Daily F - "Notes In a Self Help Book"

2017 Time Capsule

-pages 22 and 23 from Comix Skool USA #10

Also KH adds:
Crickets #6, What is a Glacier? by S. Yanow, Anti-Gone. Tongues #1. The Consumptive #3...

page from a book

Bought this at the MCAD book sale and opened randomly to this today. 

-R. Niebuhr, "...the frantically constructed tribal solidarities of the age of decay."

Book Note

Book Review

Ninety-nine More Maggots, Mites, and Munchers
by May R. Berenbaum
-Insects are written about in short 1-2 page entries. This is a sequel. I did not read the first book. This short form is fitting for writing about insects. The form of the entries consists of: many puns, perhaps to add some light-heartedness to descriptions of the insectoid horror-world; some discussion of how each species affects the lives of human beings; and of course Latin name, life cycle, diet, mating, unusual behaviors and memorable peculiarities, etc.. Insects are strange and beautiful and they often mess up things for human beings by biting them or messing with their crops. I enjoyed reading this book. First I read it as something to help me fall asleep but then as pure pleasure and distraction for a troubled mind.

Book Review

Science, Order, and Creativity

by David Bohm and F. David Peat

I bought this book at a sale because I thought the cover was so...unusual. Plus the title and the whole package was my kind of thing. There's stuff about fractals and Heisenberg and there's a chapter named "What is Order?" 

I didn't plan on reading it, but then one night I gave it a shot, and I saw that these guys really knew what they were talking about. They take us from physics to metaphysics, to meta-, and then on to the mystical and the cosmic and the everyday mind. By the end they're discussing Krishnamurti.

I like their idea of "false play" / "playing false:" This is when a person "is engaged in an activity that no longer has meaning in itself, merely in order to experience a pleasant and satisfying state of consciousness" but is now concerned with "reward or the avoidance of punishment." This not only screws with the "generative order of consciousness" but generates violence: the denial of the freedom of creative states of mind "brings about a pervasive state of dissatisfaction and boredom. This leads to intense frustration..." and deadened senses, intellect, and emotions, and the loss of a capacity for "free movement of awareness, attention, and thought." (I've been thinking back and forth about signing up with Patreon all week...)

A lot of thought went into this book. Reading it gave me a nice feeling of texture and struggle. It felt like good exercise for the mind AND the heart. Over-earnestness, a vision of the beyond, struggling with language — I can sympathize. 

As usual as I was reading I couldn't help but think more diagrammatic thinking would have helped, and not just thinking—more actual diagrams would have helped. I guess that's what the cover artist Andresj Dudzenski was trying to get at with the flower, cubes, etc. But the cover artist and the writers are using different metaphor-schemes, as far as I can tell. I don't remember any of those sorts of things (such as shaped holes and pegs, flowers or magnifying glasses) appearing inside the text.) Relatively speaking there are actually quite a few illustrations—fractals and geometric figures, and even the Baptism of the Ethiopian Eunuch by Rembrandt and some JW Turner. 

But how about a sense of humor, an ironic sense? This book is pretty dry. Here's a sample of the writing: "Thus, if there are rigid ideas and assumptions in the tacit infrastructure of consciousness, the net result is not only a restriction on creativity, which operates close to the "source" of the generative order, but also a positive presence of energy that is directed toward general destructiveness." It's true, but it's not exactly powerfully written. In the end, though, it's hard for me to hold this against a book so dedicated to making clear this vision of reality which makes humor and compassion possible at all, by "operating close to the source of the generative order" in a spirit of openness and creativity.

