Thoughts for the Day: Wednesday 21 April 2021

The Case for Keto

Gary Taubes

Why, for instance, do men and women fatten differently, and in very different places? Why do boys gain muscle and lose fat when they go through puberty while girls gain fat and do so in specific places (hips, buttocks, breasts)? Why do women gain fat as they go through menopause, the experience Newburgh and his followers wrote off to bonbons, bridge parties, and self-indulgence? Why do people get fat in some places (double chins, love handles) and not others? What about fatty tumors known as lipomas? Why do these benign fat deposits hold on to their fat even during starvation?

The Science of Conjecture

James Franklin

It is well known in the psychological literature that humans have great difficulty with “if” in an abstract setting. A simple conditional like “If a card has a vowel on one side, then it has an even number on the other” tends to make the human mind seize up, when questions are asked as to what evidence is relevant to the truth of the conditional. It is found, however, that performance miraculously improves if the conditional is cast in a semilegal context, or permission schema, like “If a letter is sealed, it must carry a 20-cent stamp.”

Plato's Revenge

William Ophuls

“The memorable events of history,” said [Gustav] Le Bon, “are the visible effects of the invisible changes in human thought.”

Conservatism

Edmund Fawcett

A final factor in conservatives’ success was the law. In the nation-building period between the Civil War and the New Deal, American law served the large purposes of protecting the freedom of businesses to expand the economy and spread prosperity, creating a national market by removing internal barriers, aligning state laws, and easing the progress of transport, notably railways, and insulating the states of the South from federal intrusions that might threaten their legal subordination of black Southerners.

Natural Born Heroes

Christopher McDougall

Heroism isn’t some mysterious inner virtue, the Greeks believed; it’s a collection of skills that every man and woman can master so that in a pinch, they can become a Protector.

The Antidote

Oliver Burkeman

The startling conclusion at which they had all arrived, in different ways, was this: that the effort to try to feel happy is often precisely the thing that makes us miserable. And that it is our constant efforts to eliminate the negative –  insecurity, uncertainty, failure, or sadness – that is what causes us to feel so insecure, anxious, uncertain, or unhappy.

Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World

Fareed Zakaria

Western experts at first overlooked the mounting evidence that in East Asian countries “universal masking” was a key component of their successful response. Even if the data on their efficacy was not entirely clear, the public narrative about mask-wearing from the US government was fundamentally disingenuous. Officials actively discouraged the use of masks, claiming both that they were ineffective at protecting ordinary people and that they should be reserved for doctors and nurses. But if the true purpose was to avoid the hoarding of surgical masks, couldn’t the government at least have encouraged the public to make simple cloth masks at home, when no more was needed than a T-shirt and scissors?

Wilding: Returning Nature to Our Farm by Isabella Tree

2018 publication about a venture in the UK. Lots of good photos!

One can make an argument that the internet is the enemy of books and reading. And there is little doubt that in our world we receive most of our information and entertainment visually, through television in my lifetime, and now more and more through various streaming services. I mention this not to bemoan a loss but to see that at least on one occasion that most seductive of media, YouTube, led me a to a book. Of course, how I got the YouTube site evades my memory; probably, like most such discoveries, I stumbled into it. But I must admit that I have a predilection for nature videos (wolves are a favorite). In any event, I stumbled upon a YouTube clip on Knepp Farms in the UK. Perhaps it was this one,  or this one, or this one, or this one. From there I came across the fact that Isabella Tree, along with her husband, Charlie Burrell, were in charge of this rather amazing story. The YouTube videos provide a peak, but Tree's book provides an in-depth tour and one well worth the time and effort as we continue to negotiate our way through the Anthropocene world. 

The story in a nutshell arises from Burrell's inheritance of Knepp farm, a large estate located in Sussex. Burrell had received a degree in agronomy and seemed a fine heir indeed to take the helm of the enterprise, aided by his wife Isabella. But after 17 years of farming, Burrell and Tree realized that they weren't making enough money to justify the enterprise despite following the standard advice. Much of the land was consisted of a clay base and had been farmed to the bone. So, in 2001, they decided to chuck it all and re-wild. 

