Hear Kurt Vonnegut Visit the Afterlife & Interview Dead Historical Figures: Isaac Newton, Adolf Hitler, Eugene Debs & More (Audio, 1998)

in History, Radio | January 24th, 2017

Image by Daniele Prati, via Flickr Com­mons

Kurt Von­negut wrote nov­els, of course, but also short sto­ries, essays, and — briefly, suit­ably late in his career — cor­re­spon­dence from the after­life. He did that last gig in 1998, com­pos­ing for broad­cast on the for­mi­da­ble WNYC, by under­go­ing a series of what he called “con­trolled near-death expe­ri­ences” orches­trat­ed, so he claimed, by “Dr. Jack Kevorkian and the facil­i­ties of a Huntsville, Texas exe­cu­tion cham­ber.” These made pos­si­ble “more than one hun­dred vis­its to Heav­en and my return­ing to life to tell the tale,” or rather, to tell the tales of the more per­ma­nent­ly deceased with whom he’d sat down for a chat.

Von­negut’s ros­ter of after­life inter­vie­wees includ­ed per­son­ages he per­son­al­ly admired such as Eugene Debs (lis­ten), Isaac New­ton (lis­ten), and Clarence Dar­row (lis­ten), as well as his­tor­i­cal vil­lains like James Earl Ray (lis­ten) and Adolf Hitler (lis­ten). Oth­er of the dead with whom he spoke, while they may not qual­i­fy as house­hold names, nev­er­the­less went to the grave with some sort of achieve­ment under their belts: Olestra inven­tor Fred H. Matt­son, for instance, or John Wes­ley Joyce, own­er of the famed Green­wich Vil­lage lit­er­ary water­ing hole The Lion’s Head. Only the Slaugh­ter­house-Five author’s coura­geous and impos­si­ble reportage has saved the names of a few, like that of retired con­struc­tion work­er Sal­va­tore Biagi­ni, from total obscu­ri­ty.

Famous or not, peo­ple inter­est­ed Von­negut, who claimed to get his ideas from “dis­gust with civ­i­liza­tion” but also served as hon­orary pres­i­dent of the Nation­al Human­ist Asso­ci­a­tion. This aspect of his per­son­al­i­ty comes up in the Bri­an Lehrer Show seg­ment just above, a lis­ten back to Von­negut’s “Reports on the After­life” seg­ments for WNY­C’s 90th anniver­sary. (You can lis­ten to all the seg­ments indi­vid­u­al­ly here.)

Pro­duc­er Mar­ty Gold­en­sohn talks about record­ing them at Von­negut’s apart­ment, where the famous writer would answer the phone every few min­utes for a brief talk with one curi­ous fan after anoth­er, none of whom he’d tak­en any pains what­so­ev­er to keep from find­ing his phone num­ber. “It was a won­der­ful thing,” says Gold­en­sohn. “He had a way of talk­ing, hear­ing what he want­ed to hear, thank­ing, and hang­ing up very nice­ly. Six­ty sec­onds.” He’d also mas­tered, adds Lehrer, the art of the one-minute trip to the after­life, and the sto­ries this unusu­al radio for­mat allowed him to tell sure­ly drew from the vast range of expe­ri­ences and emo­tions to which Von­negut had exposed his mind not just through read­ing, but also with such fre­quent and brief yet very real human con­nec­tions he’d make on a seem­ing­ly near-con­stant basis.

A lit­tle bit less than a decade after these record­ings and the sub­se­quent pub­li­ca­tion of their print col­lec­tion God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, the unceas­ing­ly smok­ing and drink­ing Von­negut would, at the age of 84, make his own final trip to the after­life. There he now pre­sum­ably awaits (pos­si­bly beside Kevorkian him­self) the next cor­re­spon­dent intre­pid enough to come up and inter­view him. Giv­en the events of the past decade, lis­ten­ers could cer­tain­ly use what­ev­er dose of his char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly clear-eyed and sar­don­ic per­spec­tive he might have to offer.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Kurt Von­negut Read Slaugh­ter­house-Five, Cat’s Cra­dle & Oth­er Nov­els

Hear Kurt Vonnegut’s Very First Pub­lic Read­ing from Break­fast of Cham­pi­ons (1970)

Hear Kurt Vonnegut’s Nov­el Cat’s Cra­dle Get Turned into Avant-Garde Music (Fea­tur­ing Kurt Him­self)

An Ani­mat­ed Kurt Von­negut Vis­its NYU, Riffs, Ram­bles, and Blows the Kids’ Minds (1970)

