the idea that facing challenges and hardship is what inspires people to excellence. As Scott Adams wrote in a post I’ve linked to before:

“I’ve noticed that creativity so often springs from hardship or pain that I wonder if it’s a precondition. That would make sense from an evolution perspective. Humans don’t need to come up with new ideas when everything is running smoothly.”

Thus, attempts to stimulate the creative people by providing them with support will backfire, leading to mental as well as physical laziness. (Similar ideas are considered in the famous Aldous Huxley novel Brave New World.)

It’s quite possible, but I do not believe this is really how the artistically or intellectually-inclined mind works. (Kindly suspend disbelief long enough to suppose that I have some inkling what such minds are like.) It is true that hardship can have a stimulative effect, but I think that, when all immediate material needs are met, people automatically start concerning themselves with more abstract problems.

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“Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.”–Douglas Adams. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy 

(Long-time readers are probably familiar with my personal system of political classification, loosely described as “nationalism”, “cosmopolitanism” and “materialism”. I have often said that I believe this system helps to clarify the political scene. In this post, I am exploring why the “conservative” and “liberal” system is so much more popular, even though, in my opinion, it is less useful.)

But first, I will consider Rare’s 1997 video game Goldeneye 007. I maintain that it is one of the best FPS games ever, easily outstripping such mundane affairs as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. There are those who will disagree and point to such things as MW 2’s vastly superior graphics, and scorn me for praising such an outdated game.

It is true that MW 2 has much better graphics–but, in my opinion, its level design, weapons, and gameplay are inferior to Goldeneye‘s, and, more to the point,  it would be eminently possible to simply redo Goldeneye‘s levels, weapons and gameplay with MW 2 like graphics. If Rare could have made it with better graphics at the time, they almost certainly would have. It was a necessity, not a design decision, that it looked like it did. Therefore, I maintain that Goldeneye is better.

(And yes, I know they remade Goldeneye, but they made the mistake of messing around with the gameplay and level design, and seem to have made it much more CoD-like.)

There are people who love the new generation of first-person shooters and people who hate it and think we ought to go back to the old style. This mimics beautifully what everyone wants you to think the political divide in this country is like. People who prefer the old way are Conservatives, people who embrace the new way are Liberals.

This concept seems intuitively correct because we all can relate to it. You may not know or care what the hell Goldeneye is, but you probably know something analogous; perhaps you thought popular music was better in the 1960s or you hate the way people used to dress in the past. So, it seems entirely plausible that similar emotions form the core of our political divide.

At first glance, this still holds up. Liberals want green technology, Conservatives want to deregulate industry. Conservatives want to go back to the more prudish days of the 1950s, Liberals want to embrace new ideas about gender, race, etc. So far, everything is what you’d expect.

And yet, there are exceptions. Conservatives have no problem with spending (taxpayer!) money on the latest in weapons technology, and Liberals sometimes romanticize the more primitive days of less pollution. Or take the issue of gun control. If you interpreted the sentence “he’s liberal on gun issues” literally, you’d assume it meant he was passing out M-16s like popcorn, when the political sense of the word means he wants restrictions on guns. Or take the occasionally noted irony that conservatives hate conservationists. The list goes on.

  There are, in both philosophies, contradictions like these, but as I am a liberal, I am perhaps better qualified to point out those in the conservative side.

What are they conserving? The status quo? If that were the case, a conservative would be someone who opposed efforts to pass some new law, but, as soon as it was passed, supported it wholeheartedly. Our “conservatives” are nothing like that. They are still mad over a nearly 40-year old Supreme Court decision. At what point can this no longer be called “conservative”?

I suspect that the real secret is that the words “conservative” and “liberal” are almost right. But then, as Mark Twain famously said “’tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning”. These words almost accurately describe the sides’ behavior, but don’t quite. And as I said, I believe they fail to account for one faction altogether. But even if you think my model is a lot of nonsense, perhaps you still think these words don’t quite make sense.

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Sorry for the lack of posting lately. I’ve been sick these last few days, but I think I’m recovering. Posting should be back to normal soon enough.

In the meantime, don’t you all think it’s sort of odd that one guy is forced to exit the Presidential race for committing adultery, only to be replaced by another guy who committed adultery? I’m not defending Cain at all–I don’t like him or Gingrich–but it doesn’t make sense to me.

Maybe it’s like Thingy said in the comments here, and Cain’s family just made him quit. Although if he cared about his family so little that he cheated, then it’s hard to imagine he would listen about not running for office.

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I had thought he might have a decent chance at the nomination, but now it appears that’s over. 

I’m really glad he has dropped out, because if any of the stuff alleged about him is true, it means he has extremely serious character flaws. Although, I am kind of surprised he didn’t first try to use the “lots of other Presidents have committed adultery” defense. I mean, he could have tried to argue that it’s not relevant to his ability to do the job, but then again, his relevant credentials don’t seem great to me, either.

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From CNN:

[Herman Cain] recalled his shock while watching the U.S. Open last year and hearing a group of children omit the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance.

As a kid, when I learned the Pledge of Allegiance, I sort of assumed it was something the Founding Fathers had written. It was only later that I found out it was written in 1892, and only later after that that I found out the “under God” bit was officially added in  the 1950s.

Not that it matters. I have no problem with making revisions. And it’s not wrong to oppose changing it back, although people who do so sometimes treat it as if changing the Pledge back is not merely inadvisable, but practically blasphemous.

Personally, I do think the “under God” part is detrimental to the Pledge as a piece of writing. “One nation, indivisible” is so much better to my ear than the present version. But still, as I’ve said before, even the national anthem has some syntax issues. Clearly, there are bigger meanings to both pieces than just their actual words, and I don’t want to “miss the forest for the trees”.

And then, of course, there’s the issue of why you pledge to the actual flag, as well as the republic. I don’t quite understand that.

P.S. I seem to remember writing another post about the Pledge at some point, but searching the blog revealed nothing, and I don’t feel like combing the archives, as I have no idea when it was. So, I’m sorry if I’m repeating myself.

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In a distant land, older than the Mayan,
There lived a man—a populist lion—
Who fought for The People like old Bill Bryan
   Would also do one day.
The land wherein dwelt this man
Was governed on a monarchical plan;
Neither democratic nor republican—
  Only one person held sway.

Our populist friend detested this state,
Its various flaws he’d always berate.
With monarchist flunkies he liked to debate
(Till they built the guillotine.)
One day, the Queen summoned him to the palace,
He went there at once, his mind full of malice,
But on meeting her, he lost his ballasts—
   For he’d fallen in love with the Queen!
Thereafter he couldn’t bring himself to oppose
The system by which this lady arose.
He hated the Crown, but the opposite goes
   For the head that wore it.
If the point of this tale seems a little remote:
(It’s not that the people oughtn’t to vote.)
The type of the office doesn’t always connote
  The type of person who’ll go for it.

If you’re wondering what in blazes this is about, I honestly can’t tell you. I sometimes find myself making up rhymes when I’m bored or when I can’t sleep or something, and this is one such case. In style, it reminds me a lot of this, but I wasn’t consciously trying to imitate that song at all.

It’s not very good, in my opinion, but I almost had to post it because of the ease with which it came to me, just to have a record of it. And the “Mayan” thing in the first line is kind of nonsensical and pointless; it’s just an excuse because, for some reason, I really got attached to the “Bill Bryan” line.