The alef, the glyphs, what's here, or what we're really looking for

On what goes on with an alef:

"'It says you’re my cousin,' said Little Ash, quite pleased with himself. 'And your name is Uriel Federman. See here, your eyes are brown and you’re a man. Like a human person. And you’re a Jew, of course.'

The angel took the papers back. The rest of the letters it did not understand, but Uriel at least was written as it would be in Hebrew. It was not sure how it felt about having such a thing as a name attached to itself. A single, solid name, that is, written in the letters with which the whole world was once written. There was something about the alef at the beginning that made it feel a little dizzy. You never quite knew what was going on with an alef."

— Sacha Lamb. When the Angels Left the Old Country. Levine Querido, 2022.

How the glyphs talk:

"Babuta say to the man, Watch me now, no man here ever wished to read, and the man say, You will know when you see the glyphs, for the glyphs talk like the world."

— Marlon James. Black Leopard, Red Wolf. New York: Riverhead, 2019. Chapter 17.

Is it already here?

"What the world will become already exists in fragments and pieces, in experiments and possibilities."

— Ruth Wilson Gilmore, quoted as the epigraph to Destiny Hemphill's motherworld: a devotional for the alter-life

On what you're really looking for:

"Upon arrival, the soldiers took me to a side area, where a chaplain came by to see me. 'Do you need spiritual help?' he asked. I couldn’t think of anything I desired less in that moment. What I really wanted was a cheeseburger..."

— Chelsea Manning, ReadMe.txt. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022.

Magical realism: Reality invaded by the unbelievably strange

Literary magic realism originated in Latin America. English Wikipedia today describes it:

"Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier and Venezuelan Arturo Uslar-Pietri, for example, were strongly influenced by European artistic movements, such as Surrealism, during their stays in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. One major event that linked painterly and literary magic realisms was the translation and publication of Franz Roh's book into Spanish by Spain's Revista de Occidente in 1927, headed by major literary figure José Ortega y Gasset. "Within a year, Magic Realism was being applied to the prose of European authors in the literary circles of Buenos Aires." Jorge Luis Borges inspired and encouraged other Latin American writers in the development of magical realism – particularly with his first magical realist publication, Historia universal de la infamia in 1935. Between 1940 and 1950, magical realism in Latin America reached its peak, with prominent writers appearing mainly in Argentina. Alejo Carpentier's novel The Kingdom of This World, published in 1949, is often characterised as an important harbinger of magic realism, which reached its most canonical incarnation in Gabriel García Marquez's novel One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)."

Read more on Spanish Wikipedia.

At the beginning of the series Narcos, a definition of magical realism:

"...what happens when a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by something too strange to believe."

This definition comes from Strecher, Matthew C. 1999. "Magical Realism and the Search for Identity in the Fiction of Murakami Haruki." Journal of Japanese Studies 25(2):263–98. p. 267.

"¿cómo se construye la ciencia ficción en un lugar donde los conceptos hegemónicos de ciencia no coinciden con los que se han construido en nuestras culturas? * * * Las principales negaciones que se implantan sobre la ciencia ficción latinoamericana están dictadas por la forma en la que se ha entendido la anglosajona y europea; por ello se suele decir que en Latinoamérica NO se habla realmente de ciencia, que NO hay ciencia ficción sino fantástico, que NO hay una identidad consolidada como en otros lugares, y otras tesis del mismo perfil. * * * Concibamos un mundo en el que gracias a los conjuros del ciberchamanismo y los futuros andinos espaciales, ahora los guacamayos vuelen entre galaxias, canten himnos espacio-temporales y embellezcan con sus colores a nuestra madre universo." — Rodrigo Bastidas Pérez, prólogo a la antología El tercer mundo después del sol

On the ritual fire

The Roma,

“who have lived in Prague for only two generations, light a ritual fire wherever they work, a nomads’ fire crackling only for the joy of it, a blaze of rough-hewn wood like a child’s laugh, a symbol of the eternity that preceded human thought, a free fire, a gift from heaven, a living sign of the elements unnoticed by the world-weary pedestrian, a fire in the ditches of Prague warming the wanderer’s eye and soul.”

Bohumil Hrabal. Too Loud a Solitude (Příliš hlučná samota) 1976. Translated from the Czech by Michael Henry Heim. Abacus (Little, Brown Book Group), 1990. p. 42.

