After failing high school - disillusioned with the meaning of life - David drifted until he was introduced to the Metaphysics of Quality. He now spends his time using it to make things better!
Glenn Greenwald on Journalism and Values
Glenn Greenwald is a great journalist. Why? Because his view of journalism; that it’s firstly meant to act as a check to power, is a good one. Without journalists informing the public about what their elected officials are doing; there are closed doors and an environment which is conductive to abuse. The role of journalism as the fourth estate is that it tempers that power by making actions made in its name public and thus open to being held to account.
But it’s not just his view of journalism as a check on power which is good. He also understands, in line with the Metaphysics of Quality, that it’s impossible for anyone to hold an objective, value free viewpoint. As Pirsig writes in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:
“The difference between a good mechanic and a bad one, like the difference between a good mathematician and a bad one, is precisely this ability to select the good facts from the bad ones on the basis of quality. He has to care! This is an ability about which formal traditional scientific method has nothing to say. It’s long past time to take a closer look at this qualitative preselection of facts which has seemed so scrupulously ignored by those who make so much of these facts after they are ‘observed.'”
In fact, Glenn articulates that it’s this value free viewpoint that modern day journalists cling to as a defense whenever they saddle up next to those in power and stenographically transcribe what they say. They claim that they’re being ‘objective’ but really they’re just transcribing what the powerful wants us to hear rather than doing their job and looking out for those things which are valuable for the public to know regardless of what those in power say.
Along these lines, recently Greenwald had a fascinating exchange with the New York Times Bill Keller in which he summarised his view on modern journalism and the role of the NYT thus:
“My view of journalism absolutely requires both fairness and rigorous adherence to facts. But I think those values are promoted by being honest about one’s perspectives and subjective assumptions rather than donning a voice-of-god, view-from-nowhere tone that falsely implies that journalists reside above the normal viewpoints and faction-loyalties that plague the non-journalist and the dreaded “activist.”
Embedded in The New York Times’s institutional perspective and reporting methodologies are all sorts of quite debatable and subjective political and cultural assumptions about the world. And with some noble exceptions, The Times, by design or otherwise, has long served the interests of the same set of elite and powerful factions. Its reporting is no less “activist,” subjective or opinion-driven than the new media voices it sometimes condescendingly scorns.”
The discussion is centred around the new media venture of which Greenwald is starting with Pierre Omidyar. It should be interesting to see what form it takes. But I recommend the whole exchange as it’s a great intellectual discussion between a prominent modern day journalist in that of Keller and one of the more adversarial journalists of our times in Greenwald.
G A T T A C A
If you’re doing not much else on a lazy Sunday afternoon, you could do worse than watch Gattaca.
Gattaca is a great film for a number of reasons; but first and foremost is the sentiment of the underlying tagline that “There is no gene for the human spirit”. The Metaphysics of Quality agrees with this sentiment and the film is nothing but a wholehearted expression of the idea that there is a more powerful thing beyond the physical genes which dictate how our bodies work. However the term ‘spirit’ is perhaps not the best choice for a word to represent that which is beyond the physical. I mean, a few hundred years ago folks were burned at the stake for their evil ‘spirits’ and so there are negative connotations with it which another word does not have. Of course, that word is ‘Quality’. There is indeed no gene for the human quality and I’d struggle to create a better movie than Gattaca to represent this idea.
Other great things about the movie :
The Probable Science Fiction Future – It would be hard to find another science fiction film which represents the ‘Not too distant future’ better than this. While it has made one predictive error since it was created in 1997 (Laser eye surgery exists now – instead of either an eye transplant or contact lenses as claimed). Designer babies, prevalent solar power, electric cars and ubiquitous space travel are all becoming more probable than less as the years roll by. Furthermore, only the best Science Fiction gives cautionary moral tales about possible futures knowing that as a result of watching them we are made wiser and can hopefully avoid these unpleasant scenarios in the future.
The Heroes Journey – The film follows Joseph Campbell’s universal heroes journey narrative very closely.
The Cinematography – Beautifully crafted shots which feature a pristine palate reflecting, perhaps, the artificial world in which the ‘Godchild’ Vincent inhabits.
The Sets– Featuring the ‘Marin County Civic Center’ by Frank Lloyd Wright. Plenty of circles which are pleasant to the human eye too..
The Soundtrack – Beautifully crafted piano pieces by Michael Nymann.
Russell Brand : The Mystic
Russell Brand does yoga and meditation. In the above video he talks about how both of these things help him find a connection which Drugs and Sex cannot. It’s rare to have a celebrity with such considerable self confessed experience in drugs and sex, speak with such honesty in what way they don’t work.
“I’ve really tried drugs. I’ve really tried sex. I really tried all these things and they do not work.”
Russell Brand
Robert Redford On a Sailboat > “[In this film] there’s nothing but the elements. Nothing but the weather, a man, a boat – that’s it.” > **Robert Redford**
In a new J.C. Chandor film Robert Redford ‘plays an unnamed solo sailor woken by a collision with a drifting shipping container that rips a hole in his 11-metre yacht. Taking on water, and with his navigation equipment and radio broken, he is stranded in the middle of the Indian Ocean, with a violent storm approaching.’
In Lila, Robert Redford made a cameo appearance as the person to romance the sailing narrator before he sold the rights to his previous book – Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Interestingly, in the book the narrator mentioned Redford’s value of the Victorians:
“Those Victorians seemed to light Redford up too. He’d made a lot of films about that era. Something about them probably interested him as it does many other people. The Victorians represented the last really static social pattern we’ve had. And maybe someone who feels his life is too chaotic, too fluid, might look back at them enviously. Something about their rigid convictions about what was right and what was wrong might appeal to anyone brought up in laid-back Southern California of the forties and fifties. Redford seemed to be a rather Victorian person himself: restrained, well mannered, gracious. Maybe that’s why he lives here in New York. He likes the Victorian graciousness that still exists here in places.”
And in the press conference Redford also talked about the losing of values:
“As I can look back now.. I can see America in kind of a series of sections where change happened as America moved from one place to the next. As it moved from one place to the next, certain things got lost, got dropped. Our belief system began to have holes punched in it.. But I was raised at a time when a belief system was what you lived on.”
“Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era, received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.
Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”
Like this cup, Nan-in said, you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”