Kurt Vonnegut’s Term Paper Assign­ment from the Iowa Writ­ers’ Work­shop Teach­es You to Read Fic­tion Like a Writer

Kurt Von­negut Dia­grams the Shape of All Sto­ries in a Master’s The­sis Reject­ed by U. Chica­go

In 1988, Kurt Von­negut Writes a Let­ter to Peo­ple Liv­ing in 2088, Giv­ing 7 Pieces of Advice

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

An Introduction to Hegel’s Philosophy of History: The Road to Progress Runs First Through Dark Times

in Philosophy | January 23rd, 2017

The ques­tion of whether or not gen­uine human progress is pos­si­ble, or desir­able, lies at the heart of many a rad­i­cal post-Enlight­en­ment philo­soph­i­cal project. More pes­simistic philoso­phers have, unsur­pris­ing­ly, doubt­ed it. Arthur Schopen­hauer, cast bale­ful sus­pi­cion on the idea. Dan­ish Exis­ten­tial­ist Soren Kierkegaard thought of col­lec­tive progress toward a more enlight­ened state an unlike­ly prospect. One mod­ern crit­ic of progress, pes­simistic Eng­lish philoso­pher John Gray, writes in his book Straw Dogs that “the pur­suit of progress” is an ide­al­ist illu­sion end­ing in “mass mur­der.” (Gray has been unim­pressed by Steven Pinker’s opti­mistic argu­ments in The Bet­ter Angels of Our Nature.)

These skep­tics of progress all in some way write in response to the tow­er­ing 19th cen­tu­ry fig­ure G.W.F. Hegel, the Ger­man logi­cian and philoso­pher of his­to­ry, pol­i­tics, and phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy whose sys­tem­at­ic think­ing pro­vid­ed Karl Marx with the basis of his dialec­ti­cal mate­ri­al­ism. Hegel saw the mass mur­der brought about by mas­sive polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic change in his rev­o­lu­tion­ary and impe­r­i­al age, but in his esti­ma­tion, such man-made dis­as­ters were nec­es­sary occur­rences, the “slaugh­ter bench of his­to­ry,” as he famous­ly wrote in the Phi­los­o­phy of His­to­ry.

This sug­gests a very bru­tal view, and yet Hegel believed over­all that “Rea­son is the Sov­er­eign of the World; that the his­to­ry of the world there­fore, presents us with a ratio­nal process.” For Hegel, the indi­vid­ual per­son­al­i­ty was not impor­tant, only col­lec­tive enti­ties: peo­ples, states, empires. These moved against each oth­er accord­ing to a meta­phys­i­cal rea­son­ing process work­ing through his­to­ry which Hegel called the dialec­tic. In his ani­mat­ed School of Life video above, Alain de Bot­ton describes the dialec­tic in the terms we usu­al­ly use—thesis, antithe­sis, synthesis—though Hegel him­self did not exact­ly for­mu­late the prin­ci­ple this way.

This is the com­mon short­hand way of under­stand­ing how Hegel’s non­lin­ear expla­na­tion of his­to­ry works: “the world makes progress,” sum­ma­rizes de Bot­ton, “by lurch­ing from one extreme to the oth­er, as it seeks to over­com­pen­sate for a pre­vi­ous mis­take, and gen­er­al­ly requires three moves before the right bal­ance on any issue can be found.” One par­tic­u­lar­ly bloody exam­ple is the ter­ror of the French Rev­o­lu­tion as an extreme cor­rec­tive for the monar­chy’s oppres­sion. This gave way to the antithe­sis, the bru­tal auto­crat­ic empire of Napoleon in anoth­er extreme swing. Only decades lat­er could these be rec­on­ciled in mod­ern French civ­il soci­ety.

In our own time, we have encoun­tered the pro­gres­sive ideas of Hegel not only through Marx, but through the work of Mar­tin Luther King, Jr., who stud­ied Hegel as a grad­u­ate stu­dent at Har­vard and Boston Uni­ver­si­ty and found much inspi­ra­tion in the Phi­los­o­phy of His­to­ry. Though crit­i­cal of Hegel’s ide­al­ism, which, “tend­ed to swal­low up the many in the one,” King dis­cov­ered impor­tant first prin­ci­ples there as well: “His analy­sis of the dialec­ti­cal process, in spite of its short­com­ings, helped me to see that growth comes through strug­gle.”