“In his 1967 article ‘Shamans and Acute Schizophrenia,’ a central source for the McKennas… Silverman then outlines a multi-phase model of pathologic experience that, up to a certain point, characterizes both schizophrenics and shamans. Drawing from the hero’s journey structure popularly articulated by Joseph Campbell, Silverman describes the earlier stages of this process as a descent into psychological chaos, a regressive state characterized by automatisms, archaic ideation, and encounters with transpersonal forces. This descent is then followed, most of the time, by a ‘cognitive reorganization.’ * * * Here [at the sealed Institute on the Big Sur coast] Silverman worked on one of Esalen’s main agendas: to rewrite insanity as an episodic process of psychic reorganization that follows the same death-and-rebirth model found, it was believed, in both esoteric initiations and deep psychedelic experience.”

Erik Davis. High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies. London: Strange Attractor Press, 2019.

“Newness...is precisely the return from left-hemisphere familiarity to right-hemisphere familiarity, from inauthenticity to authenticity. It cannot be willed, though it might be much desired; it requires an (apparently passive) patient openness to whatever is, which allows us to see it as if for the very first time, and leads to what Heidegger called radical “astonishment” before the world. That concept is also related to Jan Patocka’s shakiness: a sort of elemental driving out of the complacency of our customary modes of seeing the world. … It involves reconnection with the world which familiarity had veiled. It is at the furthest remove from the need to shock: it requires looking more carefully at what seems only too familiar, and seeing it perhaps for the very first time.”

And, in a footnote:

"Jan Patocka (1907–77) was an important Czech phenomenological philosopher, active in the Charter 77 human rights movement. He spoke of the “solidarity of the shaken”, at one level an affirmation of the power and determination of those who have suffered political oppression, but at another a recognition of the resolve born of a different kind of suffering, in those for whom the comfortable familiarity of the apparently known no longer disguises the sheer “awe-full-ness” of Being — what Rudolf Otto called the mysterium tremendum et fascinans (Otto, 1923). Thus Andrew Shanks writes of “those who have been shaken, especially by the experience of great historic trauma, out of lie “within a lie” — or, in general, out of the unquestioned prejudices of their culture — into a genuinely open-minded thoughtfulness. This is not the thoughtfulness of scholarly expertise; but, rather, that other sort of thoughtfulness (to be found at all different levels of scholarly sophistication or articulacy) which may also be described as a fundamental openness to transcendence” (Shanks, 2000, p. 5)."

Iain McGilchrist. The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009.

"Regret for the past is not the same as nostalgia. Pretending it is [the same] has always been the first and cheapest move of the present’s apologists. Regretting the past is...a way of steeling oneself for the fact that the past really is lost, and therefore maybe having a chance of looking the future accurately in the face."

— T. J. Clark, quoted on Twitter by Jared Marcel Pollen
https://twitter.com/JaredMPollen/status/1670417226489315331

"Time is like an eternal burning bush. Though each instant must vanish to open the way to the next one, time itself is not consumed."

— Abraham Joshua Heschel. The Sabbath (1951). Prologue. Reprint: New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005.

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On meritocracy and institutions

Four quotes:

"Institutions are formalized mind-sets. These too can be witnessed. To become aware of those sets but see right through them from outside is the most reliable way not to get stuck or burned out by them. We master the rules, but we don’t let them ultimately define us or narrow our field of perception. We encompass the craziness of the situation, so we can be skillful within it or playful when there’s nothing to do but ride through the contradictions. Then we share a sense of the absurd with whoever else is inclined to see it that way. Whoever feels a little lost can find relief in our presence, in our tent, around our desk.
None of this means that we just suspend judgment forever. We observe...but there is action to be taken too. If we are serious in our criticisms of the practices and habits of helping organizations, however, we’ve got to be light, free, and sufficiently above it all to see where we can untangle the knots and bring about change. Everything is always changing anyway. With the perspective of the Witness, we can see just which pressures, applied with the precision of a judo chop, can move the mass."
Ram Dass and Paul Gorman. How Can I Help?: Stories and Reflection on Service. (1985) New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. p. 199-200.

“I think that any form or any way in which you’re not productive is disruption. Anything that takes you out of the system where you are producing something — I don’t mean creating, I don’t mean the things that nurture you and serve you and are generative for you — but when you drop out of the system and you are not productive, it will have consequences. But those consequences are part of the imagination of this system that says that we have to be producing and we have to be making something happen in order for us to have value, in order to effectively know who we are.”
Rev. angel Kyodo williams, in a dialogue in “Radical Dharma: Love.” Printed in Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love and Liberation. Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Lama Rod Owens, and Jasmine Syedullah. Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic Books, 2016. p. 140.

"Many people, liberal and conservative alike, are deeply offended by critiques of compulsory schooling. Every day we’re told that schools hold the key to equalizing opportunity, that the proper credentials will allow poor and marginalized people to participate fully in society, and that education provides the only legitimate path out of poverty. The question is a difficult one. Are schools social levelers or do they reinforce the class pyramid by tracking and sorting children from a young age? Presumably they do both."
“Unschooling: Trusting our kids to be curious.” Astra Taylor. Originally in n+1. Reprinted in Utne Reader, Nov-Dec 2013, p. 47.