Near the end:

Consider, for example, a hypothetical individual whose consciousness had been "cleared up" both in the individual and the cosmic dimensions. Although this person might be a model of wisdom and compassion, his or her value in the general context would be limited. For because of "unconscious" rigidity in the general infrastructure, the rest of humanity could not properly listen to this person and he or she would either be rejected or worshiped as godlike. In either case there would be no true dialogue at the social level and very little effect on the vast majority of humanity. What would be needed in such a case would be for all concerned to set aside assumptions of godlike perfection, which makes genuine dialogue impossible. In any case, the truly wise individual is one who understands that there may be something important to be learned from any other human being. Such an attitude would make true dialogue possible, in which all participants are in the creative "middle ground" between the extremes of "perfection" and "imperfection." In this ground, a fundamental transformation could take place which goes beyond either of the limited extremes and includes the sociocultural dimension.

Notes on Couch Tag

Couch Tag

by Jesse Reklaw

-In this book there's a lot of pain and chaos in Jesse's memory and in his family. He uses an ironic scheme to organize the story of instability--playful, peaceful objects like games and animals and toys. On another level, in the book there's the thing where you try to figure out who you are in relation to the Others you bounce off—family, friends—and who shape you, and it feels like he's trying to triangulate himself in relation to these other people. It can be a difficult process in the best of times, but especially when your family has troubles. As you grow older you try to figure out yourself in relation to abstract ordering schemes you read about, like in comics, philosophy, or what it means to be an "artist." In the "Fred Robinson story" the friendship and creative collaborative relationship between him and another guy grows organically around some arbitrary organizing devices, and it seems like those were good times. Late in the book he twice tells anecdotes in which there are organizing schemes which lead to him taking the position of “nothing” (in psychological testing + Greek numerology) or adopting the nickname "Nothing." This instinct to sublimate life into metaphors and symbols is responsible for the book itself, and is a recognition of new possibilities for coping. In the final story he uses the alphabet, and his calm, quiet—almost too quiet—cartooning style gets noisier and frantically layered. There's this feeling like the manic energy is straining to break through the ordered arrangement of the comics grid and the storytelling devices. I'm not sure how to read that change in style, in terms of what it is an expression of. [later addition: looks like it's arthritis.] It threatens to bring the whole house down around it, or become something other than an orderly comics page. It’s a fun style to look at, in the sense that there’s a lot of new psychedelic levels through which to look at the panels, but I don’t think you want to go too far down that path, or else the comic as a readable balance of mark-making and symbol will start to break down. There’s a lot of energy hidden, pent up, in Reklaw’s older normal “square” cartooning style, and it’s starting to bust out and become unpredictable, more like he is in person. 

xposted from my bookblog 

Trees of Life (2/2)

Another thing I liked about Trees of Life: A Visual History of Evolution is the chance to think about how representing evolution itself evolved.* What form does the evolution of forms take? etc. It's disappointing that the author didn't try to draw a tree diagram of the evolution of tree diagrams. That seems like a no-brainer. Also there is no attempt to find or discuss a tree diagram of the evolution of trees, which also would be the ultimate for xeroxing and taping to your office door if you're a biology professor.

It’s weird that animals are shown in “tree” diagrams. Seems insulting to animals. But, an animal diagram of trees? I don’t know.

I think books which survey a variety of forms should include at least one chapter to play around and suggest new possibilities and new forms, and forms of forms. Even if some ideas are kind of dumb, as above. But obviously I’m not just talking about making jokes. Editors may frown, careful not to go “beyond the scope of the book." It’s true that Trees of Life is already 350 pages, and I’m sure many interesting tree diagrams couldn't fit. But if you're going to draw attention to forms, systems, or formal systems, etc., with this kind of history or survey, it would also be valuable to take some space to experiment at this elevated, meta-level and scope out the boundaries of the territory and draw some sketches of what you see from up there.

The form that this book (which its author, Theodore W. Pietsch, calls “a celebration”) takes is that of a standard book with chapters, notes, a bibliography and an index. The chapters consist of brief commentary on a species of tree diagram, and then examples follow, crisply reproduced. I thought the text was interesting and to-the-point, but I also wish the book was more ambitious. Not to seem ungrateful, but it left me wanting more (see above). Again, space was probably the issue. Maybe a positive way to put it would be that it opens up a lot of possibilities.