We end­less­ly quote King’s state­ment, “the arc of his­to­ry is long, but it bends toward jus­tice,” but we for­get his cor­re­spond­ing empha­sis on the neces­si­ty of strug­gle to achieve the goal. As Hegel the­o­rized, says de Bot­ton above, “the dark moments aren’t the end, they are a chal­leng­ing but in some ways nec­es­sary part… immi­nent­ly com­pat­i­ble with events broad­ly mov­ing for­ward in the right direc­tion.” King found his own his­tor­i­cal syn­the­sis in the prin­ci­ple of non­vi­o­lent resis­tance, which “seeks to rec­on­cile the truths of two oppo­sites,” he wrote in 1954’s Stride Toward Free­dom, “acqui­es­cence and vio­lence.” Non­vi­o­lent resis­tance is not pas­sive com­pli­ance, but nei­ther is it inten­tion­al aggres­sion.

Hegel and his social­ly influ­en­tial stu­dents like Mar­tin Luther King and John Dewey have gen­er­al­ly oper­at­ed on the basis of some faith—in rea­son, divine jus­tice, or sec­u­lar human­ism. There are much harsh­er, more pes­simistic ways of view­ing his­to­ry than as a swing­ing pen­du­lum mov­ing toward some greater end. Pes­simistic thinkers may be more rig­or­ous­ly hon­est about the stag­ger­ing moral chal­lenge posed by increas­ing­ly effi­cient means of mass killing and the per­pet­u­a­tion of ide­olo­gies that com­mit it. Yet it is part­ly through the influ­ence of Hegel that mod­ern social move­ments have embraced the neces­si­ty of strug­gle and believed progress was pos­si­ble, even inevitable, when it seemed least like­ly to occur.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch The Half Hour Hegel: A Long, Guid­ed Tour Through Hegel’s Phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy, Pas­sage by Pas­sage

How Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. Used Hegel, Kant & Niet­zsche to Over­turn Seg­re­ga­tion in Amer­i­ca

135 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Musician Lugs a Cello Up a Mountain, Then Plays Bach at 10,000 Feet, at the “Top of the World”

in Music | January 23rd, 2017

After this inspir­ing week­end, I did­n’t need any­thing par­tic­u­lar­ly ener­giz­ing to start my week. But, then again, it’s hard to refuse a shot inspi­ra­tion when it falls right into your lap. Above, watch “Andante,” which the web­site Aeon describes as fol­lows:

Andante (a musi­cal term mean­ing ‘at walk­ing pace’) fol­lows the cel­list Ruth Boden as she climbs 10,000 feet to a peak in Oregon’s Wal­lowa Moun­tains for a deeply per­son­al, yet breath­tak­ing­ly pub­lic solo per­for­mance. With her prized cel­lo strapped to her back, Boden reflects on how she wants to do some­thing with music that tran­scends the com­mon­place, and on the par­tic­u­lar joy of play­ing from Bach’s cel­lo suite at ‘the top of the world’.

Hope this helps you get to Wednes­day. And, to reach Fri­day, we’ve added some oth­er fine Bach mate­r­i­al in the Relat­eds below.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

All of Bach is Putting Bach’s Com­plete Works Online: 150 Done, 930 to Come

Down­load the Com­plete Organ Works of J.S. Bach for Free

Watch a 27-Year-Old Glenn Gould Play Bach & Put His Musi­cal Genius on Dis­play (1959)

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

Stream the Com­plete Works of Bach & Beethoven: 250 Free Hours of Music

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Before Siri & Alexa: Hear the First Attempt to Use a Synthesizer to Recreate the Human Voice (1939)

in Technology | January 23rd, 2017

Whether from Stephen Hawk­ing, Siri, or any­one in between, we’ve all heard quite a lot of elec­tron­i­cal­ly syn­the­sized speech by now. But less than eighty years ago, the very idea of a human-sound­ing voice pro­duced in a mechan­i­cal man­ner inspired won­der and dis­tur­bance in equal mea­sure. The every­man and every­woman got their first chance to hear such a tech­nol­o­gy at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, dur­ing its hourly demon­stra­tions of the very first speech syn­the­siz­er, the “Voder.” Who, they must have imag­ined as they stood before its boom­ing square-jawed-Art-Deco-hero logo, could have invent­ed such a thing?

Homer Dud­ley, an elec­tron­ic and acoustic engi­neer at Bell Labs, had in the 1920s invent­ed the “Vocoder” (or “Voice Oper­at­ed reCorDER”), a device that could con­vert human speech into an elec­tron­ic sig­nal and then, some­where else down the like, turn that sig­nal back into speech again.

