I recently spent some time trying to put my collection of .mp3 audio files in better shape; this has been an ongoing project for years. There really aren't any good tools to do it, which, given the popularity of that file format, is somewhat surprising. I usually find myself doing one task in one app, then a different task in a different app. Part of the reason I thought to write this post is to see if others have had similar experiences, or found solutions to some of the problems.
My ultimate, ideal goal is to have each .mp3 file be 'complete', with music, lyrics, album art, and credits for everyone who worked on that particular piece. This would actually be useful - for example, one might want to listen to every piece of music Alan Parsons worked on (beyond the Alan Parsons Project). One might trace careers of writers, producers, etc. if the tags were complete.
Another goal I've had is to attach years to each piece of music. The goal would be to let me select music that I might hear on a radio station in a given year, say, 1977. Of course radio stations play older music, so players really should have some algorithms for picking music from earlier times to add to the playlist. But attaching years is a necessary first step.
This is harder than it might seem, because work is republished. If one takes a CD issued recently, the dates attached to the album and the music will be recent, even if the CD is a re-issue of an older album. The problem is worse with compilations - the dates are often determined by the ISBN of the CD, not the original issue dates of the music.
I've found attaching dates to be an interesting but laborious process - looking up a given song one might find much earlier versions, live versions, long versions, short versions for AM radio play, etc. I try to use a date that reflects when I might first have heard it on the radio. In part its interesting because some of the older versions show the evolution of the song. For instance, while trying to date Taco's "Puttin' On the Ritz" I found that the song had been written by Irving Berlin in 1929, with several notable versions (Clark Gable 1939, Fred Astaire 1946) before Taco's version in 1983. See for instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puttin'_on_the_Ritz. A surprising number of rock songs go back to early Blues songs of the 1910-1920 period, with likely earlier, but undocumented, roots.
Just managing the MP3s isn't trivial - take 'artist name', a category in pretty much every player or library app. Now, should The Beatles be listed as "The Beatles" (which will sort with the "T"s), "Beatles" (which will sort well, but isn't the real band name), or "Beatles, The" (which kind of gets at both the real name and the right sort order). Ideally player and library software should let you specify the name as "The Beatles", which is the correct artist name, but then show this in an alphabetical list under the "B"s, not the "T"s. Almost inevitably one will have some songs in both categories, and the separation of B and T is such that it may be quite hard to notice this.
Some band names are listed inconsistently, e.g. Pinkard & Bowden or Pinkard and Bowden. Some music pieces are by a particular band, but feature a guest artist - one would like this piece listed for both the band and the artist. Then there are case issues, e.g. John McCutcheon vs. John Mccutcheon - these kinds of spelling variants creep in for a variety of reasons. And, would one like to find the music of Carlos Santana in the "C"s or in the "S"s? Add to this foreign names with accent marks (sometimes); bands which stay the same but make small changes to their names (e.g. John Cougar, John Cougar Mellencamp, etc.). Semantically these should be grouped together, but they won't be.
For classical music I describe the composer as last name first, then first and middle names. It's just how I think of classical music. There may be other genres with other common guidelines as well. And, while on the topic of classical music, I often tell my player to play in random order - but I really would never want to mix classical and, say, rock. This isn't trivial to achieve; of course one may construct playlists of all classical or all rock, but then when one adds new music one must update these playlists. The player foobar 2000 does some dynamic list assembly, which is a start. It is a good player, but I have yet to fully tame it, and don't really have the time to dedicate to figuring it out.
Then there is 'genre': one player of mine has hundred of genres, many I just don't understand. I don't know what "Trip Hop" is, nor how "Electronic" differs from "Electronica". What I'd like is a smaller subset that isn't too ambiguous, and a way to constrain any new entries in the library to use one of the existing genres that I've found acceptable. In the absence of this, I've taken to using a kind of 'path' approach, so that similar genres appear next to each other when sorted - so I'll have "guitar" (meaning guitar instrumentals), then "guitar: Spanish", "guitar: electric", etc.
Then there is 'album': many of the songs I've got have appeared on multiple albums, e.g. the original release album and perhaps a 'greatest hits' album later on, or a different kind of compilation, perhaps one containing many artists (e.g., a Christmas album). I would really like to link the song to all of those albums, but there is usually no way of doing this (short of keeping duplicate songs around).
'Rating': many players and managers keep ratings for songs in a separate database, not in the mp3 file itself. I'm not sure why - perhaps because the ratings are personal, and the songs are assumed to be shared, though that makes little sense. Every once in a while I'd have to rebuild the database for an app, and all of that information would be lost. I find it to be very useful when putting together playlists, so I adopted a somewhat radical approach: I have subdirectories named "5", "4", "3", etc., and I move all the songs rated 5 into the "5" subdirectory. If I have to reestablish the ratings in a given player I sort the songs by file path, then select all of those in the "5" subdir and set their rating to 5. It takes a few minutes, but is far better than losing that information.
So - that's a quick list of issues I've had when trying to manage my mp3 library. With all of the money and time that's been poured into the production and sale of these, I'm surprised no one has done a player or library manager that can handle all of these issues. Foobar 2000 seems to come closest, but it's always doing something a bit strange, and I just haven't had the time to master its idiosyncracies. I would very much like feedback on how others have dealt with these problems.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Government ≠ Society
There's much talk nowadays about the apparently irreconcilable differences between the Left and the Right. In nearly all of this talk I think one important, indeed central, point is missed. Acknowledging it will be a necessary first step in finding common ground, the sort needed to craft future policies with broad support.
Those on the Left argue that government should be used to advance social welfare in all its forms, beginning with providing basic necessities. One hears phrases like "No one should starve in a civilized society", or "Everyone deserves health care". These ends are pursued through various forms of legislation, taxation, 'redistribution' of income, etc.
Those on the Right (and by this I mean what people are beginning to call "Conservatives", or even classical Liberals) view government as a necessary but limited institution, largely because of the danger its power presents. As George Washington said, "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." Liberty takes precedence over goals, however noble, because otherwise government power will eventually expand without limit. It is this outlook that is at the root of the Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights, and of course has helped ensure basic freedoms for quite some time now.
Can these two views of government be reconciled, at least to the extent that policies may be found that are acceptable to both the Left and the Right? I believe it might be possible - that the social goals of the Left may be pursued while respecting the libertarian requirements of the Right. As the wealth of the world grows, enabling more and vaster collective social projects, it will be increasingly important to get this right.
I think the problem stems from confusing 'society', or even 'civilization', with the government. Without this distinction I believe we will be doomed to a relatively primitive stage of political development. This confusion shows up quite frequently, and few seem aware of it. A recent letter in the Wall Street Journal about Obama's health care proposals noted that some key ones should pass because "Society should guarantee basic health care". What struck me was the unwarranted assumption that " Society = Government". At first this seemed innocuous, perhaps because I'd heard statements like it for years; but on second thought it expresses a somewhat extreme world view, that government is the only significant social actor. Why would anyone think that? How did this idea get traction?
I know from local politics that the resources government has act as a great draw - for instance, for small nonprofits, getting funds from the government is usually much easier than raising them independently. Fund raising requires time, effort, expense, and offers no sort of guaranteed return. On the other hand, gov't are of such a scale that the lobbying efforts required are paid back many times over. Government is the one easily accessible institution that can provide this kind of support. Then there are projects seemingly possible only to something with the resources of the federal government: building the Panama Canal, going to the moon, etc. This is often mistakenly used as justification - because the government is the only actor capable of acting, that it should. In a society with relatively little wealth, it may indeed be the case that the government is the only entity with the resources for large-scale projects, but as the wealth of the citizenry increases, this is less and less true. There are many billionaires now; Bill Gates has a net worth of nearly $100 billion. Individuals such as this, and particularly groups of such individuals, are capable of marshalling resources comparable to that of many sovereign states.
What are the implications of declaring that "Government ≠ Society", not only philosophically but practically? This distinction may offer some surprising solutions, generally involving social actors capable of substantial efforts but without the coercive power of government.
Consider the following proposal - intended as an example more than as an actual policy proposal, though some variant of it might well be practical. Government functions are divided into two parts: the "libertarian core" and the "optional social support" components. Your tax bill is similarly partitioned; and you only have to pay the bill for the "libertarian core" part. You're encouraged and expected to pay the "optional social support" part as well, but it's not required. Whether you do or not (or the percentage of it that you pay) is public information.
This should satisfy the most libertarian citizen - no longer will state power be used to extract money from citizens for projects of dubious constitutionality. It might well satisfy the most progressive citizen as well, as it would remove the moral and constitutional barriers to many efforts to alleviate perceived problems. Would it work? Would people pay more than they were absolutely required to? They might if it affected how they were perceived in society, whether they were hired by certain companies, or their chances when running for office ("Candidate X always paid the bare minimum!"). And of course if it wouldn't work, if the citizenry rejected funding social initiatives dreamed up by politicians, perhaps that's a better outcome - a kind of national referendum on those initiatives.
One could modify this proposal in many ways to make it more practical and effective, but I offer it as only one of many possible innovations that might spring to mind once one has broken away from the idea that society's only agent is government. We may eventually look back and see that the separation of social reform efforts from government is as necessary a step as the separation of church and state, and for similar reasons: social reform is usually predicated on a particular view of what an ideal society should be, and there are a multiplicity of such views, just as there are different religious catmas and dogmas. In a free society these choices should not be made because of government coercion.
Until then, we face the issues that arise when the coercive power of the state is used to further questionable ends, often for political reasons. As Robert Heinlein said, "A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul" - it is this sort of politics that can corrupt democracy.
Those on the Left argue that government should be used to advance social welfare in all its forms, beginning with providing basic necessities. One hears phrases like "No one should starve in a civilized society", or "Everyone deserves health care". These ends are pursued through various forms of legislation, taxation, 'redistribution' of income, etc.
Those on the Right (and by this I mean what people are beginning to call "Conservatives", or even classical Liberals) view government as a necessary but limited institution, largely because of the danger its power presents. As George Washington said, "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." Liberty takes precedence over goals, however noble, because otherwise government power will eventually expand without limit. It is this outlook that is at the root of the Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights, and of course has helped ensure basic freedoms for quite some time now.
Can these two views of government be reconciled, at least to the extent that policies may be found that are acceptable to both the Left and the Right? I believe it might be possible - that the social goals of the Left may be pursued while respecting the libertarian requirements of the Right. As the wealth of the world grows, enabling more and vaster collective social projects, it will be increasingly important to get this right.
I think the problem stems from confusing 'society', or even 'civilization', with the government. Without this distinction I believe we will be doomed to a relatively primitive stage of political development. This confusion shows up quite frequently, and few seem aware of it. A recent letter in the Wall Street Journal about Obama's health care proposals noted that some key ones should pass because "Society should guarantee basic health care". What struck me was the unwarranted assumption that " Society = Government". At first this seemed innocuous, perhaps because I'd heard statements like it for years; but on second thought it expresses a somewhat extreme world view, that government is the only significant social actor. Why would anyone think that? How did this idea get traction?
I know from local politics that the resources government has act as a great draw - for instance, for small nonprofits, getting funds from the government is usually much easier than raising them independently. Fund raising requires time, effort, expense, and offers no sort of guaranteed return. On the other hand, gov't are of such a scale that the lobbying efforts required are paid back many times over. Government is the one easily accessible institution that can provide this kind of support. Then there are projects seemingly possible only to something with the resources of the federal government: building the Panama Canal, going to the moon, etc. This is often mistakenly used as justification - because the government is the only actor capable of acting, that it should. In a society with relatively little wealth, it may indeed be the case that the government is the only entity with the resources for large-scale projects, but as the wealth of the citizenry increases, this is less and less true. There are many billionaires now; Bill Gates has a net worth of nearly $100 billion. Individuals such as this, and particularly groups of such individuals, are capable of marshalling resources comparable to that of many sovereign states.
What are the implications of declaring that "Government ≠ Society", not only philosophically but practically? This distinction may offer some surprising solutions, generally involving social actors capable of substantial efforts but without the coercive power of government.
Consider the following proposal - intended as an example more than as an actual policy proposal, though some variant of it might well be practical. Government functions are divided into two parts: the "libertarian core" and the "optional social support" components. Your tax bill is similarly partitioned; and you only have to pay the bill for the "libertarian core" part. You're encouraged and expected to pay the "optional social support" part as well, but it's not required. Whether you do or not (or the percentage of it that you pay) is public information.
This should satisfy the most libertarian citizen - no longer will state power be used to extract money from citizens for projects of dubious constitutionality. It might well satisfy the most progressive citizen as well, as it would remove the moral and constitutional barriers to many efforts to alleviate perceived problems. Would it work? Would people pay more than they were absolutely required to? They might if it affected how they were perceived in society, whether they were hired by certain companies, or their chances when running for office ("Candidate X always paid the bare minimum!"). And of course if it wouldn't work, if the citizenry rejected funding social initiatives dreamed up by politicians, perhaps that's a better outcome - a kind of national referendum on those initiatives.
One could modify this proposal in many ways to make it more practical and effective, but I offer it as only one of many possible innovations that might spring to mind once one has broken away from the idea that society's only agent is government. We may eventually look back and see that the separation of social reform efforts from government is as necessary a step as the separation of church and state, and for similar reasons: social reform is usually predicated on a particular view of what an ideal society should be, and there are a multiplicity of such views, just as there are different religious catmas and dogmas. In a free society these choices should not be made because of government coercion.
Until then, we face the issues that arise when the coercive power of the state is used to further questionable ends, often for political reasons. As Robert Heinlein said, "A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul" - it is this sort of politics that can corrupt democracy.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
"When" We Are
I've been watching over my kids' shoulders as they take history classes, both in high school and college, and I got thinking about the class titles: "ancient history", "modern history", and so forth. It's not that I have any quarrel with these labels, but they seem far too optimistic. I think we're now living in the ancient world.
I don't mean that life hasn't changed since, say, A.D. 1. Rather, when some students a few thousand years in the future look back, our times will be grouped with more primitive eras, and be considered the mere beginnings of civilization. I'm not sneering at life nowadays, or saying that we're still barbarians; in fact we may have most of the ideas today that will be alive and well in a few thousand years. But these ideas aren't widespread, they're intermixed with a lot of nonsense, and we have no traditions or mechanisms to pass them on to future generations.
Our knowledge and experience is very very new. Literacy itself, at least in widespread form, is a relatively recent occurrence. It was only within the last 100 years or so that humans managed to set foot on all the continents of the Earth (Antarctica being the holdout; that was discovered in 1821). The wave of Europeans and others who migrated to the Americas goes back perhaps 500 years, but has had significant waves within living memory. We've only been able to map the planet within the last 100 years or so.
Our knowledge of ourselves, primarily through biology but also through psychology, sociology, economics, and political science is quite incomplete. While it may never be fully complete, it isn't unreasonable to think that at some point we will have a deeper and essentially stable knowledge of human physiology, nature, and behavior. The physical sciences have advanced further, amazingly so, but much of that has been within the last 100 years as well: quantum mechanics and relativity both arose within that period. We still don't know many answers concerning the nature of the universe, and we may not even know the right questions.
Politically we seem awfully capable of forgetting lessons we've painfully learned time and time again; the same pathologies seem to keep returning in altered forms in different eras. I would like to hope that in the future we are all free, with autonomous spheres of action untouched and unregulated by any level of government. There always seems to be someone coming along with an agenda that requires abridgement of freedoms, and it never leads anywhere good. I hope that after a few thousand years we will have gotten it right, and know enough not to yet again repeat mistakes. When we do, we'll look back at this time the way we now look back at a time of tribes, small kingdoms, or city states.
It will be interesting to see how religion fares in what is likely to be an increasingly rational and scientific world. If it stands against hubris, it may be an essential element to a world in which humans have increasing power to alter the world. If it stands against reason, it will be lost. I wish we allowed no religion to advocate or encourage killing. Most say they do not, but a cursory glance through history will show substantial exceptions. Any ideology that aims to provide a comprehensive explanation for the world and all the answers to all of the questions seems inevitably to get to the point where it must forciby eliminate doubters. We ought to have learned this pattern by now, and recognize and call it for what it is.
In every area we're learning more, but an equal if not greater challenge is passing this knowledge on. Every generation starts over, with of course no innate knowledge beyond what has been built in genetically; there is little reason to think that human beings will be much different in a thousand years, so the culture and education that exist at that time will have to pass on all that we do discover. This seems so very fragile to me.
Maybe figuring this out, how to pass along accumulated knowledge and wisdom without placing a straightjacket on thought and behavior, will be the advance that will move us beyond our current era. Just as we think of the rise of rationality in the Renaissance as the root of the modern era, perhaps in a few thousand years the development of techniques for the preservation and propagation of wisdom will be seen as the key turning point, the one that finally got us out of our 'ancient' phase.
I don't mean that life hasn't changed since, say, A.D. 1. Rather, when some students a few thousand years in the future look back, our times will be grouped with more primitive eras, and be considered the mere beginnings of civilization. I'm not sneering at life nowadays, or saying that we're still barbarians; in fact we may have most of the ideas today that will be alive and well in a few thousand years. But these ideas aren't widespread, they're intermixed with a lot of nonsense, and we have no traditions or mechanisms to pass them on to future generations.
Our knowledge and experience is very very new. Literacy itself, at least in widespread form, is a relatively recent occurrence. It was only within the last 100 years or so that humans managed to set foot on all the continents of the Earth (Antarctica being the holdout; that was discovered in 1821). The wave of Europeans and others who migrated to the Americas goes back perhaps 500 years, but has had significant waves within living memory. We've only been able to map the planet within the last 100 years or so.
Our knowledge of ourselves, primarily through biology but also through psychology, sociology, economics, and political science is quite incomplete. While it may never be fully complete, it isn't unreasonable to think that at some point we will have a deeper and essentially stable knowledge of human physiology, nature, and behavior. The physical sciences have advanced further, amazingly so, but much of that has been within the last 100 years as well: quantum mechanics and relativity both arose within that period. We still don't know many answers concerning the nature of the universe, and we may not even know the right questions.
Politically we seem awfully capable of forgetting lessons we've painfully learned time and time again; the same pathologies seem to keep returning in altered forms in different eras. I would like to hope that in the future we are all free, with autonomous spheres of action untouched and unregulated by any level of government. There always seems to be someone coming along with an agenda that requires abridgement of freedoms, and it never leads anywhere good. I hope that after a few thousand years we will have gotten it right, and know enough not to yet again repeat mistakes. When we do, we'll look back at this time the way we now look back at a time of tribes, small kingdoms, or city states.
It will be interesting to see how religion fares in what is likely to be an increasingly rational and scientific world. If it stands against hubris, it may be an essential element to a world in which humans have increasing power to alter the world. If it stands against reason, it will be lost. I wish we allowed no religion to advocate or encourage killing. Most say they do not, but a cursory glance through history will show substantial exceptions. Any ideology that aims to provide a comprehensive explanation for the world and all the answers to all of the questions seems inevitably to get to the point where it must forciby eliminate doubters. We ought to have learned this pattern by now, and recognize and call it for what it is.
In every area we're learning more, but an equal if not greater challenge is passing this knowledge on. Every generation starts over, with of course no innate knowledge beyond what has been built in genetically; there is little reason to think that human beings will be much different in a thousand years, so the culture and education that exist at that time will have to pass on all that we do discover. This seems so very fragile to me.
Maybe figuring this out, how to pass along accumulated knowledge and wisdom without placing a straightjacket on thought and behavior, will be the advance that will move us beyond our current era. Just as we think of the rise of rationality in the Renaissance as the root of the modern era, perhaps in a few thousand years the development of techniques for the preservation and propagation of wisdom will be seen as the key turning point, the one that finally got us out of our 'ancient' phase.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Internet Radio
I've really enjoyed listening to streaming audio from "internet radio stations"; you can find programming from many countries and in many languages - a great way to tune your ear and refresh a language you may have forgotten.
For day-to-day listening, one of the best 'stations' I've found, with quite a variety, is Radio Paradise, at http://www.radioparadise.com/. It's modern, so don't expect soft rock or classical music, though the mix does span a huge range.
For day-to-day listening, one of the best 'stations' I've found, with quite a variety, is Radio Paradise, at http://www.radioparadise.com/. It's modern, so don't expect soft rock or classical music, though the mix does span a huge range.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Book Recommendation: The Nuclear Express
I just finished "The Nuclear Express", subtitled "A Political History of the Bomb and its Proliferation", by Thomas Reed and Danny Stillman. I'd ordered it a while back, then forgot about it - when it came my interest was a bit reduced. I picked it up, and after not that many pages I couldn't put it down.In one way it one of the best kinds of history: it is written by knowledgeable people who use specifics of persons, time, and place to illustrate the points they are making. There is little fluff here - even personal opinion is labeled as such. It is fact after fact after fact, not in an unordered recitation but rather laid out to underpin the historical themes within the book.
By the end I felt somewhat fearful about the future. During the Cold War people worried about nuclear war, but I think the danger of the use of nuclear weapons is much greater now (though not, at least initially, in the context of an all-out war). I hope those responsible for relevant policy decisions read this book, including the new President.
On Accidental Reincarnation
"And now for something completely different."
This may seem a bit mystical, and I'm not - so it isn't, really.
On a recent birthday I recalled a thought I'd had when much younger, when I wondered if I would be much different as a person if I'd been born another day. The main difference might be one that perhaps provides a shadow of a rationale for the personality predictions of astrology: I'd have spent my first months of life in a different season, and one might imagine that this could color one's view of the world. My first six months or so were spent during the cold and dreary months of the year - perhaps I'd be slightly different if it were Spring and Summer instead.
That isn't really what I was after, though; I thought it might be an interesting exercise in imagination to toss away personal details, and see how much of "me" was left as I went along. Would I be the same person if I'd been given a different name? I think so, without a lot of doubt, though having a "B" at the beginning of my last name got me through lots of institutional processes faster than I would have been had my last name been "Zuppa" or "Zabaglione". So there might have been some small difference, but I don't think it'd have been significant.
It's an interesting exercise to try - what if you'd been born in a different country? What if you'd been born in a different century? How much of your personality, your "soul" if you wish to consider it in those terms, would be the same, and how much would be different?
My view is that I'd be the same person, though my different experiences might have led to different choices in life. I can't get away from the sense of having a central identity that wouldn't be subject to the vicissitudes of time and place.
A recent TED talk (Technology, Entertainment, Design; www.ted.com) by Steven Pinker, "Chalking it up to the blank slate" (just under 23 minutes long; well worth the time) addresses this from a neuroscience point of view. The evidence he cites for surprisingly similar behavior from identical twins, even raised in different environments, he uses to point to the importance of underlying brain structure as a determiner for human nature. Even twins aren't *exactly* the same - and if one of us were born in another place and time, physically identical to who we were at birth, we'd be even more similar to our current selves than twins are, despite environmental differences..
Then I began to wonder: who in the past might have shared some or all of the elements that make up that identity? It really doesn't matter if you get to be the way you are via nature or nurture - what you are in terms of outlook, personality, affinities, and so forth may have existed before, and may exist again at some time in the future, in whole or in part. I don't know quite what to call this: perhaps 'accidental reincarnation". It doesn't require any mysticism to consider it a possibility.
Perhaps this has happened to you: you'll be reading some bit of history, before you turn the page you think that if you were there/then, you'd say something specific, or react in some way - and you turn the page, and find that the person said or did just that. Now in the obvious cases this isn't so striking - if nearly anyone would have said or done it. But what about when almost no one would have? It can be a very eerie experience, the sense that some part of your mental life existed before you were born.
A few years after this idea had occurred to me (this was in the 1970's), I stumbled on a poem of Jorge Luis Borges. It's not his best, but the fact that it touches on the same point was a bit of a surprise:
Perhaps my surprise when reading this was that it almost proves the point: while wondering if there were others in the past who'd thought similar thoughts to my own, I'd found someone else thinking the same thing!
The "(and are)" part in the last line hadn't occurred to me (and I must admit this whole topic was something of a passing thought). It's not just that there may have been people in the past (and may be in the future) who to a lesser or greater extent were "me", but that this may be true of others alive now. And of course it's not that they're identically me; they may just have some overlap in attitude, imagination, instinct, emotional response, world view, sense of humor, or any of the other aspects that make up the mental life of an individual.
Maybe we do intuitively understand these kinds of mental life overlaps; when reading history, or even watching a movie, we identify with some characters, and can at least appreciate the actions of others, even if we wouldn't act like they did. If we couldn't do this, there'd be little value in history or literature. To the extent that I understand Christian thinking about the brotherhood of man, I make sense of it this way: we each share a little bit of each other.
One can take this further - Terence (Publius Terentius Afer, 185 BC - 159 BC) said "Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto " (I am a man: nothing human is alien to me). When I first read this I thought it to be quite powerful, but over time I've come to doubt it: when I read of certain types of crimes, too bizarre or disgusting to mention here, I feel I'm touching something alien. On the other hand, these human actions may just reflect mental illness. Or perhaps we define something as mental illness precisely when we can't empathize with it at all.
The type of overlap of mental outlook I'm speaking of might even cross species boundaries, though probably with some inherent limits. Anyone who has spent time around dogs knows they have distinct individual personalities, and, even ignoring the anthropomorphism we sometimes bring to such observations, one may find traits that humans share. I wonder how far one might take this - say, if the mind of a dinosaur that walked her 70 million years ago, perceiving similar landscapes, may have had some overlap with how I see the world. It may be that such similarities are an inevitable hallmark of consciousness.
I found another poem recently, unpublished for some time, this one by Cavafy. He's perhaps most famous for Waiting for the Barbarians, but others of my favorites are Ithaca and Thermopylae (if you've never read them they are worth the web detour). While this may have more to do with the specifics of Cavafy's life, it still touches on the same theme:
This may seem a bit mystical, and I'm not - so it isn't, really.
On a recent birthday I recalled a thought I'd had when much younger, when I wondered if I would be much different as a person if I'd been born another day. The main difference might be one that perhaps provides a shadow of a rationale for the personality predictions of astrology: I'd have spent my first months of life in a different season, and one might imagine that this could color one's view of the world. My first six months or so were spent during the cold and dreary months of the year - perhaps I'd be slightly different if it were Spring and Summer instead.
That isn't really what I was after, though; I thought it might be an interesting exercise in imagination to toss away personal details, and see how much of "me" was left as I went along. Would I be the same person if I'd been given a different name? I think so, without a lot of doubt, though having a "B" at the beginning of my last name got me through lots of institutional processes faster than I would have been had my last name been "Zuppa" or "Zabaglione". So there might have been some small difference, but I don't think it'd have been significant.
It's an interesting exercise to try - what if you'd been born in a different country? What if you'd been born in a different century? How much of your personality, your "soul" if you wish to consider it in those terms, would be the same, and how much would be different?
My view is that I'd be the same person, though my different experiences might have led to different choices in life. I can't get away from the sense of having a central identity that wouldn't be subject to the vicissitudes of time and place.
A recent TED talk (Technology, Entertainment, Design; www.ted.com) by Steven Pinker, "Chalking it up to the blank slate" (just under 23 minutes long; well worth the time) addresses this from a neuroscience point of view. The evidence he cites for surprisingly similar behavior from identical twins, even raised in different environments, he uses to point to the importance of underlying brain structure as a determiner for human nature. Even twins aren't *exactly* the same - and if one of us were born in another place and time, physically identical to who we were at birth, we'd be even more similar to our current selves than twins are, despite environmental differences..
Then I began to wonder: who in the past might have shared some or all of the elements that make up that identity? It really doesn't matter if you get to be the way you are via nature or nurture - what you are in terms of outlook, personality, affinities, and so forth may have existed before, and may exist again at some time in the future, in whole or in part. I don't know quite what to call this: perhaps 'accidental reincarnation". It doesn't require any mysticism to consider it a possibility.
Perhaps this has happened to you: you'll be reading some bit of history, before you turn the page you think that if you were there/then, you'd say something specific, or react in some way - and you turn the page, and find that the person said or did just that. Now in the obvious cases this isn't so striking - if nearly anyone would have said or done it. But what about when almost no one would have? It can be a very eerie experience, the sense that some part of your mental life existed before you were born.
A few years after this idea had occurred to me (this was in the 1970's), I stumbled on a poem of Jorge Luis Borges. It's not his best, but the fact that it touches on the same point was a bit of a surprise:
Inscription On Any Tomb
Let not the rash marble risk
garrulous breaches of oblivion's omnipotence,
in many worlds recalling
name, renown, events, birthplace.
All those glass jewels are best left in the dark.
Let not the marble say what men do not.
The essentials of the dead man's life -
the trembling hope,
the implacable miracle of pain, the wonder of sensual delight -
will abide forever.
Blindly the willful soul asks for length of days
when its survival is assured by the lives of others,
when you yourself are the embodied continuance
of those who did not live into your time
and others will be (and are) your immortality on earth.
Perhaps my surprise when reading this was that it almost proves the point: while wondering if there were others in the past who'd thought similar thoughts to my own, I'd found someone else thinking the same thing!
The "(and are)" part in the last line hadn't occurred to me (and I must admit this whole topic was something of a passing thought). It's not just that there may have been people in the past (and may be in the future) who to a lesser or greater extent were "me", but that this may be true of others alive now. And of course it's not that they're identically me; they may just have some overlap in attitude, imagination, instinct, emotional response, world view, sense of humor, or any of the other aspects that make up the mental life of an individual.
Maybe we do intuitively understand these kinds of mental life overlaps; when reading history, or even watching a movie, we identify with some characters, and can at least appreciate the actions of others, even if we wouldn't act like they did. If we couldn't do this, there'd be little value in history or literature. To the extent that I understand Christian thinking about the brotherhood of man, I make sense of it this way: we each share a little bit of each other.
One can take this further - Terence (Publius Terentius Afer, 185 BC - 159 BC) said "Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto " (I am a man: nothing human is alien to me). When I first read this I thought it to be quite powerful, but over time I've come to doubt it: when I read of certain types of crimes, too bizarre or disgusting to mention here, I feel I'm touching something alien. On the other hand, these human actions may just reflect mental illness. Or perhaps we define something as mental illness precisely when we can't empathize with it at all.
The type of overlap of mental outlook I'm speaking of might even cross species boundaries, though probably with some inherent limits. Anyone who has spent time around dogs knows they have distinct individual personalities, and, even ignoring the anthropomorphism we sometimes bring to such observations, one may find traits that humans share. I wonder how far one might take this - say, if the mind of a dinosaur that walked her 70 million years ago, perceiving similar landscapes, may have had some overlap with how I see the world. It may be that such similarities are an inevitable hallmark of consciousness.
I found another poem recently, unpublished for some time, this one by Cavafy. He's perhaps most famous for Waiting for the Barbarians, but others of my favorites are Ithaca and Thermopylae (if you've never read them they are worth the web detour). While this may have more to do with the specifics of Cavafy's life, it still touches on the same theme:
HiddenSo I'll die, my specific memories vanish, but some day, maybe many days, a new person will be born who will more or less, in many combinations, be me.
From all I've done and all I've said
let them not seek to find who I've been.
An obstacle stood and transformed
my acts and way of my life.
An obstacle stood and stopped me
many a time as I was going to speak.
My most unobserved acts,
and my writings the most covered -
thence only they will feel me.
But mayhaps it is not worth to spend
this much care and this much effort to know me.
For - in the more perfect society -
someone else like me created
will certainly appear and freely act.
Book Recommendation: Conquistador
I'd like to recommend the book "Conquistador", by Buddy Levy (Bantam, 2008). It is very readable history, and covers an epoch I'm sure we've probably all studied in school - but I had no idea how fascinating the people era, and events were.
In places it reads like the script of a fictional adventure movie, but it is a true story. When I was about halfway through I thought "What more can there be?", and it just got better and better. If you like to escape into fiction from time to time, give this a shot - while it also is a completely different world you'll enter, it has the virtue of actually having existed.
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