Re-wild? Or wilding? Both terms may be new to most readers, but I hope that they become commonplace. In short, Charlie and Isabella decided to turn the property back to nature and to end their tenure as farmers. This is the story told by Tree's book. 

The account Tree provides is detailed and (for the most part) enthralling. (My only hesitation is that she identifies so many species of bugs, beetles, and butterflies; worms; mammals; flowers, trees and shrubs; and birds--to mention only some of the life forms that come to her attention at Knepp. Sometimes I felt overwhelmed by all the mentions.) Tree also provides accounts of the responses of neighbors (skeptical when not our-right hostile), the conservation folks, and government bureaucrats. In our world, a piece of the UK doesn't simply go wild without a great deal of hubbub. Nature may have her way in the end, but for Knepp to go wild required a great deal of persistence and cajoling by Tree and Burrell and their supporters. Tree provides this account without rancor and with a modicum of sympathy for the various human impediments that they encounter. 

But while I found her account of their struggles with human impediments instructive, it's the other fauna and flora that steal the show. One of the first things Burrell and Tree did was to introduce some large herbivores to the land, including three species of deer, wild horses, longhorn cattle, and a breed of pigs that were as close as they believed that they could come to imitating wild boars. (Boar and beaver introductions are on their wish list.) While one can't identify with precision at what point an ecology can be most dramatically changed, the Knepp experience (and others) suggests that large herbivores have profound and unexpected effects upon a local ecology. All the newly introduced and mostly untended large grazers thrived, and as they thrived, so did the trees, shrubs, grasses, and the soil--along with all the creatures dependent on these plants. 

Tree also writes a lot about trees. Oaks and others. She dispels the myth that the UK was once a great forest where the canopy ran for the far north to the sea. Instead, what she discovered at Knepp (among their very many discoveries) was the existence and prominence of "wood pasture" in the British environment. This is a topic about which I knew nothing coming in (except that I'd read somewhere the tale of the squirrel who could travel from the north to the sea without ever leaving the canopy), but the dispelling the fable of the unbroken canopy, along with other of the accounts and observations in the book, demonstrate for me the limits of our knowledge. And Tree mentions neglected treasures left by her Victorian ancestors who cataloged the natural world. She also reveals the value of generations of husbandmen and farmers who observed and built upon the ways of the natural world and whose knowledge we've lost or ignored to our detriment. 

Roxana Robinson's blurb for the book on the edition I read (the NYRB edition)  is worth quoting because I agree with it wholeheartedly: 

As a writer, Tree is both elegant and deeply informed, and the story is full of poetic awareness and scientific foundations. 

Indeed, Tree goes on at length about the scientific study of what they're doing, but she also recognizes the soul of the endeavor as well. Neither is she afraid to challenge prevailing opinions. In discussing the management (to the extent they must) of the large herbivores (Exmoor ponies, cattle, and deer), she sings the praises of the quality of the beef and the healthiness of the fats (loaded with omega-3 fatty acids compared to other beef). And in the face of a thriving pony herd that must be controlled by humans (there are no large predators), this means either selling the horses at a financial loss and condemning them to (shall we say) an uncertain future, or culling the herd and considering the virtues of horse meat for human consumption (no kidding). It's refreshing to read someone who's knowledgeable about the value of meat raised under optimum conditions that benefit the animals as well as humans. Vegans and vegetarians may not be happy about such frank considerations, but Tree doesn't allow readers to shy away from the realities of the situation. 

Tree ends the book with a consideration of the uncertainties and hopes she and Burrell and their supporters have for Knepp. Brexit, for instance, means that the European farm subsidy system will end and the British will have to make some consequential decisions about agricultural and conservation policies. She makes some suggestions about what should be adopted. The Knepp project also has hopes for the introduction of new species, both through Nature's course and through human choices (as I mentioned above, boars and beavers seem to top the list). 

Tree's book was a delight to read. One pervasive thought that I've held for some time is that we humans are--must be--gardeners. And as gardeners we must work with Nature, bending and trimming as we may but knowing that Nature in its grandeur and magnificence and wisdom will always have the final say. Instead, we've too often treated Nature like a mine that we will strip as fast and as forcefully as we can until it's worthless, totally spent. You can imagine--and now observe--how such as attitude must end. But Tree points the way down a garden path that we all should tread. 

 

Thoughts for the Day: Tuesday 20 April 2021

 

The Case for Keto

Gary Taubes

The one side effect of LCHF/ketogenic eating that may be lasting is the one that is likely to make physicians most anxious. This is the effect on LDL cholesterol, the “bad” cholesterol, as it’s known in the conventional thinking. As discussed earlier, the common wisdom on a healthy diet is driven disproportionately by thinking about this single number—LDL cholesterol—and the unwarranted belief that it is a strong predictor of heart disease risk.

Eat Move Sleep

Tom Rath

Reducing this chronic inactivity is even more essential than brief periods of vigorous exercise.

Civilization

Niall Ferguson

Finally, and most important to Tocqueville, the French put equality above liberty. In sum, they chose Rousseau over Locke.

Plato's Revenge

William Ophuls

The West, says Joseph Needham, locates reality in substance, whereas the East finds it in relationship.

The Idea of History

R. G. Collingwood

It follows that the subject-matter of history is not the past as such, but the past for which we possess historical evidence. Much of the past has perished, in the sense that we have no documents for reconstructing it.

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Hannah Arendt

Delos’s brilliant analyses of the development of nationalism into totalitarianism overlook its equally intimate connection with imperialism—which is mentioned only in a footnote. And neither the racism of modern nationalism nor the power-craziness of the modern state can be explained without a proper understanding of the structure of imperialism.

Thoughts for the Day: Monday 19 April 2021

 

A Secret History of Consciousness

Gary Lachman

[Henri] Bergson, we remember, argued that the brain's function was essentially eliminative, and by the brain he meant by and large the cerebral cortex.

Language and Myth

Ernst Cassirer

Furthermore, the mythic consciousness does not see human personality as something fixed and unchanging, but conceives every phase of a man’s life as a new personality, a new self; and this metamorphosis is first of all made manifest in the changes which his name undergoes. At puberty a boy receives a new name, because, by virtue of the magical rites accompanying his initiation, he has ceased to exist as a boy, and has been reborn as a man, the reincarnation of one of his ancestors.

The Shape of Ancient Thought

Thomas McEvilley

The goal of ethical philosophy must be to bring personal preferences and aversions into harmony with those of the ruling principle of the universe, variously called “Zeus,” “Reason” (Logos), and “Nature.” As Cleanthes wrote in his “Hymn to Zeus,” “Zeus leads the willing person, the unwilling he drags.”

Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World

Fareed Zakaria

In his ambitious two-volume work, Political Order and Political Decay, Francis Fukuyama writes that the fundamental question for every human society is simple: How do you get to Denmark? “By this I mean less the actual country Denmark,” he writes, “than an imagined society that is prosperous, democratic, secure, and well governed, and experiences low levels of corruption.”

The Idea of Nature

R. G. Collingwood

Kant’s view, then, comes to this: the proper object of scientific knowledge is not God or mind or things in themselves, but nature; the proper method, of scientific knowledge is a combination of sensation with understanding; and since nature is that which we know by this method, it follows that nature is mere phenomenon, a world of things as they appear to us, scientifically knowable because their ways of appearing are perfectly regular and predictable, but existing only in so far as we take up the point of view from which things have that appearance.

Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954

Hannah Arendt

What we have called the “bourgeois” is the modern man of the masses, not in his exalted moments of collective excitement, but in the security (today one should say the insecurity) of his own private domain. He has driven the dichotomy of private and public functions, of family and occupation, so far that he can no longer find in his own person any connection between the two. When his occupation forces him to murder people he does not regard himself as a murderer because he has not done it out of inclination but in his professional capacity. Out of sheer passion he would never do harm to a fly.

On Writing

Stephen King

 Good fiction always begins with story and progresses to theme; it almost never begins with theme and progresses to story. The only possible exceptions to this rule that I can think of are allegories like George Orwell’s Animal Farm (and I have a sneaking suspicion that with Animal Farm the story idea may indeed have come first; if I see Orwell in the afterlife, I mean to ask him).

Thoughts for the Day: Sunday 18 April 2021

 

Samuel Johnson

The Rambler

Samuel Johnson

This quality of looking forward into futurity seems the unavoidable condition of a being, whose motions are gradual, and whose life is progressive: as his powers are limited, he must use means for the attainment of his ends, and intend first what he performs last; as by continual advances from his first stage of existence, he is perpetually varying the horizon of his prospects, he must always discover new motives of action, new excitements of fear, and allurements of desire.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Robert M. Pirsig

What I would like to do is use the time that is coming now to talk about some things that have come to mind. We’re in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it’s all gone. Now that we do have some time, and know it, I would like to use the time to talk in some depth about things that seem important.

History Man

Fred Inglis

There is never much point, whether in aesthetic or philosophic criticism, in arguing for coherent patterns of thought in the life’s work of a thinker or a poet. The history of all thought is broken up into new starts, blind alleys, reactionary retreats, fake advances, whether in one person’s work or in a collective movement. Yet in a life, as in an epoch, we search out form and direction. A biography is an attempt to place a life against a moral horizon, to frame it with its recognisable landmarks and pathways. One such framing was for Collingwood the long journey to make philosophy and history synonymous.

History Man

Fred Inglis

[Collingwood] also distinguishes between amusement art and art as magic, a useful and long-standing device whereby the magical acts (or arts) “generate in the agent . . . certain emotions considered necessary . . . for the work of living . . . the function of magic is to develop and conserve morale, or [when pointed at one’s enemies] to damage it.”

An Essay on Metaphysics

R. G. Collingwood

It is only when a man’s historical consciousness has reached a certain point of maturity that he realizes how very different have been the ways in which different sets of people have thought. When a man first begins looking into absolute presuppositions it is likely that he will begin by looking into those which are made in his own time by his own countrymen, or at any rate by persons belonging to some group of which he is a member. This, of course, is already an historical inquiry. But various prejudices current at various times which I will not here enumerate have tended to deceive such inquirers into thinking that the conclusions they have reached will hold good far beyond the limits of that group and that time. They may even imagine that an absolute presupposition discovered within these limits can be more or less safely ascribed to all human beings everywhere and always.

59 Seconds

Richard Wiseman

Time and again, the same pattern emerged. Those who spent a higher percentage of their income on others were far happier than those who spent it on themselves.

Thoughts for the Day: Saturday 17 April 2021

 

Dark Star Rising

Gary Lachman

In an essay aptly named “Success,” Emerson wrote: “To redeem defeat by new thought, by firm action, that is not easy, that is the work of divine men.”

Time of the Magicians

Wolfram Eilenberger

The conviction that language, out of its internal logic, bears within itself at every stage and every state of culture the forces needed to heal those very misunderstandings and misinterpretations that language itself constantly provokes and creates was already the foundation of Wittgenstein’s therapeutic program in the Tractatus. And it would also become the guiding assumption of the whole of his late philosophy from 1929 onward, particularly in his second major work, Philosophical Investigations.

Decoding Jung's Metaphysics

Bernardo Kastrup

While all of this positions Jung in the long stream of idealism, beginning with Plato, Plotinus, Berkeley, and others, it suggests also that his insight is radically new because it brings to startled awareness a post-Kantian perspective that all that we experience is psychological, that is to say, that it is experienced intra-psychically however much it may be autonomously other. Said succinctly, Kant made phenomenology and depth psychology necessary.