For the Voder (or “Voice Oper­a­tion DEmon­stra­toR”) he took the ini­tial voice out of the sig­nal, cre­at­ing a kind of syn­the­siz­er ded­i­cat­ed to the sounds of speech that one could oper­ate man­u­al­ly, through an inter­face some­what resem­bling that of an organ. Its con­trols (which you can see dia­grammed at 120 Years of Elec­ton­ic Music) pre­sent­ed a steep enough learn­ing curve that few­er than thir­ty peo­ple, most­ly the “girls” employed for the Voder’s demon­stra­tions, ever learned to play it.

Though impres­sive for the time (the oth­er feat of arti­fi­cial human­i­ty at that World’s Fair being Elec­tro the Smok­ing Robot), “the Voder’s speech came out a lit­tle hard to under­stand, and even a bit unset­tling,” accord­ing to Atlas Obscu­ra. “The Voder was shown again dur­ing San Francisco’s Gold­en Gate Inter­na­tion­al Expo­si­tion in late 1939, but after that, the machine dis­ap­peared almost instant­ly.” Speech syn­the­sis itself, by con­trast, had come to stay, though progress would remain rel­a­tive­ly slow for the next four or five decades. Now, in the 21st cen­tu­ry, it exists all around us, and despite con­sid­er­able improve­ments in real­ism, its voic­es still retain a bit of the unearth­ly awk­ward­ness of the Voder — and we prob­a­bly would­n’t have it any oth­er way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load the Soft­ware That Pro­vides Stephen Hawking’s Voice

Mon­ty Python’s “Argu­ment Clin­ic” Sketch Reen­act­ed by Two Vin­tage Voice Syn­the­siz­ers (One Is Stephen Hawking’s Voice)

Sovi­et Inven­tor Léon Theremin Shows Off the Theremin, the Ear­ly Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment That Could Be Played With­out Being Touched (1954)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

An Animated History of Planned Parenthood, Brought to You by Lena Dunham, JJ Abrams & More

in Current Affairs, Health, History, Life, Politics | January 23rd, 2017

Lena Dun­ham draft­ed a host of well known friends for The His­to­ry Of 100 Years Of Wom­en’s Health Care At Planned Par­ent­hood, the short film (above) she co-direct­ed with ani­ma­tor Kirsten Lep­ore. Oth­ers tak­ing part in the pro­duc­tion include come­di­ans Mindy Kaling and Amy Schumer, actors Meryl Streep, Amer­i­ca Fer­rera, Hari Nef, Jen­nifer Lawrence, and Con­stance Wu, and pro­duc­er J.J. Abrams.

But the real stars of this show are the female trail­blaz­ers who fought (and con­tin­ue to fight) for access to safe and afford­able repro­duc­tive care for all women, regard­less of age, race, or abil­i­ty to pay.

In the words of founder Mar­garet Sanger, a con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure who seems to share quite a few traits with Dun­ham, from her deft lever­age of her celebri­ty on behalf of her cho­sen cause to her capac­i­ty for alien­at­ing fans with some of her less savory views and state­ments:

No woman can call her­self free who does not own and con­trol her body. No woman can call her­self free until she can choose con­scious­ly whether she will or will not be a moth­er.

Women like Rosie Jimenez, a sin­gle moth­er who died from com­pli­ca­tions of a back alley abor­tion fol­low­ing the pas­sage of the Hyde Amend­ment, were vic­tim­ized by laws regard­ing repro­duc­tive choice.

Oth­ers, like Estelle Gris­wold, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Planned Par­ent­hood League of Con­necti­cut, flout­ed the laws to bring about change.

More recent­ly Faye Wat­tle­ton, Planned Parenthood’s first African Amer­i­can pres­i­dent and its cur­rent pres­i­dent, Cecile Richards, have worked to pro­mote aware­ness of both the pub­lic’s rights and any impend­ing dan­gers to those rights.

(Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence’s inad­ver­tent fundrais­ing efforts go unher­ald­ed, appro­pri­ate­ly enough. The mil­lions of women—and men—who made small dona­tions to Planned Par­ent­hood in his name are the true heroes here.)

For more of Dunham’s high­ly vis­i­ble sup­port of Planned Par­ent­hood, read her 2015 inter­view with Pres­i­dent Cecile Richards or check out the t‑shirt she designed to ben­e­fit the Cal­i­for­nia Planned Par­ent­hood Edu­ca­tion Fund.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Birth Con­trol Hand­book: The Under­ground Stu­dent Pub­li­ca­tion That Let Women Take Con­trol of Their Bod­ies (1968)

Down­load Images From Rad Amer­i­can Women A‑Z: A New Pic­ture Book on the His­to­ry of Fem­i­nism

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Fem­i­nist Phi­los­o­phy of Simone de Beau­voir (on Her 109th Birth­day)

Down­load All 239 Issues of Land­mark UK Fem­i­nist Mag­a­zine Spare Rib Free Online

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 6 ) |

20 Lessons from the 20th Century About How to Defend Democracy from Authoritarianism, According to Yale Historian Timothy Snyder

in History | January 20th, 2017

Image by Rob Kall, via Flickr Com­mons

Tim­o­thy Sny­der, Housum Pro­fes­sor of His­to­ry at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, is one of the fore­most schol­ars in the U.S. and Europe on the rise and fall of total­i­tar­i­an­ism dur­ing the 1930s and 40s. Among his long list of appoint­ments and pub­li­ca­tions, he has won mul­ti­ple awards for his recent inter­na­tion­al best­sellers Blood­lands: Europe between Hitler and Stal­in and last year’s Black Earth: The Holo­caust as His­to­ry and Warn­ing. That book in part makes the argu­ment that Nazism wasn’t only a Ger­man nation­al­ist move­ment but had glob­al colo­nial­ist origins—in Rus­sia, Africa, and in the U.S., the nation that pio­neered so many meth­ods of human exter­mi­na­tion, racist dehu­man­iza­tion, and ide­o­log­i­cal­ly-jus­ti­fied land grabs.

The hyper-cap­i­tal­ism por­trayed in the U.S.—even dur­ing the Depression—Snyder writes, fueled Hitler’s imag­i­na­tion, such that he promised Ger­mans “a life com­pa­ra­ble to that of the Amer­i­can peo­ple,” whose “racial­ly pure and uncor­rupt­ed” Ger­man pop­u­la­tion he described as “world class.” Sny­der describes Hitler’s ide­ol­o­gy as a myth of racial­ist strug­gle in which “there are real­ly no val­ues in the world except for the stark real­i­ty that we are born in order to take things from oth­er peo­ple.” Or as we often hear these days, that act­ing in accor­dance with this prin­ci­ple is the “smart” thing to do. Like many far right fig­ures before and after, Hitler aimed to restore a state of nature that for him was a per­pet­u­al state of race war for impe­r­i­al dom­i­nance.

After the Novem­ber elec­tion, Sny­der wrote a pro­file of Hitler, a short piece that made no direct com­par­isons to any con­tem­po­rary fig­ure. But read­ing the facts of the his­tor­i­cal case alarmed most read­ers. A few days lat­er, the his­to­ri­an appeared on a Slate pod­cast to dis­cuss the arti­cle, say­ing that after he sub­mit­ted it, “I real­ized there was more.… there are an awful lot of echoes.” Sny­der admits that his­to­ry doesn’t actu­al­ly repeat itself. But we’re far too quick, he says, to dis­miss that idea as a cliché “and not think about his­to­ry at all. His­to­ry shows a range of pos­si­bil­i­ties.” Sim­i­lar events occur across time under sim­i­lar kinds of con­di­tions. And it is, of course, pos­si­ble to learn from the past.

If you’ve heard oth­er informed analy­sis but haven’t read Snyder’s New York Review of Books columns on fas­cism in Putin’s Rus­sia or the for­mer Yanukovich’s Ukraine, or his long arti­cle “Hitler’s World May Not Be So Far Away,” you may have seen his wide­ly-shared Face­book post mak­ing the rounds. As he argued in The Guardian last Sep­tem­ber, today we may be “too cer­tain we are eth­i­cal­ly supe­ri­or to the Euro­peans of the 1940s.” On Novem­ber, 15, Sny­der wrote on Face­book that “Amer­i­cans are no wis­er than the Euro­peans who saw democ­ra­cy yield to fas­cism, Nazism, or com­mu­nism.” Sny­der has been crit­i­cized for con­flat­ing these regimes, and ris­ing “into the top rungs of pun­dit­dom,” but when it comes to body counts and lev­els of sup­pres­sive malig­nan­cy, it’s hard to argue that Stal­in­ist Rus­sia, any more than Tsarist Rus­sia, was anyone’s idea of a democ­ra­cy.

Rather than mak­ing a his­tor­i­cal case for view­ing the U.S. as exact­ly like one of the total­i­tar­i­an regimes of WWII Europe, Sny­der presents 20 lessons we might learn from those times and use cre­ative­ly in our own where they apply. In my view, fol­low­ing his sug­ges­tions would make us wis­er, more self-aware, proac­tive, respon­si­ble cit­i­zens, what­ev­er lies ahead. Read Snyder’s lessons from his Face­book post below and con­sid­er order­ing his lat­est book On Tyran­ny: Twen­ty Lessons from the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry:

1. Do not obey in advance. Much of the pow­er of author­i­tar­i­an­ism is freely giv­en. In times like these, indi­vid­u­als think ahead about what a more repres­sive gov­ern­ment will want, and then start to do it with­out being asked. You’ve already done this, haven’t you? Stop. Antic­i­pa­to­ry obe­di­ence teach­es author­i­ties what is pos­si­ble and accel­er­ates unfree­dom.

