…I’m trying to keep in mind what @hannibal said the other day…because it’s early in the day to feel like I’m already running late & I know I’m not going to get through everything I might be inclined to…but…not to put too fine a point on it…it’s a sad day
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jul/12/milan-kundera-obituary
…& also one that’s had occasion to throw a profusion of quotes into view one place or another…of a somewhat different quality to the bulk of the ones I tend to fill these with
On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth
Milan Kundera
…I mean…I don’t know about anyone else
Boris Johnson early Covid WhatsApps still not passed to inquiry [BBC]
…but that sounds like the man knew a thing or two about a thing or two
What secretaries of state are saying about a judge’s social media order [WaPo]
…though
2024 candidates face pressure to turn down Big Tech contributions [WaPo]
…that being the case
Wagner has handed over thousands of tonnes of weaponry, says Russia [Guardian]
…I should probably tread lightly
Hate traps us by binding us too tightly to our adversary.
Milan Kundera
…yeah…might could be he had a point about that, too
Former House Republicans and DoJ veterans lambast efforts to curb FBI and justice department [Guardian]
…even in a second language some people just brim over in the eloquence department
Anyone who thinks that the Communist regimes of Central Europe are exclusively the work of criminals is overlooking a basic truth: The criminal regimes were made not by criminals but by enthusiasts convinced they had discovered the only road to paradise. They defended that road so valiantly that they were forced to execute many people. Later it became clear that there was no paradise, that the enthusiasts were therefore murderers.
Milan Kundera
Opioid crisis: US and China at odds over influx of fentanyl [Guardian]
…&…truthfully
Underground climate change is helping sink the land beneath us [WaPo]
…I was tired & tetchy to begin with
Plastic pollution on coral reefs gets worse the deeper you go, study finds [Guardian]
…so acting my age in the first place may be a steeper hill than I can push the day’s boulder up
World’s oceans changing colour due to climate breakdown, study suggests [Guardian]
…still
Study finds GOP midterm wins came down to partisan turnout, not defections [WaPo]
…always good to have a goal, right?
EU passes nature restoration law in knife-edge vote [Guardian]
It does take great maturity to understand that the opinion we are arguing for is merely the hypothesis we favor, necessarily imperfect, probably transitory, which only very limited minds can declare to be a certainty or a truth.
Milan Kundera
Luxury trips and property deals: US supreme court’s ethical controversies [Guardian]
Lawyers with supreme court business paid Clarence Thomas aide via Venmo [Guardian]
The Supreme Court’s Conservatives Control Even More Than You Realize [NYT]
…& sometimes it’s a fine line between taking something seriously
The US supreme court has hijacked American democracy [Guardian]
…& making childish jokes in questionable taste
…I mean…is it just me who finds the phrase “the clue is in the name” hoved into view on that one?
Most people willingly deceive themselves with a doubly false faith; they believe in eternal memory (of men, things, deeds, peoples) and in rectification (of deeds, errors, sins, injustice). Both are sham. The truth lies at the opposite end of the scale: everything will be forgotten and nothing will be rectified. All rectification (both vengeance and forgiveness) will be taken over by oblivion.
Milan Kundera
Giant sloth pendants indicate humans settled Americas earlier than thought [Guardian]
…& sometimes a little fury can be righteous
Old yeller: Biden’s private fury [Axios]
…& wry observations can seem fitting
Ron DeSantis says he wouldn’t be Trump’s running mate: ‘I’m not a No. 2 guy’ [NBC]
…euphemistically speaking…about as fitting a description of that walking sack of shite as I can think of
Hard Right Presses Culture War Fights on Defense Bill, Imperiling Passage [NYT]
…but
‘Zuck is a cuck’?! Why is Elon Musk borrowing insults from white supremacists?
Tuberville says definition of white nationalist is a matter of opinion [WaPo]
Man can only be certain about the present moment. But is that quite true either? Can he really know the present? Is he in a position to make any judgment about it? Certainly not. For how can a person with no knowledge of the future understand the meaning of the present? If we do not know what future the present is leading us toward, how can we say whether this present is good or bad, whether it deserves our concurrence, or our suspicion, or our hatred?
Milan Kundera
…all due respect to the sentiment
Freedom Caucus members voted to oust Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. It’s unclear if it worked. [NBC]
…but not a lot of still waters to be found in a realm of storm-filled teacups
Crawford Lake shows humans started a new chapter in geologic time, scientists say
…hard to ignore some of the stuff strewn about the ol’ mediascape
…though mercifully not all of it exerts the same gravity on our sympathies
There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one’s own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels for someone, pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echos.