"Your academic degree and job title do a lot to shape your workplace identity. But you don’t let your fancy credentials go to your head and shape your self-identity. Whenever you have a choice in your interactions with coworkers and clients, and with people in your life outside the workplace, you downplay your formal education and your position within the system, recognizing that it would be elitist to imply that such credentials make you even a bit more deserving of respect than other people. When you identify yourself, you don’t adorn your name with titles such as “Dr.,” “PhD,” “Professor” or “Esq.”
* * *
For if your own degree and job title lend validity to your conclusions, then the paper credentials and positions of your establishment-oriented colleagues lend validity to the opposite conclusions. And there are more of them than there are of you."
Jeff Schmidt, Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System that Shapes Their Lives. (Rowman & Littlefield, 2000) Kindle Edition.

Who's leading the charge?

Yes, universities have always been elitist. But sometimes the accusation of elitism is made by someone who isn't qualified to make it or who is hypocritical, and is using it to discredit their political enemies while their intent is to gain power for themselves or their friends. Like U.S. Senator Ben Sasse from Nebraska.

Bluesky

The issue, Foust continues, is that "this man has spearheaded a historic crackdown on liberty and speech, while demanding the public supply him with a luxurious lifestyle out of reach to his staff, and condemns other people of decadence. It’s foul that The Atlantic would solicit such a man for comment."

Foust provided these sources:

UF spending $300,000 on new pool for Dasburg home where incoming president Ben Sasse will reside. Emma Behrmann, The Gainesville Sun, January 11, 2023
In Florida’s Hot Political Climate, Some Faculty Have Had Enough. Liberal-leaning professors are leaving coveted jobs with tenure. And there are signs that recruiting scholars has become harder. New York Times. December 3, 2023.
University of Florida prohibits professors from testifying. Mike Schneider, Associated Press, October 30, 2021.
Florida students and professors say a new law censors academic freedom. They’re suing to stop it. Mike Schneider. Associated Press. August 15, 2023

Tom Pepinsky on Bluesky: "You have to read this at the same time that you read about our oligarchs' demands that universities focus exclusively on truth, excellence, and meritocracy." He was referring to this article: "Inventing the Perfect College Applicant: For $120,000 a year, Christopher Rim promises to turn any student into Ivy bait." Caitlin Moscatello, NY Mag Intelligencer, January 29, 2024.

2024: In response to Matthew Yglesias's suggestion that Trump is "really smart and impressive" and is "actually playing" everyone around him who believes they're playing him, in other words, that there's some meritocracy playing out in Trump's orbit, Assigned Media says:

"There's a type of midwit liberal elite for whom meritocracy functions as the psychological justification for their entire existence and if you show those people evidence that some people rise to the top without possessing any merit, they reject it as an ego defense. (Bluesky)

Most of us can accept that, whatever our excellent (or terrible!) personal qualities, a lot of luck went into where we ended up.

But for many at the top that is such an unacceptable conclusion that they will believe literally anything that allows them to avoid confronting the fact. (Bluesky)

I think you can also go too far in the direction of fatalism, and conclude that hard work, passion, and a desire to improve is meaningless.

It's not meaningless, it's actually the primary source of meaning. It just doesn't ensure external success." (Bluesky)

Quotes: 'Time is the context...'

While writing Most Famous Short Film of All Time, I made note of these sentences. They did not work their way into my novel, but they worked their way into me in other ways, and perhaps they'll work into you too.

"Time is the context that gives meaning to everything in this world, and conversely everything that has meaning for us in this world, everything that has a place in our lives, exists in time. This is not true of abstractions and re-presentations of entities, but all that is is subject to time. The sense of time passing is associated with sustained attention, and even if for that reason alone, it is only to be expected that this arises in the right hemisphere, subserved by the right prefrontal cortex and inferior parietal lobe."
Iain McGilchrist. The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009.

"It is in this play of second chances that Rome feels most of its time, i.e. both 1995 and 2015. Vorenus' rise and fall (and rise and fall) feels like something from the era before TV was fully committed to continuity. People remember major historical events, but they don't consistently remember what they've done to each other."

"There's gonna be a party when the wolf comes home." Isaac Fellman. Isaac’s Law. June 27, 2022.

"Forget wealth versus poverty, belief versus doubt, power versus helplessness, public versus private. Never mind man versus woman, center versus margins, beautiful versus horrifying, master contra slave, even good against evil. Saying or not saying: that was where experience played out. Going away versus getting worse. What things came down to."
Richard Powers. Galatea 2.2. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1995. p. 192.