2. Defend an insti­tu­tion. Fol­low the courts or the media, or a court or a news­pa­per. Do not speak of “our insti­tu­tions” unless you are mak­ing them yours by act­ing on their behalf. Insti­tu­tions don’t pro­tect them­selves. They go down like domi­noes unless each is defend­ed from the begin­ning.

3. Recall pro­fes­sion­al ethics. When the lead­ers of state set a neg­a­tive exam­ple, pro­fes­sion­al com­mit­ments to just prac­tice become much more impor­tant. It is hard to break a rule-of-law state with­out lawyers, and it is hard to have show tri­als with­out judges.

4. When lis­ten­ing to politi­cians, dis­tin­guish cer­tain words. Look out for the expan­sive use of “ter­ror­ism” and “extrem­ism.” Be alive to the fatal notions of “excep­tion” and “emer­gency.” Be angry about the treach­er­ous use of patri­ot­ic vocab­u­lary.

5. Be calm when the unthink­able arrives. When the ter­ror­ist attack comes, remem­ber that all author­i­tar­i­ans at all times either await or plan such events in order to con­sol­i­date pow­er. Think of the Reich­stag fire. The sud­den dis­as­ter that requires the end of the bal­ance of pow­er, the end of oppo­si­tion par­ties, and so on, is the old­est trick in the Hit­ler­ian book. Don’t fall for it.

6. Be kind to our lan­guage. Avoid pro­nounc­ing the phras­es every­one else does. Think up your own way of speak­ing, even if only to con­vey that thing you think every­one is say­ing. (Don’t use the inter­net before bed. Charge your gad­gets away from your bed­room, and read.) What to read? Per­haps “The Pow­er of the Pow­er­less” by Václav Hav­el, 1984 by George Orwell, The Cap­tive Mind by Czesław Milosz, The Rebel by Albert Camus, The Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism by Han­nah Arendt, or Noth­ing is True and Every­thing is Pos­si­ble by Peter Pomer­ant­sev.

7. Stand out. Some­one has to. It is easy, in words and deeds, to fol­low along. It can feel strange to do or say some­thing dif­fer­ent. But with­out that unease, there is no free­dom. And the moment you set an exam­ple, the spell of the sta­tus quo is bro­ken, and oth­ers will fol­low.

8. Believe in truth. To aban­don facts is to aban­don free­dom. If noth­ing is true, then no one can crit­i­cize pow­er, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If noth­ing is true, then all is spec­ta­cle. The biggest wal­let pays for the most blind­ing lights.

9. Inves­ti­gate. Fig­ure things out for your­self. Spend more time with long arti­cles. Sub­si­dize inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism by sub­scrib­ing to print media. Real­ize that some of what is on your screen is there to harm you. Learn about sites that inves­ti­gate for­eign pro­pa­gan­da push­es.

10. Prac­tice cor­po­re­al pol­i­tics. Pow­er wants your body soft­en­ing in your chair and your emo­tions dis­si­pat­ing on the screen. Get out­side. Put your body in unfa­mil­iar places with unfa­mil­iar peo­ple. Make new friends and march with them.

11. Make eye con­tact and small talk. This is not just polite. It is a way to stay in touch with your sur­round­ings, break down unnec­es­sary social bar­ri­ers, and come to under­stand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a cul­ture of denun­ci­a­tion, you will want to know the psy­cho­log­i­cal land­scape of your dai­ly life.

12. Take respon­si­bil­i­ty for the face of the world. Notice the swastikas and the oth­er signs of hate. Do not look away and do not get used to them. Remove them your­self and set an exam­ple for oth­ers to do so.

13. Hin­der the one-par­ty state. The par­ties that took over states were once some­thing else. They exploit­ed a his­tor­i­cal moment to make polit­i­cal life impos­si­ble for their rivals. Vote in local and state elec­tions while you can.

14. Give reg­u­lar­ly to good caus­es, if you can. Pick a char­i­ty and set up auto­pay. Then you will know that you have made a free choice that is sup­port­ing civ­il soci­ety help­ing oth­ers doing some­thing good.

