Contra Sensus Communis

I started a new course today because my Comparative Eastern European Law course has been cancelled for some reason. The new course is Comparative Law and Legal Traditions and it seems really neat. I will not go into it too much but its generally a cross-sectional and historical study of the major legal systems of world history. The lecturer seems really interesting too.

I am also feeling steadily better and besides a scratch on my nose (and the dumb splint thing I have to wear) you would never know I was injured. I go to the doctor on Saturday and the face shield goes on Saturday. I would love to go for a jog because the lack of exercise has me a bit down and facing some mild insomnia. That's it for the health update...I declare myself to be in full health, now we will see what the "professionals" think.

I may have mentioned the next topic before because it has bothered me since I got here, but I will hop on an article I read to bring it up now. The following is an article by Andrew Sullivan in the London Times I think: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-1501-1491500-1501,00.html. It discusses the "ipod" people in New York I believe. I am going to discuss the ipod people in Copenhagen.

Ever since I arrived here I was struck by two bits of technological nonsense-- the insane level of cell phone reliance here and the ipods. I always just assumed that Americans were the worst about cellphones. Perhaps it is because Americans are so obnoxious with the cellphones that my irrationally judicious mind would not accept a world where any set of people could be more inconsiderate with their cellphones. Danes are worse. The next issue is the ipod, which I do not recall seeing much of in San Diego. To be fair though I have not been to San Diego since Christmas-- the holiday when we celebrate the birth of our lord and savior, consumer-based economics. Perhaps the ipod was this year's hot item and they are crawling all over San Diego too...between the human-animal and humanity.

I take the "Metro" most places, which is the Copenhagen equivalent of a subway, and if you get on the Metro in a car with around 15 people you can be sure 10-12 will have ipods and 6 of them will be text-messaging someone on their cellphones. Nothing screams self-centered inhumanity like a person who is so disinterested in their social surroundings that they feel the need to box themselves sensually into a 2x3 inch gadget playing, no doubt bad, music. Nothing says I am not interested in talking to you like a person eagerly pounding away on the keypad of their cellphone to an unspecified recipient who is also probably listening to bad pop music on and ipod and sending a text message to another person, ad nauseum. Now I am not the world's most chatty person, and I can be downright chilly when I am hassled in a public place while I am busy or just enjoying some social ambiance, but even the unwanted social interaction has the benefit of society. I would prefer to tell the guy next to me at the cafe that I am really not interested in his opinion of the book I am reading than to have him sit down next to me in his own little digital universe as if I do not exist.

Hannah Arendt says human beings have an "urge to appear" as appearing things in a world of appearances. I have an urge to appear and this insensitivity offends my urge to appear. It also undermines society. Eventually we will need to develop a new language that is capable of necessary communication in a world where people refuse to acknowledge their own existence among other existential things. The fact is that we still move in finite time and space with other solid bodies and to avoid collisions we have to be able to acknowledge and communicate simple ideas to others. Most people are only capable of simple ideas anyway so I will not lament the thinking we lose due to the devaluation of community. I am going to start bumping into people just so they know I am still here.

This is not going well...I have nothing against ipods, heck, I like music as much as the next guy (unless the next guy is Ryan, he likes it more than me). Why doesn't anyone want to know the person sitting across from them on the train? Why don't they wonder where he/she is going? Where they've been? What they are reading and why? Next time the weird guy at the cafe asks me why I am reading Kant I think I will tell him...and secretly I will thank him for caring. Sometimes in the work I do and my studies I find myself asking, "how can anyone do that to another human being." Its less terrifying than studying human atrocities, but just as relevant...why doesn't anyone want to be in society with other people anymore?

Maybe I am just getting soft in my old age. Ha! I am so tragically authentic aren't I? Do you believe me? Look in my eyes. Who is that behind you? Its me! Now you have been undermined...that's too bad.

What is worse than a cold rain and snow? "Mixed" rain and snow. Really, this is not too difficult to grasp. Take yourself back to 2nd-3rd grade reasoning, not just any reasoning though, but the reasoning that accompanied sketching in your notebook while the herd-animals around you try to memorize multiplication tables (I am distressed about the state of humanity tonight and I won't hide it!). What could possibly be more terrifying than a Tyrannosaurus Rex...or a tiger? A half T. Rex-half tiger monster! How about a fighter jet or a shark? You guessed it, a flying shark that shoots sidewinder missiles from under its pectoral fins! Its that, "it would be cool if..." imaginary reasoning. Well, nature is a 3rd grader who finds computational mathematics boring, and, yes, "mixed" rain and snow is worse than either by itself.

I have nothing to say and nothing to do. My roommate went to Berlin. My friends were supposed to call cause they made chocolate cake and I said I would loosen the reins on my tyrannical food discipline to have some. They have not called. I could read, but I am exhausted of books today. I am just listening to music on my laptop and sending an impersonal message out to the electronic ether...I have a quote I would like to share.

People do not appreciate the sublime any more. They do not tremble with fear anymore when they encounter something so overwhelming that it cannot be grasped. No, they just scratch their heads and try to recall some category they have memorized, some "form" that ought to be there. Ah yes, the sediment layering of a canyon, the taxonomy of a redwood, the chemistry of an ocean. Sometimes I am still overwhelmed, I am not "scientific" enough to forget about the world. I have not learned enough "truth" yet to close my eyes.

"Modern man suffers from a weakened personality. As the Roman of the imperial era became un-Roman in relation to the world which stood at his service, as he lost himself in a flood of foreigners which came streaming in and degenerated in the midst of the cosmopolitan carnival of gods, arts and customs, so the same must happen to modern man who allows his artists in history to go on preparing a world exhibition for him; he has become a strolling spectator and has arrived at a condition in which even great wars and revolutions are able to influence him for hardly more than a moment. The war is not even over before it is transformed into a hundred thousand printed pages and set before the tired palates of the history-hungry as the latest delicacy...Expressed morally: you are no longer capable of holding on to the sublime, your deeds are shortlived explosions, not rolling thunder. Though the greatest and most miraculous event should occur-- it must nonetheless descend, silent and unsung, into Hades. For art flees away if you immediately conceal your deeds under the awning of history. He who wants to understand, grasp and assess in a moment that before which he ought to stand long in awe as before an incomprehensible sublimity may be called reasonable, but only in the sense Schiller speaks of the rationality of the reasonable man: there are things he does not see which even a child sees, there are things he does not hear which even a child hears, and these things are precisely the most important things: because he does not understand these things, his understanding is more childish than the child..."

F. Nietzsche

Stand in awe! Sometimes one ought not know. And how quickly now our wars become soundbytes, not even with the time delay of compiling "a hundred of thousand printed pages."

Well, I just got back from eating chocolate cake at my friend's apartment. It was quite tasty. I ran my mouth off about how New Zealand is of such geopolitical insignificance that other countries don't gather intelligence on them, and asked if they still deliver their mail on horseback. So now I have been provided with a book about New Zealand that I am to read. I looked at the pictures (I am "such an American" I hear), it looks like a lovely country...but that doesn't answer my question, does their postal service deliver the mail on horseback?