[lit-ideas] Re: SUNDAY POLEMIC
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 17:25:49 EDT
"GOD JUST DOEN'T GET IT
-- where 'it' is ... sex? I notice that when Cole Porter uses 'it' it
_always_ means *copulation* ("Birds do it, Argentines without means do it...").
>When God still lived in Linz,
reference wasted on me. Sounds like the town where Ursula Stange was born.
>making a huge imago of himself,
>He never guessed He'd turned into
I'm surprised you are still using "He" (masculine pronoun) to refer to God.
I would
have thought something more spiritual from the Memphis
Metaphysical Minister.
>one of those,
>into a religion of ourselves.
Well, 're-ligio' has a positive side to it. It's a 'bond' as in
'bonding',
the 'new alliance', and all that.
>"Get a grip people," He'd have said,
>had He had a hman voice.
-- a 'he-man' voice? But he _did_ if you keep using male pronouns
to refer to his speeches.
>"These are just wall hangings."
or on pedestals. I collect representations of St. Michael on pedestals.
Few church ornaments _really_ hang on walls.
Incidentally, this book by Marcia Pointon, (of Courtauld
Institute) has
a book on portraiture called "Wall Hangings".
>But no, we took him seriously,
>quotiing verse and chapter,
book, chapter and versiculum, if you must!
I like that. It brought a lot of literacy to a lot of people,
the
Bible. To people who would have no idea how to 'quote'
from a book, a chapter, or a verse.
I find that very Graeco-Roman rather than Hebrew.
(The Greeks were always quoting Homer 'verse and chapter').
>despite His protests
>that those scribes didn't know
>shit from Shinola,
Well, I don't Shinola either (Mesopotamian?)
But I'd distinguish between
_the bad guys_ (who wrote the OLD Testament --
and were so strict that they
scare the Shinola out of my sister)
and
_the good guys_ (twelve of them, only -- called Apostles
who I _think_ KNEW what they
were talking about.
I love Sir Timothy Rice's line
in "Jesus Christ Superstar"
C Am
"Always thought that I'd be an apostle...
F G7
Knew that I would make it if I tried.
C E7 (effective) A
C7 ...
Then when we retire we can write the Gospels
Dm Fm
C
And they'll still talk about us when we die."
>nor even did He,
>it was all just guessing,
>for Christ's sake.
or "For Mike's sake" as I prefer.
In the 1930s, there was this fashionable musical comedy
with Bobby Hawson, "For the love of Mike"
-- which depicts a real affair for the eponymous character
In the Soho, they were showing an alternate review, by
Florence Day, "Things I do for Dick".
(remembered in "Mrs. Henderson presents..." what a
gem of a film)
>And what is this hunger for rules?
>What's with you people?
"People" here seems best applied to Jews.
As in the epigram by Martial:
How odd
of God
to choose
the Jews.
>God wonders.
>He being rule-free.
Is there such a thing. Noam Chomsky is coming to talk to town soon. He
cannot live without rules. He says Rules are in the Mind -- they make us Human
(See his "Rules and Representation". We have 'rulers'. But Latin 'regulus' was
just as well. Notice that when children don't have rules -- as for playing
hopscotch, they _invent_ them.
This reminds me of how wise children are. Yesterday I saw "Things we lost in
the fire" and there's this wonderful dialogue between a father and a
daughter:
FATHER: Eat your meat
DAUGHTER: I don't eat meat. I'm a vegetarian.
FATHER: Where did you _learn_ that?
DAUGHTER: I didn't _learn_ it. I _know_ it.
FATHER ('pedantically' or better 'patronisingly'). It is in the nature of
'knowledge' that you _learn_ it from somebody.
Which I think is _wrong_. Grice considered this with regard to 'rules' like:
'be truthful'.
He says (in Way of Words) that one can said to have _learned_ that, but
surely we (or he) wanted to have more faith in the human race than that. We
_reason_ that we have to be truthful. It's not something that we do but that we
_should_ do. And still we 'flout' the 'rule' when we offer something as an
'ironic' ("Beautiful day, today" -- on a rainy day -- look at the implicature
--
beautiful for the frogs).
>Embrace every friggin moment,
I rather embrace the one I love.
>Even if you're chin deep in a latrine
>escaping redneck, Nazi Christians
<(and all those who come under that rubric)
Well, that's quite some rubric, if you axes me.
Incidentally, 'rubric' is a very Latinate word meaning 'red' (as
in 'ruby'). Nice.
>still you're alive
>still you can smell the shit
>and shit don't smell half so bad as having no smell at all.
>Make your choice."
Well, philosophy of smells always fascinated me. Recently, I was in the Paul
Mellon Centre for British Art, and there is this BIG ROOM dedicated to this
French painter who painted FIVE gigantic canvasses on
THE FIVE SENSES.
One is smell. It also reminds me of "Million Dollar Baby", the film where
the protagonist says:
"Bleach smells like bleach"
-- which is a non-Wittgensteinian use of 'like' -- Wittgenstein used to say
that a 'horse doesn't _look_ like a horse". Grice disagreed.
>still you can smell the shit
>and shit don't smell half so bad as having no smell at all.
>Make your choice."
If Geary is meaning that one is rather endowed with the sense of smell than
not, I agree. In fact, in Spanish Argentinian, 'toilet' is referred to as
'inodoro' (the unsmelly one) which is just as well.
But it's a good polemic. For David Hume, there is no _substance_ -- only its
accidents, smell one of them. So if we take this accident, and that
accident, and that other accident, we end up with substance at all. But,
digestion
and excretion being what they are, a _living_ substance requires them, so one
may just as well _smell_ it.
Cheers,
JL
Buenos Aires, Argentina
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