15. Estab­lish a pri­vate life. Nas­ti­er rulers will use what they know about you to push you around. Scrub your com­put­er of mal­ware. Remem­ber that email is sky­writ­ing. Con­sid­er using alter­na­tive forms of the inter­net, or sim­ply using it less. Have per­son­al exchanges in per­son. For the same rea­son, resolve any legal trou­ble. Author­i­tar­i­an­ism works as a black­mail state, look­ing for the hook on which to hang you. Try not to have too many hooks.

16. Learn from oth­ers in oth­er coun­tries. Keep up your friend­ships abroad, or make new friends abroad. The present dif­fi­cul­ties here are an ele­ment of a gen­er­al trend. And no coun­try is going to find a solu­tion by itself. Make sure you and your fam­i­ly have pass­ports.

17. Watch out for the para­mil­i­taries. When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the sys­tem start wear­ing uni­forms and march­ing around with torch­es and pic­tures of a Leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-Leader para­mil­i­tary and the offi­cial police and mil­i­tary inter­min­gle, the game is over.

18. Be reflec­tive if you must be armed. If you car­ry a weapon in pub­lic ser­vice, God bless you and keep you. But know that evils of the past involved police­men and sol­diers find­ing them­selves, one day, doing irreg­u­lar things. Be ready to say no. (If you do not know what this means, con­tact the Unit­ed States Holo­caust Memo­r­i­al Muse­um and ask about train­ing in pro­fes­sion­al ethics.)

19. Be as coura­geous as you can. If none of us is pre­pared to die for free­dom, then all of us will die in unfree­dom.

20. Be a patri­ot. The incom­ing pres­i­dent is not. Set a good exam­ple of what Amer­i­ca means for the gen­er­a­tions to come. They will need it.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Fas­cism: Rick Steves’ Doc­u­men­tary Helps Us Learn from the Hard Lessons of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Umber­to Eco Makes a List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

George Orwell’s Final Warn­ing: Don’t Let This Night­mare Sit­u­a­tion Hap­pen. It Depends on You!

Watch “Don’t Be a Suck­er!,” the 1947 US Gov­ern­ment Anti-Hatred Film That’s Rel­e­vant Again in 2016

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 12 ) |

Deconstructing How Louis CK Writes a Joke

in Comedy, Life | January 20th, 2017

Those who sub­scribe to the notion that decon­struct­ing a joke ruins it may con­sid­er mak­ing an excep­tion for the Nerd­writer (aka Evan Puschak).

His care­ful pars­ing of Louis CK’s Monop­oly joke, above, takes rhythm, word choice, and the impor­tance of a clear­ly stat­ed premise into account.

Deliv­er­ing the 207-word joke at the Bea­con The­ater, CK is char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly non­cha­lant, but Puschak argues that there’s noth­ing unre­hearsed about his per­for­mance.

Take the way he ramps up a sce­nario that will be famil­iar to any parent—the six-year-old who is emo­tion­al­ly unequipped to han­dle los­ing at games. CK gets at an even deep­er truth about the howl­ing injus­tice of being six, by say­ing that his younger daugh­ter is “not emo­tion­al­ly devel­oped enough to han­dle her inevitable loss in every game of Monop­oly.”

Oh, the human­i­ty.

Puschak also sin­gles out CK’s act­ing abil­i­ty. The way he speaks to his daugh­ter, plac­ing her in the first row of the audi­ence, sharp­ens the com­e­dy by help­ing the audi­ence to ful­ly visu­al­ize the sce­nario he’s set up:

I play Monop­oly with my kids, that’s real­ly fun. My nine year old, she can total­ly do Monop­oly. The six year old total­ly gets how the game works but she’s not emo­tion­al­ly devel­oped enough to han­dle her inevitable loss in every game of Monop­oly because a monop­oly loss is dark. It’s heavy. It’s not like when you lose at Can­dy­land ‘Oh you got stuck in the fudgy-thing, baby! Oh well you’re in the gum­my twirly‑o’s! You didn’t get to win!’ But when she los­es at Monop­oly, I got­ta look at her lit­tle face and go ‘Ok, so here’s what’s gonna hap­pen now, ok? All your prop­er­ty, every­thing you have, all your rail­roads and hous­es, and all your money…that’s mine now. Got­ta give it all to me. Give it to me, that’s right. And no no, you can’t play any­more because, you see, even though you’re giv­ing me all of that, it doesn’t even touch how you owe me. Doesn’t even touch it, baby. You’re going down hard, it’s real­ly bad. All you’ve been work­ing for all day, I’m gonna take it now and I’m gonna use it to destroy your sis­ter. I mean I’m gonna ruin her! It is just may­hem on this board for her now.

