From wriddick at usa.net Wed Jan 1 19:20:12 2003 From: wriddick at usa.net (Wade Riddick) Date: Wed, 1 Jan 2003 18:20:12 -0600 Subject: [percy-l] "I don't pay much attention to the right or the left. . ." In-Reply-To: <3E0E4472.4030001@beachcitygas.com> Message-ID: >". . . Students are, if the truth be known, a bad lot. En masse they're >as fickle as a mob, manipulable by any professor who'll stoop to it. >They have, moreover, an infinite capacity for repeating dull truths and >old lies with all the insistence of self-discovery. Nothing is drearier >than the ideology of students, left and right." "Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature." Samuel Butler "The enemy is not conservatism. The enemy is not liberalism. The enemy is bullshit." Lars Erik Nelson "Read it? I haven't even taught it yet!" old English professor joke When a lot of people think of pluralism, they think of it synonymously with democracy and that's simply not the case. You need to ask yourself, like the founding fathers did, what motivates people to act together? Why do they believe what they believe? There's a lot of statistical evidence in voting behavior to indicate that people boil the world down to a few simple ideologies and reduce the way they look at problems to a few simple dimensions. What I think you're witnessing in the academic quest for "truth" is really just political coalition building. Don't expect to tune in Fox-TV and get "fair" and "balanced" - much less consistency. Don't expect that academics aren't guided by similar biases and prone to make mistakes. A skilled debater with a good handling of the facts can pick apart George Bush's business expertise or a vegetarian's pseudo-scientific moralism with equal ease. The more a person tilts to one ideological extreme, the closer they come to the people at the other end of the spectrum. In a sense the political spectrum is closer to a circle than a line. The problem is forum shopping. Most people in power understand this now, so they isolate themselves from questioning. Control the agenda and you control the result of the "questioning." Ever heard, for instance, George Bush really answer questions about how he made so much money as an executive of oil companies going down the toilet? Of course not. When you control who gets to be in "the press" and when your friends control who gets hired and fired in journalism, you can pull enough strings behind the scenes. If you look at any given academic journal - especially in an area like literary studies - "researchers" are largely asking themselves the questions and answering the questions for themselves. I think you get closer to "the truth" when you watch the idiotic freshmen ask their professors innocent questions - at least until they're properly intimidated. Then again, high school students would probably serve us better in the national press corps. They're not as concerned about playing tennis with an undersecretary or getting producer credits... then again, they will dis the smart kid to get in with the in-crowd... This is all interest group behavior. And, hey, if you're a doctor trying to discover the reason advanced glycation products affect micovasculature in diabetics then a certain bureacratic hierarchy of truth-seeking might be called for... although I'll merely note here the non-linear zigs and zags scientific quests often take as the paradigm shifts. I've written about the increasing authority interest groups speak with before in the list. You might find some light on the subject in the archives. >And, perhaps like WP was presaging, we now live in what can fairly be >described as the post-civilization/post-human culture. There is lots of >freedom here, thanks to the local meatheads: Safety free, prosperity >free, civility free culture. > >Where was it I recently read that "libertinism is the final step before >totalitarianism"? From brian at beachcitygas.com Wed Jan 1 20:24:57 2003 From: brian at beachcitygas.com (Brian N.) Date: Wed, 01 Jan 2003 17:24:57 -0800 Subject: [percy-l] "I don't pay much attention to the right or the left. . ." References: Message-ID: <3E1394E9.90903@beachcitygas.com> Wade, Thanks. I always appreciate your additions and illuminations. Thanks expecially for: "The enemy is not conservatism. The enemy is not liberalism. The enemy is bullshit." Lars Erik Nelson I will post that one at work. I have five college students in my employ. They, quite frankly, are wearied by the bullshit and academic lockstep thinking. I think what really gets them hot is that after all the hard work of serious studies, and all the long hours to earn cash to survive on while in school, they come to realize that they are paying all this to be fed little more than a lot of bullsh*t. Nelson's quote will open a window with to a bit of fresh air. Brian N. From piat1 at bellsouth.net Thu Jan 2 11:04:47 2003 From: piat1 at bellsouth.net (James Piat) Date: Thu, 2 Jan 2003 11:04:47 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] "I don't pay much attention to the right or the left. . ." References: Message-ID: <001f01c2b278$ac6d7770$0101a8c0@D68RS511> Wade Riddick wrote: > If you look at any given academic journal - especially in an area > like literary studies - "researchers" are largely asking themselves the > questions and answering the questions for themselves. I think you get > closer to "the truth" when you watch the idiotic freshmen ask their > professors innocent questions - at least until they're properly > intimidated. Dear Wade, Folks- With Brian I enjoyed your comments. You've got me wondering though just what role literary studies and literature in general play in getting at the "truth". For example, how does literature get at truth in a way that physics or scientific approaches do not. Is the difference primarily one of approach, the nature of the truth sought --or what? Especially I'm wondering about Percy's views on the distinction between the scientific and the literary. Seems to me he held there some truth or reality accessible to literature and the word in general which is simply not accessible to science --and that it is mistaken to hold the two approaches the same standards or assume they are interchangeable. Would such a view imply two different definitions of truth --or is the "fault" primarily in the approaches. Trying to think about such questions I find myself quickly becoming confused by the relationship between content and method (as well as subjective and objective) and I look forward to what other think. Cheers, Jim Piat From brian at beachcitygas.com Thu Jan 2 13:19:02 2003 From: brian at beachcitygas.com (Brian N.) Date: Thu, 02 Jan 2003 10:19:02 -0800 Subject: [percy-l] "I don't pay much attention to the right or the left. . ." References: <001f01c2b278$ac6d7770$0101a8c0@D68RS511> Message-ID: <3E148296.3060607@beachcitygas.com> Jim Piat and Friends-- > Seems to me he held there some truth or > reality accessible to literature and the word in general which is simply not > accessible to science --and that it is mistaken to hold the two approaches > the same standards or assume they are interchangeable. I found Wendell Berry's recent book "Life Is A Miracle" to be a great answer to this most important consideration. He seems to be saying that our options are mainly a despairing reductionism (thanks to science and Nietzcshe), or admit the obvious: that we live our daily lives in a world of "tacit knowledege" (to borrow a phrase from Michael Polanyi) that is beyond the self-imposed limitations of "scientific" knowledge. I guess there would be a third option, too: the annihilationism of Buddhism and other reality denial systems. But such never have much appeal to me in a world where much mercy and grace is needed. From karey at charter.net Fri Jan 3 10:10:49 2003 From: karey at charter.net (Karey L. Perkins) Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2003 10:10:49 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] Fw: talking chimp astounds scientists Message-ID: <014d01c2b33a$4d156cc0$0301000a@AFAC955012> Here' s another interesting development on animal language research (below) -- however, the last two paragraphs of the article provide a disclaimer for what comes before. BTW, this also illustrates the idea Wade mentioned earlier that, ""researchers" are largely asking themselves the questions and answering the questions for themselves." As someone said earlier -- I think for this conversation to be most effective, we need to define our terms: consciousness vs. awareness, sign vs. symbol, symbolic communication vs. any other kind of communication, etc. etc. Even what is meant by "soul." Percy even uses these terms differently from other linguists and even Pierce (is my understanding), and even Percy uses these terms differently in his own writing at some points, if I remember reading correctly. And also, whether or not these things are mutually exclusive -- Why does lack of symbolization have to equal lack of consciousness? Why did Percy think that? That's the crux of the matter right there, I think. Does it have to with what happens in the organism, the third part of the triad? What does happen? Percy doesn't say. I'm wondering if his argument is circular as well. I.E.: the logic might be provable to those already holding to Percy's basic premise, but if you don't start out believing man is a being with a soul, (or other assumptions Percy begins with), the argument just won't work. I haven't made any decisions yet, just asking questions right now. Karey ----- Original Message ----- From: ken denney To: karey at charter.net Sent: Thursday, January 02, 2003 9:09 PM Subject: talking chimp astounds scientists >From The Guardian in UK: University chimp amazes scientists with own 'words' By David Derbyshire, Science Correspondent (Filed: 02/01/2003) A chimpanzee has challenged the widely held view that animals do not have language by making up its own words from scratch. Kanzi, an adult bonobo or pygmy chimpanzee kept at Georgia State University, Atlanta, has come up with four distinct sounds for the things closest to his heart - banana, juice, grapes and yes. Although the choice of words may be a little predictable, it is the first report of an ape making sounds that seem to have the same meaning across different situations. The findings have astonished ape experts, who believe Kanzi has come the closest yet to mastering a simple form of speech. Kanzi has grown up among people and is skilled at communicating with symbols. It understands some spoken English and can respond to simple phrases such as "do you want a banana?", New Scientist reports today. But its language trainers, Jared Taglialatela and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, discovered that he also made distinct noises during their "conversations". The team studied 100 hours of video tapes of Kanzi. They were most interested in situations where the chimp's meaning was obvious, such as when it was pointing to the symbol for grapes or eating a banana. The researchers found four noises used by Kanzi in different contexts. Dr Taglialatela said: "We haven't taught him this. He's doing it all on his own." Kanzi's "word" for yes stayed the same across a whole range of emotions, suggesting that the noises were not simply the result of differences in the chimp's emotional state. Kanzi is the latest in a line of primates to challenge the conventional view that animals have no language. Language used to be defined as symbolic communication until another chimpanzee, Washoe, learned to communicate in American Sign Language. Since then, the definition has been refined to put more emphasis on syntax and less on symbols. The researchers are now trying to discover whether Kanzi is imitating human speech. But they will not consider the chimp to be communicating using the sounds until other chimps respond to the noises. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From PARLINS at culver.org Fri Jan 3 14:46:05 2003 From: PARLINS at culver.org (Parlin, Steven) Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2003 14:46:05 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] Re: animals, symbols, Gnosticism, Judaaica etc Message-ID: <580A6654EC74D511B41600034779BEDE07058C46@exchangeserver.culver.org> Nikki, you provide some interesting replies here, and I must confess I am hugely envious that you had opportunity to personally engage Percy (You at least can use his first name!) and discern what was on his mind. That gives you a leg up on some of these thorny matters, I think. However, may I point out a few or your errors and/or misunderstandings here? I may even have to be a tad bit discourteous, for your tone on some points seems a little condescending. First, Aristotle on animal souls: Aristotle never claimed that animals had no "soul". On the contrary, he argued that all things living had a "soul". He used "soul" to refer to that actualizing force or principle of the body, but he also classified the soul's faculties hierarchically, with rationality or thought, only possessed by humans, at the top. (I echo Karey, here, in that we need to be careful to define our terms). Second, the RC Church on animal souls: The Church has never doctrinally denied the existence of animal "souls". (In fact, JPII spoke about this matter recently when giving voice to responsible stewardship). However, the Church is very carefully discerning about her terms and how they are to be understood when she uses them. For example, the Church's teachings demonstrate an understanding that words like "consciousness" are, strictly speaking, indefinable, and that the definitions thereof are used with the understanding that they are only metaphors (as all words are) and with the explicit or implicit warning that they must not be taken literally or as finite. Again, I reiterate my point from an earlier part of this thread: this very discussion on the matter of "consciousness" demonstrates the slippery nature of trying to name things that most likely cannot be named. Who of us on this list really knows precisely what "consciousness" is, after all? While I suppose it is possible that we will one day "evolve", Theosophically speaking, into creatures that finally know these things in the "absolute", I must contend that its most likely the case that the mind will remain intractable to us (at least in this life). Third, the Poet as namer: Yes, poet's name things. Of course. But then, not really. They don't actually render things completely in form, they can only approximately get at things (like "consciousness") with metaphor. The can only approximately name things. That's what poetry is, after all. It's a chase, a hunt, a quest. And if the "thing" were found, the hunt would be over. Ergo, no more poets. Poets are ever in pursuit of the unicorn, but their attempts to ensnare it are ever frustrated. The thing can't be caught. And the chase goes on. In fact, Lear's "nonsense" poetry illustrates my point precisely. And, Percy's. Percy was interested in how words can be emptied out and the meanings restated. It might be more accurate to say that poets re-name, and then re-name again, and again, and again. Poet's make available to us those things that get lost because the names didn't stick. (However, as Percy observes, some words seem to resist this leakiness, like 'Jew'). Fourth, Percian courtesy: You say that Percy "NEVER raised the slightest banner of mean-tempered virulence but was always the soul of interested courtesy." Now, I certainly did not know Percy on a personal bases, and your point about him may be quite true, but I wonder. I'm sure Percy was a kind and courteous gentleman, especially in person, and I'll do nothing here to cast erroneous aspersions about his character. However, it is impossible to argue from his fiction that he was never mean tempered. He was hardly an advocate of pluralistic brotherly tolerance. Instead, his work was nothing other than a brutally violent act of vivisection upon the affairs of this world. He rather bloodily cut things open wide and went in to have a look see. That is precisely why his work is so important. Few other writers have had the courage to be "mean" in this way. No. He was quite mean-tempered about some things and, to the things he found most disagreeable, he was unmercilessly virulent. And, dare I say, he was even a bit rude about some things. (BTW: Jim, Percy wouldn't have made a distinction in kinds of truth, but that the realm of Truth is accessible to us in different ways. Percy would say that science describes the "truth" that it "sees", and that literature reveals "truth" as it is experienced. The difference is existential. Whereas science is concerned with observing and collecting data, literature is concerned with revelation. Whereas science is powerless to explain things (like existence), literature is the narration of things, the revealed account of our experience of things (like existence) as they are. For example, the true nature of a relationship, say between lovers, is most accurately revealed in a story that shows the intersubjectivity of their relationship than it is in a data base of information about those two people. It's fitting to note, here, that Chimps and the like are almost never observed for their "language use" in their own environments but are removed from their own "narratives" to a lab or a cozy home.)). Percy was an advocate of brotherly love, no doubt, but he opposed sentimental notions of it. He never let sentimentality get in the way of stating things are they are -screwed up. He was a fierce diagnostician who, after doing the messy work of exploratory surgery, offered us a prognosis, and then dared to point us to a cure. (For what its worth, I became Catholic in large part because of Percy. Is there anyone else on this list interested in this part of Percy's work? Or am I the only the only Catholic?) Fifth, Percy as Jew: I never claimed that Percy was Jewish in the practical sense, nor was I "boxing him in with the Jews". Rather, Percy was keenly aware that Catholicism is the full sacramental realization of Judaism. I can even recall from an interview, in "Conversations" I believe, that he said (and I'm paraphrasing), that spiritually we [christians] are all Semites, ie. we are all Jews. His fascination with the Jews was more than mere wistful reverence. He really believed the Jews were the "chosen". It is true, however, that he never thought himself a good Catholic (though what he meant by that is not at all obvious. Who, after all, is a "good" Catholic?) but his Catholicism mattered to him a great deal nevertheless. Steve -----Original Message----- From: Nikkibar at aol.com [mailto:Nikkibar at aol.com] Sent: Tuesday, December 31, 2002 4:13 PM To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org; daynesherman at yahoo.com; runner at i-55.com; atrous at lsu.edu Subject: [percy-l] Re: animals, symbols, Gnosticism, Judaaica etc Dear Friends, I have been lurking about with an increasing Holiday headache for the last couple of weeks over the interesting discussion and have been unwilling to spoil the fun by getting doctrinaire and behaving like a prissy old fart; but now that things seem to be slowing up, let me provide a few biographical observations which I hope will not go so far as to become deconstructionist. The whole discussion about animals and symbols -- Chomsky, the Chimps in the household with the letter and icon boards, John Lilly and his dolphin language, etc. -- was something that Walker followed with eagerness and interest. We (Walker and I) constantly argued over the matter, Walker adopting with Aristotle and The Church the position that animals had no souls (and there was an end on't) and me adopting quite the contrary position which I had always associated with Theosophical Gnosticism, that the universe (or all-that-is) is in a state of both physical and spiritual evolution. And mixing into this lifelong debate was Walker's stout defense of the notion that animals can't use symbols (despite Chomsky and the household chimps, etc., and Lilly with his investigation of terciops truncatus' click language -- possibly indicating to the contrary). My own argument inevitably ran to the notion that the symbol as we and Peirce know it, is irrelevant to the debate and that communication and not symbolization is the more proper touch-stone to get one to the concept of evidence of the kind of consciousness that would betoken the existence of animal-souls. Walker always felt that he prevailed in these contests because he could fall back on "show me the symbol-making ability) and that for me was the breakpoint, for while I couldn't show him a symbol emanating from an animal (although with enough funding and sufficiently sensitive and complex computers with enough RAM we may in time learn to talk to the dolphin or translate whale-song) I could always rejoin that he couldn't be certain that animals couldn't and didn't talk to each other; for our uncertainty is grounded in the notion that just because they may have little interest in talking to us, does not logically prove that they cannot talk to one another. In ot her words, in good lawyer-like fashion, I could always demonstrate that an absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence. I can assure you, however that WP was head-over-heels in touch with the problem and took a long and lively interest in it. For those bewildered by Gnosticism and what it is, search our archives of about five years back using not only Gnostic as a word search tool but Elaine Pagels and to a lesser degree Harold Bloom, whose works we discussed thoroughly. At the end of that discussion I resolved never to get involved in that fight again, as it simply produces (on this channel at any rate) a good deal more heat than light. And the debate seemed fruitless to me for another reason: which was that the RC proponents of antiGnosticism knew a lot less about Gnosticism than I did (and do) about the Dogma and History of the Roman Catholic Church. What was interesting (and horrible to me) in the discussion was the virulence and mean-tempered attitude emanating at that time from the antiGnostic position, a latter day resurrection of the very same mortal combat which the church won with Valentinian and in winning the victory -- physically obliterated the ancient Gnostics. Pagels refl ects with great eloquence on that fact of this victory and speculates over what the world might be like today, had the Gnostics prevailed at least to the point of remaining alive past the sixth century CE. An additional exploration might be taken up by anyone interested, by reading an enthralling novel on the subject published the last year entitled The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson (Bantam-Random House). An additional observation: in all my many discussions with Walker over these matters, he NEVER raised the slightest banner of mean-tempered virulence but was always the soul of interested courtesy. For further discussion of Gnosticism and what it is, I refer you to Bloom's speculatively intriguing American Gnosticism, but it is not nearly as informative at the basic level of defining terms as the works of Elaine Pagels (The Gnostic Gospels and Gnostic Paul). Google or Amazon will provide a useful bibliography complete with price lists. For a useful chapter on Gnosticism, specifically in the work of Percy (which may however leave you more puzzled after reading it than before) see Eddie DuPuy's book Autobiography in Walker Percy -- if you can find a copy. I am amused to the point of gentle mirth at the notion that Walker was a Jew ab initio through his conversion to Rome. That in my view is stretching the poetry of language just a little too far. (BTW Poets name things all the time. Just think of Edward Lear's toeless Pobble QED). What Walker would have said himself to this interesting error about boxing him in with the Jews, was that on the contrary he was not a Jew, but a reconstructed bad Presbyterian made over into a bad Roman Catholic. The wistful reverence for Jewry that he displays repeatedly in the novels was just that: very wistful and VERY reverent, which it occurs to me is roughly my own attitude toward Rome but that is BTW; it equals being an indifferent Episcopalian. A Parthian shot on the subject of the animals. Anyone watching the last season of The Sopranos (and who isn't?) may have some very interesting insights to draw over how Tony's conflicted Catholic attitude to the "Genesis dominion over the beasts" concept works in that most American of myths in its current HBO state of becoming. This agon may be the only thing that draws me back to it in its next season. I am suggesting that for us in the business of the aesthesis of words, myths and stories in the public mind, it's a pivot point well worth thinking about. One could assign grad school papers of 20 K words on it... It could enliven one's grading period to see what results. And a happy New Year to all. Nikki Barranger -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karey at charter.net Fri Jan 3 15:28:37 2003 From: karey at charter.net (Karey L. Perkins) Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2003 15:28:37 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] "The Monkey in the Mirror" Message-ID: <029901c2b366$b24b2360$0301000a@AFAC955012> Another article -- this one seems to confirm Percy, that it's all about symbol. Though, Tattersall's description of language (2nd to last paragraph) seems more like a traditional linguist's than Percy's or Pierce's: --------------------------------------------- From: http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/scienceandnature/0,6121,660783,00.html Science and nature The skeleton key The story of man's ascent can be traced from a single skull uncovered on Gibraltar in 1848. Ian Tattersall tells how language triumphed in The Monkey in the Mirror Robin McKie Sunday March 3, 2002 The Observer The Monkey in the Mirror Ian Tattersall pp224 In a dimly lit recess of the Gibraltar Museum, a strange skull with a beetle brow and low forehead used to glower at the occasional, perplexed tourist who wandered in from the colony's sun and warm beer. To most, the assemblage was just a peculiar set of bones, an intriguing oddity and little else. But to scientists, the skull is one of our most precious prehistoric relics. It was considered so valuable it had to be flown, in 1998, in a reinforced box, with its own seat in BA Club Class, from its home in the vaults of London's Natural History Museum, so it could join the 150th anniversary celebrations of its discovery. After a short public sojourn in the colony's tiny museum, it was returned to London where access was once again restricted to scientists. The skull - of a young woman - had been blasted from Gibraltar's Forbes quarry in 1848. Many other Neanderthal skeletons have since been dug up by scientists and most are far more complete than the bones found at Forbes. Yet none has their symbolic significance, for no other relic so neatly encompasses the poignant history of this lost species and the rise of our own. For a start, the Forbes skull was the first Neanderthal to be discovered (although the second, dug up in Germany's Neander Valley in 1856, got all the attention). And it was very probably the last, or at least one of the last of the line, for it was in southern Spain that the species were eventually cornered, like Texans at the Alamo, and wiped from the planet's face by hordes of invading Cro-Magnons, the direct ancestors of modern men and women. Those of us lucky enough to see the skull in 1998 got a privileged vision of humanity's deep and disturbing past. Today, Neanderthals are depicted as bent-kneed, brutal cavemen. But as Ian Tattersall, curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History, points out, the species were for a long time 'hugely successful, over a vast and complicated area of the Earth's surface'. They were large-brained, made superb stone tools, cared for their old and injured and, for a quarter of a million years, during several ice ages, ruled Europe and Western Asia. They were simply the best in hominid evolution. Then along came Homo sapiens and quickly put paid to the lot, although only a sliver of biological difference separated the two species, dooming them and propelling us to global domination. And that is why the Neanderthals are so important. As Tattersall says: 'History has made these now-extinct relatives unquestionably the best mirror to hold up to ourselves.' The difference between Neanderthals and ourselves is usually depicted as the inevitable outcome of incremental additions to our intellect, part of our 'long, singleminded trudge from primitiveness to perfection'. We simply got smarter, little by little, until we passed a critical threshold and could outfox the opposition. And that, says Tattersall, is bunk. Natural selection is not a business of fine-tuning towards a predestined goal. It simply lolls about in the doldrums for most of the time, a story 'of monotony - non-change - that has only rarely been punctuated by substantial innovation'. Species break up into smaller groups and nature experiments with them, occasionally throwing up a successful new breed among all its failures. Take our ancestors. Five million years ago, our ape predecessors suddenly emerged from the trees and started walking around on two legs, and, for the next two million years, did nothing more. Then, equally abruptly, the first toolmakers appeared and went on to chip out exactly the same kit for the next two million years. These people made Alan Titchmarsh look interesting. Finally, large-brained Neanderthals appeared and ruled the roost until they were wiped out in their frozen homeland by upstart ?migr?s from Africa. Another of nature's experiments had erupted on the scene. The question is: what critical feature did these African parvenus, our own direct ancestors, possess? Easy, says Tattersall: 'They led lives that were drenched in symbol.' They made sculptures; adorned their bodies with drawings; created magnificent cave paintings, like those at Chauvet and Lascaux in France; buried their dead with flowers and beads; and communicated in highly elaborate ways. To all other humans that had gone before, the environment was simply a continuum that changed as they moved about. To Homo sapiens, armed with the power of symbolism, it had become a place that could be divided up and given names like home, river, or cave. Thus we could recreate the world in our heads, recombine these mental symbols and plan. The world had seen nothing like it. But where - and why - did this ability evolve? Somewhere in Africa is all that scientists can say, for here we see the first evidence of our elaborate carvings and chiselled beads, the earliest manifestations of our symbolic prowess. Why we evolved this ability is a different matter, though it was clearly pure chance. In fact, says Tattersall, it's like feathers which evolved eons ago to keep creatures warm. Only millions of years later were they conscripted to act as adjuncts to flight. So it was with our symbolic thinking. The brain evolved the ability for some other, still unknown mental purpose and only later was it adopted for its current use. This symbolic prowess lay fallow in the brains of one small group of African cavemen, until it was released by a stimulus, probably language and most probably that spoken by children. Games, involving the stringing together of words and sounds, quickly evolved in our symbol-receptive minds into speech rich in ideas and images which was then adopted by adults. 'Once the notion of associating words with objects and ideas had developed, it would have spread rapidly through society,' Tattersall states. Indeed, it would have taken off like an intellectual virus. Complex images, suggestions, inventions and speculations were exchanged and culture let loose. Next thing we knew we were global overlords and Neanderthals were museum exhibits. And all from an obscure brain mutation and some children's games. It is a striking vision, conveyed in an admirably graceful and convincing style by Tattersall who has earned himself a deserved reputation for being one of our clearest writers on the subjects of anthropology and human evolution. The Monkey in the Mirror, conceived as a series of linked essays, may not be easy reading. Although slim, its pages are packed with ideas and careful argument that require close attention. For Tattersall, every word counts. And it shows, for the end product is as neat an encapsulation of our current understanding of our nature as you can get. From karey at charter.net Fri Jan 3 16:25:26 2003 From: karey at charter.net (Karey L. Perkins) Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2003 16:25:26 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] AND...just one more post... Message-ID: <02e901c2b36e$a243c500$0301000a@AFAC955012> I'm still off-work for the holidays, but back from my holiday trip, so Percy has my attention today: Did anyone read the December 23 Newsweek on "Racism and the Republicans"? It was about Trent Lott's recent unfortunate remark, and the article thorough describes the South, its politics, and the race issue in the first part of the century, and aptly quotes William Alexander Percy, as the aristocratic Percys were involved in politics and the race issue, always coming out in favor of better treatment of blacks. I just, coincidentally, happened to be reading Tolson's biography, describing Percy's ancestors and their political activism against the KKK and such. In this case, Newsweek quotes from Will's Lanterns on the Levee to describe the liberal/progressive part of the state in contrast to the more conservative/backwards northern Mississippi, with which Lott associates himself. Will Percy describes, and the article quotes him, that part of the state as "ill-dressed, unintelligent and slinking -- the sort of people who lynch Negroes, attend revivals, and fight and fornicate in the bushes afterwards." However, Newsweek misses the better quote in capturing a Percy opinion -- Walker Percy's himself. His Signposts essays dwell considerably on racism and segregation -- timely of course considering the era of their writing -- and the Life in the South section was immensely illuminating to me, as a non-Southerner, on the problem Southerners had with integration (which Percy was for, of course). His discussion of the fact that the South had no public space probably goes as far to explain the problem as any I've heard yet. I think the South's history of racism, his family's political heritage of political activism and "noblesse oblige" as he himself calls it, northern Mississippi's "backwards" political agendas that his southern-born relatives spent their lives battling, the fact that just a few years ago the Germans just barely failed attempt to decimate an entire race (and the U.S. did not enter the war to save the Jew, but for other interests), the heated racial conflicts and out-and-out riots of the 50's/60's, and the fact that much of this was playing out on his home state's front yard, such as James Meredith entering U. of Miss. -- all of this caused Percy to be intensely concerned about racism. Also, I think I can shed some light on Nikki's remark that Percy was never mean-tempered by relating a conversation I had at a conference with another person who was personally acquainted with Percy -- James Babin, who taught with Percy at LSU in his later years. The conversation was fascinating -- to hear his first-hand stories -- and I hope James Babin does not mind my telling this, but one of the things he said was that he had read Percy's work before he met him, and was thoroughly surprised when he met him. He had expected Percy to by "sly and ironic," as he termed it, based on reading Percy's writings and I have to agree that that does come across in his writing -- even some of his personal letters can seem brutally honest, with no attention to social niceties merely to preserve someone's feelings. But, according to Babin, he was, and I can't recall the exact phrasing Babin used, but the impression he gave was of a perfect "Southern gentleman" -- considerate, polite, gentle, retiring -- one more prone to watch the battle going on around him with detached humor rather than to join in. Again, Babin was completely surprised by this, as it didn't fit with how Percy comes across in his work. However, I might add that Percy's PROTAGONISTS are like that -- even, voiceless and passive, rarely expressing what they're really thinking to the other characters they're with. Karey -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mfrentz at bbn.com Fri Jan 3 17:01:01 2003 From: mfrentz at bbn.com (Mike Frentz) Date: Fri, 03 Jan 2003 17:01:01 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] Fw: talking chimp astounds scientists References: <014d01c2b33a$4d156cc0$0301000a@AFAC955012> Message-ID: <3E16081D.3000006@bbn.com> Karey, Interesting. BTW, Deacon describes Kanzi as "who more than any other nonhuman has demonstrated the extent to which language comprehension abilities are possible...will probably not progress beyond the symbolic sophistication exhibited by a three-year-old human child (though he still has many more years to prove me pessimistic)" (p. 254, written ~1997). Kanzi is interesting because he was not the subject of teaching -- his foster mother was -- but Kanzi hung around (on!) her the whole time she was being trained and wound up becoming the unintended star pupil (presumably because of his immaturity). An indexical relationship to words is not particularly significant -- Kanzi has done rudimentary symbolic processing with a visual lexigram system for years. The voicing of them is interesting (it is also interesting that Kanzi is at least 10 now). [Deacon also refers to "Hoover the talking harbor seal" (p. 226) who only started talking around puberty -- with a seemingly similar set of phrases and accent of the old Maine fisherman who adopted Hoover years before when he was an orphaned pup. Hoover was fond of saying such things as "Hoova", "Hey you", "Get outa there", and "yadda yadda yadda" (maybe he watched Seinfeld a bit too much ;-). He lived in the Boston Aquarium for years. The only known talking seal (I'm not making this up..) Songbirds are apparently similar in learning the dealect version of their species song when they are nestlings, but only start singing when they approach puberty.] The fact that the voicings of the words doesn't seem to correlate in any way to the human voicing (as seemingly implied in the article) is also interesting. But, as partially disclaimed in the article, probably not symbolically relevant. Language is symbolic or it isn't really language, I believe. It's the fact that the words form stable relationships to other words, independent of their indexical origins (sense, not reference), that yields the triadic nature that makes them fungible for general usage. Mike Karey L. Perkins wrote: > Here' s another interesting development on animal language research > (below) -- however, the last two paragraphs of the article provide a > disclaimer for what comes before. BTW, this also illustrates the idea > Wade mentioned earlier that, ""researchers" are largely asking > themselves the questions and answering the questions for themselves." > > As someone said earlier -- I think for this conversation to be most > effective, we need to define our terms: consciousness vs. awareness, > sign vs. symbol, symbolic communication vs. any other kind of > communication, etc. etc. Even what is meant by "soul." Percy even > uses these terms differently from other linguists and even Pierce (is > my understanding), and even Percy uses these terms differently in his > own writing at some points, if I remember reading correctly. And > also, whether or not these things are mutually exclusive -- Why does > lack of symbolization have to equal lack of consciousness? Why did > Percy think that? That's the crux of the matter right there, I > think. Does it have to with what happens in the organism, the third > part of the triad? What does happen? Percy doesn't say. > > I'm wondering if his argument is circular as well. I.E.: the logic > might be provable to those already holding to Percy's basic premise, > but if you don't start out believing man is a being with a soul, (or > other assumptions Percy begins with), the argument