October 1, 2006

• seeing with eyes unclouded

  It just so happens that I have terrible eyesight. This has been the
  case all my life. Both my parents have poor eyesight but I suspect
  neither had as poor eyesight when they were my age as I did five years
  ago. And, judging from the thickness of our relative glasses, my eyes
  are worse than my siblings as well.

  I usually don’t think about the implications of that much or the causes
  as it’s largely irrelevant. I get along just fine with my glasses and I
  have no reason to suspect that technology will not be able to keep me
  at 20/20 vision for the rest of my natural life through some means or
  another. It is expensive though but that’s a discussion for another day.

  The reason I bring this up is that the other day I realized one
  somewhat intriguing side effect of wearing glasses most people don’t
  realize. You see as a benefit to being a person who wears glasses every
  2-4 years I get to experience a unique transformation of my
  view of the world. When I get new glasses, everything about the way I
  visually experience the world suddenly shift. Everything is sharper and
  clearer and more vivid. The world just seems like an entirely new
  place, like somehow I was living in a dark cave before and only
  recently was exposed to the outside world.

  I often wonder at how I could have stood the previous sight that I had.
  Why did I not think it was so bad? Why did I think I could see fine?
  Think of all the details I was missing! There’s so much out there to
  see and I had deliberately crippled myself by allowing my eyesight to
  decline without attention. I should not be going to the eye doctor
  every two years, I should be going every month!

  Now, truthfully, it probably wasn’t as a radical a shift as I thought
  during those first few days.  The last couple of times I’ve gotten new
  glasses the Doctor described it as a “minor update” to my prescription,
  unlike when I was young and getting radically different prescriptions
  every year or so when my family could afford it. But even when the
  changes are minor, it certainly *feels* radical every time.

  Why do I bring this up? Because this correlates to the effect of
  radically different perspectives on one’s mental outlook. Every once in
  a while, you see, I read a book or read an opinion or even see a movie
  or experience some other media, that totally shifts my perspective on
  the world in which I am living. Suddenly everything looks different
  than it did before. Clearer. And I wonder at how I had lived not
  knowing these things that I know now.

  Now this is very different than experiencing media of kindred spirit.
  For example my first pleasant academic experience was reading the work
  of Plato and I would always put his works high up in my list of
  important texts that influence my thinking. But Plato’s works, none of
  them, had this kind of transformative experience on me. Rather, he was
  just saying the things similar to things I’d been wondering about for
  years. In some areas he developed ideas much further than I ever had,
  but in basic content he wasn’t saying anything surprising to me. I
  loved finding out that there have been thinkers throughout history who
  have made it their life’s work to study these very same abstract ideas
  that had plagued my childhood. It made me feel quite a bit more
  grounded in the world around me. But it didn’t change my overall
  outlook.

  In recent times though I have experienced a couple of mind turning
  books that have had as radical an impact on my thinking. There have
  been others in the past but these two I think are particularly imprtant
  for me to write about now.

  The first tale begins with a reading of an obscure message board. It
  was one my brother also frequents and they were having a rather off
  topic discussion on impromptu politics. Most everything everyone was
  saying was the same old same old but one person’s posts were just
  radically different than everyone else’s. Not better or wiser or more
  backed by evidence or any of that good stuff, just radically different
  and not necessarily in a good way. Now on very rare occassion I’d read
  a post on slashdot or some other forum with a similar bent but not
  frequently and most drowned out by the majority of those taking the
  more typical perspectives.

  I might not have made anything of this post and just chalked it up to
  one insane writer except that the person who wrote this post was a
  person whom I had found to be very intelligent and inciteful when
  writing about other matters not directly related to politics.

  So in passing I made the comment to my brother in response to one of
  this writer’s more outrageous claims, “I wonder what’s on this guy’s
  reading list? I’ve never heard anything like it.”  To which my brother
  immediately responds “It probably involves a lot of Noam Chomsky.” 

  Now, I had a weird academic life since I didn’t really know a whole lot
  about Chomsky. I remembered his name came up numerous times in
  discussions in some of my lectures and I think we learned the basic
  elements of some theory or another of his in my intro to linguistics
  class, but other than that I knew nothing of him. My study was
  primarily of mathematics and computer science and philosophy and I
  really didn’t like Linguistics very much so I didn’t study mcuh along
  that related tangent. Nor did I spend much time discussing politics
  very much with people though my school was and is a highly political
  environment. I just ignored it.