Lila

Robert M. Pirsig

As Einstein said, common sense—non-weirdness—is just a bundle of prejudices acquired before the age of eighteen. The tests of truth are logical consistency, agreement with experience, and economy of explanation. The Metaphysics of Quality satisfies these.

The Principles of Art

R. G. Collingwood

In one sense language is wholly an activity of thought, and thought is all it can ever express; for the level of experience to which it belongs is that of awareness or consciousness or imagination, and this level has been shown to belong not to the realm of sensation or psychical experience, but to the realm of thought.

Collingwood's The Idea of History

Peter Johnson

The historian in re-enacting past thought, both theoretical and practical, subjects it to criticism, ‘forms his own judgment of its value, corrects whatever errors he can discern in it’ (IH 214).

Age of Ambition

Evan Osnos

The [Chinese] government was offering its people a bargain: prosperity in exchange for loyalty.

Thoughts for the Day: Friday 16 April 2021

 

Between Past and Future

Hannah Arendt

Marx, when he leaped from philosophy into politics, carried the theories of dialectics into action, making political action more theoretical, more dependent upon what we today would call an ideology, than it ever had been before. Since, moreover, his springboard was not philosophy in the old metaphysical sense, but as specifically Hegel’s philosophy of history as Kierkegaard’s springboard had been Descartes’ philosophy of doubt, he superimposed the “law of history” upon politics and ended by losing the significance of both, of action no less than of thought, of politics no less than of philosophy, when he insisted that both were mere functions of society and history.

Beyond the Robot

Gary Lachman

That is the essential thing: for Outsiders to stop seeing themselves as misfits and to take up their real work as  evolutionary  agents. To use the mind to increase the powers of the mind. To use our freedom to create more freedom. When we have done that, mankind will have taken the decisive step in its evolution and will become, as the Romantics knew we were long ago, “something closer to the gods.”

Lost Knowledge of the Imagination

Gary Lachman

Aletheia is an ancient Greek word meaning ‘disclosure’ or ‘unconcealedness’. Heidegger traced the word ‘phenomenon’ to the ancient Greek phainesthai, meaning ‘that which shows itself in the light’. This was in opposition to Kant’s belief that phenomena were representations that our cognitive apparatus makes of the verboten ‘thing-in-itself’ – thus opening a divide between knowledge and being – and positivism’s idea of truth as scientific fact expressed in logical propositions – so reducing truth to the limits of banal prose.

Collingwood's the Idea of History

Peter Johnson

But whereas knowledge of the here and now depends on our capacity to imagine what cannot but be there as much as on our perceptions of what is there, our knowledge of the past is different, since in the absence of any such entity as an observed past, the capacity to imagine the past, ‘we cannot but imagine what cannot but be there’, as Collingwood puts it, must assume greater importance.

Earning the Rockies

Robert D. Kaplan

Frontiers test ideologies like nothing else. There is no time for the theoretical. That, ultimately, is why America has not been friendly to communism, fascism, or other, more benign forms of utopianism. Idealized concepts have rarely taken firm root in America, and so intellectuals have had to look to Europe for inspiration. People here are too busy making money—an extension, of course, of the frontier ethos, with its emphasis on practical initiative.

Conservatism

Edmund Fawcett

Treitschke turned Karl Rochau’s 1853 coinage Realpolitik from a warning by liberals to themselves to heed actual circumstances into a right-wing call for the uninhibited use of national power. “The state,” for Treitschke, was not “a good little boy, to be brushed and washed and sent to school.” The state, as in Hegel’s thinking, was the most comprehensive frame of “ethical life,” the common, norm-governed life of people together in society. The frame rose from families, through law, commerce, and bureaucracy to the highest organs of state power. Hegel had divided them into crown, executive, and legislature, but Treitschke did not believe in the separation of powers.

Man's Search for Himself

Rollo May

Our task, then, is to strengthen our  consciousness  of ourselves, to find centers of strength within ourselves which will enable us to stand despite the confusion and bewilderment around us.