just won't work. > > I haven't made any decisions yet, just asking questions right now. > > Karey > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: ken denney > To: karey at charter.net > Sent: Thursday, January 02, 2003 9:09 PM > Subject: talking chimp astounds scientists > > >From The Guardian in UK: > > University chimp amazes scientists with own 'words' > By David Derbyshire, Science Correspondent > (Filed: 02/01/2003) > > A chimpanzee has challenged the widely held view that animals do not have > language by making up its own words from scratch. > > Kanzi, an adult bonobo or pygmy chimpanzee kept at Georgia State > University, > Atlanta, has come up with four distinct sounds for the things closest > to his > heart - banana, juice, grapes and yes. > > Although the choice of words may be a little predictable, it is the first > report of an ape making sounds that seem to have the same meaning across > different situations. > > The findings have astonished ape experts, who believe Kanzi has come the > closest yet to mastering a simple form of speech. > > Kanzi has grown up among people and is skilled at communicating with > symbols. It understands some spoken English and can respond to simple > phrases such as "do you want a banana?", New Scientist reports today. > > But its language trainers, Jared Taglialatela and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, > discovered that he also made distinct noises during their "conversations". > The team studied 100 hours of video tapes of Kanzi. They were most > interested in situations where the chimp's meaning was obvious, such > as when > it was pointing to the symbol for grapes or eating a banana. The > researchers > found four noises used by Kanzi in different contexts. > > Dr Taglialatela said: "We haven't taught him this. He's doing it all > on his > own." > > Kanzi's "word" for yes stayed the same across a whole range of emotions, > suggesting that the noises were not simply the result of differences > in the > chimp's emotional state. > > Kanzi is the latest in a line of primates to challenge the > conventional view > that animals have no language. Language used to be defined as symbolic > communication until another chimpanzee, Washoe, learned to communicate in > American Sign Language. Since then, the definition has been refined to put > more emphasis on syntax and less on symbols. > > The researchers are now trying to discover whether Kanzi is imitating > human > speech. But they will not consider the chimp to be communicating using the > sounds until other chimps respond to the noises. > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mfrentz at bbn.com Fri Jan 3 18:01:07 2003 From: mfrentz at bbn.com (Mike Frentz) Date: Fri, 03 Jan 2003 18:01:07 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] AND...just one more post... References: <02e901c2b36e$a243c500$0301000a@AFAC955012> Message-ID: <3E161633.1020109@bbn.com> Karey L. Perkins wrote: > In this case, Newsweek quotes from Will's Lanterns on the Levee to > describe the liberal/progressive part of the state in contrast to the > more conservative/backwards northern Mississippi, with which Lott > associates himself. Will Percy describes, and the article quotes > him, that part of the state as "ill-dressed, unintelligent and > slinking -- the sort of people who lynch Negroes, attend revivals, and > fight and fornicate in the bushes afterwards." > > However, Newsweek misses the better quote in capturing a Percy opinion > -- Walker Percy's himself. His Signposts essays dwell considerably on > racism and segregation -- timely of course considering the era of > their writing -- and the Life in the South section was immensely > illuminating to me, as a non-Southerner, on the problem Southerners > had with integration (which Percy was for, of course). His discussion > of the fact that the South had no public space probably goes as far to > explain the problem as any I've heard yet. > I think the South's history of racism, his family's political heritage > of political activism and "noblesse oblige" as he himself calls it, > northern Mississippi's "backwards" political agendas that his > southern-born relatives spent their lives battling, the fact that just > a few years ago the Germans just barely failed attempt to decimate an > entire race (and the U.S. did not enter the war to save the Jew, but > for other interests), the heated racial conflicts and out-and-out > riots of the 50's/60's, and the fact that much of this was playing out > on his home state's front yard, such as James Meredith entering U. of > Miss. -- all of this caused Percy to be intensely concerned about > racism. > Hogwash. I can't help but feel sometimes that peopleon this list believe that if Percy were alive today he would be a Democrat. Even I was a Democrat (Deathocrat, Damnednocrat..) around the time Percy died. Percy certainly did not fit the demographics of the current Democratic party if you can believe the color chart from the 2000 election (big city, Northeast or Pacific coast). And his beliefs were adamantly pro-life (e.g. Signposts 340) (which is why I had to finally switch parties in '92, also flushing 100+ years of still rabid Democratic heritage down the potty). I think Percy was most interested in justice, not political labels ("If you want peace, work for justice" JP II). That's why Catholicism was so important to him. Catholicism is about the pursuit of truth, wherever it goes, rather than wherever it "was". (BTW, most fervent Catholics are now Republicans if you believe the polls) The Republicans also did not start the Civil War to free the slave, yet they did. Go figure on Lott's remark, it is certainly not representative of the Republican party. Good riddance if there was any truth to it. Nor are the Democrats symbolic of progressive thinking (anymore) -- they now represent the special interests that are the same bigoted special interests that Percy's ancestors fought. Only the color has changed. Mike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karey at charter.net Fri Jan 3 18:34:36 2003 From: karey at charter.net (Karey L. Perkins) Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2003 18:34:36 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] AND...just one more post... References: <02e901c2b36e$a243c500$0301000a@AFAC955012> <3E161633.1020109@bbn.com> Message-ID: <03a101c2b380$ada51c20$0301000a@AFAC955012> Mike -- I wasn't talking about politics, or Republicans, or Democrats -- Newsweek was. I was talking about RACISM, and Percy's attitude towards that. I agree Percy was interested in justice and not labels. But Percy, and his family, are well-born, wealthy, Southern, aristocratic and interested in preserving the interests of that world -- which seemed liberal on race because it wanted to keep the black in Mississippi, and happy to be in Mississippi, but had a kind of paternalism that was, in the end, self-interested. While there was certainly altruistic, compassionate, and "justice" motives in the Percy family's fight against the KKK and those of that ilk, it was also mixed with self-interested motives -- nothing (and no one) in REAL life is plain, simple, and purely black and white. We're all shades of gray. Read Tolson's biography, Ch. 3, "Uncle Will," and what great-uncle LeRoy asked Uncle Will to do to the black refugees in the flood of 1927. Percy was more progressive, but if you are equating my terms of progressive/liberal with the Democrat then that is a mistake. A liberal from Mississippi is hardly a liberal. I visited my sister's family (in England) for Christmas. My brother-in-law is British (and a professor at Cambridge University and quite bright) and he said he was thoroughly confused by the Newsweek article. I asked why, he said because the American parties switched in the middle, (as did the Brits also with their parties), so Republicans and Democrats became something different than what they were -- hard for him to follow. Read the article -- it's good. And worth reading, if only in that it describes the world, culture and values that Percy, and Strom Thurmond, and Trent Lott were given. The Republicans HAD to get rid of Trent Lott -- regardless of whether he still believed in the "Dixiecrat" platform of 1948 that Strom Thurmond was running on -- because he propagated the image of the racist Republican that would be the death toll of the party. I personally happen to believe Trent Lott is a racist and meant what he said -- as you see in the next week's news, where Lott said he learned a lesson from this -- that he needed to change -- though wished he hadn't had to learn it that way. By the way, on a personal note, I vote against Republican on pretty much anything. That does not mean I think Percy would at all, nor was I implying that. But I differ from Percy on a lot of things, including a lot of political issues, including also his attitude towards women, but not at all on his attitude toward race. Karey ----- Original Message ----- From: Mike Frentz To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org Sent: Friday, January 03, 2003 6:01 PM Subject: Re: [percy-l] AND...just one more post... Karey L. Perkins wrote: In this case, Newsweek quotes from Will's Lanterns on the Levee to describe the liberal/progressive part of the state in contrast to the more conservative/backwards northern Mississippi, with which Lott associates himself. Will Percy describes, and the article quotes him, that part of the state as "ill-dressed, unintelligent and slinking -- the sort of people who lynch Negroes, attend revivals, and fight and fornicate in the bushes afterwards." However, Newsweek misses the better quote in capturing a Percy opinion -- Walker Percy's himself. His Signposts essays dwell considerably on racism and segregation -- timely of course considering the era of their writing -- and the Life in the South section was immensely illuminating to me, as a non-Southerner, on the problem Southerners had with integration (which Percy was for, of course). His discussion of the fact that the South had no public space probably goes as far to explain the problem as any I've heard yet. I think the South's history of racism, his family's political heritage of political activism and "noblesse oblige" as he himself calls it, northern Mississippi's "backwards" political agendas that his southern-born relatives spent their lives battling, the fact that just a few years ago the Germans just barely failed attempt to decimate an entire race (and the U.S. did not enter the war to save the Jew, but for other interests), the heated racial conflicts and out-and-out riots of the 50's/60's, and the fact that much of this was playing out on his home state's front yard, such as James Meredith entering U. of Miss. -- all of this caused Percy to be intensely concerned about racism. Hogwash. I can't help but feel sometimes that peopleon this list believe that if Percy were alive today he would be a Democrat. Even I was a Democrat (Deathocrat, Damnednocrat..) around the time Percy died. Percy certainly did not fit the demographics of the current Democratic party if you can believe the color chart from the 2000 election (big city, Northeast or Pacific coast). And his beliefs were adamantly pro-life (e.g. Signposts 340) (which is why I had to finally switch parties in '92, also flushing 100+ years of still rabid Democratic heritage down the potty). I think Percy was most interested in justice, not political labels ("If you want peace, work for justice" JP II). That's why Catholicism was so important to him. Catholicism is about the pursuit of truth, wherever it goes, rather than wherever it "was". (BTW, most fervent Catholics are now Republicans if you believe the polls) The Republicans also did not start the Civil War to free the slave, yet they did. Go figure on Lott's remark, it is certainly not representative of the Republican party. Good riddance if there was any truth to it. Nor are the Democrats symbolic of progressive thinking (anymore) -- they now represent the special interests that are the same bigoted special interests that Percy's ancestors fought. Only the color has changed. Mike -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dabeck at iupui.edu Fri Jan 3 21:35:58 2003 From: dabeck at iupui.edu (David Alan Beck) Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2003 21:35:58 -0500 (EST) Subject: [percy-l] AND...just one more post... In-Reply-To: <03a101c2b380$ada51c20$0301000a@AFAC955012> Message-ID: Karey, If I remember right, in one of the conversations books, Percy said that, if forced to choose, he would choose Republican. I'm not a strong Republican in many ways, but the abortion issue is one that sways me. I was wondering if this is what you meant by Percy's "attitude toward women"? I was wondering what you meant by that. -DB On Fri, 3 Jan 2003, Karey L. Perkins wrote: > Mike -- > > I wasn't talking about politics, or Republicans, or Democrats -- Newsweek > was. I was talking about RACISM, and Percy's attitude towards that. I > agree Percy was interested in justice and not labels. But Percy, and his > family, are well-born, wealthy, Southern, aristocratic and interested in > preserving the interests of that world -- which seemed liberal on race > because it wanted to keep the black in Mississippi, and happy to be in > Mississippi, but had a kind of paternalism that was, in the end, > self-interested. While there was certainly altruistic, compassionate, and > "justice" motives in the Percy family's fight against the KKK and those of > that ilk, it was also mixed with self-interested motives -- nothing (and no > one) in REAL life is plain, simple, and purely black and white. We're all > shades of gray. > > Read Tolson's biography, Ch. 3, "Uncle Will," and what great-uncle LeRoy > asked Uncle Will to do to the black refugees in the flood of 1927. Percy > was more progressive, but if you are equating my terms of > progressive/liberal with the Democrat then that is a mistake. A liberal > from Mississippi is hardly a liberal. > > I visited my sister's family (in England) for Christmas. My brother-in-law > is British (and a professor at Cambridge University and quite bright) and he > said he was thoroughly confused by the Newsweek article. I asked why, he > said because the American parties switched in the middle, (as did the Brits > also with their parties), so Republicans and Democrats became something > different than what they were -- hard for him to follow. Read the > article -- it's good. And worth reading, if only in that it describes the > world, culture and values that Percy, and Strom Thurmond, and Trent Lott > were given. The Republicans HAD to get rid of Trent Lott -- regardless of > whether he still believed in the "Dixiecrat" platform of 1948 that Strom > Thurmond was running on -- because he propagated the image of the racist > Republican that would be the death toll of the party. I personally happen > to believe Trent Lott is a racist and meant what he said -- as you see in > the next week's news, where Lott said he learned a lesson from this -- that > he needed to change -- though wished he hadn't had to learn it that way. > > By the way, on a personal note, I vote against Republican on pretty much > anything. That does not mean I think Percy would at all, nor was I implying > that. But I differ from Percy on a lot of things, including a lot of > political issues, including also his attitude towards women, but not at all > on his attitude toward race. > > Karey > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Mike Frentz > To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org > Sent: Friday, January 03, 2003 6:01 PM > Subject: Re: [percy-l] AND...just one more post... > > > > Karey L. Perkins wrote: > > In this case, Newsweek quotes from Will's Lanterns on the Levee to > describe the liberal/progressive part of the state in contrast to the more > conservative/backwards northern Mississippi, with which Lott associates > himself. Will Percy describes, and the article quotes him, that part of the > state as "ill-dressed, unintelligent and slinking -- the sort of people who > lynch Negroes, attend revivals, and fight and fornicate in the bushes > afterwards." > > However, Newsweek misses the better quote in capturing a Percy opinion -- > Walker Percy's himself. His Signposts essays dwell considerably on racism > and segregation -- timely of course considering the era of their writing -- > and the Life in the South section was immensely illuminating to me, as a > non-Southerner, on the problem Southerners had with integration (which Percy > was for, of course). His discussion of the fact that the South had no > public space probably goes as far to explain the problem as any I've heard > yet. > I think the South's history of racism, his family's political heritage of > political activism and "noblesse oblige" as he himself calls it, northern > Mississippi's "backwards" political agendas that his southern-born relatives > spent their lives battling, the fact that just a few years ago the Germans > just barely failed attempt to decimate an entire race (and the U.S. did not > enter the war to save the Jew, but for other interests), the heated racial > conflicts and out-and-out riots of the 50's/60's, and the fact that much of > this was playing out on his home state's front yard, such as James Meredith > entering U. of Miss. -- all of this caused Percy to be intensely concerned > about racism. > > Hogwash. I can't help but feel sometimes that peopleon this list believe > that if Percy were alive today he would be a Democrat. Even I was a > Democrat (Deathocrat, Damnednocrat..) around the time Percy died. Percy > certainly did not fit the demographics of the current Democratic party if > you can believe the color chart from the 2000 election (big city, Northeast > or Pacific coast). And his beliefs were adamantly pro-life (e.g. Signposts > 340) (which is why I had to finally switch parties in '92, also flushing > 100+ years of still rabid Democratic heritage down the potty). > > I think Percy was most interested in justice, not political labels ("If you > want peace, work for justice" JP II). That's why Catholicism was so > important to him. Catholicism is about the pursuit of truth, wherever it > goes, rather than wherever it "was". (BTW, most fervent Catholics are now > Republicans if you believe the polls) > > The Republicans also did not start the Civil War to free the slave, yet > they did. Go figure on Lott's remark, it is certainly not representative of > the Republican party. Good riddance if there was any truth to it. Nor are > the Democrats symbolic of progressive thinking (anymore) -- they now > represent the special interests that are the same bigoted special interests > that Percy's ancestors fought. Only the color has changed. > > > Mike > > > David Beck "Life is what happens when you are making other plans." - John Lennon From dabeck at iupui.edu Fri Jan 3 22:07:48 2003 From: dabeck at iupui.edu (David Alan Beck) Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2003 22:07:48 -0500 (EST) Subject: [percy-l] Re: animals, symbols, Gnosticism, Judaaica etc In-Reply-To: <580A6654EC74D511B41600034779BEDE07058C46@exchangeserver.culver.org> Message-ID: I swore that I wasn't going to reply to Nikki's ramblings. I was one who opposed Nikki's condemnation of the Church because of their so-called persecution of gnostics. I am not RC, so I'm not sure who the mean-spirited virulence came from. A former member of the list (who was RC) did offer some historical perspectives. But it wasn't mean spirited. The point that I made was that the church had to decide what was "true" and what wasn't. They weren't children of the age of tolerance and relativism. They believed in an absolute truth, one that they felt needed to protected and safe-guarded. They could not allow gnostic beliefs to enter the church. (If the gnostics are correct, then the apostolic tradition is wrong. But you can't have both.) Is it mean and, God forbid, intolerent to recap the postion of the Church during this time? Nikki's last email implies that the people who disagreed were mean-spirited or didn't know about the gnostics. I've read Pagels and I do know