Milan Kundera
…&…some people aren’t about the heavy lifting
…&
Who Employs Your Doctor? Increasingly, a Private Equity Firm. [NYT]
…presumed job descriptions notwithstanding
McConnell recasts the high court as ‘independent’ to win votes in 2024 [WaPo]
…as ever
What Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Meant When She Said ‘Blink’ [NYT]
…I’m not looking to write a book about it
The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything. The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead.
Milan Kundera
…but you know what
After two years of real progress on climate, a European ‘greenlash’ is brewing [Guardian]
The Ukraine war highlights the deep strategic folly of Euroscepticism [Guardian]
Nuclear bomb fallout site chosen to define start of Anthropocene [Guardian]
…with the sheer amount of stuff & people who seem to be begging to have the book thrown at them
House GOP election bill expands dark money and curtails D.C. autonomy [WaPo]
…or the sense that history rhymes with bleak humor
No extra money for public sector pay rises, Hunt tells ministers [Guardian]
…& the wheels within wheel within wheels keep turning
Erdoğan boxes clever for Turkish interests as Sweden wins Nato prize [Guardian]
Cross-border aid to Syria blocked in ‘act of utter cruelty’ by Russia at UN vote [Guardian]
US aid policies undermined success of Afghanistan mission, says watchdog chief [Guardian]
…it feels like demand for hard copy threatens to outstrip supply if don’t play our cards right
As Threads app thrives, experts warn of Meta’s string of privacy violations [Guardian]
Trump asks for classified documents trial to take place after 2024 election [Guardian]
‘It’s pillage’: thirsty Uruguayans blast Google’s plan to exploit water supply [Guardian]
…anyway
Online Safety Bill: Algorithms that lead boys to Andrew Tate content targeted [BBC]
…don’t listen to me
As you live out your desolation, you can be either unhappy or happy. Having that choice is what constitutes your freedom.
Milan Kundera
…there are better words to live by than I could offer
A man able to think isn’t defeated – even when he is defeated.
Milan Kundera
…so if you gotta laugh
The sound of laughter is like the vaulted dome of a temple of happiness.
Milan Kundera
…or you’ll cry
My lifelong ambition has been to unite the utmost seriousness of question with the utmost lightness of form.
Milan Kundera
…let’s try not to lose sight of the funny side?
…tunes to follow…coffee-based inspiration allowing
“It does take great maturity to understand that the opinion we are arguing for is merely the hypothesis we favor, necessarily imperfect, probably transitory, which only very limited minds can declare to be a certainty or a truth.”
Milan Kundera
This is basically how I was taught to debate or discuss in college and what I brought to online discussions when I first entered the scene. I soon learned this type of mind set while discussing with maga etc. doesn’t seem to work, or maybe I can’t work it. I am to the point and I know it’s not great, but I am to the point where I am very blunt and quite crude when dealing with people that don’t understand things like this quote. I just can’t help it, I have no patience for aggressive ignorance…. Whelp, there I go….
…sad to say…I’m pressed for time…because I find myself thinking wistfully of the misty bits of time when spending all day getting into the weeds about that kind of thing qualified as a constructive use of mine…& I could start somewhere between that french dude’s famous bit of latin in all its cogito ergo sum & meander through stuff like ontology before so much as trying to come around to the point…& that’s a pretty sweeping detour when people like quine were throwing out essays called stuff like “on what there is”
…so…you’d find me there waiting if I had any say in the matter…but alas…like yesterday’s missed opportunity to take @lemmykilmister up on that “how much time ya’ got?” by wheeling out the differences between hart & dworkin for starters & seeing where the ball stopped rolling…& I absolutely would have been having a ball
…but alas…time & tide & a great many things besides wait for no one…& I’ve bills to chase & places to be…that apparently get dibs on that time on account of some vague social contract I’m apparently signed up to despite the part where I never seem to get a clear look at the fine print & don’t remember putting my name to it…or indeed ever being asked?
I think one way to think about it is the belief in hypothesis is itself a hypothesis.
Kundera was no dummy. He didn’t think everything was unknowable, or anything could happen, just that certainty was limited. His books are full of people making choices, falling in love, and pushing back against repression. They’re a testing of how far the hypothetical really goes.
At the heart of repressive right wing jargonmouth about debate is the assertion that openness of thought must admit to the possible validity of what they demand. For Kundera, openness meant the uncertainty whether Tomas and Tereza would reconcile or how far they could connect, not that anything was possible, like they would live forever in perfect love.