  One thing I did observe was that the name Chomsky was often accompanied
  with a great deal of contention. There seemed to be a strict division
  of people who seemed to see some truth in his words and many others who
  seemed to hate his guts. I made nothing of it really since that’s
  pretty much the same division you find in classrooms about everybody.
  Though for the most part people do try, reasonably to suppress their
  inner feelings and expend their effort analyzing the ideas of scholars
  in all fields. It’s just that you can always kinda tell the
  undercurrent. If the disdain for Chomsky was a little stronger than on
  average, I didn’t really take note since the discusssion never dwelled
  on him long enough for me to gain any real understanding of who he was
  and I was young and dumb and didn’t care enough to find out more.

  But in recent years, like so many people, I’ve gotten to the point
  where I care a little more about things political in nature. Perhaps in
  large part it is spurred by my disappointment in myself for not
  reacting nearly strongly enough against the war in Iraq before we
  invaded. Perhaps its just that I am seeing more of the economic
  consequences of political choices in my daily life and that of my
  family. Or perhaps its just that I’m bored because the people around me
  never talk about interesting things any more and I’ve fallen out of
  touch with so many of my friends with whom I would not really discuss
  any of these things with but who would at least listen to my most
  recent random theory or crazy idea.

  Well, whatever the reason, after that conversation with my brother, I
  found myself in my local bookstore looking for something to read and I
  found myself looking in the politics and history section looking at all
  of the god awfully named books with gargatuan subtitles all so very
  confrontational and trying to push various perspectives. Some of them
  I’d read before and others were on my list of books I intended to read
  but always only those that I had gotten specific recommendation from
  elsewhere or which were very specific to the topics of concern to me at
  the time, such as copyright law and the environment.

  Anway, I found the works of Chomsky and flipped through a couple of
  them. Some seemed interesting, others seemed tedious. Ultimately I
  settled on buying a book called Understanding Power: The Indispensable
  Chomsky.

  Now this isn’t really one of Chomsky’s books. Rather it is a collection
  of discussions he’s had and question and answer sessions from way back
  many years ago to recent times. I thought this would be a good way to
  introduce myself to the body of Chomsky’s theories without having to
  have read all of hist various books. I also bought Deterring Democracy
  so that I could get a sense of what hsi full length works were like.

  I devoured most of Understanding Power in a single day.  And I got new glasses that day.

  Everything just seemed so different after that. The reason people do
  things, the way in which they act, the perspective with which they
  approach the world.  Bits and pieces of so many other things I’d heard
  over the years out of context now made so much more sense. Now I knew
  where people were coming from who just seemed to be ranting insanely to
  me in the past. Now the cynicism and lack of optimism with which so
  many individuals I’d encountered had approached life seemed to have a
  grounded basis. Governments and Businesses and Universities and
  individuals all seemed like different entities to me than they had
  before.

  Now to say this is not to say that I have now become a devout follower
  of the Chomsky world view. I don’t believe in religious experiences.
  There’s only understanding and analysis that can cause shifts in
  perspective. Remember that whenever I put on new glasses I try to
  remember that what I perceive as a radical shift in view is actually
  never as radical a change as I might think. And rememver also that a
  world viewing change and a theoretical kindred spirit are different. I
  don’t really think my thinking much aligns with that of Noam Chomsky.
  Our basic assumptions are different. Our philosophies and morals are
  very different. Perhaps that’s because he just knows more than me or
  because I haven’t fully come to understand his theories or perhaps
  because there are things that he just takes for granted that aren’t
  really that certain, who knows. Regardless, I think even if I agreed
  with everything he said, I still find it doubtful that he spent nearly
  as much energy in his childhood wondering if his experiences were real
  or imagined so at least based on this single examination of his writing
  and thinking and the few other examples I’ve read since then he doesn’t
  seem to be much of a kindred spirit to me.

  So anyway, I think the world was laughing at me a little when not all
  that much further in the future after I had discovered Chomsky,
  Chomsky’s name was in the national spotlight. The President of
  Venezuala, Hugo Chávez recommended one of Noam Chomsky’s books:
  Hegemony or Survival during a speach to the UN wherein he also called
  President Bush “the devil”.

  Far far too much has already been said about “the devil” comment so I
  won’t even go there. Now I personally didn’t know much about Hugo
  Chavez before hearing this except what you hear on the news… you know
  “radical leftist leader” and “hates the US and is trying to undermine
  it” and “giving heating fuel to the poor in New York city”. Oh wait,
  that last one seems a little out of place but anyway you get the idea.
  Well anyway after hearing this I read a couple more resources about
  Chavez which paint a very neutral picture. He’s no hero.

  To be honest, I applaud the idea of advocating books that provide
  different perspectives to the people of the UN and to the peoples of
  the world. I also have no problem in particular with daring, radical
  speaches to the UN. Indeed, I’d prefer the direct approach then holding
  your opinions to yourself and saying some tripe instead.  One thing
  that I wonder about is whether this speach was calculated to create the
  uproar it did in order to create a greater audience for these new
  perspectives he wants to advocate or whether it was a surprise to him
  that US Citizens and US Media would take his comments so seriously and
  be so critical of them.

