While we are on the subject

Subject of labeling civilizations. How about the

Vowelly
and the
Consokraut
?

An illustration of how intellectuals think

FOLLOWING, is an EXAMPLE of intellectual reasoning, an instance where mentation is assumed to be sufficient to explain the world we inhabit.
....
Quote, from an interview with Marcel Gauchet:
You claim that the period that is most analogous to our own in the history of modern democracy is what you describe as the “crisis of liberalism” between 1880 and 1914. What do you see as the resemblance?

There is a parallel between the two periods, but at the same time an opposition that makes the parallel all the more significant. This first crisis was one of frustration with democracy’s promises. It came at a moment when universal suffrage had become absolute law, when some even began to regard it as the very definition of democracy. In other words, it was a time where the masses entered into politics. But at this moment, there was a radical disjunction between the reality of society—i.e., class divisions, capitalist antagonisms, etc.—and the “mendacious” liberal parliamentary regime, judged as such for its inability to resolve the social question. This powerlessness of democracy to fulfill the promise of sovereignty, awakened by the institution of universal sufferage, led people on both the far left and the far right to seek solutions to the question of the good regime outside of parliamentary democracy. Hence the radical contestations of “bourgeois” democracy that led to the rise of totalitarian movements in the aftermath of the First World War.....

End quote.

The sufficiency of man's reasoning powers is an unstated but basic aspect of modernity. Missing above is a sense of the import of Confucius when he says Knowing what you know, and remembering what you do not know, is real wisdom.

Now, actually it is a great article, full of ideas I had not been aware of, and I heartily recommend following the link above.

Wherein I lose all my readers

Woody Allen is the one being abused. Those accusers are the brainwashed children of a bitter hysterical woman.

Garrison Keillor also. I couldn't even figure out exactly what he is accused of doing. But it was an accident.  A new legal principle, sisters: leave the geezers out of it. Also, perhaps, one free feel.

So unsubscribe, already.

A Man

Rodin's "The Thinker" is one of the world's most famous statues. From a certain perspective it compares poorly with a very old vision conveyed in the statuary of men, men, in the sense of human beings. The ancient kouroi,  statues in Greek art, are commonly presented as archaic, a less developed stage in art. Possibly though, what we have in a kouros is a man alert beyond ordinary levels. What IS incontestable is that Rodin's thinker is a guy on the john.

He's Not Even in Love With Her

My suspicion is the whole of the latest tabloid romance was mainly manufactured by officials in the department of keep things running smoothly. And what a bold and clever offensive. Powers in front of the throne are doing a great job also, as a transition of leadership clearly looms.

One Crow

This morning there was a crow outside and I watched him drop a triangle red something into a rain water puddle. Perhaps pizza, perhaps critter guts. Anyway, he picked it up and seemed to break off a piece to eat, as the rest fell back in the water. Then he picked the piece back up and flew off. This was problem solving behavior if you assume he knew the water would soften his meal.

Animal versus human traits are a big deal in science news.  Do chimps have compassion, says the famous scientist about his experiments on caged animals?  The story is always the same--- such and such beast shows human behavior.

In fact, the scientists have the setup backwards.  Their research could be used to show what is non-human and more animalistic about the researcher, about ourselves. Obviously our body unites us with the animal world, and surely our brain does too. So what is specific about the human in this scenario; a clue is if animals do it also, some behavior of ours is may have evolved from our neighbors on this planet. I trust my point is clear. I think the language is skewed to avoid the fact that animals and people are even related at all. But if chimpanzees hug someone who has been kind to them, surely that suggests a range of human emotional behavior is shared by, probably originated in, these beasts. So the question is, exactly what about compassion is distinct with homo sapiens.

But to recognize this, really rather obvious fact, runs into what Steven Pinker calls, "the ban on knowing who you are."

Now that I think about it, that crow was eating pizza he rescued from some trash container.

Happy New Land

Quoting an example of medical jargon:

ABIN-1 regulates RIPK1 activation by linking Met1 ubiquitylation with
Lys63 deubiquitylation in TNF-RSC pp58 - 68
Slawomir A. Dziedzic, Zhenyi Su, Vica Jean Barrett, Ayaz Najafov,
Adnan K. Mookhtiar, Palak Amin, Heling Pan, Li Sun, Hong Zhu, Averil Ma,
Derek W. Abbott & Junying Yuan
doi:10.1038/s41556-017-0003-1
Dziedzic et al. show that the ubiquitin-binding protein ABIN-1 is
recruited into TNFR1 signalling complex in a manner dependent on
Met1-ubiquitinating complex LUBAC to regulate K63 de-ubiquitination
to activate RIPK1.

I suppose it is risky to use a quote that someone out there understands, as an example of the border of verbal coherence,(and thereby misses my point) but that edge, in my mind, reminded me of something Jan said, and, continuing our holiday freedom to repeat his words, I will share Jan's thought:

There is an actual physical component in blood that affects mystical attention.