And the unfortunate parallel phenomenon is the insistence of supposedly neutral parties that right wing discourse is a necessary path that must be explored. If life is really limited, as Kundera asks in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, then following one path necessarily shuts down following others.
We don’t have unlimited time. We have to make choices which have permanent aftereffects. We don’t have to favor bad faith right wing discourse as a path to follow when that leads to the exclusion of other paths instead.
…the exploration might not be necessary in the strict academic sense…but I’d argue that grappling with that stuff (if only to try to bring it to ground & wrestle it into submission) is presently unavoidable
…it’s everywhere…& the failure to do so entirely gives it leave to fester until it infects everything up to & including the volitional realities in which it gets to be avoided
…if that’s merely a hypothesis it would very much appear to be borne out by history (ancient, modern & intermediate) in addition to being the proverbial accident of hourly proof?
Oh sure, there’s no avoiding it, in the same way that a Czech in 1967 or 1981 couldn’t avoid dealing with the regime.
But a lot of what Kundera was asking had to do with how do you engage. The mistake made by the crowd insisting that you must assume good faith on the part of the right, or even some congruence between their words and beliefs, is that standard forms of discourse are appropriate.
One of the great things about Kundera as a writer is how inventive he was about the forms he used. And not simply for the sake of being different, but because he understood that forms that were chosen affected meaning as much as the words in the sentences.
One of the great poverties of the establishment pseudo intellectual caste is their incredible limitations in forms. You see it to the extreme degree in what Chris Licht was saying about his precious town hall. But it also extends to flat out dopey false dilemmas offered by editors that they can’t ignore what Jim Jordan says, so they have no choice but to broadcast what he says in the same way as a serious person.
In the old system, there were ways to decode what was said. But what’s happened is the right has figured out the decoding method, and changed their code in a way which allows them to generate a false but comprehensible message to their supposed decoders, while communicating something completely different to their real audience.
There has to be an understanding of the game that is being played, and an ability to think about new methods of uncovering the new rules. But people who get stuck decoding the words in messages will inevitably fail if the real code is contained in the number of words in a message.
…sort of…though I begin to suspect you & I might differ in a few places on a close reading of kundera…like…I threw this one in
…very much because it seemed to be a valid description of at least part of what you’re getting at with this sort of thing…the two are practically twins in a paraphrasing sort of a way, after all
…but I don’t think it’s just “dopey false dilemmas” any more than I only think it’s editors who face them when it comes to the “can’t ignore what [some asshole projecting unwarranted certainty] says, so they have no choice but to broadcast what he says in the same way as a serious person” of it all
…but…I always got the impression kundera either had more respect for (or higher expectations of) his readers than to think this part followed on with that academic necessity I mentioned before
“in the same way as a serious person.”
…what they’re saying can be presented…in the raw, so to speak…by a serious person…but the one doing the saying in the first instance is hardly to be mistaken for any sort of serious person even if they clearly pose a serious threat that constitutes a clear & present danger
…it’s not to be dismissed in the way you might a descent into kabbalah or other cul de sacs of involuted numerological fabulism
…that kind of wholesale discounting has cost a lot of lives one way or another & shows every indication of continuing to rack up a butcher’s bill fit to make a sane mind weep
…but since I can’t swear to possessing one of those today…which I may or may not get away with blaming on pressing distractions combined with general sleep deprivation…I’ll just stick with quoting the dearly departed
…& maybe we’re all dying the death by a thousand cuts…& maybe we’ve miles to go that were stolen by people who were given an inch…& all splintered into fractions of factions…but…even if it’s the last inch of the hardest of yards…I never got the impression he’d have argued for ceding the field of play…let alone the battlefield
…that last part is a damn sight easier said than done…not least with people who don’t listen & think the fact they say a thing confers miraculous properties to their pronouncements
…but, as the saying goes…we can but try?
He lived on the edge in the midst of a horrible regime, and that’s why he pushed back so hard against just surrendering and crossing the line.
He was very much aware of the ability of even serious consumers of his work to blow it — after the movie adaptation of Unbearable, which was critically acclaimed, he refused to allow any more adaptations of his work.
The guy was a crank, in a good way, and I think he’d look at his obits and throw up his hands at almost all of them. He’d ask in all seriousness why were people defaulting to the same form they used for the deaths of Peter Nero, Edward Fredkin, or Benno Schmidt.
I don’t think there’s any way to look at the absurdity of so much of the framing of the political press and not see a need for a whole lot more work to think about new frameworks. In a world where Jim Jordan gets treated from the outset as an honest representative of his views, and any challenge to that must come in graf 14, it’s impossible to say that the current model works.