  Anyway, I’ve got to say I also agree that at this point that it
  wouldn’t hurt too much to have a lot of people read the works of Noam
  Chomsky. Whether or not Chomsky’s right about anything, the topics he
  discusses are serious and the perspective he gives is meaningful and
  the nature of his commentary really ought to be debated right out in
  the open. For one thing, you can’t really understand the poltiical
  discourse I think without having a basic understanding of the kinds of
  writing Chomsky’s writing represent. There are lots of works written
  that are influencing policy today that are specifically in direct
  backlash to the words of Chomsky and those of a similar perspective.
  There are others whose opposition to current policies are directly
  founded in principles akin to those expoused by Noam Chomsky. If you
  didn’t realize that before (and I didn’t before I read Understanding
  Power), you surely must now that you see that a head of state of a
  growing power in the world explicitly endorsed his book. To understand
  where everyone is coming from you have to understand the evolution of
  their thoughts. You have to know what it is that they are running
  toward or running away from. And you have to talk about it in order to
  break through fallacies and find out the truth. It’s better to read
  Chomsky skeptically then to ignore him altogether

  That being said, I’m not sure having Hugo Chavez endorse a work by Noam
  Chomsky is likely to foster an honest debate about US foreign policy
  inside the United States. This conjoining of two objects of hatred of
  the Right will likely inspire such fervid opposition as to shutdown
  discussion and brand those who dare try to give Chomsky’s work a chance
  as traitors, enemies, or just plain stupid. More dangerous, I think, is
  that so many regular people will feed their disillusionment and despair
  by reading the dark words of Chomsky and will not fight as hard to
  effect changes that are so obviously needed right now. Chomsky does
  speak of hope but in the little that I’ve read of his, it’s such a
  small part of his works that you can hardly believe it is there.
  Overall I don’t think this well help Venezuala very much and I doubt it
  will help Hugo Chavez very much and I sadly don’t think it will make
  the world a much better place.

  Now, if Hugo Chavez had wanted to have a more beneficial impact, I
  think he might have considered recommending another book that I have
  read of late that created a radical shift in my perspective of things
  that are.  This one is called Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under
  Stress and a Civilzation in Trouble by Lester R. Brown.

  Plan B is fascinating in a lot of ways and pulled together in my mind
  many discordant things I’d heard about the environment and the economy
  into a much more coherent whole.  I can’t recommend this book enough.
  It’s one of those books that just tells the truth without unnecessary
  obfuscation or radicalization.

  Now the picture Plan B paints is in a lot of ways more dark than
  Chomsky’s but there is hope in this book too and very specific
  recommendations for changes that can and must be done. Brown doesn’t
  just throw up his hands and say “Oh well, let’s hope things get
  better.”  He finds what can work and what ought to work and shows how
  we can get the point that it will work. But the overrriding message of
  the book is that we don’t have much time, dark days are coming and very
  very soon. Even so the books is hopeful. You feel as if there is a way
  out, we just have to take it.

  In terms of acceptance, Plan B would get far more acceptance in the
  American populace than Chomsky’s works. Plan B doesn’t inspire
  defensiveness, anger, and hatred like many of the things Chomsky says
  does. He isn’t being that controversial. He’s just spelling out the
  truth about things people don’t want to talk about. ARguably Chomsky is
  doing the same thing, but it’s a lot easier to take the “our planet is
  in trouble right now!” message than the “your country in particular
  amongst all the countries in the world has been acting evilly for
  generations now” message at least if you are a citizen of that country.

  If Chavez had recommended Plan B to the world, it would have had the
  same skyrocketing effect on sales but the eventual impact on policy
  would be far more substantial. People who read Plan B would have a more
  global view of the world and have an immediate interest in changes in
  their own country right now. Admittedly it might not have been quite as
  on topic with the “devil” comment and to be sure it wouldn’t have
  sparked as much interest without the “devil” comment but it would be
  very useful and very needed. Books like Plan B need to be deeper in the
  consciousnesses of regular people if we are to have any hope of moving
  forward as a species.

  Anyway, if you want to see the world differently today than you did yesterday I highly recommend these two books:
  Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky -  Noam Chomsky
  Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble  – Lester R. Brown

  You might not like them and you might be quite disturbed after you read them but I believe they are worth it.

  Please also tell me of any works you’ve experienced that have changed
  your perspective on life. I am always looking to build a more complete
  world view.

  • 8:36 pm
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