You can view the Nerdwriter’s oth­er videos essays on his web­site or sub­scribe to his YouTube channel where a new video is pub­lished every Wednes­day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Great George Car­lin Showed Louis CK the Way to Suc­cess (NSFW)

20-Year-Old Louis CK Per­forms Stand Up (1987)

Louis CK Ridicules Avant-Garde Art on 1990s MTV Show

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

12 Million Declassified CIA Documents Now Free Online: Secret Tunnels, UFOs, Psychic Experiments & More

in History | January 20th, 2017

Image by Duff­man, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“The Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment has not yet made any offi­cial reply to the Sovi­et and East Ger­man alle­ga­tions and protests con­cern­ing the 300-yard tun­nel that Amer­i­can intel­li­gence oper­a­tives are said to have built under­neath the bor­der between West and East Berlin for espi­onage pur­pos­es,” says a Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle from 1956 head­lined “The Tun­nel of Love.” The Com­mu­nists’ excite­ment about their dis­cov­ery even had them con­duct­ing “spe­cial pro­pa­gan­da tours through the tun­nel and to have exhib­it­ed the wire­tap­ping and oth­er record­ing appa­ra­tus that the Amer­i­cans are sup­posed to have installed inside it.”

This amus­ing chap­ter of Cold War his­to­ry might have seemed, to Amer­i­ca at the time, like the kind of foiled effort — though one of an inge­nu­ity admired on both sides of the Iron Cur­tain — best buried at the back of the espi­onage archives. But now, thanks to an exec­u­tive order requir­ing the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency to release “nonex­empt his­tor­i­cal­ly valu­able records 25 years or old­er” as well as the dogged efforts of jour­nal­ist Michael Best, you can read over 12 mil­lion pages of pre­vi­ous­ly clas­si­fied doc­u­ments at CREST, the CIA Records Search Tool. In addi­tion to the files on the “Berlin Tun­nel” oper­a­tion, it offers copi­ous mate­r­i­al on much else, such as vin­tage espi­onage tech­niques like writ­ing with invis­i­ble ink and unde­tectably open­ing sealed let­ters and CIA research into spir­i­tu­al­ist heal­ing, telepa­thy, and oth­er psy­chic pow­ers.

For quite some time before now, you tech­ni­cal­ly could have looked up all of this infor­ma­tion your­self, pro­vid­ed you felt like going to the Nation­al Archives in Col­lege Park, Mary­land, and pulling it up on one of the four com­put­ers made avail­able to do so — but only between the hours of 9 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. The fact that you can now do it from the com­fort of your brows­er owes in large part to the efforts of Best, who raised $15,000 on Kick­starter to go man­u­al­ly print out all (or at least some) of those twelve mil­lion pages and upload them to the inter­net, there­by prod­ding the CIA to save the ink-and-paper mon­ey and just do it them­selves.

Some of the pro­jec­t’s back­ers, no doubt, want­ed specif­i­cal­ly to see what the CIA’s archives have to say about space aliens, a stock of infor­ma­tion you may recall that we fea­tured here just last year. “The pub­li­ca­tion of the files rep­re­sents a poten­tial moth­er­lode of back­ground mate­r­i­al for researchers, jour­nal­ists and curi­ous hob­by­ists,” write the New York Times’ Daniel Vic­tor and Erin McCann, not long before admit­ting that “most of the files are pret­ty bor­ing,” a result of “reg­u­lar bureau­crat­ic col­la­tion.” But then, that kind of method­i­cal gath­er­ing and orga­niz­ing of infor­ma­tion has long con­sti­tut­ed most of the work of nation­al intel­li­gence: even the short-lived “Tun­nel of Love” gath­ered enough data to keep its proces­sors busy for years after it became a Sovi­et tourist spot.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

FBI’s “Vault” Web Site Reveals Declas­si­fied Files on Hem­ing­way, Ein­stein, Mar­i­lyn & Oth­er Icons

The CIA Puts Hun­dreds of Declas­si­fied Doc­u­ments About UFO Sight­ings Online, Plus 10 Tips for Inves­ti­gat­ing Fly­ing Saucers

His­to­ry Declas­si­fied: New Archive Reveals Once-Secret Doc­u­ments from World Gov­ern­ments

Declas­si­fied CIA Doc­u­ment Reveals That Ben Franklin (and His Big Ego) Put U.S. Nation­al Secu­ri­ty at Risk

75 Years of CIA Maps Now Declas­si­fied & Made Avail­able Online

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast