Geoffrey FoxUnsolicited Comments - 1999Home | Notes & Essays | Readings | Bio Comments 2002, 2001, 2000, 1998
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99.07.11 - Constructed memories >>Our memories are constructed, but no one person can choose how; and our memories are not simply retrieved, and yet neither are they free flotating, entirely manipulable to present interests. >>Two truths, though, must remain bedrock. First, some versions of the past are wrong. ... >>The second ... is that failure to remember can impose unacceptable costs.
>>We are what we remember.
Index | Top99.06.21 - Individual intelligence & collective stupidity
 The collective stupidity of intelligent individuals is the great conundrum of our, the human, race. Serbs, not all Serbs certainly but a critical mass at critical moments, have allowed themselves to be bamboozled by a tiny clique of opportunist politicians to pursue a horribly self-destructive campaign that has ruined their economy, made refugees of great numbers of their people and now, finally, lost what their own myths proclaimed as their most sacred territory, symbol of their national aspirations. The stupidity of NATO included alienating China, trying to outfox Russia (the agreement with Russia that ended the war said explicitly that the occupation would be under UN, not NATO, command), and ignoring the protests over the bombing campaign from its own members, especially Germany and Italy. Bombing markets, hospitals, TV stations and commuter trains in Serbia wasn't all that bright, either. Only the bombs were smart, not the people or policies that directed them. No matter what the insufferable, smirking Shea may think (if he thinks), we are not going to achieve a unipolar world led by the US and seconded by Britain, where compromise is unnecessary. Even the power of NATO will meet, and already has met, certain immovable objects. As for the last question, well, we just have to remain alert, and skeptical.
Index | Top99.06.07 - Bullets can't harm me, or, 'La vida es sueño' The movie "The Matrix" is great fun, clever, fast moving, and scrupulously coherent within its fantastic premise. That premise (in case you still haven't seen it) is that everything we see around us today is in reality an immensely complicated computer-constructed illusion -- "the matrix." When the hero penetrates the matrix, he sees that human civilization really destroyed itself circa 1999, that it is now at least 100 years later, and New York City is a jumble of immense, abandoned ruins. The rulers of the matrix are machines, including "agents" disguised as men (like secret service, with tight little gray suits, dark glasses and a coiled communications cable plugged into one ear) with extraordinary superhuman powers. Their job is to prevent any humans from penetrating the matrix and discovering the reality, which is that they are all slaves of the matrix, kept because only the energy (electrical?) of their bodies keeps the whole system functioning. Which brings me to the literary and historical matrix of "The Matrix." One reading of it is as another iteration of the sollipsistic fantasy, the suspicion of the irreality of the perceived world, also the theme of "Truman's World." In that film, the hero is the unwitting subject of a sociological experiment watched by millions on TV; the town where he was born and has lived all his life is a stage set, his parents, friends, wife and children all actors. He finally figures this out and escapes. A much earlier version of this confusion and doubt about the reality of the perceived world is Calderón de la Barca, "La vida es sueño." "The Matrix" is also connected to another, related theme in world culture, the power of belief to conquer mere matter. The hero is able to defeat the "agents" only after he achieves absolute faith in the irreality of the weapons they use against him. At that moment, he is able to hold up his hand and make the bullets stop and drop to the ground, and to do many other extraordinary things. The Sioux warriors of the Ghost Dance religion believed they could do that, and so have many warriors in Africa and Asia, when they had only their spirits to defend them against superior (material) weaponry. Oddly, though, the belief also pops up in settled, unthreatened, technologically advanced societies; when the material world is not what people wish it to be, some of them strive to believe that thinking alone can change it. As the "Scientific Statement of Being" of Christian Science (written by a Bostonian lady, Mary Baker Eddy, in the 1880s) puts it, "There is no life, intelligence nor substance in matter; all is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is all in all. Spirit is immortal truth, matter is mortal error. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material, he is spiritual." The material world is just an illusory matrix. Index | Top
99.06.01 - Stamping out the entrepreneurs
