I skied the Bluestem Trail at Bird’s Hill last Sunday and I drove to Portage and skied some of the Bittersweet trails at Rossendale yesterday. I had problems both days, and it has been a struggle. I am not as fit as I was in the fall, and it gets worse each week. The cycling dropped off in October, and I have not maintained the same level of activity. As Mike says, a weekly game of shinny without proper conditioning and stretching hurts and inspires a week of inactivity. It doesn’t cut it.
Addiction 105
Addictions therapists and theorists, like addicts, have their stories. It has become fashionable to identify drug use as a (reasonable?) psychological response to the unhappiness and ugliness of life, and addiction as a long term response to emotional pain.
On Bullshit
In Michael Lynch’s book about Truth, which I mentioned back here, he mentions Harry Frankfurt’s paper “On Bullshit”. It has just been printed as a very short book. The paper was available on line here and elsewhere, but Frankfurt’s publisher – the Princeton University Press – has been asserting copyright. [Updated March 16/05; it was available when I wrote this post but taken down]. Frankfurt is going to be on The Daily Show. Blog news about that at Crooked Timber.
It’s a short paper – it would come to about 25 pages of a larger font, generously spaced, and it’s a nice piece of writing. It discusses truth and bullshit in ordinary talk, advertising, and politics. Bullshit is what we hear from people who don’t care about the truth. Liars care about the truth – they say things they know aren’t true. Bullshitters don’t care about the truth. It’s not that they are careless about their story – their presentation may be elaborate, beautiful, and even true in some measure. But the bullshitter isn’t trying to tell the truth. The bullshitter is a story-teller. Bullshitters believe in themselves, sincerely. They want you to listen to them and like them, and they want you to believe them. The problem is that their stories aren’t reliable.
It’s a nice piece of work, which has inspired a lot of thought.
[Update/addendum. In 2022, after the Donald Trump presidency had acquainted people with the term “fake news” as a synonym for bullshit, I read the article The Varieties of Bullshit by Peter Ludlow (who has published online under the name E.J. Spode).
Nigerian Bank Fraud
Before e-mail spam started to arrive in torrents, it used to be fun to read some of the messages. Now, most of my spam is screened by my ISP and autoscreened in Mailwasher, and I clean up the rest when I see an obviously suspicious return address or subject line. One in a while I still read one for fun.
The Nigerian Bank scam (also see this link or the RCMP web warning) is so well-known that it ought to obvious, and the pitch is stale. Sometimes the con artist ads a nice touch.
Addiction 104
Addicts and the people around them have different versions of the story of the addict’s life and role of drugs or compulsive behaviours in the addict’s life.
Opening the Windows
One of the stories Fr. Britz mentioned during the 2005 St. Ignatius Parish Mission – the story about John XXIII and wine and company at meals – resonated with me. Fr. Britz said he was a young seminarian at the time.
Parish Mission
Last week I went to a parish mission for the first time in my life. A mission is a short series of homilies or lectures offered over a few days to sharpen religious knowledge and spirituality. It is almost always presented by a guest preacher, and it is common to hold the mission during Lent. This year the mission at St. Ignatius was presented by Father Andrew Britz, a Benedictine who spent about 20 years as the editor of the Prairie Messenger weekly newspaper. He spoke over three nights, February 14-16.
Truth in Religion
I picked out Truth in Religion, The Plurality of Religions and the Unity of Truth by Mortimer J. Adler (see previous post)- as I was browsing at the library. It was a quick and worthwhile piece of reading.
Great Ideas
In the last couple of weeks I have been reading some books by Mortimer J. Adler, a teacher and writer with a broad grasp of the history of philosophy, and an advocate of living the examined life through understanding the “Great Ideas“.
Sideways
“Sideways” is worth seeing. It was released several months ago and is still playing in theaters. I saw it a couple of weeks ago at the Globe (which is a great theater for independent film in Winnipeg).