David quietly tells me, ‘You know, I’ve had so much sex and drugs that I can’t believe I’m still alive,’ and I loudly tell him, 'You know, I’ve had SO LITTLE sex and drugs that I can’t believe I’m still alive.’
[gallery] natgeofound:
A hand-tinted photograph of Jerusalem where the dome of the Mosque of Omar is visible, March 1914.Photograph by American Colony Photographers
If there’s anything we philosophers really hate it’s an untenable dualism. Exposing untenable dualisms is a lot of what we do for a living. It’s no small job, I assure you. They (the dualisms, not the philosophers) are insidious, and they are ubiquitous; perpetual vigilance is required. I mention only a few of the dualisms whose tenability we have, at one time or other, felt called on to question: mind v. body; fact v. value; knowledge v. true belief; induction v. deduction; sensing v. perceiving; thinking v. behaving; denotation v. connotation; thought v. action; appearance v. reality … I could go on. It is, moreover, a mark of an untenable dualism that a philosopher who is in the grip of one is sure to think that he isn’t. In such a case, therapy can require millennia of exquisitely subtle dialectics. No wonder philosophers are paid so well.
Paleofuture: If those prices look good to you, you haven’t adjusted for inflation
I wanted to get away from traditional comic-book covers, which I thought were very boring: usually a fight scene. By issue eight, Sandman was already becoming a little strange – as much about ideas as an adventure story. So I thought the covers should represent that. Since the interior artists changed all the time, I was the only consistent visual element. I wanted the covers to be a filter, a window of slightly surreal, melancholy, thoughtful imagery to pass through. The first issue was influenced by the posters for Peter Greenaway films – rather too heavily, actually.Some covers were painted, some drawn, but many of the first few were 5ft-high collage-type works made by me that we took to a high-res photography studio to shoot – this was all pre-computers. I ended up wandering around London with Neil trying to find interesting bits and bobs to use as imagery. We liberated a fantastic-looking broken door from a skip, and found odds and ends in antique shops. People started donating things: I did a signing in London and someone gave me a lamb’s heart in a block of resin. It got used a few times.
It’s worthwhile to cover horrible things like the attacks on Sarkeesian and Penny Red and so many others because doing so can help uncommitted or passive readers understand and defend against this behavior. But as cathartic and entertaining as it might be, skewering trolls and attacking jerks is never going to change their minds. Putting people on the defensive only hardens their positions.When it comes to actually changing minds, I think we’re stuck with love.
Recognizing the humanity of people who do awful things is one of the core challenges of being human. (We have enough trouble recognizing it even in people who are like us.) But it’s the only way out. Even when the worst trolls are beyond visible redemption, the way we handle them is visible to so many others who are still capable of feeling empathy or recognizing pain or changing their minds.
As Dr. King put it: “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.”
That’s from a sermon I reread every few weeks. I’ll probably be reading it for the rest of my life as a part of my struggle with my own deep-rooted anger.
I only read factual books. I can’t think of… I mean, novels are just a waste of f•••ing time. I can’t suspend belief in reality… I just end up thinking, ‘This isn’t f•••ing true.’ I like reading about things that have actually happened. I’m reading this book at the minute — The Kennedy Tapes. It’s all about the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis — I can get into that. Thinking, 'Wow, this actually f•••ing happened, they came that close to blowing the world up!’ But… what f•••ing winds me up about books… is, like… my missus will come in with a book and it will be titled — and there’s a lot of these, you can substitute any word, it’s like a Rubik’s Cube of shit titles — it’ll be entitled The Incontinence Of Elephants. And I’ll say “What’s that book about?” And she’ll say, “Oh it’s about a girl and this load of f•••ing nutters…” Right… so it’s not about elephants, then? Why the f••• is it called The Incontinence Of Elephants? Another one: The Tales Of The Clumsy Beekeeper. What’s that about? “Oh it’s about the French Revolution.” Right, f••• off. If you’re writing a book about a child who’s locked in a f•••ing cupboard during the f•••ing Second World War… he’s never seen an elephant. Never mind a f•••ing giraffe.
Almighty and most wrathful God, who hate nothing You have made but sometimes repent of having made Man; we thank you this day for the life and work of Your faithful servant Jonathan Swift, who constantly imitated and occasionally exceeded Your own anger at the folly of sin, and who in his works excoriated such folly with a passion that brought him nigh unto madness; and we pray that You may teach us to be imitators of him, so that the follies and stupidities of our own time may receive their proper chastisement; through Christ our Lord, who reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
After finishing my degree in philosophy, I needed a career. I have no regrets pursuing my MBA at Stanford and in the various experiences that followed from that choice. Would I have done the same thing if I had, say, a trust fund paying my living expenses? Probably not. But I am more of a person today for the intellectual rigor I assimilated at the Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey, or for doing an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange. I could list many benefits I gained from these experiences, but I will cite one. The microeconomic modeling and game theory analysis I learned at the Boston Consulting Group has helped me explain developments in the history of music that I would never have understood if I had spent my entire life in the arts.On the other hand, I knew that I couldn’t allow the financial opportunities of the business world sway me from my music projects. Shortly before my thirtieth birthday I had a huge choice to make. The Boston Consulting Group wanted me to move to New York and advise their corporate clients, and that same week Stanford University asked me to teach jazz and work alongside artist-in-residence Stan Getz. The consulting job paid ten times the teaching job—I’m not exaggerating. But this was an easy decision to make. A few weeks later I started teaching at Stanford. I always lived modestly so I could make these kinds of choices.