Platonic dialogue, logic, and the absense of logic

I was reading the dialogues of Plato last night. I absolutely love the way he makes philosophical points through the use of argumentative conversation, in rhetorical question and answer format, nowadays known as Platonic dialogue. The idea of the form is for the person making a point in his argument to ask questions of his opponent, simple questions to which there are simple, obvious answers, which come together logically one upon the other to prove the questioner's point. This was used by another Greek, a playwright (Aristophanes, I believe, but I may be wrong) humorously to show how if you start with an incorrect premise, then you can "logically" prove just about anything. This is what he called "the bad logic" versus "the good logic."

This cracked me up when I remembered a passage from Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In this scene Huck is trying to explain the idea of foreign languages to the slave, Jim, who thinks it to be ridiculous for two people to speak differently. Twain uses a very simple form of Platonic dialogue between the two quite hilariously:

Huck:
"That's a Frenchman's way of saying it."
"Well, it's a blame ridicklous way, en I doan' want to hear no mo' 'bout it. Dey ain' no sense in it."
"Looky here, Jim; does a cat talk like we do?"
"No, a cat don't."
"Well, does a cow?"
"No, a cow don't, nuther."
"Does a cat talk like a cow, or a cow talk like a cat?"
"No, dey don't."
"It's natural and right for 'em to talk different from each other, ain't it?"
" 'Course."
"And ain't it natural and right for a cat and a cow to talk different from us?"
"Why, mos' sholy it is."
"Well, then, why ain't it natural and right for a Frenchman to talk different from us? You answer me that."
"Is a cat a man, Huck?"
"No."
"Well, den, dey ain't no sense in a cat talkin' like a man. Is a cow a man?-er is a cow a cat?"
"No, she ain't either of them."
"Well, den, she ain't got no business to talk like either one er the yuther of 'em. Is a Frenchman a man?"
"Yes."
"Well, den! Dad blame it, why doan' he talk like a man?"

This is a perfect, if somewhat simple, example of a bad premise for the argument, and simple bad logic to prove that speaking another language is ridiculous. It is an argument based on ignorance of cultures and languages. With such ignorance, it is easy with seemingly logical steps to prove that the moon is made of cheese.

For example, take a person who has no knowledge whatsoever of astronomy, distance, or other types of cheese than a wheel of Swiss cheese that he is examining with another person:
"Is this cheese round?"
"Yes, it's round."
"And is the moon round?"
"Yes, it's round as well."
"And is the cheese full of pits and holes?"
"Why, yes, it is."
"And can't you see pits and holes on the moon?"
"Why, yes, they look very similar."
"Well, then, don't they look so similar as to be the same?"

And you see how it works. I would like, at this time, to posit that stupidity, in fact, is the root of all wrongdoing.

I'm trying really hard not to go into a crazy rant about the ignorance of our age... trying...trying... TOO LATE!!! Here I go...

THIS REMINDS ME of a speech I saw by President Obama at a college shortly after his election. Now, please believe me; I am NOT making this up. I am dead serious. This happened. Really.

He was talking to the students and grad students about his plans for the economic stimulus packages and creating job opportunities and the typical political rhetoric, and then took some questions from the audience. One student who was about to graduate told President Obama that for the last four years he had been working at a McDonald's to help pay his way through college. He then asked the president what his plans were for reimbursing those like himself who had worked at lower paying jobs before Obama's presidency. Basically, asking if the government was going to pay him the difference in wages between his job at McDonald's and an average hourly wage.

Yah. I'm serious. This question was really asked, in all seriousness, by an Obama-supporter.

Where to begin? where to begin?

