313. About The Elegance of the Hedgehog

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This is taking forever but I've now made it to 210. I'm not mentioning much but books, but at least it's something.

Sort of a cold?

I seem to be in between sick and well. (All better now.) Not quite one or the other. It’s finally getting cold -- which for us means below 60F -- so I’ve spent the last two mornings under the covers in my nice warm bed. I did want to get out of the house and I remembered the mezzanine at Another Cafe. It’s always warmer up there and also less crowded (since it isn’t clear if I’m really sick, I don’t know if I’m contagious). I did recall that the reason I stopped going to that cafe is that it’s often too crowded to get a seat, and so it was today. So I dropped down a block to the Beanstalk, which used to be tiny but has expanded and is now merely small -- a fraction of the size of Another Cafe, but there are plenty of seats free here. The reason I never come here is that it is so close to my house I don’t even get any exercise. It’s less than two blocks from my door. 

I haven’t been here since they expanded into the small space next door. It’s very nice, and they have an interesting menu. I really should come here for lunch.

The cafe is almost directly across Bush from the now defunct Nob Hill Theatre. It still says “Touch Our Junk” on the marque. The female equivalent of the Nob Hill Theatre, down on Market, is now a building of condos. On their marque it always said, “Touch the Magic” which I really think they should have named the new building, or at least the HOA. A Touch the Magic HOA would be so cool. I don’t know what is planned for the Nob Hill Theatre, but if it’s going the same route, I hope they save “Touch Our Junk.” I admit that would be a bit less likely.

The theatre was operating there when I moved here in 1993 and only shut down this year, so it has a long history. I tended to forget it was even there, only to be reminded by tourists pointing or taking photos. I don’t ever recall seeing anyone entering the place. No idea what their hours of operation were.

Emmanuel Kant airport

I just read on the BBC site that Kaliningrad is thinking about naming their airport after Emmanuel Kant. What an odd idea. Though he was known for being very punctual. Apparently you could set your watch by his appearance at the same point on his daily walk. And the airport could then specialize in impenetrable explanations for why flights were delayed or cancelled. The true nature of the “flight-in-itself” would be ultimately unknowable.

NYC rents

YouTube has been offering me videos on touring NYC apartments and I’ve been watching them. What is interesting is how similar they all are -- new buildings with largely the same amenities and high rents -- and also how similar it is to here. So I’ve been thinking about why this is the case. 

It would be better if I had some basic information like, the cost to build and the profit margin they are getting. My guess is that, the cost of building just a basic apartment in these buildings is so high that adding the laundry or slightly better bath and kitchen details, doesn’t make much of a difference. But, more importantly, they are competing with other similar buildings so they can’t not offer the same experience unless they want to knock down the price, which there’s no justification for doing. 

Following this same logic, there is really no obvious way to build new, moderately priced housing unless you are coming from a non-profit position with non-market based criteria for choosing tenants. Which, incidentally, would increase your cost of doing business and make your management job harder, rather than easier. 

The Elegance of the Hedgehog, yet again

I am to the restaurant scene. They are sampling sushi and this is where I, too, nibble at the book, afraid to read too much at a time because I know there’s so little left. 

We just had the scene where two of the women residents fail to recognize Renne as she leaves with with M. Ozu, and Renne speculates about vision. Isn’t this just a continuation or translation of what was said before about Phenomenology? What we “see” is what our brains decide to show us based on what they already know and other criteria we can only guess at. As M.Ozu says, they have never seen her so of course they don’t recognize her.

And we are getting foreshadowing. Renne has now taken over Paloma’s position, “I feel weary, to be honest, weary of all these rich people, all these poor people, weary of the whole farce...

“Something must come to and end; something must begin.”


Both “story” and music can touch us emotionally in a way few things can. And by “story” I mean both things like the plots of Anna Karenina or Elegance (especially the ending of the latter) but also story in the sense of the adventurous creation of fiction and Devi. This is why we read novels and listen to Beethoven’s 9th. It’s an aspect of life and art that most paternalistic religions are hostile to. That they wish to transcend. We don’t want Renne to die at the end of Elegance, but we would miss the catharsis if she didn’t. The emotional payoff of the novel would be much less. It’s kind of sick. It’s why the Dionysian tragic hero also must die. And to tie this in to another very diverse book, this is a point made very well in The Ship Who Sang with the aliens who are willing to trade technology for Shakespeare plays. It’s the emotions of Romeo and Juliet that we crave. This is what life is for, but what meditative religion is against. Art and philosophy are natural enemies in this regard. Is this why Socrates and Euripides favored the deus ex machina to save the day and avoid the full emotional payoff of tragedy.

70. A new book

Previous - 69. When cities work

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Alice Herz-Sommer

I may be reviving my Regieren blog soon, but not quite yet. The reason is the latest book for my book club, that I started reading yesterday,

A Century of Wisdom: Lessons From the Life of Alice Herz-Sommer, the World's Oldest Living Holocaust Survivor 

by Caroline Stoessinger, Spiegel & Grau, 2012

I have to admit I didn't think this title sounded promising, but, as usual, it's a mistake to generalize about people, even Holocaust survivors. That at 108 she sites the Stoic Epictitus as a guide to life, in particular his statement, "He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things he has not, but rejoices for those which he has," quickly won me over.

Philosophy

Being me, you can't just drop this quote into my mind without it having consequences. (Yesterday I only read the Forward by Vaclav Havel and the Prelude by the author.) When Epictitus enters my mind he brings along his buddies Epicurus and Diogenes. After a tasty lunch,  I started thinking about Epicureanism -- in the academic, not the popular, sense.

Being cheap, I have a natural affinity for the principles of Epicurus. The cafes I frequent tend to have decent (veggie) food at reasonable prices (and usually good WiFi.) Even my favorite Burmese place has comparatively cheap prices (it's location half way to Hawaii helps with this.) My regular pizzerias are not places I would take an out-of-town visitor devoted to sampling the best pizza. 

A purest Epicurean (a vegan to my veggie) would opt for even simpler and cheaper cuisine. In fact you could probably make a philosophically Epicurean argument for Fast Food. But what's the point of living a life spent trying to elude cravings you can't easily satisfy? If you are that keen to keep disappointment and longing at bay you should probably opt for suicide as the perfect (and simple) way to avoid all future problems. I can't believe Diogenes never suggested this, so this probably isn't an original notion. 

And speaking of the most famous Cynic, while a modern Cynic would probably be a dumpster diver, I think she would have the sense to prefer dumpsters behind upscale restaurants. 

Need + meaning + story

But all this was yesterday and I had almost forgotten about it when I ran into an article written by the Dalai Lama today on Facebook. (Dalai Lama: Behind Our Anxiety, the Fear of Being Unneeded.) I think this is completely true, though I would like to add a Victor Frankl note and add the importance of meaning. While being needed can give a life meaning -- in either the superficial sense of having a reason to get up in the morning, or the more profound sense of the suicide bomber who wants his death, and therefore his life, to have a meaning to some cause or other -- this relationship between need and meaning is not always present. (And this sense of meaning for the suicide bomber connects back to the philosophical advantage of death vs all the contingencies of life.)

But in addition to "need" and "meaning" there is also my old friend "story." Riding the bus this morning to my favorite breakfast place -- while thinking about all this -- I noticed an advert on the side of a bus for the latest TV show by an English actor (Hugh Laurie) who recently wrapped up a long run on another, very interesting, show ("House").  I could come up with a list of other actors who have made similar transitions recently, but why did they have to leave good shows with established audiences? I would argue the reason is that the long running shows had run out of compelling stories. The material had played out, like a vein of gold in a mountain.

What people (and we may as well say Trump supporters, since that's what we're really talking about), want is to be needed, for their existence to have meaning, and to participate in a compelling story. I still hope they will be satisfied with scaring society to the point that society is forced to address these social requirements, but this is the same level of hope I have that the California drought will end or that all the people in my building will suddenly compost their waste properly -- more of a wish than an expectation.

Next - 71. Election 2016 + Alice