The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry

August 5, 2015 / posted in images of being-human, reviews / No Comments

The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness IndustryThe Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ronson makes a strong case for leadership being psychopathic. In a sense the test and the way society is; have the same root. Both the psychopath test is about achieving certain metrics, measuring personality orientation. Society in our rationalist contemporary way, is about achieving goals, which are often defined in terms of metrics rather than irrelevant reactions, like feelings or ideals like humanity. So it makes sense that those of us who are able to concentrate on a narrow portion of sociality in order to achieve (any arbitrary thing) would be likely to miss the part of a human that makes our attention/understanding in a situation less rational.

Ronson takes a very around about way to discovering and saying what he wants to say. He seems like a contrarian as well, always asking questions and trying to see things from the other angle. Although he is nervous, he still tries to get to the root of things. He highlights several important angles; that the test’s threshold is arbitrary; that the way people label things (esp other people) creates injustices, and that ultimately the experts can be very correct about things but also very wrong when contexts change. We all make this up as we go along, hiding behind the moniker of “science” as we do it. Tracing the history of an idea is one way to undermine it, to see it as being often un-necessary, that the accidents of history could have turned out another way.

In a sense, this book is about tracing madness and civilization all over again, but from a less discourse oriented perspective and more from a journey of unraveling a particular idea that has hit on us in a random sort of way. In the process we get an amusing, human oriented story that educates us about what psychopaths are, and how the concept has been developed by psychologists — and because of that presentation we are also left unable to really understand what to do with this concept. While there are some people who are partially so, no one is really totally so. Like all labels, this is a matter of degrees of grey.

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Diderot and the Encyclopædists Volume II

July 29, 2015 / posted in dialectics, reviews / No Comments

Diderot and the Encyclopædists Volume II.Diderot and the Encyclopædists Volume II. by John Morley
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Like an encyclopaedia, this volume is mainly a list of various aspects of Diderot and his fellow encyclopaedists. As such, this is not a very coherent work, as there is no real theme. One does get a sense of the times Diderot lived in and the various influences they all had on one another.

The excerpts of Rameau’s Nephew did serve to highlight some of Diderot’s perversity, especially in how he is able to take what is inessential out (social relations) and highlight absolute judgement on those unfavorably. By showing the relativism of valorization and the contingency of opinion, Diderot gets at a particular kind of “heart” of the issue of what is value itself. This is a dyadic work, one that is based in the shadow of “absolute principle” (or at least its absence) and thus tears apart various opinions by which we may hold dear, if we are not very analytic. A start at getting at the relations in mind, but one which still speaks to a kind of essentiality — that certain ways of thinking are more or less real than others.

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Life, Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes, and Autism

July 29, 2015 / posted in images of being-human, life as we know it, reviews, Universal non-all / No Comments

Life, Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes, and AutismLife, Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes, and Autism by Ron Suskind
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

At first I was a little dubious about the topic. The book starts off slowly but with the sure guidance of Ron Suskind’s writing. The story is positive, triumphant. It doesn’t necessarily highlight how great Disney is, but it does give us an interesting peak as to what family is about; and how good family supports itself and is able raising children in an environment that fosters their growth. What is of interest is how the public’s perception of autism has changed to better facilitate autistic inclusion, and yet still has room for improvement.

What’s of interest here isn’t the neurotypical/autistic as a real tragedy, but more about how that divide ignores the fact that all of us function differently. Normalcy is the expectation that all of us are able to function adequately to each other. And we are; but with exceptions. What is of great profound interest is that an autistic boy is able to use Disney as a social lattice to map his interaction with his family and then with the outside world. All of us use stories and cliches to guide our interaction/expectation with the outside world. Some of us just are more able to ground our behavior on a moment to moment guide. We need less structure to foster growth, but we all still need structure. I think the conception of normalcy in some way hides this structure because this structure is expected. With autism that structure is inadequate. We need some other way of allowing for growth.

Part of growth today requires that we are able to create a smooth rationality to realize things forwards and backwards. Not all people can do this to the same degree, of course. With autism, reasoning works only within a certain configuration. This story is about a family that was able reach their son by allowing that configuration to map outwards and envelope them all.

I used to dislike Disney to a great degree. I found the narrow confides of their socialization to be unacceptable. Restraining. To a great degree I still do. I’m not saying this book has helped change my mind about what (sub)cultures and social rigidity can do/impose on people, but I think we can see that there are many modes of reasoning and none of them are invalid although not all of them are socially acceptable.

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Runaways Deluxe, Vol. 3

July 29, 2015 / posted in art, images of being-human, reviews / No Comments

Runaways Deluxe, Vol. 3Runaways Deluxe, Vol. 3 by Brian K. Vaughan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This volume had a much more cohesive sense as to what this group was about, and what they are doing. Although it left certain ties to be unresolved. As with comic books, this may happen, never to be resolved. Unfortunate because I would have liked the story to be resolved, although we are seeing a point here in which this series has become part of the comic book machine, always to have revelation after revelation with character after character being yanked around, killed or twisted around without any real change. The characters are aware of some of this, and yet still defined by the haunted past of the parents. In this volume, I see how the characters fade into the relief of the normal comic book super hero with shady past, to forever be held in immanence between where they would like to be and where they are running away from.

I think this will be the last I read of this series, as by the end of this volume we see that they have gained a sense of place. The necessity of comic book series is to be lodged in that place, forever unable to move from that point of non-place. It does get tiresome to be stuck in transition, although there have been some long standing series that have comfortably crafted a sense for themselves; such as Spiderman, Batman and Superman. I suppose that kind of placement takes some time though.

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The Name of the Rose

July 29, 2015 / posted in images of being-human, manifesto, reviews / No Comments

The Name of the RoseThe Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As always, Umberto Eco is impeccable in the detailed twist of his own imagination and intellectual prowess. This tale starts off from a place of reason, in the cloister of an abby in Italy, the centerpiece of calmness in the medieval world, and ends with the full force of unreason pouring down. A mystery that is solved and revealed to be nothing more than a non-mystery in the sense of an evil master, and the chaos that ensues when we strive too deeply for what we desire.

The happenings are mysterious and too great to be recounted in a way. Towards the end, you may wonder what is going to become, how can Eco wrap this up? He does so in a way that is satisfying too. The folly of wisdom and the necessary strength of faith. Not in ourselves but as a reference to anchor us.

In a way, we still fight over the nominalisms of various movements. We take too seriously the differences we make of each other and ignore the fact that the center changes with each movement. Very poetic ending, Eco.

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Hannibal Lecter, My Father

July 29, 2015 / posted in art, images of being-human, reviews, Theory / No Comments

Hannibal Lecter, My FatherHannibal Lecter, My Father by Kathy Acker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I agree with much of the other commentators. The interview at the beginning was well worth the read. The selection of other works afterwards appear to be padding to exemplify the interview and also by giving us more of Acker’s work, but of works that may be less known.

Still, her methodology and philosophy come together in her interview and presents itself as a force. At first a critique, and then with the yet to be Pussy: King of the Pirates the making of a new mythology. Acker did manage to mature as a writer, not to destroy and create but to end with creating.

In some ways, I wish I read this first, before reading some of her other works, especially when she was churning them out in a way, the same book over and over at some point in the middle there.

It is telling to see how as a mere writer, she was able to provoke so much “bad touch” in the areas of culture, when government and legislation were involved. We cannot hide from that which we do not understand only because there is so much more we do not, cannot understand.

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Essentials of Processing Assessment

July 29, 2015 / posted in images of being-human, reviews, Theory / No Comments

Essentials of Processing AssessmentEssentials of Processing Assessment by Milton J. Dehn
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There’s not much to say too much about a textbook. Or in this case, a guide to the various kinds of assessments of human potential/capability.

It’s interesting that the rationality of psychology in the area of assessment would echo itself in terms of tests. While Dehn is careful to say that these tests don’t mean anything in themselves — that capability is a relative term — what we see here is the fragmentation of assessment as the ability to recount, move and process material difference. Different kinds of processing is tested differently, as though this is all that a human being is. The coherency of intelligence per se, may be found in fluid intelligence or g but these are admittedly difficult to test. We are more comfortable with mechanical tasks in terms of accuracy and speed as those are easily rated and compared.

The overall picture though, of an assessor as scientist, is not to judge but to try to reconstruct from the fragmented volley of tests the individuals entire capability. As Dehn pushes this philosophy of a unified human mind, he also remarks that often it’s not necessary to envelope a subject with the endless number of tests to be taken. We should only test when we think there is a need to help a subject do better in a subject matter or with social issues.

While this is directly applicable to school, this ends up being entirely applicable to our human condition. We want everyone to be calibrated properly, to excel. A nation of healthy minds to do what we need to do. This is not a bad ideal but its negative quality, that of degrading what cannot be tested, what cannot be captured, of ignoring potentials that are not easily capturable through rout rationalisation is not a good thing.

This is not a heavily critical book, but as such, it reveals the undercurrent of its own judgement by trying to be as faithful to what we need processing assessment for, and how we ought to utilize it for the good of the subject.

Of course, we should not shrink from doing what we think is best, of doing what we can for others, just because we might hurt them in ways that we cannot yet understand.

All in all, an interesting reflection of how justifiable fallibilism is possible given the way a field of knowledge wraps itself in terms of how it knows what it knows through its own immanent metrics.

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Tom Sawyer: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer / Tom Sawyer Abroad / Tom Sawyer, Detective

July 29, 2015 / posted in reviews / No Comments

Tom Sawyer: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer / Tom Sawyer Abroad / Tom Sawyer, DetectiveTom Sawyer: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer / Tom Sawyer Abroad / Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I suppose to some degree, Twain captures the American boyhood in a way that was uncaptured before. He expresses a part of life that was not deemed to be of interest. In this, Twain comes to elegantly encapsulate what makes America America. With all that is told, much of this is as trite as you’d expect, although Twain is able to say something through the innocence of the characters about human beings, human nature and respect for the other, even with the classism and racism as we would understand it now.

In many ways the characters are cartoony without meaning to be. Twain’s writing is well paced but it also has the particular twists of quality you’d expect from him, where he is too clever with the plot, too clever with the characters. I suppose our tastes are out of alignment with his.

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The Great Railway Bazaar

July 29, 2015 / posted in reviews / No Comments

The Great Railway BazaarThe Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

In many ways, Theroux does not warm up until the end of the story. The longest part of the journey — through Siberia — is in some ways the shortest. It is there that the narrative becomes most lucid, as a scene. Before that, his musings on Japan, Burma and Singapore also add a quality of place that was missing early on, perhaps because early on he was more interesting in passengers than on places.

This travelogue is simple. He chronicles a travel the way you’d expect. In some ways though, he misses out on what makes trains so special to him. He sets out on a journey and then writes about it and then it’s over. Travel is much about familiarity as much as it is about what is alien. The insular beginning and the difference of ending could have used a better control of coherency as to what this book was about.

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The Cosmology of Bing

July 29, 2015 / posted in reviews / No Comments

The Cosmology of BingThe Cosmology of Bing by Mitch Cullin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Similar to Disgrace Cullin also talks of a professor, an intellectual for whom life has passed him by. Only here, Cullin ends the round as a tale of self discovery for all those involved.

By not showing us the break but the result of the break, Cullin allows us to see how two estranged lovers come to heal by being there for each other in a way they could not find apart, but tried.

In a way, missing here, Cullin allows us to draw a connection to a mysterious “big bang” which is felt but not seen. I expected the end to be more dramatic than it was, but it still has its mode of satisfaction. In some sense, the character Bing is too weak to stand on his own; too uninteresting as half the narrative is shared with Nick. That makes the title a bit of a misnomer for me as a good part of the story doesn’t fall into focus as being about Bing; as Nick’s tale, being interesting, is still to a degree irrelevant.

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