about the gnostic beliefs (I've read the gnostic gospels). I'm willing to discuss their beliefs. While Nikki believes that he knows more than the rest of us, I'm willing to discuss their beliefs and why they were rejected by the Church. And I've even read beyond Pagels (who is about as objective as Karen Armstrong). And, while most of us, have a great interest in Percy's work, the fact that, as you report, he never argued with such "virulence" means nothing. I know I'm not trying to model my life on Percy's, nor do I think that he would want me to. But I agree with Steve: your email is condescending. Sorry if some of us disagreed with some your "beliefs" a few years ago. But go back and read the archives. I'll even re-post some of them, if necessary. Let's see how mean and virulent they were. In the meantime, I'd like to hear your response to Steve's email, if it isn't too mean-spirited. -DB On Fri, 3 Jan 2003, Parlin, Steven wrote: > Nikki, you provide some interesting replies here, and I must confess I am > hugely envious that you had opportunity to personally engage Percy (You at > least can use his first name!) and discern what was on his mind. That gives > you a leg up on some of these thorny matters, I think. However, may I point > out a few or your errors and/or misunderstandings here? I may even have to > be a tad bit discourteous, for your tone on some points seems a little > condescending. > > First, Aristotle on animal souls: Aristotle never claimed that animals had > no "soul". On the contrary, he argued that all things living had a "soul". > He used "soul" to refer to that actualizing force or principle of the body, > but he also classified the soul's faculties hierarchically, with rationality > or thought, only possessed by humans, at the top. (I echo Karey, here, in > that we need to be careful to define our terms). > > Second, the RC Church on animal souls: The Church has never doctrinally > denied the existence of animal "souls". (In fact, JPII spoke about this > matter recently when giving voice to responsible stewardship). However, the > Church is very carefully discerning about her terms and how they are to be > understood when she uses them. For example, the Church's teachings > demonstrate an understanding that words like "consciousness" are, strictly > speaking, indefinable, and that the definitions thereof are used with the > understanding that they are only metaphors (as all words are) and with the > explicit or implicit warning that they must not be taken literally or as > finite. Again, I reiterate my point from an earlier part of this thread: > this very discussion on the matter of "consciousness" demonstrates the > slippery nature of trying to name things that most likely cannot be named. > Who of us on this list really knows precisely what "consciousness" is, after > all? While I suppose it is possible that we will one day "evolve", > Theosophically speaking, into creatures that finally know these things in > the "absolute", I must contend that its most likely the case that the mind > will remain intractable to us (at least in this life). > > Third, the Poet as namer: Yes, poet's name things. Of course. But then, not > really. They don't actually render things completely in form, they can only > approximately get at things (like "consciousness") with metaphor. The can > only approximately name things. That's what poetry is, after all. It's a > chase, a hunt, a quest. And if the "thing" were found, the hunt would be > over. Ergo, no more poets. Poets are ever in pursuit of the unicorn, but > their attempts to ensnare it are ever frustrated. The thing can't be caught. > And the chase goes on. In fact, Lear's "nonsense" poetry illustrates my > point precisely. And, Percy's. Percy was interested in how words can be > emptied out and the meanings restated. It might be more accurate to say that > poets re-name, and then re-name again, and again, and again. Poet's make > available to us those things that get lost because the names didn't stick. > (However, as Percy observes, some words seem to resist this leakiness, like > 'Jew'). > > Fourth, Percian courtesy: You say that Percy "NEVER raised the slightest > banner of mean-tempered virulence but was always the soul of interested > courtesy." Now, I certainly did not know Percy on a personal bases, and your > point about him may be quite true, but I wonder. I'm sure Percy was a kind > and courteous gentleman, especially in person, and I'll do nothing here to > cast erroneous aspersions about his character. However, it is impossible to > argue from his fiction that he was never mean tempered. He was hardly an > advocate of pluralistic brotherly tolerance. Instead, his work was nothing > other than a brutally violent act of vivisection upon the affairs of this > world. He rather bloodily cut things open wide and went in to have a look > see. That is precisely why his work is so important. Few other writers have > had the courage to be "mean" in this way. No. He was quite mean-tempered > about some things and, to the things he found most disagreeable, he was > unmercilessly virulent. And, dare I say, he was even a bit rude about some > things. > > (BTW: Jim, Percy wouldn't have made a distinction in kinds of truth, but > that the realm of Truth is accessible to us in different ways. Percy would > say that science describes the "truth" that it "sees", and that literature > reveals "truth" as it is experienced. The difference is existential. Whereas > science is concerned with observing and collecting data, literature is > concerned with revelation. Whereas science is powerless to explain things > (like existence), literature is the narration of things, the revealed > account of our experience of things (like existence) as they are. For > example, the true nature of a relationship, say between lovers, is most > accurately revealed in a story that shows the intersubjectivity of their > relationship than it is in a data base of information about those two > people. It's fitting to note, here, that Chimps and the like are almost > never observed for their "language use" in their own environments but are > removed from their own "narratives" to a lab or a cozy home.)). > > Percy was an advocate of brotherly love, no doubt, but he opposed > sentimental notions of it. He never let sentimentality get in the way of > stating things are they are -screwed up. He was a fierce diagnostician who, > after doing the messy work of exploratory surgery, offered us a prognosis, > and then dared to point us to a cure. (For what its worth, I became Catholic > in large part because of Percy. Is there anyone else on this list interested > in this part of Percy's work? Or am I the only the only Catholic?) > > Fifth, Percy as Jew: I never claimed that Percy was Jewish in the practical > sense, nor was I "boxing him in with the Jews". Rather, Percy was keenly > aware that Catholicism is the full sacramental realization of Judaism. I can > even recall from an interview, in "Conversations" I believe, that he said > (and I'm paraphrasing), that spiritually we [christians] are all Semites, > ie. we are all Jews. His fascination with the Jews was more than mere > wistful reverence. He really believed the Jews were the "chosen". It is > true, however, that he never thought himself a good Catholic (though what he > meant by that is not at all obvious. Who, after all, is a "good" Catholic?) > but his Catholicism mattered to him a great deal nevertheless. > > > Steve > > > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Nikkibar at aol.com [mailto:Nikkibar at aol.com] > Sent: Tuesday, December 31, 2002 4:13 PM > To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org; daynesherman at yahoo.com; runner at i-55.com; > atrous at lsu.edu > Subject: [percy-l] Re: animals, symbols, Gnosticism, Judaaica etc > > Dear Friends, > > I have been lurking about with an increasing Holiday headache for the last > couple of weeks over the interesting discussion and have been unwilling to > spoil the fun by getting doctrinaire and behaving like a prissy old fart; > but now that things seem to be slowing up, let me provide a few biographical > observations which I hope will not go so far as to become deconstructionist. > > The whole discussion about animals and symbols -- Chomsky, the Chimps in the > household with the letter and icon boards, John Lilly and his dolphin > language, etc. -- was something that Walker followed with eagerness and > interest. We (Walker and I) constantly argued over the matter, Walker > adopting with Aristotle and The Church the position that animals had no > souls (and there was an end on't) and me adopting quite the contrary > position which I had always associated with Theosophical Gnosticism, that > the universe (or all-that-is) is in a state of both physical and spiritual > evolution. And mixing into this lifelong debate was Walker's stout defense > of the notion that animals can't use symbols (despite Chomsky and the > household chimps, etc., and Lilly with his investigation of terciops > truncatus' click language -- possibly indicating to the contrary). > > My own argument inevitably ran to the notion that the symbol as we and > Peirce know it, is irrelevant to the debate and that communication and not > symbolization is the more proper touch-stone to get one to the concept of > evidence of the kind of consciousness that would betoken the existence of > animal-souls. Walker always felt that he prevailed in these contests because > he could fall back on "show me the symbol-making ability) and that for me > was the breakpoint, for while I couldn't show him a symbol emanating from an > animal (although with enough funding and sufficiently sensitive and complex > computers with enough RAM we may in time learn to talk to the dolphin or > translate whale-song) I could always rejoin that he couldn't be certain that > animals couldn't and didn't talk to each other; for our uncertainty is > grounded in the notion that just because they may have little interest in > talking to us, does not logically prove that they cannot talk to one > another. In ot her words, in good lawyer-like fashion, I could always > demonstrate that an absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of > absence. I can assure you, however that WP was head-over-heels in touch with > the problem and took a long and lively interest in it. > > For those bewildered by Gnosticism and what it is, search our archives of > about five years back using not only Gnostic as a word search tool but > Elaine Pagels and to a lesser degree Harold Bloom, whose works we discussed > thoroughly. At the end of that discussion I resolved never to get involved > in that fight again, as it simply produces (on this channel at any rate) a > good deal more heat than light. And the debate seemed fruitless to me for > another reason: which was that the RC proponents of antiGnosticism knew a > lot less about Gnosticism than I did (and do) about the Dogma and History > of the Roman Catholic Church. What was interesting (and horrible to me) in > the discussion was the virulence and mean-tempered attitude emanating at > that time from the antiGnostic position, a latter day resurrection of the > very same mortal combat which the church won with Valentinian and in winning > the victory -- physically obliterated the ancient Gnostics. Pagels refl ects > with great eloquence on that fact of this victory and speculates over what > the world might be like today, had the Gnostics prevailed at least to the > point of remaining alive past the sixth century CE. An additional > exploration might be taken up by anyone interested, by reading an > enthralling novel on the subject published the last year entitled The Years > of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson (Bantam-Random House). An > additional observation: in all my many discussions with Walker over these > matters, he NEVER raised the slightest banner of mean-tempered virulence but > was always the soul of interested courtesy. For further discussion of > Gnosticism and what it is, I refer you to Bloom's speculatively intriguing > American Gnosticism, but it is not nearly as informative at the basic level > of defining terms as the works of Elaine Pagels (The Gnostic Gospels and > Gnostic Paul). Google or Amazon will provide a useful bibliography complete > with price lists. For a useful chapter on Gnosticism, specifically in the > work of Percy (which may however leave you more puzzled after reading it > than before) see Eddie DuPuy's book Autobiography in Walker Percy -- if you > can find a copy. > > I am amused to the point of gentle mirth at the notion that Walker was a Jew > ab initio through his conversion to Rome. That in my view is stretching the > poetry of language just a little too far. (BTW Poets name things all the > time. Just think of Edward Lear's toeless Pobble QED). What Walker would > have said himself to this interesting error about boxing him in with the > Jews, was that on the contrary he was not a Jew, but a reconstructed bad > Presbyterian made over into a bad Roman Catholic. The wistful reverence for > Jewry that he displays repeatedly in the novels was just that: very wistful > and VERY reverent, which it occurs to me is roughly my own attitude toward > Rome but that is BTW; it equals being an indifferent Episcopalian. > > A Parthian shot on the subject of the animals. Anyone watching the last > season of The Sopranos (and who isn't?) may have some very interesting > insights to draw over how Tony's conflicted Catholic attitude to the > "Genesis dominion over the beasts" concept works in that most American of > myths in its current HBO state of becoming. This agon may be the only thing > that draws me back to it in its next season. I am suggesting that for us in > the business of the aesthesis of words, myths and stories in the public > mind, it's a pivot point well worth thinking about. One could assign grad > school papers of 20 K words on it... It could enliven one's grading period > to see what results. > > And a happy New Year to all. > > Nikki Barranger > David Beck "Life is what happens when you are making other plans." - John Lennon From brian at beachcitygas.com Sat Jan 4 01:09:11 2003 From: brian at beachcitygas.com (Brian N.) Date: Fri, 03 Jan 2003 22:09:11 -0800 Subject: [percy-l] "The Monkey in the Mirror" References: <029901c2b366$b24b2360$0301000a@AFAC955012> Message-ID: <3E167A87.7010509@beachcitygas.com> And on the lighter side (but too close to home?): > We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters > will eventually produce the entire works of Shakespeare. > Now, thanks to the Internet, > We know this is not true. > - Robert Wilensky > > From dabeck at iupui.edu Sat Jan 4 11:38:51 2003 From: dabeck at iupui.edu (David Alan Beck) Date: Sat, 4 Jan 2003 11:38:51 -0500 (EST) Subject: [percy-l] Re: animals, symbols, Gnosticism, Judaaica etc In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Sorry for the rant. I should've stuck with my vow not to respond. So much for turning the other cheek. David Beck "Life is what happens when you are making other plans." - John Lennon From PARLINS at culver.org Sat Jan 4 12:25:16 2003 From: PARLINS at culver.org (Parlin, Steven) Date: Sat, 4 Jan 2003 12:25:16 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] Gnosticisim, Science, and the Literary. Message-ID: <580A6654EC74D511B41600034779BEDE07058C4A@exchangeserver.culver.org> Jim, since Gnosticism is on the table again, it seems fitting to include it in a reply to your questions about the scientific and literary approaches to truth. I wasn't involved in the previous discussion on Gnosticism, but I think I can guess exactly how the arguments unfolded. I don't need to check the archives on this one. It's predictable enough. Aside from a few fashionable changes in dress here and there, the arguments really haven't changed much in, well, about 2000 years, give or take. Nevertheless, it seems perfectly fitting to include Gnosticism in this question about science, for this was one of Percy's primary concerns about our predicament; that is, we know more about the world now than ever before (ala gnosticism), and conversely know less about our selves and our place in the world ("Lost in the Cosmos"). And this has had its fatal consequences. The reason this struck me so poignantly was that I am currently working on my teaching evaluation portfolio for the school I work for, and one of the requirements is to articulate my philosophy of education. Subsequently, one of the themes I keep arriving at is this very distinction: We have given ourselves over to a kind of education that treats the world as an object to be dismembered, classified, manipulated and reshaped, and we have trusted in a way of knowing that provides us the illusion of having power over the world and ourselves. So, there it is: The scientific approach is a disordered attempt at mastery over Truth; The literary approach is one of obedient submission to the order of Truth. In fact, Percy repeatedly said that when he forced is writing, when he inserted himself into it and controlled it, when he was trying to make an argument in his fiction, he always produced garbage. He had to submit to the act of it and let the stories find themselves. And, to be sure, the scientific approach to truth is ultimately a form of Gnosticism, and I dare say a drive toward death -our "Thanatos Syndrome". Perhaps the most salient example of the fatal danger involved with this kind of Gnostic orientation to the world is revealed in the building of the atomic bomb. (Just one of many examples of this age). Even more horrifying than the detonation of the bomb was the Gnostic lust for knowledge expressed by the scientists themselves and the power it brought. Nowhere have I seen this so aptly expressed as in this quote from a celebrated physicist in The Day after Trinity, a film documentary about the team of American scientists who produced the first atomic bomb. "I have felt it myself. The glitter of nuclear weapons. It is irresistible if you come to them as a scientist. To feel it's there in your hands--to release the energy that fuels the stars. To let it do your bidding. To perform these miracles--to lift a million tons of rock into the sky. It is something that gives people an illusion of illimitable power and it is, in some ways, responsible for all our troubles, I would say--this what you might call technical arrogance that overcomes people when they see what they can do with their minds.1 " Hmmm...does this not smell like Gnostic rot? And it gets worse. Just prior to detonating the first atomic bomb there was fierce speculation and debate about the possibility of the explosion causing a chain reaction in the atmosphere that would have obliterated the entire world. But did they stop their "experiment?" Nope. Hardly. Filled with Gnostic-lust, the experiment went on as scheduled. The thirst for "knowing" and "controlling" was so overwhelming that they were willing to risk total self-annihilation. Am I "bewildered" by Gnosticism, Nikki? No. Not bewildered. Terrified is more like it. And, I am therefore zealously anti-Gnostic. Just as Percy was. He saw, better than any writer I know, precisely how toxic the Gnostic air has been for us and what the consequences have been. Not the slightest courtesy here. No apologies. Yet, Percy's respectful and gentle nature toward people is hardly surprising (Thank you, Karey, for providing anecdotal evidence). It was wrong-mindedness, not people, he berated with irony. In fact, you might say that his ferocity toward Gnosticism was so "mean-tempered" precisely because he loved humanity so much. Similarly, Nikki, if you find these remarks hurtful in any way, know that they are not directed toward you personally, but toward your Theosophical Gnostic ideology. I find it, not you, hideous. Unity in the Cosmos cannot be achieved through our own efforts to know things -who could look back on the twentieth century and think otherwise?-- but only through submission to the order that is revealed to us. Also, one last thing, in C.S. Lewis' Abolition of Man, he outlines very clearly how our struggle to master the world has only resulted in the loss of the very things that make us human. In the most monstrously ironic way, the Gnostic drive for mastery over self and nature is the very thing that is giving nature a mastery over us -though we haven't yet blown ourselves up, we might be slowly losing those very human attributes that keep us from doing it. (BTW: I think this fits in somewhere in the discussion about animals and language, for part of that discussion seems to work in the direction of denying the uniqueness of humanity, but I'm short on time today to flesh that out). Steve -----Original Message----- From: James Piat [mailto:piat1 at bellsouth.net] Sent: Thursday, January 02, 2003 11:05 AM To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org Subject: Re: [percy-l] "I don't pay much attention to the right or the left. . ." Wade Riddick wrote: > If you look at any given academic journal - especially in an area > like literary studies - "researchers" are largely asking themselves the > questions and answering the questions for themselves. I think you get > closer to "the truth" when you watch the idiotic freshmen ask their > professors innocent questions - at least until they're properly > intimidated. Dear Wade, Folks- With Brian I enjoyed your comments. You've got me wondering though just what role literary studies and literature in general play in getting at the "truth". For example, how does literature get at truth in a way that physics or scientific approaches do not. Is the difference primarily one of approach, the nature of the truth sought --or what? Especially I'm wondering about Percy's views on the distinction between the scientific and the literary. Seems to me he held there some truth or reality accessible to literature and the word in general which is simply not accessible to science --and that it is mistaken to hold the two approaches the same standards or assume they are interchangeable. Would such a view imply two different definitions of truth --or is the "fault" primarily in the approaches. Trying to think about such questions I find myself quickly becoming confused by the relationship between content and method (as well as subjective and objective) and I look forward to what other think. Cheers, Jim Piat -- An archive of all list discussion is available at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy/hypermail Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy From wriddick at usa.net Sat Jan 4 23:27:43 2003 From: wriddick at usa.net (Wade Riddick) Date: Sat, 4 Jan 2003 22:27:43 -0600 Subject: [percy-l] "The Monkey in the Mirror" In-Reply-To: <029901c2b366$b24b2360$0301000a@AFAC955012> Message-ID: All this blather and we still don't know what the monkey had to say? I hope it wasn't more of "" From mfrentz at bbn.com Sun Jan 5 08:45:27 2003 From: mfrentz at bbn.com (Mike Frentz) Date: Sun, 05 Jan 2003 08:45:27 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] AND...just one more post... References: <02e901c2b36e$a243c500$0301000a@AFAC955012> <3E161633.1020109@bbn.com> <03a101c2b380$ada51c20$0301000a@AFAC955012> Message-ID: <3E1836F7.9040904@bbn.com> Karey, You (or Newsweek rather...) presented a classic Peicean Triad of the sort: Republican (Representamen) / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ Conservative (Semiotic Object)------- "ill-dressed, unintelligent and slinking -- the sort of people who lynch Negroes, attend revivals, and fight and fornicate in the bushes afterwards (Interpretant) Whether Will Percy "meant" it *that* way or not, that's how it was presented now (Mahh Deahh, that trahangle was from the sixties, but..., come to think of it, it *does* appeah to be in pretty good shape, Ah think ah'll just use it anyway...) -- Wade's earlier comment about not getting a balanced view on FOX struck me curiously -- no argument, it's just that I would have put the NY Times, Wash. Post, NPR, ABC-NEWS, CBS, etc. *at least* no lower on his list. If you've ever attended a non-PC event (or, equivalently, watched it on C-SPAN [Yaay for C-SPAN!!]), and then seen how it was reported by the talking heads afterwards, you have no problem seeing how prevalent media bias is. Case in point: the pro-life march in Washington -- typically ~100,000 of the nicest people you'd ever want to meet vs. 199 multi-pierced/tattooed strange-ohs [that you'd blanch if they showed up to babysit your kid..] + 1 "normal person" as a frontman. Normal person gets more air-time than the 100,000. Consistently. Second case in point: I'll bet you that the number of votes that Alan Keyes got in the Republican primary correlated very strongly to the number of Republicans who actually watched the debate on C-SPAN. Phone calls afterwards were running 2 out of 3 enthusiastically in favor of Keyes. When you read about the debate the next day, it was hard to believe anybody but McCain and Bush actually particpated (but then the media were mystified by the "surprising showing" of Keyes in the actual primary). My 2c on Percy: people trying to "understand" Percy without first trying to understand THE Catholic view of the world must be fond of fool's errands -- it would be very hard to be successful with that approach, IMHO (and the Catholic viewpoint is *probably not at all* like what you think it is -- especially if you're still believing in NY Times' type fairy tales). An excellent primer on the Catholic worldview is Frank Sheed's "Theology and Sanity". Distilled Aquinas and Augustine. It may be a good study aid for students of Percy. I'm sure your brother-in-law is very bright, but he also has the distinct advantage of having a media without nearly as much built-in agenda (that's why things that are obvious to him, many Americans are still in the dark about..) Mike Karey L. Perkins wrote: > Mike -- > > I wasn't talking about politics, or Republicans, or Democrats -- > Newsweek was. I was talking about RACISM, and Percy's attitude > towards that. I agree Percy was interested in justice and not > labels. But Percy, and his family, are well-born, wealthy, Southern, > aristocratic and interested in preserving the interests of that world > -- which seemed liberal on race because it wanted to keep the black in > Mississippi, and happy to be in Mississippi, but had a kind of > paternalism that was, in the end, self-interested. While there was > certainly altruistic, compassionate, and "justice" motives in the > Percy family's fight against the KKK and those of that ilk, it was > also mixed with self-interested motives -- nothing (and no one) in > REAL life is plain, simple, and purely black and white. We're all > shades of gray. > > Read Tolson's biography, Ch. 3, "Uncle Will," and what great-uncle > LeRoy asked Uncle Will to do to the black refugees in the flood of > 1927. Percy was more progressive, but if you are equating my terms of > progressive/liberal with the Democrat then that is a mistake. A > liberal from Mississippi is hardly a liberal. > > I visited my sister's family (in England) for Christmas. My > brother-in-law is British (and a professor at Cambridge > University and quite bright) and he said he was thoroughly confused by > the Newsweek article. I asked why, he said because the American > parties switched in the middle, (as did the Brits also with their > parties), so Republicans and Democrats became something different than > what they were -- hard for him to follow. Read the article -- it's > good. And worth reading, if only in that it describes the world, > culture and values that Percy, and Strom Thurmond, and Trent Lott were > given. The Republicans HAD to get rid of Trent Lott -- regardless of > whether he still believed in the "Dixiecrat" platform of 1948 that > Strom Thurmond was running on -- because he propagated the image of > the racist Republican that would be the death toll of the party. I > personally happen to believe Trent Lott is a racist and meant what he > said -- as you see in the next week's news, where Lott said he learned > a lesson from this -- that he needed to change -- though wished he > hadn't had to learn it that way. > > By the way, on a personal note, I vote against Republican on pretty > much anything. That does not mean I think Percy would at all, nor was > I implying that. But I differ from Percy on a lot of things, > including a lot of political issues, including also his attitude > towards women, but not at all on his attitude toward race. > > Karey > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Mike Frentz > To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org > Sent: Friday, January 03, 2003 6:01 PM > Subject: Re: [percy-l] AND...just one more post... > > > Karey L. Perkins wrote: > >> In this case, Newsweek quotes from Will's Lanterns on the Levee to >> describe the liberal/progressive part of the state in contrast to the >> more conservative/backwards northern Mississippi, with which Lott >> associates himself. Will Percy describes, and the article quotes >> him, that part of the state as "ill-dressed, unintelligent and >> slinking -- the sort of people who lynch Negroes, attend revivals, >> and fight and fornicate in the bushes afterwards." >> >> However, Newsweek misses the better quote in capturing a Percy >> opinion -- Walker Percy's himself. His Signposts essays dwell >> considerably on racism and segregation -- timely of course >> considering the era of their writing -- and the Life in the South >> section was immensely illuminating to me, as a non-Southerner, on the >> problem Southerners had with integration (which Percy was for, of >> course). His discussion of the fact that the South had no public >> space probably goes as far to explain the problem as any I've heard yet. > >> I think the South's history of racism, his family's political >> heritage of political activism and "noblesse oblige" as he himself >> calls it, northern Mississippi's "backwards" political agendas that >> his southern-born relatives spent their lives battling, the fact that >> just a few years ago the Germans just barely failed attempt to >> decimate an entire race (and the U.S. did not enter the war to save >> the Jew, but for other interests), the heated racial conflicts and >> out-and-out riots of the 50's/60's, and the fact that much of this >> was playing out on his home state's front yard, such as James >> Meredith entering U. of Miss. -- all of this caused Percy to be >> intensely concerned about racism. >> > > Hogwash. I can't help but feel sometimes that peopleon this list > believe that if Percy were alive today he would be a Democrat. Even I > was a Democrat (Deathocrat, Damnednocrat..) around the time Percy > died. Percy certainly did not fit the demographics of the current > Democratic party if you can believe the color chart from the 2000 > election (big city, Northeast or Pacific coast). And his beliefs were > adamantly pro-life (e.g. Signposts 340) (which is why I had to finally > switch parties in '92, also flushing 100+ years of still rabid > Democratic heritage down the potty). > > I think Percy was most interested in justice, not political labels > ("If you want peace, work for justice" JP II). That's why Catholicism > was so important to him. Catholicism is about the pursuit of truth, > wherever it goes, rather than wherever it "was". (BTW, most fervent > Catholics are now Republicans if you believe the polls) > > The Republicans also did not start the Civil War to free the slave, > yet they did. Go figure on Lott's remark, it is certainly not > representative of the Republican party. Good riddance if there was > any truth to it. Nor are the Democrats symbolic of progressive > thinking (anymore) -- they now represent the special interests that > are the same bigoted special interests that Percy's ancestors fought. > Only the color has changed. > > > Mike > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karey at charter.net Sun Jan 5 14:29:10 2003 From: karey at charter.net (Karey L. Perkins) Date: Sun, 5 Jan 2003 14:29:10 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] AND...just one more post... References: <02e901c2b36e$a243c500$0301000a@AFAC955012> <3E161633.1020109@bbn.com> <03a101c2b380$ada51c20$0301000a@AFAC955012> <3E1836F7.9040904@bbn.com> Message-ID: <00cb01c2b4f0$b8e325c0$0301000a@AFAC955012> Mike, Today it's all about the image. That's our society today (more dominant in America than elsewhere a you say below). The image will make or break you, not who you really are, or what you really think, or what you'll really do. That's why Lott had to go -- whatever he actually believed. I just saw the movie "Simone" (with Al Pacino) which is a timely comment on our society -- Simone of course is an illusion, and the whole world is in love with her. (This is Percy's view on our fascination with stars, too.) This is what Peter Weir was saying in the "Truman Show" (and btw I love all his movies -- he is a genius, I think, and he predicted the whole "reality show" phenomenon with the Truman Show, before it ever happened. Ten years ago, who would have thought that something like the "The Osbournes" could happen, ant that they'd make a list of most influential people of the year.) The reality show pheonomenon IS the confusion of "real" with "image." I'm sure this also relates somehow to The Moviegoer in even more ways if someone can do that -- right now it's slipping my mind!! Journalists tend to be liberal so I don't mind the Time, Newsweek, NYTimes bias as much as someone else might. I can see why it would bug you. My dad is retired military, as conservative as they come (and despite it all a great guy) and he watches that horrible Irish guy on TV (Someone O'Reilly?) that invites his liberal guests on just to badger them and interrupt them. Ick. He doesn't care what they have to say, or to really discuss things, just to get his point across that his guest is "wrong." I have to leave the room. That's the problem with liberal/conservative or Republican/Democrat. It shouldn't be about the label, it should be about exploring the issue. I am a converted Catholic -- Steve asks if anyone else reads Percy because they're Catholic. I first read Percy at 18, before I became Catholic, and loved him -- for what he had to say about man (i.e.: humanity). He totally GOT it, as far as I was concerned. I became Catholic at 26 -- when I was attending a Baptist seminary, with the eventual goal of teaching theology (so of course I quit the seminary though really didn't have to!)-- but my becoming Catholic was not because of Percy (i.e: it was less of a causal relationship than a coincidental or synchronistic one), or not so much due to the theology, but because of the Catholic mass -- because of the sacraments. I was blown away by the Eucharist. The Catholics have something in the sacraments that we need -- and something happens in the sacraments that the Baptists are missing -- and Percy totally GOT that too. First few pages of Love in the Ruins. But I never would have known had I not gone to Catholic mass. I knew immediately I would be Catholic for the rest of my life. Of course an anthropologist can examine what the sacraments do on a psychological/cultural level, but I think something metaphysical is going on there. (Something triadic?) BTW, converted Catholics are like converted non-smokers -- much more rabid in their beliefs than cradle Catholics or those that never smoked!! It's been twenty years for me so I've somewhat mellowed. I think Percy gets Man (as in men and women), but doesn't get women as a gender. As far as David's question, is it because of abortion -- well that's opening up a can of worms, isn't it!! I think one day I'll write a post entitled "A View of A View of Abortion, with Something to Offend Everyone." Suffice it to say, it's not the black and white issue most conservatives (usually middle class to wealthy white males -- and not to state the obvious, but the very people willing to legislate the act would never actually have a need for an abortion) make it out to be. They're sort of like Marie Antoinette saying: "Let them eat cake." But that's not the reason Percy doesn't "get" women. The reason I don't think Percy understands women is what I'd said in an earlier post -- I thought I picked up a madonna/whore complex in his characterizations of women. I asked, no one responded, but now, reading Tolson's biography, and the Uncle Will chapter, that view is somewhat confirmed -- Tolson attributes Uncle Will's lifelong bachelorhood to his inability to reconcile the "image" of the pure women he admired (whom he could not be sexually attracted to) with the sexy women he could not love. I think there's a little bit of Uncle Will in Walker -- not so bad that he never married of course, but just look at his characterizations. I attribute this to his conservative Southern upbringing. Also, on a psychological level, I think the fact that there were three boys and a distant mother contributes to that phenomenon. I don't mean this disparagingly at all -- I've always known who Percy was, and sometimes been surprised that I chose him to study (why not Flannery O'Connor? or Maya Angelou? both of whom are wise ladies who also "get" it) but I think it's because he really has something to say about being a human being in the modern world, something that I'd like to say if I could. What I'm trying to figure out now is if his language theory is as "on the money" as his understanding of man in his novels. KP ----- Original Message ----- From: Mike Frentz To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2003 8:45 AM Subject: Re: [percy-l] AND...just one more post... Karey, You (or Newsweek rather...) presented a classic Peicean Triad of the sort: Republican (Representamen) / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ Conservative (Semiotic Object)------- "ill-dressed, unintelligent and slinking -- the sort of people who lynch Negroes, attend revivals, and fight and fornicate in the bushes afterwards (Interpretant) Whether Will Percy "meant" it *that* way or not, that's how it was presented now (Mahh Deahh, that trahangle was from the sixties, but..., come to think of it, it *does* appeah to be in pretty good shape, Ah think ah'll just use it anyway...) -- Wade's earlier comment about not getting a balanced view on FOX struck me curiously -- no argument, it's just that I would have put the NY Times, Wash. Post, NPR, ABC-NEWS, CBS, etc. *at least* no lower on his list. If you've ever attended a non-PC event (or, equivalently, watched it on C-SPAN [Yaay for C-SPAN!!]), and then seen how it was reported by the talking heads afterwards, you have no problem seeing how prevalent media bias is. Case in point: the pro-life march in Washington -- typically ~100,000 of the nicest people you'd ever want to meet vs. 199 multi-pierced/tattooed strange-ohs [that you'd blanch if they showed up to babysit your kid..] + 1 "normal person" as a frontman. Normal person gets more air-time than the 100,000. Consistently. Second case in point: I'll bet you that the number of votes that Alan Keyes got in the Republican primary correlated very strongly to the number of Republicans who actually watched the debate on C-SPAN. Phone calls afterwards were running 2 out of 3 enthusiastically in favor of Keyes. When you read about the debate the next day, it was hard to believe anybody but McCain and Bush actually particpated (but then the media were mystified by the "surprising showing" of Keyes in the actual primary). My 2c on Percy: people trying to "understand" Percy without first trying to understand THE Catholic view of the world must be fond of fool's errands -- it would be very hard to be successful with that approach, IMHO (and the Catholic viewpoint is *probably not at all* like what you think it is -- especially if you're still believing in NY Times' type fairy tales). An excellent primer on the Catholic worldview is Frank Sheed's "Theology and Sanity". Distilled Aquinas and Augustine. It may be a good study aid for students of Percy. I'm sure your brother-in-law is very bright, but he also has the distinct advantage of having a media without nearly as much built-in agenda (that's why things that are obvious to him, many Americans are still in the dark about..) Mike Karey L. Perkins wrote: Mike -- I wasn't talking about politics, or