Three beautiful films

Here are some screenshots from three films with a colour palette that I find very appealing: muted and earthy, almost monochromatic, with rich, warm accents. Their compelling effect is produced through a combination of the skills and aesthetic sensibility of the director, cinematographer, production designer, art director and costume designer. This is of course an entirely subjective experience, but there is something about the colours and textures in the following pictures that deeply moves me. They project humility and honesty, and a raw imperfection that one can sympathise with while being inspired by its quiet, unassuming beauty.

Hopefully you get the same vibes as I do (click on the pictures to enlarge them).

From John Hillcoat’s Lawless, with cinematography by Benoît Delhomme, production design by Chris Kennedy, art direction by Gershon Ginsburg and costume design by Margot Wilson.

From Emanuele Crialese’s Golden Door, with cinematography by Agnès Godard, production design by Carlos Conti, art direction by Laurent Ott, Filippo Pecoraino and Monica Sallustio, and costume design by Mariano Tufano.

From Yôji Yamada’s The Twilight Samurai, with cinematography by Mutsuo Naganuma, production design by Mitsuo Degawa, art direction by Yoshinobu Nishioka and costume design by Kazuko Kurosawa.

These two photographs by the American photographer Jack Delano (1914 – 1997) have a similar feel.

30.10.12

Is eugenics really such a bad thing?

Kenan Malik is a critic of a purely science-based morality, the sort promoted by thinkers like Sam Harris in his book The Moral Landscape (2010). Malik doesn’t believe that ethical issues are amenable to scientific reductionism. In his review of The Moral Landscape, he makes this criticism of Harris’s ideal morality:

Moral norms seem not to emerge through a process of social engagement and collective conversation, nor in the course of self-improvement, but rather are laws to be revealed from on high [by science] and imposed upon those below.

Malik recently wrote a blog post expanding on his analogy of scientific morality as revealed laws (the religious connotation is made obvious in the title of his post). Again, he challenges the assumptions of those like Harris who view morality as simply being a question of facts, which science can discover and present, indisputable. Malik mentions the bioethicist Julian Savulescu, who has argued in favour of a benign form of eugenics that will remove the “genes and proteins associated with poor impulse control as well as those for psychopathy and anti-social personality disorder” while promoting “genes for compassion and moral thinking.”

So far, so controversial.

I am inclined to adopt the scientific view of morality as espoused by Harris and Savulescu, though it is to Malik’s credit that his counter-arguments have made me reexamine my position, if not entirely abandon it. I think that when one accepts a materialist conception of human personality (or the mind), one has to also accept that neurobiological manipulation can alter people's character traits. So why not do so to make them more moral?

Malik rebuts Savulescu’s idea of positive eugenics with examples of how nominally bad traits like aggression can be good in the right context, and vice-versa for nominally good traits like trust and co-operation. He writes:

But is it a good that trust be enhanced in all circumstances? After all, would not authoritarian regimes and even democratic politicians welcome a more trustful, and therefore a less questioning, population? Is aggression always bad? Is the aggression that the Arab masses have shown, and continue to show, in taking to the streets in defiance of brutal authoritarian regimes equivalent to the aggression of those authorities in brutalising and murdering the protestors? And if not does it make any sense to suggest, as Savulescu does, that ‘our futures may depend upon making ourselves wiser and less aggressive’, including through the ‘compulsory’ use of serotonin [a neurotransmitter that contributes to feelings of happiness and well-being]?

Good points. But as I responded in a comment to Malik’s post, what about undeniably pernicious traits like a propensity for sexual predation or rape? For violent psychopathy or homicidal urges? I wrote:

If one accepted a materialist conception of the mind, then wouldn’t it be an uncontroversial good to use medical/scientific means to purge these sorts of tendencies from people? And if you answer “no”, what would be the moral justification for letting a portion of society continually pose a (perhaps fatal) risk to others?

Malik replied that my question was an important one that “gets to the heart of the debate about what we mean by a ‘materialist view of the mind’”, and that he will write a proper post on this topic soon, hopefully within the next few days. I look forward to his (very likely persuasive) answer to the rather utilitarian dilemma my question poses. Stay tuned!

11.7.12

The story of an Indian atheist

The October 10 issue of The New Yorker has an article by Akash Kapur about an Indian cow broker named R. Ramadas (‘The Shandy’, online abstract here). Kapur writes about Ramadas’s line of work in the context of a rapidly modernising India. As expected of a New Yorker piece, Kapur’s journalism is engaging, eye-opening and full of pathos without being condescending or mawkish.