There’s an unfortunate tendency among misinterpreters of ideas like reader-response theory to state that the meaning of a work is constructed by the reader and vastly minimize the role of the author. It’s the reductive junk that people like Stanley Fish have pushed, and it’s no small irony that he had a column for years in the NY Times.
To be fair, literary criticism has largely left this kind of solipsism behind, and far more advanced thinkers are vastly more aware of the role of producers prior to interpretation, and the constraints that a reader’s society put on their ability to create meaning.
But to get back to Kundera, I think it’s essential to understand him as a novelist, not a writer of aphorisms or polemics. Trying to get the meaning of him from quotes I think is fundamentally impossible, because he really disliked this kind of distillation and isolation.
With a bit of apparent irony regarding the previous paragraph (what is writing but constantly tripping over the rake you just set in your own path?) I’d recommend this interview with Kundera.
https://granta.com/an-interview-with-milan-kundera/
And to go back to Jim Jordan, what we get in today’s news is first presenting him as a legitimate person, and then suggesting ways in which he falls short. It posits the possibility of legitimate discourse with Jordan. Saying that the job of the news is to first let him speak and then leave it to the reader to uncover the absurdity is quick thinking, it’s classification, and it’s fundamentally broken. There needs to be a different form.
But even more than just focusing on the single saying, I’d definitely encourage reading the interview as a cooperative work between Kundera and Ian McEwan. It’s really not something that works as a piece for stripmining, it gives more meaning the more work you put into it.
There’s one interesting part, for example, where Kundera puts forward his ideas of kitsch, and how it’s a function of modern politics. At which point McEwan asks whether that works for the Russians, and Kundera concedes the point and works to refine what he just said.
Later Kundera concedes more points, and McEwan pushes back that more disagreement from Kundera would be better!
The point being that this is all much, much more than just the sum of the quotes. It’s formed by individuals involved, and improved immeasurably when the reader goes beyond a simple interpretation and starts looking at how the interactions between the two shape the result itself.
None of which says this is how every way of dealing with Kundera, or Jim Jordan for that matter ought to go. So much depends on the people involved, and their ability to shape and create the product in a way that readers can make something useful of it.
…I’m familiar with the interview…along with his instructions regarding the rights to his work after what he made of the movie they made of the one thing…& to the extent that I think a good bit of what you’re saying can fit within the pretty copious space sketched out by another of the quotes I went with in the post…to wit
…I’d mostly come along for your ride…but however fishy fish’s stuff might have been when it came to the smell test…barthes’ take on the putative death of the author has more going for it than you seem inclined to credit…which is a tad surprising to me given your frequently expressed views on the necessity of readers doing the due diligence when it comes to parsing what’s on the page
…but to each their own…particularly when the author no longer resides in the land of the living & can’t stop people putting his words in their mouth…which isn’t the sort of death of the author barthes was wont to immerse himself in…but has a bearing of its own when it comes to finding the “right” perspective?
…which needless to say isn’t the sort of thing you’d expect jordan to recognize if it jumped up & down on his head singing hallelujah…but…it’s not condemned to inevitable solipsism…even the talking heads model of linguistic understanding isn’t bereft of utility for all that it’s been surpassed in almost every respect
…most writers…even kundera…write for readers as much or more than for themselves…& tend to prefer those to be active readers…so a fair bit of that stuff is baked in at the source in my experience
i was today years old when i learnt that theres an actors union (which i guess i should have known) and that fran drescher is its president (which i never would have guessed and is honestly amusing me way more than it probably should as i can only picture her in her role as the nanny)
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/13/business/sag-aftra-actors-talks-hnk-intl/index.html
anyways with the writers and the actors now on strike i guess we arent going to be seeing much new stuff for a while
probably not the most important news in the world…but president fran drescher is tickling my imagination something fierce
Nice tribute to Kundera.
Ray Epps may become US Amercia’s next billionaire.
Why is Elmo Smuk using White racist terms? Because he is. The media is too fucking blinded by his billions not to see him using language that he’s fond of it.
They really should have read more Kundera.
It really surprises me that people are surprised by Elmo’s racism. He grew up in a wealthy South African family. There’s no such thing as a rich South African that didn’t benefit from apartheid and racism.
To be fair to DeathScentence… he walks like he’s holding a massive No 2.