Republicans, or Democrats -- Newsweek was. I was talking about RACISM, and Percy's attitude towards that. I agree Percy was interested in justice and not labels. But Percy, and his family, are well-born, wealthy, Southern, aristocratic and interested in preserving the interests of that world -- which seemed liberal on race because it wanted to keep the black in Mississippi, and happy to be in Mississippi, but had a kind of paternalism that was, in the end, self-interested. While there was certainly altruistic, compassionate, and "justice" motives in the Percy family's fight against the KKK and those of that ilk, it was also mixed with self-interested motives -- nothing (and no one) in REAL life is plain, simple, and purely black and white. We're all shades of gray. Read Tolson's biography, Ch. 3, "Uncle Will," and what great-uncle LeRoy asked Uncle Will to do to the black refugees in the flood of 1927. Percy was more progressive, but if you are equating my terms of progressive/liberal with the Democrat then that is a mistake. A liberal from Mississippi is hardly a liberal. I visited my sister's family (in England) for Christmas. My brother-in-law is British (and a professor at Cambridge University and quite bright) and he said he was thoroughly confused by the Newsweek article. I asked why, he said because the American parties switched in the middle, (as did the Brits also with their parties), so Republicans and Democrats became something different than what they were -- hard for him to follow. Read the article -- it's good. And worth reading, if only in that it describes the world, culture and values that Percy, and Strom Thurmond, and Trent Lott were given. The Republicans HAD to get rid of Trent Lott -- regardless of whether he still believed in the "Dixiecrat" platform of 1948 that Strom Thurmond was running on -- because he propagated the image of the racist Republican that would be the death toll of the party. I personally happen to believe Trent Lott is a racist and meant what he said -- as you see in the next week's news, where Lott said he learned a lesson from this -- that he needed to change -- though wished he hadn't had to learn it that way. By the way, on a personal note, I vote against Republican on pretty much anything. That does not mean I think Percy would at all, nor was I implying that. But I differ from Percy on a lot of things, including a lot of political issues, including also his attitude towards women, but not at all on his attitude toward race. Karey ----- Original Message ----- From: Mike Frentz To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org Sent: Friday, January 03, 2003 6:01 PM Subject: Re: [percy-l] AND...just one more post... Karey L. Perkins wrote: In this case, Newsweek quotes from Will's Lanterns on the Levee to describe the liberal/progressive part of the state in contrast to the more conservative/backwards northern Mississippi, with which Lott associates himself. Will Percy describes, and the article quotes him, that part of the state as "ill-dressed, unintelligent and slinking -- the sort of people who lynch Negroes, attend revivals, and fight and fornicate in the bushes afterwards." However, Newsweek misses the better quote in capturing a Percy opinion -- Walker Percy's himself. His Signposts essays dwell considerably on racism and segregation -- timely of course considering the era of their writing -- and the Life in the South section was immensely illuminating to me, as a non-Southerner, on the problem Southerners had with integration (which Percy was for, of course). His discussion of the fact that the South had no public space probably goes as far to explain the problem as any I've heard yet. I think the South's history of racism, his family's political heritage of political activism and "noblesse oblige" as he himself calls it, northern Mississippi's "backwards" political agendas that his southern-born relatives spent their lives battling, the fact that just a few years ago the Germans just barely failed attempt to decimate an entire race (and the U.S. did not enter the war to save the Jew, but for other interests), the heated racial conflicts and out-and-out riots of the 50's/60's, and the fact that much of this was playing out on his home state's front yard, such as James Meredith entering U. of Miss. -- all of this caused Percy to be intensely concerned about racism. Hogwash. I can't help but feel sometimes that peopleon this list believe that if Percy were alive today he would be a Democrat. Even I was a Democrat (Deathocrat, Damnednocrat..) around the time Percy died. Percy certainly did not fit the demographics of the current Democratic party if you can believe the color chart from the 2000 election (big city, Northeast or Pacific coast). And his beliefs were adamantly pro-life (e.g. Signposts 340) (which is why I had to finally switch parties in '92, also flushing 100+ years of still rabid Democratic heritage down the potty). I think Percy was most interested in justice, not political labels ("If you want peace, work for justice" JP II). That's why Catholicism was so important to him. Catholicism is about the pursuit of truth, wherever it goes, rather than wherever it "was". (BTW, most fervent Catholics are now Republicans if you believe the polls) The Republicans also did not start the Civil War to free the slave, yet they did. Go figure on Lott's remark, it is certainly not representative of the Republican party. Good riddance if there was any truth to it. Nor are the Democrats symbolic of progressive thinking (anymore) -- they now represent the special interests that are the same bigoted special interests that Percy's ancestors fought. Only the color has changed. Mike From piat1 at bellsouth.net Mon Jan 6 10:18:12 2003 From: piat1 at bellsouth.net (James Piat) Date: Mon, 6 Jan 2003 10:18:12 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] Gnosticisim, Science, and the Literary. References: <580A6654EC74D511B41600034779BEDE07058C4A@exchangeserver.culver.org> Message-ID: <002a01c2b596$d4502820$0101a8c0@D68RS511> Dear Steve, I am not familiar with the pros and cons of Gnosticism and have not wittingly been part of that discussion. I say this not to criticize the discussion but merely to clarify my role in it. OTOH I am following and enjoying your interesting and informative comments about literary vs scientific approaches. I appreciate the mere fact that you find the subject worthy of comment. And I agree with much of what you say about the value of humility vs arrogance. I think however I may be more sympathetic to the scientific approach than you seem to be. I think, for example, that the scientific approach is humble. In any case I've commented on a few places where you and I seem to see the distinctions between the literary and the scientific somewhat ifferently -- not to deny the truth in what you say (as I happen to think what you say is true) but more to further the discussion. > So, there it is: The scientific approach is a disordered attempt at mastery > over Truth; The literary approach is one of obedient submission to the order > of Truth. Interesting! You seem to equate science with attempts to master the truth and literature with attempts to understand truth. I think science is most scientific when its practitioners submit to the data. I think what we know as individuals is, in a sense, self evident or evealed -- I take science as an attempt to collate these individual experiences or observations in such a way so as to help determine what is true for us all -- a bit like democracy at its best works in the political domain. >In fact, Percy repeatedly said that when he forced is writing, > when he inserted himself into it and controlled it, when he was trying to > make an argument in his fiction, he always produced garbage. He had to > submit to the act of it and let the stories find themselves. Yes, I find this to be true even in my own attempts to express something. The more I try to impose my order or view of things the less satisfying the results. Better to submit to the data --even when all the data seems to come from within! >Unity in the Cosmos cannot be > achieved through our own efforts to know things -who could look back on the > twentieth century and think otherwise?-- but only through submission to the > order that is revealed to us. > I think one could also make the opposite argument -- that many of the horrors of the twentieth century were the result of those who thought they had the revealed truth -- rather than by those who sought to know the things. > Also, one last thing, in C.S. Lewis' Abolition of Man, he outlines very > clearly how our struggle to master the world has only resulted in the loss > of the very things that make us human. In the most monstrously ironic way, > the Gnostic drive for mastery over self and nature is the very thing that is > giving nature a mastery over us -though we haven't yet blown ourselves up, > we might be slowly losing those very human attributes that keep us from > doing it. Sounds to me a bit like the communist argument against capitalism. Does he credit Marx? Cheers, Jim Piat From piat1 at bellsouth.net Mon Jan 6 10:30:57 2003 From: piat1 at bellsouth.net (James Piat) Date: Mon, 6 Jan 2003 10:30:57 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] AND...just one more post... References: <02e901c2b36e$a243c500$0301000a@AFAC955012> <3E161633.1020109@bbn.com> <03a101c2b380$ada51c20$0301000a@AFAC955012> <3E1836F7.9040904@bbn.com> <00cb01c2b4f0$b8e325c0$0301000a@AFAC955012> Message-ID: <003001c2b598$9bfb2860$0101a8c0@D68RS511> > What I'm trying to figure out now is if his language theory is as "on the > money" as his understanding of man in his novels. > > KP Dear Karey, For what it's worth, I think Percy's language theory is very much rooted in the same religious convictions as his theory of man. BTW, why do you suppose the converted are often more zealous that those born in a faith? Jim Piat From PARLINS at culver.org Mon Jan 6 14:54:14 2003 From: PARLINS at culver.org (Parlin, Steven) Date: Mon, 6 Jan 2003 14:54:14 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] Gnosticisim, Science, and the Literary. Message-ID: <580A6654EC74D511B41600034779BEDE07058C4C@exchangeserver.culver.org> Jim, Yeah, I thought of trying clarify my point about science before I sent that last rant, but I thought it might be implicitly expressed. Apparently, I was wrong about that. I never meant to indicate that science itself is evil. Science is neutral, and can neither be good nor evil, arrogant nor humble, in itself. It's how science is employed that is either salutary or evil. It's the gnostic lust for knowledge and control over nature, largely expressed in the sciences, that is evil. Knowing is only good if tempered by humility. But its foolish to think that knowledge alone will or can heal. To know the good does not result in doing the good. To know a map does not necessary mean to follow a map. Yeah, you could look back on the last century and say that those who thought they had revealed truth contributed to the mayhem. But, ultimately anyone you might be referring to who might have claimed (or even might have thought) they were obeying revealed truth were still obeying their own sense of knowing and having control over things. The fact that some may have been mistaken due to their own arrogant blindness doesn't mean that revealed truth is not the order that should be followed and obeyed. You see, we can't blame the map if people fail to read it correctly. Billions of people can fail to interpret and obey the map (or a compass) correctly, but that says nothing of the correctness of the map (or compass) itself. It just means that billions of people are "cartographically illiterate" and don't know or care to know how to read the map (or compass). Some reject the map outright even after seeing its truth. However, if the illiterate choose to redesign the map (or compass) to suit their own needs, they will find that they are not only still lost, but without any hope of finding their way at all, for the landscape does not change (and neither do the poles). Of course the rejoinder here is that we can and should alter the landscape and shift the poles at our choosing -Gnosticism-for we are in control of our own destiny. Instead of admitting we are Lost in the Cosmos and need maps and compasses -and dare I say authorities to tell us how to read them-we either ignore the compass or recalibrate them or redesign them according to our own desires. And, since there are so damn many of us on this planet, our own desires are not only going to be in conflict with the revealed landscape itself, but with each other. If my altered compass or map is in conflict with yours, what is left for us but war? So, can't blame revelation. Nope. A lot of blood has been shed by those who have interpreted or refashioned it for themselves, but no blood has ever been shed by those who have sincerely submitted to the established order of the Cosmos. Steve -----Original Message----- From: James Piat [mailto:piat1 at bellsouth.net] Sent: Monday, January 06, 2003 10:18 AM To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org Subject: Re: [percy-l] Gnosticisim, Science, and the Literary. Dear Steve, I am not familiar with the pros and cons of Gnosticism and have not wittingly been part of that discussion. I say this not to criticize the discussion but merely to clarify my role in it. OTOH I am following and enjoying your interesting and informative comments about literary vs scientific approaches. I appreciate the mere fact that you find the subject worthy of comment. And I agree with much of what you say about the value of humility vs arrogance. I think however I may be more sympathetic to the scientific approach than you seem to be. I think, for example, that the scientific approach is humble. In any case I've commented on a few places where you and I seem to see the distinctions between the literary and the scientific somewhat ifferently -- not to deny the truth in what you say (as I happen to think what you say is true) but more to further the discussion. > So, there it is: The scientific approach is a disordered attempt at mastery > over Truth; The literary approach is one of obedient submission to the order > of Truth. Interesting! You seem to equate science with attempts to master the truth and literature with attempts to understand truth. I think science is most scientific when its practitioners submit to the data. I think what we know as individuals is, in a sense, self evident or evealed -- I take science as an attempt to collate these individual experiences or observations in such a way so as to help determine what is true for us all -- a bit like democracy at its best works in the political domain. >In fact, Percy repeatedly said that when he forced is writing, > when he inserted himself into it and controlled it, when he was trying to > make an argument in his fiction, he always produced garbage. He had to > submit to the act of it and let the stories find themselves. Yes, I find this to be true even in my own attempts to express something. The more I try to impose my order or view of things the less satisfying the results. Better to submit to the data --even when all the data seems to come from within! >Unity in the Cosmos cannot be > achieved through our own efforts to know things -who could look back on the > twentieth century and think otherwise?-- but only through submission to the > order that is revealed to us. > I think one could also make the opposite argument -- that many of the horrors of the twentieth century were the result of those who thought they had the revealed truth -- rather than by those who sought to know the things. > Also, one last thing, in C.S. Lewis' Abolition of Man, he outlines very > clearly how our struggle to master the world has only resulted in the loss > of the very things that make us human. In the most monstrously ironic way, > the Gnostic drive for mastery over self and nature is the very thing that is > giving nature a mastery over us -though we haven't yet blown ourselves up, > we might be slowly losing those very human attributes that keep us from > doing it. Sounds to me a bit like the communist argument against capitalism. Does he credit Marx? Cheers, Jim Piat -- An archive of all list discussion is available at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy/hypermail Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy From mfrentz at bbn.com Mon Jan 6 16:16:33 2003 From: mfrentz at bbn.com (Mike Frentz) Date: Mon, 06 Jan 2003 16:16:33 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] AND...just one more post... References: <02e901c2b36e$a243c500$0301000a@AFAC955012> <3E161633.1020109@bbn.com> <03a101c2b380$ada51c20$0301000a@AFAC955012> <3E1836F7.9040904@bbn.com> <00cb01c2b4f0$b8e325c0$0301000a@AFAC955012> <003001c2b598$9bfb2860$0101a8c0@D68RS511> Message-ID: <3E19F231.8010304@bbn.com> James Piat wrote: >>What I'm trying to figure out now is if his language theory is as "on the >>money" as his understanding of man in his novels. >> >>KP >> >> Karey, Amen (to virtually all you said). I'm scratching my head about Percy's language theory as well (I just received Peirce's CP in the mail on Saturday, just finished Merrell's book on Peirce, Signs, and Meaning). I'm convinced there's something there (as have many others before me..). It's an addiction, I tell you.. > >Dear Karey, > >For what it's worth, I think Percy's language theory is very much rooted in >the same religious convictions as his theory of man. > >BTW, why do you suppose the converted are often more zealous that those born >in a faith? > >Jim Piat > > Jim, The perspective from a cradle Catholic (lifelong practicing, "always" [i.e. once the adolescent leap-of-faith surmounted] a believer , but only recently on fire [Scott Hahn was responsible]) -- the RCC has done a *terrible* job catechising for several generations now. Don't know if that's looking at things from an edumacated perspective vs. the working class roots that the majority of our grandparents probably had, but catechesis is in a pitiful state compared to the average educational levels of our society today. The Confirmation classes at my parish are ABYSMAL. The teachers and even the "teachers of the teachers" don't know enough to teach. My wife and I were so aghast at the curriculum we were given (literally: "is God more like a golf ball or a Nerf ball" & "just love one another"-type nauseating pap), that we ad-libbed a curriculum based on the Catechism and the kids (ages 13-16 LOVED it). We were shocked. The majority of their parents came to us in amazement wanting to know what we were doing and to keep it up. There's a beauty there that most of us totally miss, just because there's no one there to educate us (of course the irony is, that after two years of teaching we were literally fired because the DRE didn't believe the Catechism either. The beatitudes are timeless.). My wife is working on publishing her own curriculum now. "Will" is all you need to love God (being ignorant isn't a sin) but, once the "Intellect" grows as well, the love seems to intensify immensely (ala Sheed). I think many converts by necessity have to "get it", in order to even bother to get "it" (so statistically speaking they'd comprise the majority of zealots given the lukewarmness of the pews). The vast majority of lay hosts on EWTN shows are converts, not cradles. (Not speaking for you in any way, Karey, just my usual 2 1/2 c..). Best, Mike >-- > >An archive of all list discussion is available at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy/hypermail > >Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wriddick at usa.net Tue Jan 7 02:17:00 2003 From: wriddick at usa.net (Wade Riddick) Date: Tue, 7 Jan 2003 01:17:00 -0600 Subject: [percy-l] "I don't pay much attention to the right or the left. . ." In-Reply-To: <3E1394E9.90903@beachcitygas.com> References: Message-ID: As far as scientific and literary pursuits, I wouldn't go so far as to classify one as mastery and the other as not. There's a great deal of overlap. Most great scientists don't get very far without a creative edge and a desire to think outside the box and take