We Are All Excellent in Our Own Exceptional Excellent Way

Someone drew a smiley face in the condensation inside the plate glass window – sunlight and fluffy snowflakes outside the glass – big band music is heard coming from hidden speakers here inside. I take off my glasses. I rub my eyes. My coffee is only lukewarm by now.  I now hear organ music. It is a sort of a rumba. He counted himself lucky for having a snowblower. I have a shovel.  The playlist continues while everything else remains the same. “Bill Baily won’t you come home?” A trumpet picks up the line. Then a piano. I am dreaming California – yes, this is strange weather, they all agree. “Bill Baily won’t you come home?” Due to El Nino I hear. And sunspots this years are expected to reach their cyclical high. Everything is coming home to roost.

Once the last wrapper is broken, the commodity is destroyed, it is unsalable … Someone wants the thing enough to touch it rather than sell it. Economically, then this is a sacramental moment – Paul & Percival Goodman - Communitas, 1960 p180

If we could predict the future it would only be incrementally different form the present – a present shifted in the direction of ‘progress’. It is the modernist fantasy. And to the extent that we can prevent the ‘unexpected’ this becomes our reality. The anticipation of the possible is called ‘risk’. It is the function of ‘experts’ to assess risk. It is the responsibility of administrations to manage risk based on performance measurements. Then comes global warming and Islamic revolutions and the depletion of resources to upset this applecart. Things not on the actuary tables can and do happen. It is called 'becoming' and is always other than the anticipated.

Habits are not really formed or performed individually – Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri – Multitude: war and democracy in the age of empire, 2004 p98

Son of an African prince
Daughter of the a noble man
        And a washerwoman
        And left on the churchsteps
A blue birthmark demonstrates
        Their royal births
Thus the American exceptionalism
         Has been propagated
From Russia came the Khan’s
         Bastards
From China came the son of
        The Emperor’s concubine
America’s huddled masses
Are really all aristocrats

[Queer politics] is not really an affirmation of homosexual identities but a subversion of the logics of identity in general – Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri – Multitude: war and democracy in the age of empire, 2004p200

The intellectual invariably is a didactic, if the expert and his claim to legitimacy is excluded form the category of an intellectual – and it should be – as the expert does not create, he only proclaims and administrates. 

Mathematics, whether or not it employs visible images and representations as working conveniences, concerns itself with systems that are entirely emancipated form life, time and distance – Oswald Spangler – The Decline of the West, 1965 p92

To consume to to be apolitical, or so it is presumed

Who can aloof remain / That shares youth’s ardor, uncooled by the snow / wisdom or sordid gain? – Herman Melville – Battle-pieces and Aspect of the War, 2001

Excellence is a unit of value internal to a process that lacks an internal unit of value – after all there must be some measure by which a consumer can make an informed judgement of value and compare options.

Concepts cannot represent the inconceivable, and thus at the most a significant feeling may be evoked by the sound of words – Oswald Spangler – The Decline of the West, 1965 p94

Cost of sending a sports team to a Bowl (Alabama – 2010 – actual cost $4.3m):

Travel                       28%
    Team and staff       15
    Band and cheerleaders 9
    Official party        4
Meals and Lodging            25%
    Team and staff       17
    Band and cheerleaders 4
    Official party        4
Bonuses                      28%
Gifts                         4%
Tickets                       8%
Other                         7%

We don’t do kulturpessimismus. We do divine providence, five-point plans, miraculous touchdowns, as the clock runs out, and the whole town is coming together to save the bank because gosh darn it, it’s a wonderful life – Mark Lilla – New York Review of Books, Dec 9, 2010 p16

Deep travel is not spatial or temporal travel but an experienced journey – the act of being jolted out of normalcy and complacency – becoming aware of what one has learned not to notice.

There is no Natural science without a precedent Religion – Oswald Spangler – The Decline of the West, 1965

All new technology has the tendency to increase society’s reliance on the process of education (as well as increase the consumption of energy).

The ‘self-interested individual’ is today the pervasive subject of post-secondary schooling – Stanley Aronowitz – The Knowledge Factory, 2000 p142

We are no longer primarily citizens. Politics is no longer a possibility. We are consumers. We act in order to consume. We consume in order to act.

The purpose of myth is to provide a logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction (an impossible achievement if, as it happens, the contradiction is real) – Claude Levi-Strauss – Structural Anthropology