The Saunterer

Ryszard Kapuscinski on the worst sort of bureaucrats

    The worst sort don’t understand what Ryszard Kapuscinski called the principle of the second bag:

His August Majesty chided the bureaucrats for failing to understand a simple principle: the principle of the second bag. Because the people never revolt just because they have to carry a heavy load, or because of exploitation. They don’t know life without exploitation, they don’t even know that such a life exists. How can they desire what they cannot imagine? The people will revolt only when, in a single movement, someone tries to throw a second burden, a second heavy bag, onto their backs. The peasant will fall face down into the mud - and then spring up and grab an ax. He’ll grab an ax, my gracious sir, because he feels that in throwing the second burden onto his back suddenly and stealthily, you have tried to cheat him, you have treated him like an unthinking animal, you have trampled what remains of his already strangled dignity, taken him for an idiot who doesn’t see, feel, or understand. A man doesn’t seize an ax in defense of his wallet, but in defense of his dignity. (Quoted from page 97 of The Emperor, by Ryszard Kapuscinski. First Vintage International Edition, 1989.)

    For a brief biography of Ryszard Kapuscinski, click here.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on how to reach out into the infinite

    Goethe gave these instructions:   

If you desire to reach out into the infinite,
Move in all directions in the finite.

    Quoted from page one of Klee and Nature, by Richard Verdi. New York: Rizzoli. 1985. For a brief biography of J. W. von Goethe, click here.

Charles Burchfield on where to find sincerity

    Sincerity in society is getting in shorter supply, making it all the more important that we have available great amounts of unspoiled Nature. As the watercolorist Charles Burchfield put it:

People invariably love the artificial more than the natural. They respect superficiality more than deeper feelings. Most are content with a paper rose. Most buy their perfume in bottles. Rather than real friendship, they are content with superficial expression. They do not care if their acquaintances are sincere, as long as they pretend to be. I would rather have ten sincere enemies than a hundred palaverers.
    So I go to Nature when I want sincerity. In nature we not only find sincerity but also innocence. And when, on all sides I am beset with palaver and artifice, I feel the need of drawing a long breath, I ramble the fields. (Journal entry of December 25, 1914; page 60 in Charles Burchfield’s Journals: The Poetry of Place. J. B. Townsend, ed. State University of New York Press. 1993.) For a brief biography of Charles Burchfield, click here. For images of Charles Burchfield’s paintings, click here.

Henry David Thoreau on global warming

    In a May 20, 1860, letter to Harrison Blake, Thoreau asked:   

What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?

    (Quoted from page 360 of The Writings of Henry David Thoreau: VI - Familiar Letters. F. B. Sanborn, ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Company. 1906.)
    For a brief biography of Henry David Thoreau, click here. For a brief biography of Harrison Blake, click here.

Jennifer Muller on what dancers should strive for

    What dance teacher Jennifer Muller says applies equally well to all athletics, such as golfing:

I believe that excellent dancing is moving from the inside, not from the exterior, not from the positional aspects, but moving from the energy within the body. Even though you’re getting your leg up to your ear and you’re doing five turns and you’re jumping as high as you can, which, are the signs of a great technique, it is coming from the spirit inside you, and it doesn’t feel like muscles moving in the end result. It feels like you’re dancing. (Quoted from page 129 of Talent Abounds: Profiles of Master Teachers and Peak Performers, by Robert F. Arnove. Paradigm Publishers, 2009.)
    For a brief biography of Jennifer Muller, click here. For a brief biography of Robert F. Arnove, click here.

Carl Sandburg on what poetry is

    Sauntering in Utah State University’s library, in old bound issues of The Atlantic Monthly, we found an article, “Poetry Considered” (vol. 131, 1923, pages 342-343), where Carl Sandburg listed and numbered his thirty-eight one-sentence definitions of poetry. These we especially like:

   

6. Poetry is a puppet-show, where riders of skyrockets and divers of sea fathoms gossip about the sixth sense and the fourth dimension.

14. Poetry is a sky dark with a wild-duck migration.

15. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable.

19. Poetry is a theorem of a yellow-silk handkerchief knotted with riddles, sealed in a balloon tied to the tail of a kite flying in a white wind against a blue sky in spring.

36. Poetry is the achievement of the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.

38. Poetry is the capture of a picture, a song, or a flair, in a deliberate prism of words.

    For a brief biography of Carl Sandburg, click here.

Philip Jones Griffiths on the problem with digital photography

    Digital photography too easily allows “What you see is what wasn’t there,” believes Philip Jones Griffiths:

The real problem with digital is there is no reason to believe photographs any more. In a sense, you could easily postulate and say photography was a shooting star of the twentieth century. It came and went in 100 years . . . faking pictures is just so easy. Let’s hope that there will be a reaction to that. And we will go back to taking real pictures on real film and people will say, yes, this is real, this really happened. (Quoted on page 66 of After Photography, by Fred Ritchin. W. W. Norton & Co. 2009.)

    For a brief biography of Philip Jones Griffiths, click here. For a selection of his photographs, click here. For a brief biography of Fred Ritchin, click here.

Charlie Chaplin’s way for getting great ideas

    As he tells it:

    Over the years I have discovered that ideas come through an intense desire for them; continually desiring, the mind becomes a watch-tower on the look-out for incidents that may excite the imagination - music, a sunset, may give image to an idea.
    I would say, pick a subject that will stimulate you, elaborate it and involve it, then, if you can’t develop it further, discard it and pick another. Elimination from accumulation is the process of finding what you want.
    How does one get ideas? By sheer perseverance to the point of madness. One must have a capacity to suffer anguish and sustain enthusiasm over a long period of time. Perhaps it’s easier for some people than others, but I doubt it. (Quoted from page 211 of The Life of the Creative Spirit, by H. Charles Romesburg.)

    For a brief biography of Charlie Chaplin, click here.

How mathematical logic played a big hand in causing the banking crisis

    The mathematical logic for pricing financial securities was a trap. It had assumptions that ran contrary to the real world. The Saunterer pointed this out in the post of December 17, 2005 - “Gilbert K. Chesterton on how life is a trap for logicians” (to see, click here).

    I want to give a simple illustration of how easy it is to fall into a logical trap. It involves a puzzle posed by Lewis Carroll (pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson): You have a cup containing 50 spoonfuls of brandy, and another containing 50 spoonfuls of water. You take a spoonful of brandy from the first cup and mix it into the second cup. Then you take a spoonful of the mixture from the second cup and mix it into the first. Is there more, less, or the same amount of brandy in the water cup as there is water in the brandy cup? The mathematical logic (you can work it out; it’s easy) shows there is the same amount of brandy in the water cup as water in the brandy cup.

    Yet that isn’t true in the real world, as Christopher S. Lange pointed out in a letter to The New York Book Review (March 1, 2009), saying:

The problem lies in the mixing of solutions. The molecules of water and alcohol each occupy a certain volume in pure solutions each. However, water and alcohol when mixed yield a sum that is more compact than the parts. Hence, 50 spoonfuls of water plus 50 spoonfuls of alcohol equals approximately 98 spoonfuls of mixture because of the interpenetration of each solution’s molecular spacing by the other. Thus, adding a spoonful of brandy to the same cup of water yields less than 51 spoonfuls. So taking a spoonful from the mixture involves sampling a more concentrated solution and leaves less than 50 spoonfuls in the cup of water; adding that more concentrated spoonful to the cup of brandy results in more brandy in the brandy cup that water in the water cup.

    What we have here is a tidy object lesson about logical traps. Lange made it in response to the mathematician John Allen Paulos’ review (February 1, 2009, NYT Book Review) of Lewis Carroll in Numberland: His Fantastical Mathematical Logical Life, by Robin Wilson. W. W. Norton. 2008.)
    For a brief biography of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, click here. For John Allen Paulos’ home page, click here. For Christopher S. Lange’s home page, click here.

John Ruskin on really seeing

    In a passage from a group of quietly Sauntering essays, John Ruskin reminds us of the way it has always been: To really see, draw the thing:

And to-day, I missed rocks, palace, and fountain all alike, and found myself lying on the bank of a cart-road in the sand, with no prospect whatever but that small aspen tree against the blue sky. Languidly, but not idly, I began to draw it; and as I drew, the languor passed away; the beautiful lines insisted on being traced, - without weariness. More and more beautiful they became, as each rose out of the rest, and took its place in the air. With wonder increasing every instant, I saw that they “composed” themselves, by finer laws than any known of men. At last, the tree was there, and everything that I had thought before about trees, nowhere. (From page 314 of The Works of John Ruskin, edited by E. T. Cook and A. Wedderburn. London: George Allen. 1908.)

    For a brief biography of John Ruskin, click here. For images of him and of his art, click here.