risks. That means a lot of failures you never hear about. When you're playing on the cutting edge of science with a real problem with no obvious resolution, you are playing with a great unknown and you're trying to read a lot from contexts. Science is all about stripping context from a situation and reducing the relationships to the lowest common denominator so you can repeat the experiment, so you can distill knowledge and pass it along. In everything else from social science to a plot, it's not possible to reverse the arrow of time and repeat things by changing variables here and there. Knowledge gets revealed and you have to do your best with what you've got. I'd say that leaves room for forgiveness; it becomes a necessity. Imperfect people acting with imperfect information don't understand all the consequences of their actions and they're bound to make mistakes. Interpretation and context come into play whenever the model doesn't fit or can't fit. You can examine the way individual actors behave in a small auction and derive certain rules about how people behave psychologically and in small groups. You can't add all that up to make sense of things at the macroeconomic level - at least not easily or absolutely. You can even derive proofs on the limits even the best models will have on predicting the system's future behavior. There are a lot of trade-offs now in modeling - how much do you want to pay in computing time, how far into the future do you need to see, how accurate does it need to be? While Hitler liked to think of himself as a scientist, let's face it: the Nazis were burning books they couldn't write, much less read and understand. I think a lot of bullies have appropriated the cloak of science to speak with authority. After all, as we add more people to the population and more avenues of communication, it becomes increasingly difficult to say a thing that needs to be said and be believed. How do you know to believe something when someone says it? What we have is a game of information - and without proper regulation, Gresham's law applies. Bad money drives out good money. Reputations crumble when not properly maintained. Did anyone prone to doubt the legitimacy of the Supreme Court's decision in _Bush v. Gore_ change their mind when certain Justices' children got jobs from one of the litigants? Will anyone ever trust again what a stock analyst from an investment bank has to say when his bank has investment business with the stock at issue? Technical analysis of stock trading is a bunch of statistical bullshit and yet people continue to spout is like a proven science. None of its foundations are really valid. (But it does do one important thing which economists still refuse to do and that is take into account aggregate supply and demand for selling stock. If economists did this, then they'd be moving the discipline of high finance too close to survey-dominated disciplines like psychology and sociology. They don't want to accept the idea that irrational psychology affects people's economic behavior and it has to be measured by asking questions. If they do, several generations of "scientific" economics papers have to be thrown out the window.) As I talk to others about how horribly my life has been maimed by outright medical incompetence and how I'm still unable to get adequate treatment for my worst problem, TMJ, I've come across all sorts of people with similar stories. Some have turned to alternative medicine. They know their own doctors have lied to them about things as lowly as low fat, high carb diets. They figure how worse can things get if they see an 'alternative' practitioner? And, indeed, some of these 'alternative' practitioners are at least reading the latest scientific papers on certain disorders and staying current. Still, with any medicine, caveat emptor. It's here where I think science gets its dirty name among the rest of us unwashed. We fail to distinguish between researchers and engineers. We don't like to think of our neurologists as the same sort of people who write Windows code that drops us into the blue screen of death, but most neurologists don't do original research and they're just working from cookbook recipes handed down to them. Any time an engineer can hide behind science to keep their shoddy workmanship from being questioned, they will. A good scientist, like a good writer, knows to ask those questions. What if things are different than what they tell us in school? Why is this anomaly here? What if this character made different choices? What if the world was a little different? What if the world *is* different than we think it to be? Context and bias and all of these factors may not hold over in very repetitious experiments when theories are verified but it's pretty important stuff when you're dealing with the unknown. Whether you're formulating new theories of reality or you're simply a reader in the middle of a novel, it's that element of surprise and revelation that you feed upon. What's behind the next corner? What's that lurking in the shadows? Turn the next page and read what's printed in the great book of life. It might require a certain professional diligence and the path might be strewn with the corpses of better men who gave up their day job to be poets or dally in cold fusion, but it's definitely not a pursuit in the same class as accounting - although to watch Enron go up in smoke, clearly we're bedeviled by a group of accountants who see themselves more as frustrated artists. Then again, rather than the quest for truth dependent on revelations and lucky breaks I think Arthur Anderson was more attracted to certain social aspects of the contemporary art scene which substitute celebrity for talent. (And if you want talentless celebrities just turn on any one of the hot new reality shows where costs have been cut by transforming drama from a story-telling enterprise to an amateur sport. Reconstructing a new reality which seems more real because we wore out the old reality. Did we really wear it out or did it wear us out? It doesn't matter. We'll pick up a new one next time we're at the store. Consumption will give us our fix.) In a profession which requires an adherence to "standards" and where deviations in the design of a bridge or the treatment of a patient can result in death, creativity is a little more frowned upon. To a certain extent I think you see this lack of entrepreneurship even in academia. Witness how we teach our graduate students. Do we broaden their fields of knowledge or do we narrow them down to a few areas of expertise. Which is better as far as communicating knowledge which is useful in the real world? Is it better to train an economist to have some knowledge of psychology, politics and statistics or just train one with three times the mathematical skills? The answer's obvious to anyone with an eye on the job market - unless you're willing to go into business for yourself. I can remember a conversation I had with Babin too. I wanted to write a paper comparing and contrasting the family structures in Faulkner's "Barn Burning", a short story from Anderson's "The Egg" and Oates' "Where are you going? Where have you been?" and use it to draw some view of how American families had changed over time. Babin said that would be great... but that's not what an English literature class was all about. Maybe in sociology. Of course, I know what they would say in a sociology class: "That would be great... maybe for an English literature class." I've long since forgotten everything else he said to me during the semester but because I had atypical teachers in the honors program at LSU who did this type of analysis all the time, this exchange stuck with me by way of offering a contrast of what "normal" academic life would probably be like. And that's fine. If there weren't gaps, there wouldn't be room for entrepreneurs to move in and start looking for gold in all that shadowy dark matter between the disciplines. But is knowledge going to change more as time goes forward or change less? How will we know what's important and relevant if we're only trained to think in one discipline - if fences are built up and we're told to stay on our side? You can't speak with authority about treating a disease because, well, you've only *had* the disease and you're not a doctor. We're going to deprive you of legitimacy because of that. No Larry King for you... well, maybe if you made money on a book or you're secretly paid by a pharmaceutical advertiser (but then we've only confused market success for constructing a logical argument. It doesn't matter if you're right and a peon. You're still a peon.) "Mommy? Why is it called a value stock if it keeps dropping?" "Well, it's like a shoe sale, honey. The more it drops in price, the more of a value it is." "I thought investments were supposed to go up, Mommy?" "That's a nice lad. Go play with Al Gore and leave Mommy alone." Doesn't that about sum it up in the press corps today? We ought to yank our universities out of the millennium-old rut they're in. There needs to be a more advanced degree where students focus on coursework in an area each of science, business, liberal arts, mathematics, so on and so forth. Forget the dissertation. We need electrical engineers who can speak Chinese, understand historical changes in stock market regulation and take into account the psychology of learning when they design a new product. We need lawyers who can tell if a chemical industry "expert" is spewing bull on the stand and doctors who can manage their own books and buy real estate without inspiring snickers. For ten bucks a month, I know how to cut your TNF-alpha levels in half using just one commonly found herb. For $1000 a month, big drug companies will offer rheumatoid arthritis sufferers a shot of Remicade which will take care of 95% of TNF-a. Of course, it's more cost effective to treat diseases before they occur. So how much money do you think is spent getting people to change their diets and exercise more? Speaking of trusting the messenger and games of information, do you really think if a bevy of horny young nymphomaniacs airlifted themselves into your living room every time you consumed the right six-pack that anyone would ever have to advertise beer? The product would fly of the shelves on simple word of mouth. What's the truth? The truth is, alcohol tends to be an addictive product. Half of all alcohol sales are to alcoholics. One beer a night won't be as good as one glass or red wine a night, but it will improve your health. Much more than one beer will dramatically harm it. You think beer companies have a financial incentive to encourage self-restraint? It's a good thing we don't actually sell sex in this country. What is there left we could sell it with? There's certainly a role for prescription drugs in medicine, but is it the only role? It is if the only people paying for doctors' continuing education are drug companies. Some of you won't notice either way because you're always well. For the rest of us, it makes all the difference. So when you sit there and start asking a doctor complicated questions about a complicated condition and they get short with you... take it personally. It's certainly not any part of any "science." It's a psychological failing. It's different I think in the law, which is all about judging conflicts of interest, broken contracts and failure and where things are in constant flux, not because of logical inconsistencies but because the world the law has to govern is itself in flux. When you go to a lawyer and they don't know the answer, they look it up and bill you for the time. If it's not in an area they practice, they know something they can refer you to. There's even a professional review board, a code of ethics about what you can charge clients and how you should conduct yourself. You go before other people - common people - and you have to argue your case in a way they can understand and there's always someone picking it apart. When you go to a doctor with something mysterious and they can't figure it out right away, suddenly that image of a detective on a trek for the truth vanishes. The first question is, do you have insurance. If you don't, they charge you more since they figure there's no company to argue with. When they run out of the tests in their specialty and still don't know what it is, they don't pick up a book and learn new science. They don't sit down and ask, well, what are all the biochemical suspects which would lead to swelling of someone's hands. If it ain't in their cookbook, it doesn't go in the stew. They say go see someone else - we don't know exactly who, but go see someone else. And they'll run you around in circles for months and years like that when it's just cheaper to pay one guy to sit down and work it out from scratch for you. That's what a lawyer would do. "I don't know anything about problems of insulin resistant microvascular tort law. But at $150 an hour, I'll solve it for you." You know what? It would be a hell of a lot cheaper if we always did it this way. Law school prepares you to realize how much you don't know and it prepares you to find it out. If you pass the buck, you lose business. Doctors don't approach their profession as an entrepreneurial apprenticeship because they've never structured their schools around the simple basis that knowledge changes. You argue with your professor until a fact is learned and a proper diagnosis made... and then it's learned. You go out and practice and that's that. If anything, it's the unorthodox doctors who become successful who get hauled before any review boards - even if they're right. That's perfect interest group behavior. As sick as I was, I spotted it a mile away. Since many people with one medical problem often have another and they interact, doctors who don't understand the basis for these disorders can be deadly. For instance, a doctor might prescribe an NSAID for a patient with TMJ - a class of disorders where candidiasis is common (yeast in the sinuses) - not knowing that NSAIDs are contraindicated for patients with TMJ. They do this because there's nobody else there to argue with them. You go into a courtroom with lawyers determined to beat each other. You go into an examining room with one single doctor. You know the difference between God and a federal judge, right? God doesn't think He's a federal judge. God doesn't think He's a doctor, either. Let's say you go back to a doctor who actually knows sinus infections are caused by yeast and instead of the normal antibiotics, they also address the underlying yeast overgrowth in your intestines by prescribing an additional anti-fungal. But, oops, they've given you Cipro which has the effect of upregulating one of the matrix metalloproteinases which dissolves collagen - which might be OK in a normal person but with TMJ you already have plenty of collagen erosion. Or say you're treating a diabetic with a foot infection and you know periodontal disease is common in diabetics but you don't know quite why because you don't read the latest research now that you're out of school. It's your turn at the top of the fraternity bossing others around and making money instead of getting hazed yourself. You forget to read that doxycycline is used to treat periodontal disease because of its downregulation of MMP-9 and instead you prescribe Cipro which kills the infection but has even worse consequences for tendons and teeth. Welcome to my life. I need two hands to count up the *classes* of drugs that have been misprescribed for me. Why? I simply trusted that doctors knew more than I did. They don't. They may be smarter than I am... but not when they're lazy. I can understand damage done to me because there wasn't enough information at the time to make a guess about what was going on. I can't forgive the rest. They don't even think they've done anything wrong. That old arrogance remains. There are any number of substances I could inject into my jaw to treat the temporomandibular joint, but none of them are approved by the FDA. Some of them would be incredibly cheap, too, and they all show incredible potential. They make sense from the standpoint of cellular studies of diseased joints and they make sense from the standpoint of foreign clinical studies which have established their effectiveness. And who teaches TMJ treatment in the US and who reviews new treatments? Surgeons. Historically there's been about a 1-3% success rate for TMJ surgery, but despite superoxide dismutase injections being 70-80% effective on problem cases in other countries, surgery remains approved and an SOD doesn't. Same for hyaluronic acid injections and other things. You think heart surgeons who make $100K on a bypass want any competition from $1000 in EDTA chelation shots? Hell no. And if you don't know anything about statistics, you'd never know how they were cooking their study designs to "prove" surgery was superior. Hell, I can't even handle numbers again yet and even I can tell by the way some of these studies have been designed what their problems are. If you frame the question and control the agenda, you're out of the woods before the fight even starts. That's OK. I can play the game too. When I realized the dentist could only shoot me up with anesthetic, I looked into other substances which scavenged free radicals like an SOD. Lidocaine happened to be pretty good at tackling oxidation and - what do you know? - it actually worked. The whole process took me several months to figure out since a lot of my neurons were oxidized too and I couldn't concentrate but, hey, here I am a sick guy and I got to a place most healthy doctors won't go to on their own. Am I some sort of modern day parable - the patient so sick only he could treat himself? Something like that? Sure, I know mistakes are not supposed to happen again and again like they did in my case, but they have. Maybe as science progresses, there will be fewer stories like mine to tell. But saying medicine has standards and practical oversight doesn't change the fact that medicine is particularly poorly organized as a social endeavor. The auditing and supervisory measures are inadequate. There's nothing much in place to check conflicts of interest. The means of disseminating new research don't work. Mostly there's no adequate collection of data. You buy a DVD at Walmart and that information goes into a national computer, a field in a spreadsheet is notched up and the decisions of purchasing managers are altered accordingly. And what happens if the numbers on the Worldcom balance sheet look a little funny? Do institutional shareholders do anything? (Actually they did in this case. They sued and the Republican judge who was a relative of the RNC head rejected the suit as baseless - *with prejudice* - a year before the company bellyflopped for exactly the shenanigans alleged. Like I said. Adult supervision counts. We are our brother's keeper.) What happens if the medicine the doctor gave you actually worked? Do they call you back six months later, collect that information and report it back? Why not? The car company calls you up to see if you're happy with your new purchase. They want to know what color you'd like to see the next model in. Hell, they spend millions trying to work out what will be hot next year. That's because the balance of power is with the consumer and not the patient. Do you think a drug company would ever collect data on the appropriateness of their drug for certain disorders? You think sick as a dog when you can't think straight you can suddenly brush up on everything you need to know and argue that a given medicine is contraindicated or that you're not "psychosomatic?" It's harder for a doctor to get sued if he tells you you're nuts and you should see a psychiatrist first. Better to do nothing, right? First do no harm? Better to blame the shrink? Let's say you do get a bottle of pills instead of the couch trip. You're going to get the medicine, take it and figure the doctor has already checked the fine print on the bottle, aren't you? And when you die because of that mistake - or maybe the pharmacist just plain couldn't read his handwriting - who will you run to? Will your family think to