The article takes an unexpected turn when the reader discovers that Ramadas is an atheist. I say ‘unexpected’ because Ramadas is a poor, uneducated man born into the Dalit, or ‘untouchable’, caste of a highly religious and superstitious society. The trend is for religion to be more prevalent among those who share Ramadas’s demographic traits. Yet, amazingly, he bucks that trend.

Kapur writes:

[Ramadas] said people always talked about gods and the miracles they’d supposedly performed. People believed the gods could heal a disease. But where was the proof? Ramadas believed only in what he could see. He believed in science. He believed in doctors and their injections.

More from Christina on fashion (and its frustrations)

It seems that Greta Christina’s previous posts on fashion rubbed some of her readers the wrong way. She felt compelled to address this pushback with another post, where she clarifies her original argument that fashion is a form of communication, whether one is conscious of it or not.

Judging by the raw nerves this subject matter has touched, one thing fashion definitely isn’t is irrelevant. Love it, hate it, apathetic about it – so long as we homo sapiens are subject to both the physical necessity of clothing our bodies and the psychological occupations of our inner lives (status anxieties, moral values, sexual attraction, aesthetic appreciation, emotional needs and cognitive biases), we will inevitably have some kind of relationship to fashion.

I sympathise with Christina’s position, yet I also understand why her views have caused offence. Still, she’s trying to meet her dissenters halfway by acknowledging their grievances against either her arguments or fashion itself. But people being people, I doubt that the controversy surrounding anything fashion related will be tidily resolved by Christina’s latest essay.




23.9.11

Against romantic love

If I must name one writer who has had a life-changing impact on me, it would be Alain de Botton. He was my First Philosopher, since his books introduced me to a lot of the more famous philosophers who preceded him. The name and nature of this blog have their ultimate origins in de Botton – although they were inspired by Michel de Montaigne’s Essais, or ‘Attempts’, it was de Botton, in his Consolations of Philosophy (2000), who brought about my fateful encounter with the 16th century French writer and inventor of the essay.

I read de Botton’s The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009) when it first came out, and followed his column in Standpoint until it was dropped from the magazine last year. Since then I haven’t read any more of his writing, mostly because I discovered other writers who then proceeded to consume a greater and greater portion of my reading attention. So it was a pleasant surprise when a few days ago I found a de Botton piece in the very first issue of Australian men’s magazine Smith Journal (published by the same folks behind Frankie). It was like bumping into an old friend you hadn’t seen in years. In my case, a friend who had played a large part in making me the person I am today.

This is what your soul looks like

This image was in the August 2011 issue of National Geographic magazine. It shows the “color-coded depiction of routes created by a brain’s neural pathways”, made possible by cutting-edge 3D imaging technology. From the accompanying text:

We like to brag about our gray matter, linking smarts to brain cells. But for neuroscientists, it’s also about white matter, the spaghetti-like tangle of nerve fibers, and the networks that carry information between regions of the brain. Who we are — our memories, thoughts, emotions — derives from these wiring connections. The problem was no devices existed to see and decode the neural maze in live subjects. That’s now changing.

Advances in neuroscience and psychology increasingly prove that our minds – constituted of our memories, thoughts, dreams, emotions, decisions – have a physical basis in our brains. As this knowledge becomes more widely spread and accepted, it will revolutionise the way human beings perceive themselves and others. The ramifications for culture, society, law, religion and politics are immense.

For thousands of years people have, to varying degrees, believed in a soul or self that isn’t bound to the physical body, nevermind the specific lump of matter in our skulls. This dualism is apparent in religion, pop psychology, the cultural products we manufacture, even our language – as when we exhort someone to ‘follow your heart’, meaning to trust their ‘gut’ feeling that is supposedly distinct from their brain-derived thinking. I don’t know about you, but all my heart does is pump blood around my cardiovascular system. I do my feeling with my amygdala and my rationalising with my frontal lobes.

The popular conception of the soul or self is becoming untenable. Like the geocentric universe, bloodletting, bodily humours, phlogiston and much of pre-Darwinian biology, mind-brain dualism will eventually end up in the rubbish bin of false ideas. The only thing keeping it from being immediately thrown out is the ubiquitous triumvirate of social inertia, ignorance, and fear.

Those who still believe in immaterial souls and ghosts in machines are on the wrong side of history.




25.7.11




Image by Van Wedeen

What exactly is a person’s ‘true self’?

Person X is usually kind, generous and courteous. But sometimes she can also be mean, petty and boorish. Which description would she regard as representing her ‘true self’? Which one would her family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances consider to be her ‘real’ character?

Now let’s expand on the above. Say that Person X is characteristically kind, generous and courteous. But when she gets drunk, she undergoes a Jekyll and Hyde transformation into a mean, petty and boorish person. So, which version of Person X is her true self?

In the first case, one might say that Person X is a complex combination of both positive and negative traits, though she may prefer to consider the positive traits as her true self while others may choose to focus on her negative qualities. In the second case, there are two possible responses:

1. Person X revealed her true, horrible self when drunkenness made her drop her fake mask of good character.
2. Person X is really a kind, generous and courteous person, since it required something as drastic as getting absolutely pissed in order to change her personality.

This thought experiment presumes that there is such a thing as a ‘true self’. But does such a thing actually exist?

Asma, Myers & Blackford on religion and atheism

Stephen Asma has responded to P Z Myers’ criticism of his article ‘The New Atheists’ Narrow Worldview’, where Asma argues for the emotional benefits of religion and tut-tuts atheists for not acknowledging this positive aspect. Myers wrote on his blog that Asma had misunderstood the atheist position on religion: the primary issue is not about whether religion makes people feel good or happy, but whether its claims are true. And the reason why truth matters above all else is because falsehoods can cause harm, irrespective of their feel-good effects.

Apologist for religion misunderstands atheism

Philosophy professor Stephen T. Asma thinks that atheists are too easily dismissive of religion, or at least the Big Three monotheisms with which they appear to be obsessed. He chides atheists like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett for their ‘provincialism’, reminding them that a great, if not the greatest, part of humanity follow non-monotheistic religions like Buddhism and animism.

Having lived in Cambodia and China, and travelled in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Africa, I have come to appreciate how religion functions quite differently in the developing world — where the majority of believers actually live. The Four Horsemen, their fans, and their enemies all fail to factor in their own prosperity when they think about the uses and abuses of religion.

"Eeeww!": Disgust and morality

A few weeks ago the intellectual middleman and founder of Edge.org John Brockman brought together a group of psychologists, neuroscientists and philosophers to discuss the emergent science of morality. It’s a hot topic at the moment, as our technology and methodology become more capable of studying the scientific basis of our sense of right and wrong. It would perhaps be no exaggeration to say that new discoveries in this field will have an impact on society and culture, politics and economics, education and law, possibly on every single facet of our lives as moral beings.

End the (consciousness) war!

Reason is not the ultimate human faculty lauded by classical philosophy, yet neither is it the 'slave of the passions' as David Hume believed. We must avoid the simple, convenient and false reason-emotion dichotomy that rends apart what is intricately entwined, even interdependent. Neuroscientific evidence shows the important role played by feelings, instinct and the unconscious mind - aspects of our humanity often reviled as inferior to reason and logical thinking - in our personal theatre of life.

Meaning and association

Mundane objects are made oppressive with the weight of emotional associations. Sentimentality chains itself to the most banal things. There is this fear that reigns a tyrant over so many, this terror of loss that shadows all things material. We grip tight, accumulate and hoard in a vain attempt to make time stand still. We console ourselves that though a cherished moment is deceased, we can still summon the memory of it, especially with the aid of a physical catalyst. We may not be able to raise the dead, but we can call forth their ghosts. Sentimentality is a sort of necromancy.

The mob, the masses, the collective

There's a repulsive element in large numbers of people supposedly united for a common cause. When wisdom and reason are abandoned and solidarity is adopted for its own sake, regardless of the validity of its premises, the mob becomes a spawning pool for unbridled passions and zealotry. I have tasted of such seemingly sweet fruit, which intoxicates with its illusion of certainty, seduces with its attractive facade of infallibility. The crowd encourages a natural multiplication of error, of blind belief, of desperate stupidity.

Far more good is done through individual action and commitment that doesn't depend on the security blanket offered by the chanting, gesticulating masses for its strength. Collectives have always been vulnerable to the skilled manipulations of a clever demagogue (or gang of demagogues). Gather a crowd in one location and they are at risk of succumbing to theatrics and bombastic rhetoric that fans their irrational fears, hatreds and desires. It's as if the mass of people act as conductors of overcharged emotional electricity, filling the very atmosphere with sparks that could start a conflagration.




29.5.08