First of all, this is what happens when you accept a bad premise. His logic (that he was owed money from the government due to having worked a lower paying job) was perfect when based on the following assumptions: 1)That he was entitled to help from the government, 2) that the government had limitless right to redistribute wealth, ie, take it from someone who had worked a higher paying job the last four years, combine it with his wages from the last four years, whack it down the middle and redistribute it between them, and 3) that it wasn't his fault that he worked at a McDonald's the last four years (ignoring that if he worked harder at his job, he could have been promoted, ignoring that if he had worked harder at jobs during high school, he might have, with the previous training, been able to get a better one in college, ignoring that nobody forced him to work at McDonald's, or forced him not to seek better employment elsewhere, ignoring that if he didn't get better employment elsewhere, having sought it, that it was probably because he wasn't good enough for the job, and somebody else was, and therefore had earned that job and the better pay).

Secondly, when you take these assumptions to be fact, then the logic follows. He has been told that he is entitled to help from the government. Therefore of course he turns to the government to fix everything, instead of trying to better his situation himself. He has been told that he deserves as much happiness as everyone else. Therefore if he is less fortunate than others, that is unfair and the government needs to do something about it. He doesn't ever need to worry about working towards a promotion. He needs no additional schooling or training to justify earning more, even retroactively. Therefore if someone else makes more than he does because they worked for it, no worries, the government will give him a share.

Thirdly, this sense of entitlement that has pervaded our society is the natural precursor to justifying the limitless redistribution of wealth by the government. Obviously, if you felt you are owed more than you have earned, than wealth itself is not personal at this stage. Thus, wealth can be seen as a communal pool. Who else to distribute this wealth? The government, naturally. Possession is nine-tenths of the law, as they say, and so it goes with the natural law as well, apparently. The government distributes the wealth. The government has the wealth. It is, in fact, the government's wealth that they then dole out to us, the citizens. And why should it be handed out any way but fairly, regardless of what a person has earned? Earning something doesn't matter, innately deserving it does, for no actual reason at all other than that it doesn't belong to anybody, only the government, and the government's place in this world is to hand it out.

Anybody who thinks for two seconds can see that this reeks of unparalleled insanity. Yet this student had apparently gone through 12 grades of government-provided education and almost four years at a government-run college without ever once thinking for two seconds.

Obama's reaction? Surprisingly, a shade of disbelief crossed his features. As an answer he just spouted out some of the usual empty blah blah about creating job opportunities and stimulating the economy and pretty much the same crap he was saying before. The fact that he was surprised by the question just shows that he hadn't realized what his political ideologies were leading to (which takes about 3 seconds thought) and that shows that Obama apparently went through 12 grades, 4 years college, however many years law school and experience practicing law, without having once sustained a thought for 3 seconds.

in defense of misanthropy

So I'm standing in line at the self-checkout registers at the grocery store. The 50-or-so year old woman in front of me (and the other ten people in line) is about as slow as possible. Not only is she buying way more than the 15 items allowed (not that I'm a stickler about that, but, c'mon? 30? 40?) but she chooses to pay with cash, and then carefully count out the coins to pay the exact amount.

It is 5 pm. As I said, there are ten people (now 12, now 15, etc) waiting behind her.

The self-checkout is the fast line. I, and everyone else in line, are carrying a few items each, just trying to get out of the hellhole that is your friendly neighborhood supermarket.

But there she stands, with her shopping cart full of bags that she has carefully tied and put into the cart one at a time then rearranged so the freakin' bread doesn't get freakin' squashed. Then she carefully takes her receipt from the machine, and actually stands there at the check-out counter, leaning on her cart, carefully checking every item on the receipt versus every item in her cart.

At this point I walk up and slam my microwave pizza and chips as loud as I could onto the counter right beside her (shattering the chips far beyond any dipping use now, but hey, sometimes you have to make a point) and give her my best I'm-two-seconds-away-from-ripping-your-stinkin'-throat-out look. There's a security guard 20 feet away, so I refrain from yelling (I know that someday I'll be kicked out of a grocery store raving like a lunatic but I'm trying my best to forestall turning into THAT guy for as long as I can). I'm six feet six inches, happen to be wearing black, and have a freshly shaved head, and I don't mind looking scary to strangers when they're pissing me off. Needless to say, she finally gets the point and moves along.