check the bottle? Will they have the education to do the research? Will they have the balls to ask questions or will the high priests of everything biological have properly intimidated them from the start? Easy, you say? No problem? Of course you can spot that. Well, I kind of fooled you. What if you don't die but three years later you develop really complicated problems - and you weren't on one medication but five? Do you keep your life together in a spreadsheet like that? Will you think to make the connection? Will you have the proper training even if you have the records? Will you know how to think for yourself? Are we teaching our kids how to address their ignorance on their own when they get their degrees? Should we be teaching "truth" for an incomplete secular world or should we be teaching a constant process for getting there? It's not the easy lies which are hard to pick apart. You go into a murder interrogation with six suspects and you know while one of them probably did it,they'll all tell you they didn't. You have to collect independent evidence to build up an argument... to make sense of it all. Isn't that what all these debates have been about the last few weeks - making sense? Everywhere I look it seems the notion that man is fallible has fallen out of fashion. People don't make mistakes. OK, people make mistakes but they don't chuck their ethics in a moment of weakness. OK, they chuck their ethics but they don't do it maliciously and deliberately. Well, OK, they do it maliciously and deliberately but only if they're different than us, see - you know, they grow beards, speak a funny language and have strange customs. Why are we even playing these games? I'm sick and tired of journalists who don't ask questions. What good are they if they don miniskirts, grab pompoms and cheer the markets? Like my political economy professor said, why do we even report up days as good news? Stocks go up. Stocks go down. People make money. People lose money. Who are we to judge? And yet we get, "every day in every way I'm getting better and better..." Every day the war with Iraq seems to get cheaper and shorter - and we haven't even fought it yet. Every day the unemployment rate is falling... and so is the employment rate - but that's good too! I swear I haven't seen such an unhappy set of factors foreign and domestic converging since the '20s and '30s - not that anybody'd tell us if they noticed. From brian at beachcitygas.com Wed Jan 8 11:21:24 2003 From: brian at beachcitygas.com (Brian N.) Date: Wed, 08 Jan 2003 08:21:24 -0800 Subject: [percy-l] "I don't pay much attention to the right or the left. . ." References: Message-ID: <3E1C5004.4060004@beachcitygas.com> Thanks, Dr. Tom More Riddick. I especially liked: "It's a good thing we don't actually sell sex in this country. What is there left we could sell it with?" I visulize you sitting in your office gazing out on the ox yard watching the martins as the musings of your mind pour onto the page. What, by the way, is in that desk drawer? Thanks for you thoughts. From PARLINS at culver.org Wed Jan 8 11:39:18 2003 From: PARLINS at culver.org (Parlin, Steven) Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2003 11:39:18 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] Lab chimp speaks his own language Message-ID: <580A6654EC74D511B41600034779BEDE07058C53@exchangeserver.culver.org> Here's an interesting wrinkle in the Kanzie debate. I have't formed an opinion yet, but thought I'd throw it to the list to chew on. Steve Lab chimp speaks his own language 10:15 02 January 03 Exclusive from New Scientist http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993218 A bonobo has surprised his trainers by appearing to make up his own "words". It is the first report of an ape making sounds that seem to hold their meaning across different situations, and the latest challenge to the orthodox view that animals do not have language.Kanzi is an adult bonobo kept at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He has grown up in captivity among humans, and is adept at communicating with symbols. He also understands some spoken English, and can respond to phrases such as "go out of the cage" and "do you want a banana?"Jared Taglialatela and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, who work with Kanzi, noticed that he was making gentle noises during his interactions with them. "We wanted to know if there was any rhyme or reason to when they were produced," says Taglialatela.So his team studied 100 hours of videotape showing Kanzi's day-to-day interactions and analysed the sounds he made at various times. They picked situations in which the bonobo's actions were unambiguous: for example, while he was eating a banana, pointing to the symbol for "grapes", or responding to a request to go outside by leaving the cage.They identified four sounds that Kanzi made in different contexts - banana, grapes, juice and yes. In each of these contexts, Kanzi made the same sound. "We haven't taught him this," says Taglialatela. "He's doing it on his own." References 31. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992678 32. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992662 33. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991430 34. http://archive.newscientist.com/ 35. http://www.gsu.edu/~wwwlrc/biographies/kanzi.html 36. http://www.biology.gsu.edu/depart/faculty/srumbaugh.htm 37. http://www.pigeon.psy.tufts.edu/psych26/language.htm From karey at charter.net Wed Jan 8 12:34:54 2003 From: karey at charter.net (Karey L. Perkins) Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2003 12:34:54 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] Lab chimp speaks his own language References: <580A6654EC74D511B41600034779BEDE07058C53@exchangeserver.culver.org> Message-ID: <005001c2b73c$4160d120$0301000a@AFAC955012> The thing to think about is -- Kanzi IS communicating, but is Kanzi dealing in sign or symbol? Is he developing a mythology and a "world"? I think Percy would say no...pointing to grape "icons" and going outside the cage are still interactions in an "environment" (cf. Percy's definition of "world" and "environment"...) KP ----- Original Message ----- From: Parlin, Steven To: 'percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org' Sent: Wednesday, January 08, 2003 11:39 AM Subject: [percy-l] Lab chimp speaks his own language Here's an interesting wrinkle in the Kanzie debate. I have't formed an opinion yet, but thought I'd throw it to the list to chew on. Steve Lab chimp speaks his own language 10:15 02 January 03 Exclusive from New Scientist http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993218 A bonobo has surprised his trainers by appearing to make up his own "words". It is the first report of an ape making sounds that seem to hold their meaning across different situations, and the latest challenge to the orthodox view that animals do not have language.Kanzi is an adult bonobo kept at Georgia State University in Atlanta. He has grown up in captivity among humans, and is adept at communicating with symbols. He also understands some spoken English, and can respond to phrases such as "go out of the cage" and "do you want a banana?"Jared Taglialatela and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, who work with Kanzi, noticed that he was making gentle noises during his interactions with them. "We wanted to know if there was any rhyme or reason to when they were produced," says Taglialatela.So his team studied 100 hours of videotape showing Kanzi's day-to-day interactions and analysed the sounds he made at various times. They picked situations in which the bonobo's actions were unambiguous: for example, while he was eating a banana, pointing to the symbol for "grapes", or responding to a request to go outside by leaving the cage.They identified four sounds that Kanzi made in different contexts - banana, grapes, juice and yes. In each of these contexts, Kanzi made the same sound. "We haven't taught him this," says Taglialatela. "He's doing it on his own." References 31. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992678 32. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992662 33. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991430 34. http://archive.newscientist.com/ 35. http://www.gsu.edu/~wwwlrc/biographies/kanzi.html 36. http://www.biology.gsu.edu/depart/faculty/srumbaugh.htm 37. http://www.pigeon.psy.tufts.edu/psych26/language.htm -- An archive of all list discussion is available at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy/hypermail Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From PARLINS at culver.org Fri Jan 10 15:12:03 2003 From: PARLINS at culver.org (Parlin, Steven) Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2003 15:12:03 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] On the ligher side: Tallking dog for sale! Message-ID: <580A6654EC74D511B41600034779BEDE07058C6C@exchangeserver.culver.org> Talking Dog for Sale In Tennessee, a guy sees a sign in front of a house: "Talking Dog for Sale." He rings the bell and the owner tells him the dog is in the backyard. The guy goes into the backyard and sees a black mutt just sitting there. You talk?" he asks. Yep," the mutt replies. So, what's your story?" The mutt looks up and says, "Well, I discovered this gift pretty young and I wanted to help the government, so I told the CIA about my gift, and in no time they had me jetting from country to country, sitting in rooms with spies and world leaders, because no one figured a dog would be eavesdropping. I was one of their most valuable spies eight years running. The jetting around really tired me out, and I knew I wasn't getting any younger and I wanted to settle down. So I signed up for a job at the airport to do some undercover security work, mostly wandering near suspicious characters and listening in. I uncovered some incredible dealings there and was awarded a batch of medals. Had a wife, a mess of puppies, and now I'm just retired." The guy is amazed. He goes back in and asks the owner what he wants for the dog. The owner says, "Ten dollars." The guy says, "This dog is amazing. Why on earth are you selling him, so cheap?" The owner replies, "He's such a liar. He didn't do any of that stuff!" -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lithium_barbie_doll at hotmail.com Sat Jan 11 17:46:13 2003 From: lithium_barbie_doll at hotmail.com (Kat Smock) Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2003 16:46:13 -0600 Subject: [percy-l] Society and The Moviegoer Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From karey at charter.net Wed Jan 29 17:16:35 2003 From: karey at charter.net (Karey L. Perkins) Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2003 17:16:35 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] 2003 MLA Annual Convention and Walker Percy References: Message-ID: <001501c2c7e4$162a7f70$0301000a@AFAC955012> I've noticed that Walker Percy has been absent from the MLA for the past few years; even two conventions ago, when the MLA was in New Orleans, Percy's home, there were no sessions (nor even any papers within sessions, as far as I could tell) on Walker Percy, which I thought was unusual. Why his absence? Is no one interested in Percy so no one has proposed a session, or do convention organizers just not want to accept a session on him? I am considering proposing a session on Percy for this year's convention. I had thought of the theme of "time and place" in his work -- which has a vast array of possibilities, including both literal time and place and metaphysical time and place. In his novels "place" matters immensely, as was also true in his life it seems. (Actual geographical place, but also, finding one's place in the world. The original title of "the Last Gentleman" was "Ground Zero," referring, I think, to both a spiritual and a physical "ground zero." What to do with "time" was another very important theme of his in both his novels and his life. Catholicism (in particular, Christiniaty in general), which was so important to him, is a religion of particular time and place -- not of abstracts. Another approach could be any of the social issues that he wrote about or that were reflected in his work that were affected by his time and place. I think that Percy is sufficiently narrow enough a topic that just a session entitled: "Walker Percy in the 21st Century" -- would be enough (which also relates to time). What does Percy have to say to humankind in the 21st century -- anything? Is his message still relevant? Anyway, if you'd be interested, have something to say, and think the topic is a possible viability at this year's convention (it's in San Diego, Dec. 27-30), then send a one-page abstract by e-mail to me at karey at charter.net by mid-March. The submission deadline for the session itself is April 1st, so I would need to have all paper proposals before that date. If I get three good papers, I'll submit the session. For more info on the convention, see www.mla.org Thanks! Karey From desmond at whitman.edu Wed Jan 29 19:41:37 2003 From: desmond at whitman.edu (John Desmond) Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2003 16:41:37 -0800 Subject: [percy-l] 2003 MLA Annual Convention and Walker Percy References: <001501c2c7e4$162a7f70$0301000a@AFAC955012> Message-ID: <001501c2c7f8$599096a0$1d020b0a@desmond> Friends: The Walker Percy Society sponsors a Percy session at the ALA meeting every year. This year the meeting is in Cambridge, MA, May 22-25. The Percy session this year features Lewis A. Lawson, Edward Dupuy, and Farrell O'Gorman. Anyone interested in a Percy session at the 2004 SSSL meeting in Chapel Hill, or participating in the ALA session in San Francisco in May, 2004, can contact me. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Karey L. Perkins" To: Sent: Wednesday, January 29, 2003 2:16 PM Subject: [percy-l] 2003 MLA Annual Convention and Walker Percy > I've noticed that Walker Percy has been absent from the MLA for the past few > years; even two conventions ago, when the MLA was in New Orleans, Percy's > home, there were no sessions (nor even any papers within sessions, as far as > I could tell) on Walker Percy, which I thought was unusual. Why his > absence? Is no one interested in Percy so no one has proposed a session, > or do convention organizers just not want to accept a session on him? > > I am considering proposing a session on Percy for this year's convention. I > had thought of the theme of "time and place" in his work -- which has a vast > array of possibilities, including both literal time and place and > metaphysical time and place. In his novels "place" matters immensely, as > was also true in his life it seems. (Actual geographical place, but also, > finding one's place in the world. The original title of "the Last > Gentleman" was "Ground Zero," referring, I think, to both a spiritual and a > physical "ground zero." What to do with "time" was another very important > theme of his in both his novels and his life. Catholicism (in particular, > Christiniaty in general), which was so important to him, is a religion of > particular time and place -- not of abstracts. Another approach could be > any of the social issues that he wrote about or that were reflected in his > work that were affected by his time and place. I think that Percy is > sufficiently narrow enough a topic that just a session entitled: "Walker > Percy in the 21st Century" -- would be enough (which also relates to time). > What does Percy have to say to humankind in the 21st century -- anything? > Is his message still relevant? > > Anyway, if you'd be interested, have something to say, and think the topic > is a possible viability at this year's convention (it's in San Diego, Dec. > 27-30), then send a one-page abstract by e-mail to me at karey at charter.net > by mid-March. The submission deadline for the session itself is April 1st, > so I would need to have all paper proposals before that date. If I get > three good papers, I'll submit the session. > > For more info on the convention, see www.mla.org > > Thanks! > > Karey > > > > > -- > > An archive of all list discussion is available at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy/hypermail > > Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy > From karey at charter.net Wed Jan 29 20:15:53 2003 From: karey at charter.net (Karey L. Perkins) Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2003 20:15:53 -0500 Subject: [percy-l] 2003 MLA Annual Convention and Walker Percy References: <001501c2c7e4$162a7f70$0301000a@AFAC955012> <001501c2c7f8$599096a0$1d020b0a@desmond> Message-ID: <00bc01c2c7fd$22b2ed40$0301000a@AFAC955012> What is the SSSL? (something something Southern Literature?) I assume ALA is American Literature Association? Glad to see Percy is getting some exposure elsewhere... KP ----- Original Message ----- From: John Desmond To: percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org Sent: Wednesday, January 29, 2003 7:41 PM Subject: Re: [percy-l] 2003 MLA Annual Convention and Walker Percy Friends: The Walker Percy Society sponsors a Percy session at the ALA meeting every year. This year the meeting is in Cambridge, MA, May 22-25. The Percy session this year features Lewis A. Lawson, Edward Dupuy, and Farrell O'Gorman. Anyone interested in a Percy session at the 2004 SSSL meeting in Chapel Hill, or participating in the ALA session in San Francisco in May, 2004, can contact me. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Karey L. Perkins" To: Sent: Wednesday, January 29, 2003 2:16 PM Subject: [percy-l] 2003 MLA Annual Convention and Walker Percy > I've noticed that Walker Percy has been absent from the MLA for the past few > years; even two conventions ago, when the MLA was in New Orleans, Percy's > home, there were no sessions (nor even any papers within sessions, as far as > I could tell) on Walker Percy, which I thought was unusual. Why his > absence? Is no one interested in Percy so no one has proposed a session, > or do convention organizers just not want to accept a session on him? > > I am considering proposing a session on Percy for this year's convention. I > had thought of the theme of "time and place" in his work -- which has a vast > array of possibilities, including both literal time and place and > metaphysical time and place. In his novels "place" matters immensely, as > was also true in his life it seems. (Actual geographical place, but also, > finding one's place in the world. The original title of "the Last > Gentleman" was "Ground Zero," referring, I think, to both a spiritual and a > physical "ground zero." What to do with "time" was another very important > theme of his in both his novels and his life. Catholicism (in particular, > Christiniaty in general), which was so important to him, is a religion of > particular time and place -- not of abstracts. Another approach could be > any of the social issues that he wrote about or that were reflected in his > work that were affected by his time and place. I think that Percy is > sufficiently narrow enough a topic that just a session entitled: "Walker > Percy in the 21st Century" -- would be enough (which also relates to time). > What does Percy have to say to humankind in the 21st century -- anything? > Is his message still relevant? > > Anyway, if you'd be interested, have something to say, and think the topic > is a possible viability at this year's convention (it's in San Diego, Dec. > 27-30), then send a one-page abstract by e-mail to me at karey at charter.net > by mid-March. The submission deadline for the session itself is April 1st, > so I would need to have all paper proposals before that date. If I get > three good papers, I'll submit the session. > > For more info on the convention, see www.mla.org > > Thanks! > > Karey > > > > > -- > > An archive of all list discussion is available at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy/hypermail > > Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy > -- An archive of all list discussion is available at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy/hypermail Visit the Walker Percy Project at http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy