9/11 (and other) mysteries

[PSmith08]

That's it. I take an interest in English idioms and vocabulary. I know you speak German or Russian or Japanese or something.

That's it? You don't speak any other major European languages and no Asian language at all but you pontificate about Western and Eastern philosophy and mentality, yet you have no access to studying any other people's culture and mentality. You are even more provincial and stupid than I thought.
There is nothing wrong in general BTW with not knowing foreign languages if you don't need them for practical reasons or intellectual interests - although it certainly is very enrichening to know at least a few at least a little -, but someone like you who holds grandiose lectures about the culture and mentality of "the West" and "the East" without even understanding what most of these people say in their own words, that is just totally ridiculous.

So, let me see if I've got this. Sean, who once (not too long ago, either) dismissed both Friedrich Nietzsche and Theodor W. Adorno out-of-hand, cannot even pretend to read either author in their common native tongue? I've nothing against translations, but - and take it from first-hand experience - there is a nuance and subtlety lost in translation. An oration of Cicero, going with my meager experience in Latin and Greek, has shadings of meaning that are totally lost in most translations. When, for example, he calls Clodia "non solum meretrix sed etiam proterva meretrix procaxque," there is something lost there. The cadence and flow, too, would be lost: "not only a prostitute, but also a wanton and flagrant prostitute." You lose linguistic and cultural senses when you have to take it out of its original tongue.

Am I the only one taken by the irony of someone railing against Western narrow-mindedness who behaves, for all intents and purposes, like the parochial folk he chastises?

I think the ultimate reassuring myth of conspiracy mongers is that someone is in control.  It is too disturbing for them to believe that events like 9/11 can happen as a result of a chain of random events.  Blaming the "devil" is the easier route of these superstitious peasants. The unspoken utopian correllary is a that potentially the forces of good could in theory likewise control the world, if it were not for "them".  It is a warped species of the narrative fallacy that people fall for in looking at history - where a narrative is spun around a series of events (like the rise of Hitler) that makes it seem totally foreseable ex ante (which of course it was not).  Of course the same fallacy applies to pundits who look back at the real history of 9/11 and delude themselves to believe that it was somehow predictable - that Clinton, or Bush or whoever could have foreseen that the chain of events that did lead to 9/11 and somehow put the pieces together and prevent the tragedy.

I have long argued that conspiracy theories are little more than modern analogs to ancient mystery-cults. Hidden knowledge opening up bigger "truths." They have about as much real value as those mystery-cults, but they are psychologically invaluable to those who need them.

[Lethevich]

there is a nuance and subtlety lost in translation.

Indeedie - I got a bit of a roasting for suggesting that on the forum a while ago.

[M forever]

Indeedie - I got a bit of a roasting for suggesting that on the forum a while ago.

What roasting? For suggesting that a lot of nuances get lost in translations?

[Lethevich]

Yep. I can't remember too much detail, so it may have been the way I phrased it that was the problem. While the work may be very enjoyable in translation, there will always be an unknown factor to the reader about how much they are actually missing. Not just with the required notes at the bottom of some pages explaining the double-meaning of an occasional part (if the translation doesn't gloss those over), but also the way language is used in the original writing is impossible to replicate. It could be the literary equivalent of listening to music on a car radio instead of a Hi-Fi - the point gets across, but not always the details. Some of the joy of wordplay and very subtle ways in which the writer tweaks the language would also be a shame to miss out on without it being pointed out by notes (and they can only remark on occasional notable parts), or a slightly more interventionist piece of translation to apply it to something similar but not identical in the second language - the directness (and joy) of the writing is... blunted.

This is quite biased by my own preferences, though, and it's obvious that it may antagonise people who enjoy books that I can't due to this nagging feeling regarding the directness of the text in another language (or lack of it).

[Sean]

The more Nietzsche and Adorno lost in translation the better. They were childish and cluless and I'm not going to bother elaborating except that yes I've read BT, CW, TG, GM etc and chunks of Aesthetics of music, Wagner, Subject and Object and The Culture industry.

[Sean]

M, learning another language is an interesting experience to be sure, and I'd like to do an oriental one with their different grammar.

But for the time being you can trust me- I am indeed the towering genius I appear to be.

[lukeottevanger]

Sean, don't leave that open goal just sitting there..... it's just too hard to resist...


So you are indeed exactly what you appear to be, eh? 

[M forever]

M, learning another language is an interesting experience to be sure, and I'd like to do an oriental one with their different grammar.

Since you haven't learned any languges yet, *any* language you try will have a different grammar from what you know.


And yes

Sean, don't leave that open goal just sitting there..... it's just too hard to resist...

I'd like to do an oriental one

I thought you already did plenty of the small oriental ones?

[M forever]

Yep. I can't remember too much detail, so it may have been the way I phrased it that was the problem. While the work may be very enjoyable in translation, there will always be an unknown factor to the reader about how much they are actually missing. Not just with the required notes at the bottom of some pages explaining the double-meaning of an occasional part (if the translation doesn't gloss those over), but also the way language is used in the original writing is impossible to replicate. It could be the literary equivalent of listening to music on a car radio instead of a Hi-Fi - the point gets across, but not always the details. Some of the joy of wordplay and very subtle ways in which the writer tweaks the language would also be a shame to miss out on without it being pointed out by notes (and they can only remark on occasional notable parts), or a slightly more interventionist piece of translation to apply it to something similar but not identical in the second language - the directness (and joy) of the writing is... blunted.

100% true. That's why learning a new language is so interesting. It is not just a tool which allows you access to more information from more diverse sources, it also leads you into the culture and shows you the differences (and similarities) between cultures on a much deeper level. Cultural comparisons on any scale, let alone the grandiose scale on which our towering Genius Sean The Brawn makes them, are not possible at all without that skill.

This is quite biased by my own preferences, though, and it's obvious that it may antagonise people who enjoy books that I can't due to this nagging feeling regarding the directness of the text in another language (or lack of it).

Why would that antagonize people?

[karlhenning]

But for the time being you can trust me- I am indeed the towering genius I appear to be.

Sean, did I accuse you of lacking a sense of humor? I withdraw the allegation.

[PSmith08]

The more Nietzsche and Adorno lost in translation the better. They were childish and cluless and I'm not going to bother elaborating except that yes I've read BT, CW, TG, GM etc and chunks of Aesthetics of music, Wagner, Subject and Object and The Culture industry.

Well, by your own admission, you would have absolutely no idea how much they lost in translation, so I hardly think you're in a position to pass judgment on that fact. Given your earlier admission, I am somewhat under-inclined to take your word for it, though. You'll have to forgive me, but I just don't think you're qualified.

But for the time being you can trust me- I am indeed the towering genius I appear to be.

I'm no expert, but I think that the DSM-IV would call this the "manic" phase.

[M forever]

Is that the phase just before total breakdown? Will Sean run amok soon? Will we hear about him in the news?

[PSmith08]

Is that the phase just before total breakdown? Will Sean run amok soon? Will we hear about him in the news?

No. It's just the high phase, and is followed by the low phase. It's cyclic.

I don't think holding forth at length and in the vaguest possible terms about "good" Eastern Dionysian thought and Western narrow-mindedness would count as "[running] amok" by most definitions, unless you count boredom.

[M forever]

I know, but where is it all going to lead. Sean, when your father cuts off your allowance and you can't go on trips to third world countries anymore to satisfy your basic needs with cheap prostitutes, what will happen? Are you going to make the evening news?

[Sean]

M, all the oriental ones are small. I wish you weren't so obsessed though: just get your face over to Pattaya, a couple of hours south of Bangkok and be done with it will you- take some friendly advice for once.

I won't be running amok, what's the point, the horde is already the living dead. I'm partly just still mad years later after reading that drivel by Nietzsche and Adorno: if Smith really wants it I still have files on Adorno and modernism and Nietzsche's Case of Wagner.

[M forever]

M, all the oriental ones are small. I wish you weren't so obsessed though: just get your face over to Pattaya, a couple of hours south of Bangkok and be done with it will you- take some friendly advice for once.

I have a feeling that that is the only area you can actually give some advice in...but don't you think it is totally pathetic that you have to fly half around the globe to buy little underpriviledged girls? What is your "philosophical" justification for that?

I won't be running amok, what's the point, the horde is already the living dead.

So that means if you went out and shot people on a wild killing spree, it wouldn't really matter - because they are already dead?

I'm partly just still mad years later after reading that drivel by Nietzsche and Adorno: if Smith really wants it I still have files on Adorno and modernism and Nietzsche's Case of Wagner.

I doubt that. Who wants to read self-congratulatory drivel about German literature and philosophy from someone who doesn't even have superficial insights into that culture?

But why are you so mad still years later? Is it Nietzsche and Adorno, or is it in reality that...nice uncle... who...came to "read you bedtime stories"?

[Sean]

I have a feeling that that is the only area you can actually give some advice in...but don't you think it is totally pathetic that you have to fly half around the globe to buy little underpriviledged girls? What is your "philosophical" justification for that?

You don't understand, and there's virtually no prostitution in Pattaya.

So that means if you went out and shot people on a wild killing spree, it wouldn't really matter - because they are already dead?

Many people aren't alive that much. Beyond that there are always other considerations.

Who wants to read self-congratulatory drivel about German literature and philosophy from someone who doesn't even have superficial insights into that culture?

I don't really want to read drivel on this idiot forum either. Maybe I am mad as you say.

But why are you so mad still years later? Is it Nietzsche and Adorno, or is it in reality that...nice uncle... who...came to "read you bedtime stories"?

They fill library shelves (Nietzsche though at least being controversial), but it's very obvious neither actually knew Wagner's music they bitch about: if you're going to bash someone you have to begin with what they've achieved. Adorno particularly is a classic example of an academic scribbler divorced from reality.

Aside from that M, you're nuts.

Anyone is who uses an internet message board.

[Brian]

That's it? You don't speak any other major European languages and no Asian language at all but you pontificate about Western and Eastern philosophy and mentality, yet you have no access to studying any other people's culture and mentality. You are even more provincial and stupid than I thought.
There is nothing wrong in general BTW with not knowing foreign languages if you don't need them for practical reasons or intellectual interests - although it certainly is very enrichening to know at least a few at least a little -, but someone like you who holds grandiose lectures about the culture and mentality of "the West" and "the East" without even understanding what most of these people say in their own words, that is just totally ridiculous.

Incidentally, I would guesstimate the percentage of American Fundamentalist Christians who can actually read the original texts which they venerate as *literally true*, at 0.005% (out of roughly 160 million). (Ignoring the objection that we don't actually have the original texts.)

[Brian]

Aside from that M, you're nuts.

Anyone is who uses an internet message board.

What did the pot call the kettle?

I'll sign off now and return to my, uh, sane manifestation. 

[longears]

I am indeed the towering genius I appear to be.

It's pretty clear to anyone who reads your drivel that you are indeed what you appear.  If you were a little smarter you'd see that, rather than a "towering genius," you present as a common nitwit.