November 2nds

11/2/1872

(Letters of William James)

To Charles Renouvier:

...On other points of your philosophy I still have doubts, but I can say that through that philosophy I am beginning to experience a rebirth of the moral life; and I assure you, Monsieur, that this is no small thing!…With us it is the philosophy of Mill, Bain, and Spencer which just now carries everything before it. This philosophy has done good work in psychology, but from the practical point of view it is deterministic and materialistic; and already, I think, I can discern in England the symptoms of a revival of religious thought....

[I’m reminded of a book I read several years ago, Sick Souls Healthy Minds. Page 47: “James was reborn in the spring of 1870. There is an entry from his diary on April 30, 1870, "I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. I finished Renouvier's second Essais and see no reason why his definition of free will, "The sustaining of a thought because I chose to when I might have other thoughts’, need be the definition of an illusion.””]

Of course he went on to publish The Varieties of Religious Experience. I believe I read it when I was in my late 20s, the typical age of the onset of existential crises. Interesting in 2024: “James had relatively little interest in the legitimacy or illegitimacy of religious experiences. Further, despite James' examples being almost exclusively drawn from Christianity, he did not mean to limit his ideas to any single religion. Religious experiences are something that people sometimes have, under certain conditions. In James' description, these experiences are inherently very complex, often life-altering and largely indescribable and unquantifiable through traditional means, yet measurable in the profound changes they have on the individuals that report such experiences.”

11/2/1914

Wittgensten diary: Ship stuck in sand again, bitter cold. "It is really fortunate to have one’s self in that one can always withdraw into the self."

As a chant:

11/2/2004

Presidential election. The pervasive feeling in America is that this is the most important election in 50 years. Half the country wants a fresh start, half wants the status quo...We've turned into a country of followers...Are we now a veritable theocracy?...even when majorities prevail, the true profile of the constituent is a more accurate arbiter of who we truly are as a nation. It's like an Ansel Adams print: a wide degree of tonal variation from total black to total white)

[11/2/2024: A very interesting juxtaposition with Wittgenstein’s entry: “stuck in sand again, bitter cold.”, as well as James’ re: existential crises, perhaps on the cusp of a World War.]

An Ansel Adams photo riff from yesterday:

11/2/2005

Interesting: Music listeners are again opting to buy singles, not albums...As Malcolm Gladwell suggests, we are designed to "thin slice"). The invention of the iPod apparently reshaped how people consume content—short and mobile.

[11/2/2024: Almost 20 years later we’ve evolved to “thin slice”. In music I do the Video 45s, videos exactly 45 seconds long, as a send-up of this. But I also do video albums, where I can set the song sequence, as one would on an LP, as a reaction to the PL (Playlist).]

Photos on Michigan Avenue:

11/2/2022

Another clear and warm day, 70 degrees. Lovely.

The "middlists" (not moderates)—the people who want both the left and right cakes and eat them too, like Roger Waters. Then there's the billionaires who will produce the cakes.

Chilling Biden speech about protecting democracy in advance of the mid-terms. I feel I'm living in Chile in September 1973.

Unity Temple, Golden Hour, 5:20 PM