This MUST pass…
https://www.levernews.com/update-new-bill-could-stop-fox-news-defamation-tax-writeoff/
This is an interesting article about the viability of local newspapers in Maine. (You have to register, but I just threw in a burner.)
https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2023-07-12-as-goes-maine-local-newspapers/
I think there’s a lot of validity to the point that local newspapers aren’t inherently unprofitable, any more than local pizza joints are doomed. Newspapers just can’t live the way they used to, or under the ownership of VCs.
The trouble, of course, is that newspapers are much harder to start from the ground up than pizza joints. But they’re not impossible, and I think there is an opportunity for ad sales to retailers who are burned by the enshittification of online advertising.
As Cory Doctorow put it
https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/
We’re at the stage where online platforms are abusing their business customers, and genuine local newspapers offer an alternative to businesses, if only owners can be found willing to accept real world margins.
That’s very interesting in light of my work with venture capitalists. They do, in fact, look for HUGE returns, not normal business returns. In fact, we regularly tell prospective startup founders that they need to inflate their projections (VCs know they do this) to get any traction with them. We also warn people that are essentially trying to launch a small business with normal return projections that they shouldn’t bother with VCs. A lot just really need business loans, not venture capital. In the real world, a 5 to 10 percent return is just fine.
The biggest problem with local newspapers was never making a profit; it was making ENOUGH profit to satisfy (in general chronological order): the millionaire owner, the billionaire owner, the corporate board, the investors, the hedge fund, and finally the private equity firm looking to strip it for parts.
Newspapers were, not even that far back in the past, wildly profitable. It’s why hedge funds started buying in to them in the first place! Even today, stripped of most of their most lucrative business lines (supremacy in classified advertising and job posting in particular), they could be mildly profitable given enough startup capital and willingness to give it time, even if the time of ads paying the freight is probably not a long-term viable strategy.
My journalism lament is that so much is made of the supply side (and for good reason given what’s happened) but not enough people talk about the demand side. Newspapers were, for generations, a general interest publication. What’s a general interest media product that’s doing great right now? The answer is basically none — network TV is a shadow of itself; movies are scuffling; who listens to regular radio now; and magazines might be deader than newspapers. The splintering of the old media landscape is probably a good thing, but it’s not just enough to have a smart business plan to restore a town’s newspaper. They need to have a strategy on how they’re gonna make people care and want the product in a world that’s mostly moved on from the type of product they make. And I dunno what that answer is or if anyone has really done the deep thinking on what it should be.
This quote resonated with me on a personal level, “The truth lies at the opposite end of the scale: everything will be forgotten and nothing will be rectified. All rectification (both vengeance and forgiveness) will be taken over by oblivion.”
As I grow older I more frequently contemplate mortality. When I was younger, the were living generations before me, providing a cushion of comfort against the void. Now, in my small family, I am the oldest generation. And it reminds me of my father saying that everyone is forgotten in three generations. (I’m sure that saying came from some philosopher.)
I am the only person alive who remembers my grandparents, and I have no memory of my father’s parents. Three generations and out/oblivion.
…being may come packaged with unbearable lightness
…but existence is some heavy shit & no mistake
…though…I’ve heard it argued that the only thing worse than knowing the clock is ticking & you don’t know how much time you’ve got left would be to confront the world from the perspective of an immortal
…but…that’s a whole other ball of sealing wax, as carroll’s walrus would have it?
I have similar musings about mortality. My wife often tells me that I’ve got more dead friends than anyone else she knows. I do have a fair number of friends that died young and childless, or even more recently and childless. My parents are gone, and theirs might be too. How many people still remember Ray, or Carey, or Scott, or Dave, or Martha, or … is it just me now? We don’t even post in memoriam pictures at our high school reunions any more. Dave still has a Facebook page. How long with that last? Who looks at it now? The others were gone long before social media.
It’s not an uplifting line of thought. But it is humbling.
I think about this from time to time though I still have two generations of cushion as you say (on my German side). But for me it is less about specific people and more about culture. I feel it most acutely with my Cambodian side because it is less accessible to me. Other than some specific dishes and a few words, I won’t be able to pass on much of our Cambodian culture to my kids. The erasure of a whole history, traditions and language from my maternal lineage makes my existence feel meaningless. I was born in a melting pot which replaced culture with consumerism. I’ve been whitewashed and my kids even more so (also due to having a white husband). Even though I try to expose them to my mom’s culture, it becomes more of an anthropological endeavor than proper immersion and therefore it doesn’t take root.
…I feel for you on that being one of those “the mind is willing but the heart lies heavy” kind of difficult things to find a way with
…& I wish you luck with it…but I fear not a lot that’d be materially helpful springs to mind…& even if it did it hardly seems likely you wouldn’t have thought of it already?