Joseph Conrad, Nostromo

Introduction

Opening Passage:

In the time of Spanish rule, and for many years afterwards, the town of Sulaco—the luxuriant beauty of the orange gardens bears witness to its antiquity—had never been commercially anything more important than a coasting port with a fairly large local trade in ox-hides and indigo. The clumsy deep-sea galleons of the conquerors that, needing a brisk gale to move at all, would lie becalmed, where your modern ship built on clipper lines forges ahead by the mere flapping of her sails, had been barred out of Sulaco by the prevailing calms of its vast gulf. Some harbours of the earth are made difficult of access by the treachery of sunken rocks and the tempests of their shores. Sulaco had found an inviolable sanctuary from the temptations of a trading world in the solemn hush of the deep Golfo Placido as if within an enormous semi-circular and unroofed temple open to the ocean, with its walls of lofty mountains hung with the mourning draperies of cloud.

Summary: Sulaco is the most resource-rich province of the fictional country of Costaguana, home of the rich San Tomé silver mine. This mine was granted in perpetual concession to a Costaguanan of English extraction, Mr. Gould, who, knowing that it was an albatross around the neck, tried to get out of it, but could not. And, indeed, it dominated him the rest of his life as the corrupt Costaguanan government used it as an excuse to squeeze his fortune dry. The mine is taken over by Charles Gould, his son, and he with his wife, Mrs. Gould (we never learn her first name) set out to do good with it, to bring stability, order, and prosperity with it. In a sense they succeed. But plans never go quite straight in Costaguana, especially when tangled up with the complexities of silver, which, of course, is not just a metal but an idea, and an idea that can tangle everything up.

The book, through a very wide and beautifully drawn cast of characters, traces the course of idealism in its tangled and complicated interaction with material interests. There are many kinds of idealism, each as varied as the characters themselves, and they all become tangled in the complications of Material Interests, and especially in the mine as the consummate representation of those interests. Material interests need idealism to be justified, but they have a way of becoming indistinguishable in men's minds from the ideals themselves. Likewise, idealism needs material interests as its instruments; but material interests at the same time muddle one's mind and begin to enslave it, thus risking the ideal. And each, materialism and idealism, carry their own blind-spots. Thus the Author's Note sums it up well when it says that Sulaco is the background for men and women shortsighted in good and evil. Every significant character in the book suffers from this shortsightedness arising from the suicide pact, so to speak, between the material and the ideal in human life. For a Conrad novel things turn out remarkably well in the end; but no one breaks free from moral shortsightedness.

Favorite Passage: There are several possibilities, but this one doesn't give away much of the story, while nonetheless carrying it in its germ.

The father of Charles Gould, for a long time one of the most wealthy merchants of Costaguana, had already lost a considerable part of his fortune in forced loans to the successive Governments. He was a man of calm judgment, who never dreamed of pressing his claims; and when, suddenly, the perpetual concession of the San Tome mine was offered to him in full settlement, his alarm became extreme. He was versed in the ways of Governments. Indeed, the intention of this affair, though no doubt deeply meditated in the closet, lay open on the surface of the document presented urgently for his signature. The third and most important clause stipulated that the concession-holder should pay at once to the Government five years' royalties on the estimated output of the mine.

Mr. Gould, senior, defended himself from this fatal favour with many arguments and entreaties, but without success. He knew nothing of mining; he had no means to put his concession on the European market; the mine as a working concern did not exist. The buildings had been burnt down, the mining plant had been destroyed, the mining population had disappeared from the neighbourhood years and years ago; the very road had vanished under a flood of tropical vegetation as effectually as if swallowed by the sea; and the main gallery had fallen in within a hundred yards from the entrance. It was no longer an abandoned mine; it was a wild, inaccessible, and rocky gorge of the Sierra, where vestiges of charred timber, some heaps of smashed bricks, and a few shapeless pieces of rusty iron could have been found under the matted mass of thorny creepers covering the ground. Mr. Gould, senior, did not desire the perpetual possession of that desolate locality; in fact, the mere vision of it arising before his mind in the still watches of the night had the power to exasperate him into hours of hot and agitated insomnia.

Recommendation: The artistry of the book is, of course superb: the descriptions are vivid, the characterizations excellent, and Conrad's ability to tell the stories of a large number of characters in detail while still maintaining a clear and coherent plot is impressive. Highly recommended.

The Martyrdom-Day of Guru Arjan Dev Ji

Today there is an interesting Sikh holiday, remembering the martyrdom of Arjan Dev, the fifth Guru and the most notable Sikh martyr. Sikhism is the world's fifth largest religion; it is monotheistic. You can get a rough idea of it if you think of it as a little like Islam and a little like Hinduism; Sikhs themselves tend not to like this way of putting it, but it is nonetheless true that the Sri Guru Granth contains, in addition to many uniquely Sikh compositions, a fair number of songs from the Muslim Sufi and the Hindu Bhakti traditions. The key element of Sikh religion is the Guru. There were ten human Gurus, from Guru Nanak in the late fifteenth century to Guru Gobind Singh in the late seventeenth century. Guru Gobind Singh, however, foreseeing that Sikhs would in future years need a far greater coherence than they had had to that point, instituted a large number of reforms to constitute the Sikhs as a Panth, a community, including imposing the requirement of the five K's (the Sikh uniform), and installing the Sikh holy book, the Adi Granth, as the perpetual Guru of the Sikhs. The Sri Guru Granth, however, is a psalter, a holy song-book, and is not so much read as sung, so in a sense by making the Adi Granth the Sri Guru Granth Sahib, the tenth Guru made the Panth itself Guru, and you occasionally find Sikhs talking about Sri Guru Panth. It is important to understand that this is not a second Guru; rather, the point is that, Sri Guru Granth being the perpetual Guru of the Sikhs, the community or Panth itself becomes the Guru insofar as it becomes the voice and thought of the Guru in holy song and prayer.

The deepest roots of Sri Guru Granth are various, but it was Guru Arjan Dev (1563-1606) who first began to build a Sikh holy book by collecting and writing a coherent collection of hymns to God. This first consolidation of Sikh prayer and teaching would itself be enough to give the fifth Guru an important place in history; the current Sri Guru Granth, which consists of the core collected by Guru Arjan plus other sacred poetry added by Guru Gobind Singh, is a truly remarkable book. But the fifth Guru also became the first person to be martyred as a Sikh, and this also plays an important role in Sikh life. The Sikhs had to face early on the problem of being a strong religious minority under Muslim rule, and under a Guru like Guru Arjan, who was very popular in his region and who drew quite a few Hindus and Muslims to Sikhism, this became quite a problem. Under the reign of the highly tolerant Emperor Akbar, this mostly played out in terms of social tension. However, after the death of Akbar, who was succeeded by his son Jahangir, things changed. Like his father, Jahangir's official policy was toleration. Jahangir, however, almost immediately had to deal with rebellions, and for reasons that are not wholly clear, Guru Arjan was accused of assisting rebels. In particular, the major rebel leader Khusrau was supposed to have been welcomed hospitably and blessed by the Guru. Guru Arjan was arrested, but Jahangir himself seems to have hoped to obtain Guru Arjan's conversion to Islam (it was a common approach among Muslim rulers to treat troublesome religious leaders fairly generously in the hope of trying to get their conversion and thus dealing with the problem at the source). Jahangir turned over Guru Arjan to the governor, Murtaza Khan. It is unclear what Murtaza Khan's instructions were. It's likely that Jahangir authorized the death penalty, but it's not clear that he demanded it and, again, he may have been hoping to get a conversion instead; likewise, it's possible he authorized torture, but there's no actual evidence that he did. There are other possibilities; the exact historical details are somewhat unclear because we have several different accounts from different sources, any one of which could be true. Whatever the case, Murtaza Khan tortured Guru Arjan by hotseat: the Guru was made to sit on a metal seat underneath which there was a fire that blazed to make the metal grow hotter and hotter. According to Sikh stories, which, allowing for adornment are fairly probable, the Guru, after several sessions of this blistering torture, was granted a respite, and allowed to bathe in the river; he entered the river and never came out, his body never to be recovered. Guru Hargobind Singh took leadership of the Sikh community. Guru Arjan died in May 30, 1606, but the first memorial of his martyrdom was on June 16, 1606, and so it has been ever since.

The death of Guru Arjan Dev is in many ways a reasonable starting point for the process by which the Sikhs became not just a religious movement but a cohesive ethnic identity. The Sikhs were shocked by Guru Arjan's death, and this seems to have led to an increasing tendency by the Sikhs to protect themselves by the sword, which led to their reputation as a fierce and well-organized soldier-community; Guru Gobind Singh would later essentially take this element of Sikh life and channel it more fully into religious devotion, leading to the Sikhs as they exist today.

The following is from the hymns, or banis, of the Sri Guru Granth; it is the beginning portion of what is usually known as the Sukhmani Sahib, beginning on page 262, a linked collection of 192 hymns divided into 24 sections of 8, and one of the most popular Sikh prayers. The Sukhmani Sahib itself is quite long; the full recitation can take a couple of hours. 'Gauri' is the type of tune to which it is sung or chanted. The Shalok is a sort of introductory part to the section. An Ashtapad is one of the eight hymns in each section. This Ashtapad is usually attributed to Guru Arjan Dev himself.

Gauri Sukhmani, Fifth Mehl.

Shalok:
One Universal Creator God. By The Grace Of The True Guru:
I bow to the Primal Guru. I bow to the Guru of Ages.
I bow to the True Guru. I bow to the Great, Divine Guru. ||1||

Ashtapadi:
Meditate, meditate, meditate in remembrance of Him, and find peace.
Worry and anguish shall be dispelled from your body.
Remember in praise the One who pervades the whole Universe.
His Name is chanted by countless people, in so many ways.
The Vedas, the Puraanas and the Simritees, the purest of utterances,
were created from the One Word of the Name of the Lord.
That one, in whose soul the One Lord dwells -
the praises of his glory cannot be recounted.
Those who yearn only for the blessing of Your Darshan -
Nanak: save me along with them! ||1||

You can hear this sung -- at this point it is a bit more chant-like than the full song of some parts -- here.

Left to Muse

A Night-Piece
by William Wordsworth

------The sky is overcast
With a continuous cloud of texture close,
Heavy and wan, all whitened by the Moon,
Which through that veil is indistinctly seen,
A dull, contracted circle, yielding light
So feebly spread, that not a shadow falls,
Chequering the ground--from rock, plant, tree, or tower.
At length a pleasant instantaneous gleam
Startles the pensive traveller while he treads
His lonesome path, with unobserving eye
Bent earthwards; he looks up--the clouds are split
Asunder,--and above his head he sees
The clear Moon, and the glory of the heavens.
There, in a black-blue vault she sails along,
Followed by multitudes of stars, that, small
And sharp, and bright, along the dark abyss
Drive as she drives: how fast they wheel away,
Yet vanish not!--the wind is in the tree,
But they are silent;--still they roll along
Immeasurably distant; and the vault,
Built round by those white clouds, enormous clouds,
Still deepens its unfathomable depth.
At length the Vision closes; and the mind,
Not undisturbed by the delight it feels,
Which slowly settles into peaceful calm,
Is left to muse upon the solemn scene.

Jottings on Logical Tense

Suppose we take a fairly simple argument of more than single step, e.g.,

p) All black cats are ninjas.
q) Whatever is a ninja is well-trained.
r) Therefore all black cats are well-trained.
s) Some black cats are pets who never get out of bed.
t) Therefore some pets who never get out of bed are well-trained.

This is a series of propositions, but they have a logical order. Some propositions are premises for others, while others are conclusions. If we take a proposition as a reference-point, like (r), we find that (p) and (q) are in the premiseward direction, and that (t) is in the conclusionward direction. (s) is, so to speak, simultaneous with (r). On the basis of this we could build up a modal logic to describe the relations among propositions.

Let us use the following to indicate "p is a premise everywhere for r" (I'll get to the reason for using 'everywhere' in a bit):

Hpr

and let us use the following to indicate "t is a conclusion somewhere for r".

Ftr

From these we can develop two new descriptions. The following says "t is a conclusion everywhere for r":

Gtr

And the following says "p is a premise somewere for r"

Ppr

The reason for the 'everywhere' and 'somewhere' is that there is an asymmetry, not logically necessary but practically sensible, in how we talk casually about premises and conclusions. When we say something is a premise, we usually mean that it is a premise everywhere; once a premise, always a premise, it can be used whenever you please as a premise. When we call something a conclusion, however, we do not usually mean that it is always a conclusion; many conclusions are path-dependent: you can only get them in the conclusionward direction if other things intervene. To say that a proposition is a conclusion everywhere with respect to p requires that it follow immediately from p. In other words. As I said, there is no particular logical reason why we should talk this way; we could just as easily talk in the reverse way. So it makes sense to allow two ways in which a proposition can be premiseward and two ways in which a proposition can be conclusionward.

We can then talk about conditions on arguments in these terms. For instance, this pair tells us there are no contradictory premises for any given proposition x:

Ppx -> ~H~p,x ("If something is a premise anywhere, its contradictory is not a premise everywhere")
Hpx -> ~P~p,x ("If something is a premise everywhere, its contradictory is not a premise anywhere")

And these are the corresponding formulae for cases where there are no contradictory conclusions:

Fpx -> ~G~p,x ("If something is a conclusion anywhere, its contradictory is not a conclusion everywhere")
Gpx -> ~F~p,x ("If something is a conclusion everywhere, its contradictory is not a conclusion anywhere")

Likewise, we can say "if p is an always available conclusion, it is a conclusion available at some point":

Gpx -> Fpx

And we can say that if (p->q) is a premise then, if p is a premise, q is also a premise:

G(p->q),x -> (Gpx -> Gqx)

Nested operators end up being meta-operators. For instance, FFpx says that Fp is a conclusion at some point with respect to x. Thus for most contexts, this will be true:

FFp,x -> Fpx

But this will not:

Fpx -> FFp,x


This is all a tense logic, of course, although it simply indicates direction rather than time (premises are the past, conclusions are the future), but we've picked out a particular proposition to serve as a reference point rather than just assuming a 'now'. Another difference is that this is not a standard tense logic, that is, it is not based on K or Kt modal systems.

We can also quantify if we please, e.g.,

∀x Hpx ("p is an everywhere-available premise for every proposition")
∃x Hpx ("p is an everywhere-available premise for some proposition")
∀x ~Fpx ("p is the conclusion of no proposition")
∃x ~Fpx ("there is a proposition for which p is not a conclusion")

Of course, one would also want to indicate sections of argument, using multiple reference points, so one would ideally have equivalents for Since and Until. And if one added truth-values as modal operators, one could discuss things like validity of arguments.

Henneberger on FoF and Tax Exemption

Melinda Henneberger:

The upcoming “Fortnight for Freedom” campaign to push back against this administration’s contraceptive health care mandate, however, sounds so much like a “Fortnight to Defeat Barack Obama” that I’ve gotten to wondering what our prelates would have to do to cost the church its tax-exempt status. (IRS rules are pretty clear that churches have to give up their exemption if they campaign for or against a political candidate.)

That is not going to happen, and I’m not suggesting it should. But as a thought exercise, what would it take to provoke such a thing?

This is not quite stated correctly. It's simply impossible for "the church" to lose tax-exempt status because (1) the Catholic Church as such is not a single taxable institution, but a very, very large number of affiliated institutions, each of which would have to be looked at individually; and (2) the most the IRS could seriously do is say that the income used for political campaigning is taxable. It's not illegal for churches to campaign for political candidates, by the way; it's just that if they do, their income can be treated as taxable if the IRS so determines. According to IRS rules, churches don't have any special tax exemption per se, since they just fall under educational or cultural institutions, but they do have one peculiarity in comparison with other institutions in this category, which is that churches and similar institutions get their exemption automatically as long as they meet other requirements. Since a lot of other tax-related benefits (affecting the charitable status of donations, audit procedures, etc.) are linked to tax-exempt status, this could be a pretty big matter, but the institution would qualify again the next year as long as they met the requirements for that year.

Moreover, not all activities that are political count: most of the prohibited activities can be avoided by simply framing everything in nonpartisan terms encouraging people of all parties to take an issue seriously, especially if the message of the institution in question is closely connected to things the church says even in non-election years. It doesn't actually matter how politically controversial an issue is: the IRS is quite clear that churches can still speak out on controversial topics in election years, even when they divide the candidates. It's favoritism for candidates and parties that has to be avoided -- whatever the action is, it can't be equivalent to telling people they can't vote for one candidate or must vote for another (whether or not it actually uses those words). Anything short of that is at most grey-area, and probably safe. So the basic point is:

(1) The Catholic Church, as such, has no tax exempt status because it is not for tax purposes a single institution but a very, very large group of affiliated institutions, each of which would have to be considered separately.

(2) The only institutions whose tax-exempt status could possibly be affected are those directly intervening in the problematic activity. That would in this context largely limit the matter to the diocesan level, although here and there it might reach further.

(3) The activity would have to be directly prejudicial to a candidate or party as such, would have to be clearly associated with the person's official work for that institution. Jenky's actions, as given in Henneberger's post, could potentially get Peoria diocese in trouble, because it is effectively equivalent to telling people not to vote for Obama. Dolan's, on the other hand, are much more grey-area. Many of the tweets, press releases, etc., that Henneberger mentions are certainly not even in the vicinity: merely coming down on an issue is not enough.

(4) While it would be a pretty serious matter for the institution for this fiscal year, it wouldn't be a serious long-term problem; institutions of this sort can't be permanently stripped of the status -- tax-exempt status is handled year-by-year.

Of course, Henneberger is right that this is unlikely to happen, for two reasons: (1) even very small, low-publicity cases where the IRS decides that a church fails to meet the tax exemption requirement are immensely difficult matters for the IRS -- it is highly unpopular, it is always bad press, and it can drag on and on because there are always people who will go to the wall to fight it; and (2) if the IRS tried to press the matter in this context, it would reflect very badly on the White House. Very politically sensitive territory. Actually doing it would just strengthen the arguments and worry more people.

My own view is that the campaigning restriction should be removed completely for all 501c3 institutions -- it is a technically-acceptable qualification that is at heart entirely out of step with the spirit of the American way of life. But this is unlikely -- the restriction actually has considerable bipartisan support, and whenever Congress has considered the matter it has always ended up strengthening the restriction. The reason's not hard to find: it's very convenient for both major parties to muzzle major cultural institutions in the context of election campaigns. That very fact should make us worry about it. But it would take an immense push to change it, and that's unlikely to happen.

Indispensable Requirements of Logic

It may seem strange that I should put forward three sentiments, namely, interest in an indefinite community, recognition of the possibility of this interest being made supreme, and hope in the unlimited continuance of intellectual activity, as indispensable requirements of logic. Yet, when we consider that logic depends on a mere struggle to escape doubt, which, as it terminates in action, must begin in emotion, and that, furthermore, the only cause of our planting ourselves on reason is that other methods of escaping doubt fail on account of the social impulse, why should we wonder to find social sentiment presupposed in reasoning? As for the other two sentiments which I find necessary, they are so only as supports and accessories of that. It interests me to notice that these three sentiments seem to be pretty much the same as that famous trio of Charity, Faith, and Hope, which, in the estimation of St. Paul, are the finest and greatest of spiritual gifts. Neither Old nor New Testament is a textbook of the logic of science, but the latter is certainly the highest existing authority in regard to the dispositions of heart which a man ought to have.

Charles S. Peirce, "On the Doctrine of Chances, with Later Reflections." Part of the point here is that logic requires treating reasoning as having a sort of universal character, going beyond any particularities of any individual point of view; this universality the self-absorbed cannot grasp. The community of the rational is an unlimited community, and its interest is the interest of the long-run and includes all possible reasoners. To be genuinely logical you must reason with this community, in imitation of the kind of person who could devote a life to this kind of community.

The Trees are Loud

The Rainy Summer
by Alice Meynell

There’s much afoot in heaven and earth this year;
The winds hunt up the sun, hunt up the moon,
Trouble the dubious dawn, hasten the drear
Height of a threatening noon.

No breath of boughs, no breath of leaves, of fronds,
May linger or grow warm; the trees are loud;
The forest, rooted, tosses in her bonds,
And strains against the cloud.

No scents may pause within the garden-fold;
The rifled flowers are cold as ocean-shells;
Bees, humming in the storm, carry their cold
Wild honey to cold cells.

I wish it were a rainy summer around here. It's looking much less bad than last year, but it still seems to be shaping up to a terribly dry summer. We might get some rain this week, though.