Thurow obliquely supports a thought I have long held, as to why the industrial revolution began in England and Scotland and not in Asia, or central Africa, or Mexico or the Andean highlands, or even England's European neighbors Holland, France or Spain -- and consequently why England's colonies in the Americas had such a headstart, economically, on the parts colonized by Spain, Portugal or France. The main problem, I believe, was that the rulers of these other places were too good at doing what rulers always try to do, which is to suppress innovations that threaten the social order. The Spanish monarchy was especially efficient at this, through a cultural stabilization program called the "Inquisition."The British monarchy, in contrast, had been so shaken by civil wars and regicide (1640) that it had lost control of the economy, and couldn't stop a James Watt or anybody else who thought up a new industrial process. Index | TopMy apologies to my webpage visitors -- who, to judge from the hit counter below*, exist entirely in my imagination. Still, I have always felt affection for the creatures of my imagination, and I do not wish to disappoint you. I have let too many weeks go by without a new "thought" -- not because I had suspended thinking (oh, if only I could!) but because I had lost connection to the server. Now this page resides on a different server. A strange thing has happened to me lately. Everybody looks like a Serb. Even people on the subway who, because of their skin colors, almost certainly are not Serbs. I think it has to do with the realization that there is no possible useful distinction between "guilty" and "innocent." I know it's a hallucination -- similar to the one suffered by many where everybody with a gun and a sneer looks like a German Nazi, and everybody persecuted looks like a Jew, except that in my version, there is only one category. I am very disturbed by all of it -- the Serb paramilitary black-jackets (whom, I strongly suspect, are not at all controllable by Milosevic), the KLA hotheads who had more or less deliberately provoked retaliation by murdering both Serbs (starting with policemen) and even Albanian Kosovar "collaborators," Milosevic's thuggery against the opposition journalists & politicians, the burnings of villages, the bombings of Belgrade and Novi Sad, the killing by NATO "friendly fire" of refugees, and on an on. So I'm struggling to define how I can best intervene, make some effort tohelp redeem the dignity of our human race. It will have to be by writing; that's the only way I know to fight. And it will have to be to make at least some more human beings stop to think, instead of letting smart bombs be our only smarts. [*To avoid further embarrassment, I removed the counter shortly after the above was written.] Index | Top99.03.015 - Yogurt nationalism
In Istanbul a year and a half ago, my wife I were accosted by one of those young men eager to practice their English and to sell you something. What he was selling was his national superiority, and with no encouragement from me launched the well-worn riddle, "What is the difference between America and yogurt?" I knew the punchline -- "Yogurt has a culture" (har, har) -- and didn't want to hear it, so I just told him it was a stupid joke. What I wish I'd said, and may yet say if the opportunity recurs, is that America has many cultures, whereas yogurt has only one. Or maybe I should say, no illegal aliens by the hundreds of thousands are trying to smuggle themselves into yogurt-- but I like the "many cultures" response better. Index | Top
It's 1761, and 28-year old Jeremiah Dixon has come to London for the first time to meet Charles Mason, 5 years older and more experienced in the ways of the great city. I'll bet Dixon would get a thrill from riding the No. 4 subway with me, between Manhattan and the Bronx, some morning or evening. Index | Top
This is the best line in what is otherwise a gushing ode to the U.S. president with the most public privates in history. As a journalist, GGM is a great entertainer -- "Escribo para que mis amigos me quieran más" ("I write so that my friends will love me more"), he's said many times, and because of that intention, his ideas are nicely formed but lack critical depth. And I suspect that fiction -- deliberate invention of stories -- is really even older than Jonas. Index | Top
99.02.22 - Ends, means and art Trotsky said once -- probably he said it many times, because it's too good an idea not to repeat -- that the question wasn't whether the ends justify the means. Of course they do! What else could possibly justify them? The problem was to justify one's ends. (There used to be more to this revery, but the computer has swallowed some text and now -- 00.10.27, more than a year later -- I remember only that I was critiquing two plays. Wonder what I said?) Index | Top
99.02.15 - Making "moments" into "stories"
Index | Top99.02.01 - Time and the wordsmiths
This stanza, which I first heard intoned in Audens' deep, hoarse voice, recording date unknown, was not included in his final version of the poem in Collected Poems. Still, even if Auden himself came to have doubts, I treasure these lines, and want to believe that they are true. Index | Top99.01.25 - Art, love and historical destiny
Index | Top99.01.19 - Basic science as poetry
William Wheaton is an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology. He is also a contributor to the wonderful, zany science information page "Mad Scientist." For more of the thoughts of Bill Wheaton, check out his web page. Index | Top
99.01.11 - Adult education among the Oghuz
Sometimes people need to have the most obvious things pointed out to them, and thereafter can manage brilliantly. Egrek in the story turns out to have a real gift for cutting off heads and spilling blood. (This little example of adult education comes from the folklore of the Oghuz Turks of Central Asia, ancestors of the Ottomans.)
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