Worth quoting Sahlins' (1972) remarks on the original affluent society: "there are two possible courses to affluence. Wants may be "easily satisfied'' either by producing much or desiring little. 1/
"The familiar conception... makes assumptions peculiarly appropriate to market economies: that man's wants are great, not to say infinite, whereas his means are limited, although improvable... 2/
"thus, the gap between means and ends can be narrowed by industrial productivity, at least to the point that "urgent goods'' become plentiful. But there is also a Zen road to affluence, departing from premises somewhat different from our own... 3/
"that human material wants are finite and few, and technical means unchanging but on the whole adequate. Adopting the Zen strategy, a people can enjoy an unparalleled material plenty---with a low standard of living. That, I think, describes the hunters" (Sahlins 1972)/end

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More from @Helenreflects

28 Mar
I am teaching on the numinous and religious experience tomorrow--so here is a brief thread on Galdalf and Saruman, and how they instantiate very different kinds of magic, which correspond to different ways of understanding magic and the supernatural 1/
Brandon Sanderson makes a distinction between two kinds of magic in fantasy: soft and hard magic systems.
Hard magic: follows rules (a bit like alternate-world rules of physics)
Soft magic: does not follow rules, preserves our sense of wonder 2/

brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-fir…
Sanderson argues that Tolkien uses different kinds of magic, from hard to soft. E.g., the rings are quite hard magic--they make you invisible, they make you powerful, and they slowly turn you into Gollum.
Similarly, rules apply for the palantiri
Read 13 tweets
17 Mar
Today I am teaching Zhuangzi, Wolf and Russell on the good of uselessness. Since the idea of usefulness and efficiency is so deeply ingrained in our society, so integrally a part of our "philosophical plumbing" (as Midgley calls it), I think a brief thread on this is in order 1/
Many passages in Zhuangzi push back against usefulness, efficiency, and welfarism, for example this one in book 1 where Huizi complains to Zhuangzi about a gnarly, useless tree. Just chill! Says Zhuangzi 2/

ctext.org/dictionary.pl?…
Or this one about the gourds and the salve. Huizi complains about giant gourds that are too large as containers but would be great to float with. Zhuangzi says to his friend he simply is not thinking broadly enough about purposes 3/

ctext.org/dictionary.pl?…
Read 28 tweets
14 Mar
Been thinking about the monastic life.
Monks and nuns throughout the ages have deliberately aimed for a lifestyle many would recognize as our pandemic lifestyle: boring, predictable, with a few close people or alone.
What can their choices tell us about our lives now?
Thread 1/
After a year in pandemic world, we see articles like this that frame the pandemic as having very negative effects on our minds. The article quotes a neuroscientist saying "We’re all walking around with some mild cognitive impairment" - are we? 2/

theatlantic.com/health/archive…
The Desert Fathers and Mothers, the earliest monks and nuns, deliberately chose a life of isolation (either by themselves or with a few close people), conveniently close enough to a river, a city, but still, predictable, boring, not fun, why did they choose lives like that? 3/
Read 20 tweets
10 Mar
About a year into this pandemic, I'm craving physical, embodied experiences. So I'll occasionally put a photo that's in my photo library that I took, for enjoyment. This is a wonderful watercolor by JRR Tolkien, taken in Oxford when I lived there (in 2016). Bilbo comes to the huts of ...
Me in the Musée d'art contemporain in Montreal in 2016 Image
Niagara Falls, visited in 2016.
Read 7 tweets
10 Mar
Watching a Sanderson video on how to publish your novel. S. says how it used to be publishers would also publish "mid-listers", books that had a steady fan base but not bestsellers. Now, the big publishers just want bestsellers. Why? 1/
Sanderson says that that it's because of indy publishing. If you can self-publish and have a fan base you'll be better off than if you're mid-listing at a big publisher. But I'm not so sure. It seems to me this is really driven by the publishing world. 2/
Another thing that's remarkable is how the shifting/slush reading is now done by agents and basically you can't (already for a while) send directly to big publishers. So you get all these middle-people where no middle-person used to exist (cf also real estate etc). 3/
Read 4 tweets
20 Jan
@travisthewriter @mehdirhasan Ah that's a pity! I think Arendt works very well for intro phil course. She sought to understand how ordinary, decent people could enable something like the Nazis. I mean, people who voted for Nazis were people w families etc. not psychopaths, law-abiding citizens. So why?
@travisthewriter @mehdirhasan Arendt also focused on stalinism. To her, Nazism and stalinism (in her Origins of Totalitarianism) were similar in that respect that they are totalitarian regimes enabled by a mass of people 2/
@travisthewriter @mehdirhasan A key term for her is a "mass", a mass is when people are fractured, isolated, the social fabric is destroyed to such an extent they can't organize themselves according to common or public interest 3/
Read 13 tweets

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