As I took less than a minute to ring up and pay for my groceries, I briefly wonder what the people behind me are thinking. Do they secretly congratulate me and thank me in their minds for doing what they all wanted to do? Or are they thinking "boy, that guy has got problems"?

Then I started thinking, while I was concentrating on lowering my heart rate to get the blood to stop pounding in my ears, that hey, maybe I do have problems. Yah, it might even be possible that I overreacted slightly in getting that mad at that lady.

But then I dismissed that thinking as quickly as I would walk away from that same woman if she was on fire in the middle of the street screaming in pain. I realized, I'm not just pissed at her. I'm pissed at everything she represents. There is a type of person who will take the time to realize that there are other people besides himself in the world, and life would be a little more bearable to all of us if he acted accordingly. Then there is a type of person who has never learned to think about anybody but themselves. They go through life not caring, not even realizing, that their very existence is inconvenient to those around them. Its not just unnecessarily holding up a line at the grocery store. Its sitting in the no turn lane with your blinker on, stupidly waiting an opportunity to turn the wrong way up a one way, while the cars pile up behind you. Its sitting in a drive through staring at the menu for five freakin minutes before you finally order. Its the idiot blasting his crappy music from the four open windows in his car at a red light while you're stopped beside him with a sleeping child. Its the person who pays for a 50 cent coffee at the gas station with a check, or the dumb hick who holds up everyone just buying their morning caffeine on the way to work because he has to ponder the lottery scratch-offs and which ones to buy. Its the self-absorbed, inconsiderate a-hole who won't even hold the door he just walked out of for the guy loaded down with an armful of boxes. And a million other examples.

When I get so mad over what most people would call "nothing, just a little inconvenience," I'm not just mad at that one person. I'm mad at everyone like that, and the thousands of ways they make my life a little harder every day, which add up and add up and add up, the whole time I'm screaming inside my head "WHY?!?! OPEN YOUR EYES AND LOOK AROUND YOU!!!"

Common courtesy is dead. They have no need for it on reality tv, so they have no need for it in the real world, apparently. I wish I could (as I usually do) blame it on my own crappy, moronic generation, but that is sadly not the case. Almost every example listed above has been perpetrated by every age, race, and gender.

I was reading a study the other day that will help illustrate my point. This study, based on Littlewood's Law, states that, over the hours of the day that an average human being is awake and alert, he will experience one event per second, or about a million over a 35 day span. Thus, when a one-in-a-million event happens, he should not attribute it to divine intervention, but as the probable outcome of chance.

Now, however you feel about that, let us take the same study and apply it to me getting shafted by the rest of humanity. One event per second. Figure in the amount of people I come into contact with on my average work day. I don't feel like doing the math, but I'm sure the numbers are very compelling. The long and short of it is that I have only a finite amount of patience, and there have been, over the 28 years I've been alive, a number of events forcing me to deal with the stupidity of humanity that comes so close to infinite as to make no practical difference.

I don't think I have much time left. I can see the headline now: "Man Dies Of Heart Attack Screaming At Old Lady In Supermarket." Wow, what a way to go.

Book Review: Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

From now on, once a week (more or less, depending on my mood or opportunity) I'm going to post a book review of whatever book I'm currently reading from my collection.

This week's review is on Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman, the sometimes-called quintessential American Poet.

I bought this book because it was on sale in the bargain section at B&N about a year ago. I picked it up again recently to give it another try. Also, I felt that I was required to own a copy and read at least part of it, as it is, apparently, such a big part of literary history.

If you just want a thumbs up or thumbs down without having to read the whole review (I'm well aware that I tend to ramble) then here it is: Don't bother even picking this up.

Or perhaps you should. I have always maintained that one should not have an opinion of something that one knows nothing about. Before ripping anything apart, I personally choose to read/watch/listen to it, and then tear it to pieces, mocking everything about it. Partly (aside from the logical and obvious non-merit of any ignorant opinion) because uneducated opinions are a hallmark of modern society, and therefore should be despised. And secondly, it is far more entertaining to myself to be able to rip into somebody for their stupid "thoughts" while actually knowing more about what they're talking about then they do.

To continue...

First of all, a little background on Walt Whitman. He published Leaves of Grass in 1855, in the wake of some of the greatest poetry ever written (Tennyson, and the rest of the Romantic era poets were still quite popular, and the Victorian era was under full swing). He published with his own money. He was known to have written several reviews of his own book under fake names, praising the book highly, in order to boost sales. He was, earlier in his life, opposed to slavery, then switched later in life to be anti-abolitionist and maintained until his death the idea that even freed African-Americans shouldn't be allowed to vote. He is known as one of the fathers of free verse, or what can be called, in my opinion, the absolute total disregard of poetical structure due to a lack of skill. (This opinion does have a few exceptions. I have found a few poems in free verse written so cleverly and worded so well, with inner structures and hidden repetitions/alterations that I had to admit they were really rather good). He was also the main poetical subject of that ridiculously over-rated piece of crap film The Dead Poet's Society.

He was also a self-described deist, amending that title to say that he believed in all religions equally. Considering that most of humanity's religions are not mutually compatible, this is obviously a sign of insanity and/or a pathetically miniature IQ. (I'm reminded of a character in a movie who had tattoos from half a dozen different cultures. Another character pointed out that that doesn't make him a citizen of the world, it makes him full of BS).

The edition I bought is 679 pages long. I made it a little over 100 pages through the endless thousands of lines of blank, free verse. Rambling, rambling, rambling lines with no discernible point, no rhythmic or metric measure, no structure of any sort other than an occasional paragraph break. After the first hundred pages I started skipping around, reading a poem here, a poem there, throughout the whole book, reading a total of about 200 pages or so, trying to see if it would get better. It didn't. Here are a few examples of some of his better passages, as I'm afraid to show his really bad, or even mediocre poems, as they might cause the reader's eyes to boil out.

For him I Sing

For him I sing,
I raise the present on the past,
(As some perennial tree out of its roots, the present
        on the past,)
With time and space I him dilate and fuse the
       immortal laws,
To make himself by them the law unto himself.
(page 30)

Homosexual overtones aside, I'm forced to ask "HUH?"

There was a Child went Forth

There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he look'd upon, that object he
      became,
And that object became part of him for the day
     or a certain part of the day,
Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.
(page 457)

Yah, as I said, rambling. He tended to do that quite often. The above poem actually continues on for dozens of lines more, describing the lilacs the child saw, then this, then that. Each "stanza" first named it, then said something nonsensically existentialist (without any actual philosophical thoughts put into it), then went on to list every mundane thing the child ever saw; listed one after the other, line after line, blah blah blah.

Isn't one of the most basic and admirable qualities of poetry the ability to extract and glorify real human emotion or lofty and idealistic thoughts through the use of equally lofty and beautiful language? Whatever happened to The Lady of Shallot, by Tennyson, or Eldorado, by Poe, or Ozymandias, by Shelley? That is Poetry. That is Art.

Let's get one thing straight. Walt Whitman was no poet. He was simply a man with an inclination towards verbosity as amazing as his poetical skill was not, with altogether too much time on his hands. His poems were considered rather risque, hence his current popularity, as anything today praising homosexuality, the responsibility-free lifestyle, and naturism is awarded greater merit based upon subject matter rather than quality.

Though I have no problem with the above subjects, as they are real parts of the emotional and philosophical human experience, praising the subject over the presentation is as insane as watching a presidential debate where the one screams "conservatism conservatism conservatism!!!" and the other screams "liberalism liberalism liberalism!!!" and having each side lauded by their respective followers for their political brilliance and amazing oratory skills.

Yet, aside from understanding why certain groups would admire the subject of some of Whitman's supposed "poetry", I can find no real value or quality in it.