The book begins by discussing the varieties of bracket diagrams used to show taxonomic relationships before the discovery of evolution, and then the development of varieties of tree diagram types, and on from there into boring-looking—but more densely meaningful—computer-aided trees which depend on DNA data and statistics. By the end of the book you’re very sensitive** to how the forms that diagrams take can represent and misrepresent the messy and complex reality of natural history, and you can’t help but be dissatisfied both with the limitations of ink-on-paper tree diagrams and of books.*** Obvously a 3D computer-generated tree that you could rotate and zoom in and out of would be pretty great, and it seems totally doable, too—something huge and editable with many nested hierarchies and expandable branches, like you find in mind-mapping programs.****

Other than the Quinarians, my other favorite type of tree diagram from the book is where the diagram-maker opens up the 3rd dimension. Examples are below. Dissatisfaction with the limitations of form is on display big time. I think this may be what separates us from the animals?—the working memory capacity to stick with a form and evolve it, moment to moment, sensitive to how changes of form affect functionality, or sensitive to the possibility of bracketing it or framing it or abstracting “up” or “out” to other levels, or into new dimensions, and enjoying all of this, as we enjoy a good story or a joke.

(I added arrows and highlights to show what's happening in this one.)

____

* This evolution-of-evolution thing is just one of those things you have to deal with if you’re going to read about evolution. No writer could possibly still think it’s a witty move? But you can’t escape it. Just be tasteful and don’t overdo it. I avoided a chance to say something about “pruning” tree diagrams later in this review—that’s just gross. (Also, the author’s name is Pietsch?! Leave it alone.) There are probably unavoidable meta-groaners in every area of study, and there’s probably a survey article in Cabinet or something.

**Not for the first time, hopefully.

***Very good, though, is the unfolding of animal and plant forms on Earth, which makes up the real subject of all of this.

****Dissatisfaction with the forms of printed-book-divided-into-chapters and mind-mapping apps is beyond the scope of this blog post. 

Trees of Life (1 of 2)

Here's one of my favorite parts of Trees of Life: A Visual History of Evolution:

"…the so called quinarian approach to classification that was embodied in the work of British entomologist named William Sharpe Macleay (1792-1840) but taken up almost immediately by others, principally Nicholas Aylward Vigors (1787-1840) and William Swainson (1789-1855) during the 1820s and 30s. They somehow came to believe that living things existed in natural groups of five, that such groups of five are naturally divisible into five subgroups, each subgroup into five sub-subgroups, and so on. Affinities among taxa formed circular chains…Quinarians were also convinced that similarities between taxa based on affinity as well as analogy could be indicated in the same diagram…"

Here are two examples of these diagrams (check the pentagram…evilution): 

Another quinarian, “…Swainson devoted several years to the development of a new general classification of animals based on quinarianism, applying it, for example, throughout his two-volume Natural History of Birds that appeared in 1836 and 1837.” Imagine spending years on this. Imagine those wonderful days when everything seems to fit, and the frustration when they don’t. Notice, in the diagrams above, that three asterisks were placed where taxa that "had yet to be discovered.” The “ ule of five” predicts them, so they must be out there somewhere. 

Looking for patterns, can't knock it. It's not like they were numerologists or anything. And they were def. way smarter than I am. I’m sure this played out differently in reality than the Borges-lite story in my mind.

The questionable pattern I see reminds me of this post at waggish, the part about Fludd vs. Kepler: 

“I too play with symbols and have planned a little work, Geometric Cabala, which is about the Ideas of natural things in geometry; but I play in such a way that I do not forget that I am playing. For nothing is proved by symbols; things already known are merely fitted [to them]; unless by sure reasons it can be demonstrated that they are not merely symbolic but are descriptions of the ways in which the two things are connected and of the causes of these connections.” (Kepler)

Here's the good part. Why 5? Why not 6? or 9? “…As the approach developed and became more widespread, some proponents of circle arrangements were not content to restrict the number to five.” You can see where this is going... 

Here are diagrams based on numbers 7 and 10: