Ballast for the brain

Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it. P.J. ORourke

To get an idea of what books mean to McIlroy, consider the fourth hole in last years final round. It was a cloudy 59 degrees and nearing 2:30 p.m. ET. He was crushing the driver he would trail only Tommy Fleetwood in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee and liked the course better in March than in May, as he could see it better from the tees. TPC Sawgrass had over-seeded and thus created sharper definition between fairways (lighter) and rough (darker).

The fourth is not hard if you hit the fairway, but from the right fairway bunker or the rough, it can be tricky to hit the green, which is guarded by a moat. One stroke behind Jon Rahm entering Sunday, McIlroy had already worked his way into the lead but found the right rough off the tee. Now, with a wedge, he swung and watched in horror as his ball came out left and soft.

Splash.

It was cold; even though sunrise had been at 7:33 a.m., he had not had much chance to show off the green St. Patricks Day shirt under his blue pullover. Jason Day waited as he took a drop.

There were a lot of places McIlroys mind could have gone. Having been in contention but not won in his previous five TOUR starts, all top-six finishes, he could have thought,Here we go again.

He cant close, he cant play on Sundays, McIlroy said later, describing the noise that had seeped up from the muck. Blah, blah, blah.

Here was a player who could do no wrong as he won the 2011 U.S. Open, 2012 PGA Championship, and 2014 Open Championship and PGA, but now he apparently could do no right.Here we go again? Yeah, McIlroy could have gone there.

Reading, though, had steeled him.Avoid the big reaction.Thats one of the tenets of one of McIlroys favorite authors, Ryan Holiday, who espouses the stoicism of figures like Marcus Aurelius in The Obstacle is the Way and The Ego is the Enemy.

Not giving in to your emotions, says McIlroy, who in the last year has befriended the author. (They trade the occasional email.) Not being impulsive, being a little bit more rational, taking a step back to think about things logically. Thats what has helped me.

I mean, if you go back to THE PLAYERS, he adds, I went from leading or tied for the lead to a couple behind, but I didnt impulsively go and chase some birdies. I was like, OK, this is fine, weve got a lot of holes left. Theres a lot that can happen, stay patient, and show poise, and all the P words that I like to use. All of that comes from reading and a little bit of inward reflection and figuring out what I need to do to get the best out of myself.

In the end, McIlroy recovered to win the TOURs signature event.

On a wild day in which a half-dozen people had a share of the lead, he accepted his double and turned in 1 over, then made four back-nine birdies to post a 2-under 70 and win by a shot over Jim Furyk. His best shot, he said later, was the 6-iron he hit out of the fairway bunker at the par-4 15th, his ball stopping 14 feet from the pin before he made the putt. His most important shot, though, might have been his gaffe at the fourth, the fulcrum on which his week and perhaps his entire season could have swung one way or the other.

If you dont like to read, you havent found the right book. J.K. Rowling

Tiger reads a lot, says McIlroy, who also has read popular novelists like J.K. Rowling and Dan Brown. But he reads a lot of, like, the medical journal and studies that have been published and stuff like this. Hes a big reader, but I dont know if hes a big reader of books, per se.

Lucas Glover is a reader. He went through a large chunk of the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child, and is now onto The Body, by Bill Bryson. Sometimes, Glover talks books with Peter Malnati, also a reader. David Duval had a bookish side even in his prime.

The written word is alive and well. Asked at the Masters last year to name the best book hed read in the previous 12 months, McIlroy was surprisingly expansive.

The Greatest Salesman in the World, by Og Mandino, thats one that I sort of refer back to every now and again, replied McIlroy. Either of the Ryan Holiday books are pretty good, The Obstacle is the Way or Ego is the Enemy. Just started on Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, so getting into that. Theres four.

He later mentioned a fifth, Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport. McIlroy, who has deleted several apps from his phone, wonders what all of our screens are doing to us and tries to go low-to-no-tech during tournament weeks, preferring jigsaw puzzles and, yes, books.

But why? Its not that McIlroy, an only child, staved off loneliness with his books. Nor was he ever obsessed with academia. It was never my forte, he said in a lengthy interview with the Irish Independent. I was good enough to get by, but I never excelled.

Its more accurate to say he was seeking ballast amid the pitching and yawing of life as a public figure. Was he a good person because he was winning golf tournaments? Was he a bad one when he wasnt? Even amid his dazzling early success, he felt slightly unmoored.

One thing I used to do in the past is let what I shot that day influence who I was or my mood, McIlroy said last season, when he also led the TOUR with 14 top-10 finishes and won the Byron Nelson Award for adjusted scoring average (69.057). Its something I worked hard on because who I am as a person isnt who I am as a golfer.

In other words, at 30 he has become acutely aware of the perils of accomplishment. Regarding the Jobs biography, McIlroy was struck by the Apple major domos failures and comebacks and achievements, but also by the rare glimpses into Jobs humanity.

It seems like he was a pretty hard guy to like at the start, and I think thats why I found the book so slow-going, he says now. I was like, I dont know if I like this guy. And then as it goes on and he gets sick and starts to appreciate his family more, you get a sense that hes turned the corner a bit, and there are things he values maybe more than just trying to create another cool product.

If you are going to get anywhere in life, you have to read a lot of books. Roald Dahl

At the Ryder Cup in France in 2018, McIlroy came upon another favorite author: Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F---: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life, followed by Everything is F-----: A Book About Hope. As the titles suggest (weve, ahem, slightly altered them), his books are equal parts profound and profane. Theyre also very funny.

(European Captain) Thomas Bjorns partner, Grace, gave Mark Mansons (Subtle Art) book to all the wives, McIlroy says. My wife read it before I did and gave it to me and said, I think you should read this. Its really good. Its an important book to me.

The title was part of the initial appeal, and thats because, McIlroy admits, Sometimes I care too much about too many things. But theres more to it than that.

In The Subtle Art, Manson writes about humankinds misery amid a long list of advances (from the Internet to eradication of disease) that one might have thought would have made us happier. One culprit: the idea that we can have it all, and everyone can be a superstar.

The key to a good life, he writes, is caring about only what is true and immediate and important, and not getting caught in what philosopher Alan Watts called the backwards law, the trap of pursuing feeling better/richer/thinner only to reinforce a feeling of dissatisfaction.

The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience, Manson writes. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of ones negative experience is itself a positive experience.

Perhaps this is what McIlroy was thinking of when he told Ewen Murray of The Guardian that the last step for him was mindset, i.e., when you are in contention, not giving a s*&% if you win or not. In other words, a sports psychologist might say, its important to just let it happen.

He talks about how everyone wants to get smarter, more attractive, richer, McIlroy says of Manson, and theyre not going deep enough to ask, Why do I want these things? Whats wrong with who I am right now? Its people thinking that all these things will make them happier at the end of the day. With this book, its getting happiness from the simple things in life.

For instance, he adds, I get to go grocery shopping on the Monday when I get home from a tournament, and that to me is fun. Thats very mundane for most people, but for me its a little perk for having a week off, going to Whole Foods and doing the grocery shopping.

Some of the rules in the books McIlroy reads can be contradictory. While Holiday preaches stoicism, Manson points out in Everything is F----- that its impossible to completely remove emotion, lest one turn into a potato.

McIlroy may have been wrestling with this paradox last summer. Having decided to treat every round the same, he lost a head-to-head battle with then-No. 1 Brooks Koepka at the World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Invitational. (Koepka shot 65 to win, McIlroy 71 to finish T4.)

When they met four weeks later in the final round of the TOUR Championship, McIlroy vowed not to treat the final round as just another day. He would give it special reverence. It worked out nicely as he shot 66 to win, while Koepka slumped to a 72 for a T3 finish.

The lesson: Emotion is bad, except when its good.

When it was over, McIlroy tried to accept his victory the way Holiday would, the way Marcus Aurelius would: without arrogance, just as he should let his setbacks go with indifference. Rory would still be just Rory to the organic apples and the rest of it at Whole Foods, and to his wife, and their library of books at home. All awaited his return as conquering hero or not.

For Rory McIlroy golfer, reader, citizen of the world it was on to the next chapter.

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Rory gets a good read - PGA TOUR/Perform Media

Baruch Spinoza, one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy.

The recent no-platforming of social historian Selina Todd and former Conservative MP Amber Rudd has reignited the debate about protecting free speech in universities. Both had their invited lectures cancelled at the last minute on the grounds of previous public statements with which the organisers disagreed.

Many people have interpreted these acts as hostile behaviour aimed at silencing certain views. But is this primarily about free speech?

The debate about no-platforming and cancel culture has largely revolved around free speech and the question of whether it is ever right to deny it. The suggestion is that those who cancel such events want to deny the freedom of speech of individuals who they take to be objectionable.

Most of us surely agree that freedom of speech should sometimes be secondary to considerations of the harm caused by certain forms of speech so the question is about what kinds of harm offer a legitimate reason to deny someone a public platform. Since people perceive harm in many different ways, this question is particularly difficult to resolve.

But perhaps the organisers who cancelled these events were not motivated by the desire to deny freedom of speech at all. Todd and Rudd are prominent people in positions of authority so cancelling their events, while causing a public splash, is unlikely to dent their freedom to speak on these or other issues at other times and in different forums.

Read more: Two arguments to help decide whether to 'cancel' someone and their work

But these acts have a significant effect on others, who may feel unable to speak on certain issues from fear of similar treatment. Perhaps the no-platformers cancelled Todd and Rudd, not because they wanted to deny them their freedom to speak, but because they didnt want to listen to them. Perhaps they were motivated not by a rational consideration of potential harm, but by an emotion: the desire not to listen to something with which they disagree.

The 17th-century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza has a name for this emotion: ambition. Nowadays we think of ambition as the desire to succeed in ones career. But in the 17th century, ambition was recognised to be a far more pernicious and far more political emotion. As Spinoza wrote in his Ethics (1677), ambition is the desire that everyone should feel the way I do:

Each of us strives, so far as he can, that everyone should love what he loves, and hate what he hates Each of us, by his nature, wants the others to live according to his temperament; when all alike want this, they are alike an obstacle to one another.

Spinoza sees the emotions, or passions, as naturally arising from our interactions with one another and the world. We strive to do things that make us feel joy an increase in our power to exist and flourish and we strive to avoid things that make us feel sad or cause a decrease in our power.

We naturally desire and love what we believe others desire and love. It is therefore natural that we want others to love what we do and think what we think. For if others admire and approve of our actions and feelings, then we will feel a greater pleasure with a concomitant increase of power in ourselves.

Ambition is not simply wanting to feel esteemed it is wanting others to love and hate exactly what we love and hate. It is the desire to cause others to think and feel exactly as we do. It is the desire to avert from ourselves those who cannot be convinced to do so for those dissenters diminish our sense of self-worth.

Spinoza would have recognised the desire not to listen to dissenting views as a species of ambition. Disagreement is perceived not as a reasoned difference of views, but as a threat: something that causes sadness and a diminishing of ones power something to be avoided at all costs.

Somebody who feels differently threatens our sense of the worthiness of our own feelings, causing a type of sadness. Spinoza stresses that we strive to destroy whatever we imagine will lead to sadness. Thus ambition leads to a desire to change peoples views, often through hostile, exclusionary, destructive behaviours.

Not only that, but someone in the grip of ambition is likely to be immune to rational argument. Spinoza argues that passions are obstructive to good thinking: reason on its own has little power to shift a passion that has a strong hold on us.

Most of us have had negative experiences on social media with people who disagree with us on politically charged questions. Instead of engaging with our arguments, they point out that we are immoral or unfeeling for holding a different view. Really, what our opponents find intolerable is our failure to feel the same about the issue as they do.

Refusing to hear an argument and seeking to silence it is a mild form of no-platforming, motivated not by the desire to quash free speech, but by ambition. Our failure to share in the political feelings of others leads them to experience a loss of power, and they respond by attacking the cause of the loss. Ambition makes rational debate impossible, even when our freedom to speak remains perfectly intact.

Continued here:
Spinoza and no platforming: Enlightenment thinker would have seen it as motivated by ambition rather than fear - The Conversation UK

Senator, and presidential hopeful, Bernie Sanders enticing blend of progressivism (which claims reason and science as justification) and socialism (which is skeptical of both) gives cause to inquire into the foundations of his redistributive political mindset.

Sanders politics echo the social ideology of Herbert Croly, whos book, The Promise of American Life (1909), introduced a progressive liberalism that lost its intellectual respectability decades ago (for more on this loss, see The End of Liberalism: The Second Republic of the United States, 2nd edition [1979], by Theodore Lowi). Croly, in turn, was influenced by the positive polity of French philosopher Auguste Comte, who coined the term altruism to denote the personal sacrifices that his social ideology entailed. Comte claimed to disdain utopian social visions, yet proposed (across numerous volumes) the wildest of them all. By his lights, [o]ur harmony as moral beings is impossible on any other foundation but altruism. Nay more, altruism alone can enable us to live, in the highest and truest sense (see Comtes primer, The Catechism of Positivism, 1858 [1852], 310311).

The ethicist and philosopher of economics John Mueller offers a distinction between altruism and everyday generosity: benevolence [altruism], or good will, can be extended to everyone in the world, and beneficence [generosity], or doing good, cannot (Redeeming Economics: Rediscovering the Missing Element, 2010, 36). Yet sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, and economics teach that sacrificial altruism among humans occurs naturally only within the family. Voluntary generosity, by comparison, usually entails no true sacrifice (see my 2018 paper, Altruism: From Pagan Virtue to Political Biology, Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism 26: article 4, 119).

Croly echoed Comtes call for altruistic social policies:

The Promise of American life is to be fulfillednot merely by a maximum amount of economic freedom, but by a certain measure of discipline; not merely by the abundant satisfaction of individual desires, but by a large measure of individual subordination and self-denial. [...] To ask an individual citizen continually to sacrifice his recognized private interest to the welfare of his countrymen is to make an impossible demand, and yet just such a continual sacrifice is apparently required of an individual in a democratic state. The only entirely satisfactory solution of the difficulty is offered by the systematic authoritative transformation of the private interest of the individual into a disinterested devotion to a special object [e.g., a truly democratic state]. (The Promise of American Life, 1909: 22; 418, italics added.)

Croly, like Comte, embraced Enlightenment progressivism, by which Robespierre attempted to lead the people by reason and the peoples enemies by terror; the peoples reason ultimately led Robespierre onto the guillotine. The other Enlightenment choice available was classical liberalism, from which Americas early political fabric was woven. (For historical analysis of these developments, see two books by Jonathan Israel, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights, 17501790 [2012] and The Enlightenment that Failed: Ideas, Revolution, and Democratic Defeat, 17481830 [2020].)

Altruism and progressivism necessarily entail coercion. The historian Vegas Liulevicius shows that [a] clear connection exists between 20th-century plans for utopias and use of terror to bring them about. [... Terror was necessary] because plans for perfection encountered either passive or active resistance (Utopia and Terror in the 20th Century, 2003, Part 1). The harmony that Comte imagined would flow from altruism was illusory.

The prominent academic psychologist and avowed Enlightenment humanist Steven Pinker characterizes modern altruism as [t]odays Fascism Lite, which shades into authoritarian populism and Romantic nationalism, [and] is sometimes justified by a crude version of evolutionary psychology in which [...] humans have been selected to sacrifice their interest for the supremacy of their group (Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, 2018: 448). The prominent evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins sides with Pinker on the facts, but differs with him on the spirit: Human superniceness is a perversion of Darwinism, because, in a wild population, it would be removed by natural selection. [...] Lets put it even more bluntly. From a rational choice point of view, or from a Darwinian point of view, human superniceness is just plain dumb. But it is the kind of dumb that should be encouraged (Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist, 2017: 276277, italics added). Dumb behavior and impossible demands are unlikely means for perfecting individuals and societies.

The Roman Stoic philosopher Lucius Annus Seneca wrote of generosity that people must be taught to give benefits freely, receive them freely, and return them freely and to set themselves a grand challenge: not just to match in actions and attitude those to whom we are obligated, but even to outdo them, for the person who should return a favor never catches up unless he gets ahead (On Benefits, n.d.). Seneca argued that an upward eudmonic spiral results whenever benefits are given and reciprocated voluntarily.

Generosity and reciprocity nevertheless arise most often as instrumental means to purposeful ends. The philosopher Thomas Hobbes aptly argued that No man giveth but with intention of good to himself, because gift is voluntary; and of all voluntary acts, the object is to every man his own good; of which, if men see they shall be frustrated, there will be no beginning of benevolence or trust, nor consequently of mutual help (Leviathan, 1651). Ayn Rand similarly saw, in the grace of reality and the nature of life, a rational selfishnesswhich means: the values required for mans survival qua manwhich means the values required for human survivalnot the values produced by the desires and feelings, the whims or the needs of irrational brutes, who have never outgrown the primordial practice of human sacrifices, have never discovered the industrial society and can conceive of no self-interest but that of grabbing the loot of the moment (The Virtue of Selfishness, 1964: 31).

Sanders, like Comte and Croly, proposes to perfectioneer society through the kind of altruistic policies that, since the late eighteenth century, have wrought havoc on mankind.

See the original post:
Altruism, Generosity, and Selfishness in the Age of Bernie | James A. Montanye - The Beacon

Rather than fight vitriol with vitriol, a Muslim politician who is running for a seat in Congress responded to some deeply hurtful anti-Muslim tweets with compassionand it completely changed the dialogue.

Qasim Rashid, a Democratic attorney who is running for Congressman in the 1st district of Virginia, was perturbed to receive a series of racist messages from a conservative constituent on Twitter.

The man in question was a 66-year-old Fredericksburg resident named Oz Dillon.

RELATED: Judge Sentences Teen Vandals to Reading Books About Racism and It Apparently Worked

Dillon has been struggling to pay the bills since his wife suffered a pulmonary embolism that wiped out their retirement savings. In addition to having a modest income of just $38,000 per year, Dillon and his wife have been coping with soaring insurance rates and a house that is not handicap accessible.

When Rashid learned of Dillons financial difficulties on Twitter, he donated to Dillons GoFundMe campaign and encouraged his community voters to do the same.

Inspired by Rashids kindness, many of his social media followers did indeed donate to the crowdfunding page, leaving Dillon in awe.

Dillon later sent Rashid an apology for his earlier insults and thanked him for showing such compassion.

Mr. Rashid, You humble me sir, with your graciousness, and surprisingly kind words, he said in a message to Rashid. You cannot imagine how uplifting it is, to see gifts such as yours starting to come in! Given how I have misspoken about you in posts on Facebook, I am truly shocked, that you have shared my wife and my plight with your supporters. I must now reassess my opinion about you, and your platform, come November.

He also published a note of thanks to his benefactors on GoFundMe.

An amazing week of eye- and heart-opening enlightenment, that I used to always have before 9/11, he said A Christian Muslim, Qasim Rashid, who I had previously opposed politically just because of the word Muslim, has opened my eyes that there are GOOD people in all walks of life.

LOOK: Descendants of Slaves and Slave-Owners Are Bonding at South Carolina Plantation Where They Share Their Painful Past

He shared our plight with his followers, who in turn donated nearly $1,000 dollars to help Terri and I get rid of this crushing debt. I owe him, and everyone in fact, a deep debt of gratitude, and pray you are all rewarded tenfold, for your generosity.

Dillon and Rashid eventually met in person so they could develop their newfound friendship. Since their story has been shared on social media and news outlets, Dillons crowdfunding campaign has raised more than $20,000.

However, Dillon now says he only plans on keeping enough of the funds to get himself and his wife out of their financial rut before he donates the rest to St. Judes Childrens Hospital, The American Heart Association, and their local food bank.

Be Sure And Share This Inspiring Story With Your Friends On Social Media

More here:
Politician Helps Pay Off Crushing Medical Debt for Man Who Sent Him Racist TweetsAnd They're Now Friends - Good News Network

Lin Yutang's MingKwai typewriter is perhaps the most well-known and most poorly understood Chinese typewriter in history.

By: Thomas Mullaney

We learn with mingled emotions transcending dismay and yet appreciably milder than despair that Dr. Lin Yutang, our favorite oriental author has invented a Chinese typewriter. So began a 1945 article in the Chicago Daily Tribune that revealed to an American reading public the quixotic new pursuit of a celebrated cultural commentator, and beloved author of the bestselling titles My Country and My People and The Importance of Living. So allergic were they to this startling news, the authors explained, that at first they simply did not believe it. The news would have been incredible, they stressed, if it had not come directly from Lins publisher. Seeking additional enlightenment, the reporters continued, we consulted our laundryman, Ho Sin Liu.

Tell us, Ho, about how big would a Chinese typewriter need to be to cover the whole range of your delightful tongue?

Ho, ho! Ho replied, wittily punning his name into an English exclamation point. How indeed shall I answer such an interrogation unless with another? Have you seen the Boulder dam?

Lin Yutang was born in 1895 in Fujian province, the same year that Taiwan was lost to Japan following the humiliation of the first Sino-Japanese War. Raised in a Christian household, Lin entered St. Johns University in Shanghai in 1911, the year a republican revolution delivered the death blow to an already weakened Qing dynasty. His educational career was marked by distinction, continuing at Tsinghua University from 1916 to 1919, and then Harvard in 1919 and 1920. By 40 years of age, Lin was a celebrated author in the United States and beyond, becoming one of the most influential cultural commentators on China of his generation.

Years before his breakout English-language debut, Lin Yutang began to contemplate a question that exerted a magnetic pull on the minds of many: the question of how to develop a typewriter for the Chinese language that could achieve the scope and reputation of its Western counterpart. With these inspirations, Lin set off down a path that many years later would lead to perhaps the most well-known, but also most poorly understood, Chinese typewriter in history: the MingKwai or Clear and Fast Chinese typewriter, announced to the world starting in the mid-1940s.

When MingKwai made its first appearance, the writer at the Chicago Daily Tribune and his laundryman would be proven wrong: MingKwai was considerably smaller than the Boulder Dam. In fact, it looked uncannily like a real typewriter. Measuring 14 inches wide, 18 inches deep, and nine inches high, the machine was only slightly larger than common Western typewriter models of the day. More notably, MingKwai was the first Chinese typewriter to possess the sine qua non of typewriting, a keyboard. Finally, it would seem, the Chinese language had joined the rest of the world by creating a typewriter just like ours.

MingKwai may have looked like a conventional typewriter, yet its behavior would have quickly confounded anyone who sat down to try it out.

MingKwai may have looked like a conventional typewriter, yet its behavior would have quickly confounded anyone who sat down to try it out. Upon depressing one of the machines 72 keys, the machines internal gears would move, and yet nothing would appear on the papers surface not right away, at least. Depressing a second key, the gears would move again, yet still without any output on the page. With this second keystroke, however, something curious would happen: Eight Chinese characters would appear, not on the printed paper, but in a special viewfinder built into the machines chassis. Only with the depression of a third key specifically one of the machines eight number keys would a Chinese graph finally be imprinted on the page.

Three keystrokes, one impression. What in the world was going on?

What is more, the Chinese graph that appeared on the page would bear no direct, one-to-one relationship with any of the symbols on the keys depressed during the three-part sequence. What kind of typewriter was this, that looked so uncannily like the real thing, and yet behaved so strangely?

If the fundamental and unspoken assumption of Western-style typewriting was the assumption of correspondence that the depression of a key would result in the impression of the corresponding symbol upon the typewritten page MingKwai was something altogether different. Uncanny in its resemblance to a standard Remington- or Olivetti-style device, MingKwai was not a typewriter in this conventional sense, but a device designed primarily for the retrieval of Chinese characters. The inscription of these characters, while of course necessary, was nonetheless secondary. The depression of keys did not result in the inscription of corresponding symbols, according to the classic what-you-type-is-what-you-get convention, but instead served as steps in the process of finding ones desired Chinese characters from within the machines mechanical hard drive, and then inscribing them on the page.

The machine worked as follows. Seated before the device, an operator would see 72 keys divided into three banks: upper keys, lower keys, and eight number keys. First, the depression of one of the 36 upper keys triggered movement and rotation of the machines internal gears and type complex a mechanical array of Chinese character graphs contained inside the machines chassis, out of view of the typist. The depression of a second key one of the 28 lower keys initiated a second round of shifts and repositionings within the machine, now bringing a cluster of eight Chinese characters into view within a small window on the machine a viewfinder Lin Yutang called his Magic Eye. Depending upon which of these characters one wanted one through eight the operator then depressed one of the number keys to complete the selection process and imprint the desired character on the page.

In creating the MingKwai typewriter, then, Lin Yutang had not only invented a machine that departed from the likes of Remington and Underwood, but so too from the approaches to Chinese typewriting put forth by the many designers before him. Lin invented a machine, indeed, that altered the very act of mechanical inscription itself by transforming inscription into a process of searching. The MingKwai Chinese typewriter combined search and writing for arguably the first time in history, anticipating a human-computer interaction now referred to as input, or shuru in Chinese.

Thomas S. Mullaney is Professor of History at Stanford University and the author of The Chinese Typewriter, from which this article is excerpted.

Continued here:
The Uncanny Keyboard - The MIT Press Reader

A woman has her legs slung over the shoulders of a man, bent backwards like a stone comma. One of her feet is on the mans headdress, while he rests his chin on her yoni. Im hunkered down on my knees in a back room of the British Museum, staring at a carved depiction of oral sex. Not your typical Tuesday.

My guide tells me that the statue is 11th century, possibly from the Elephanta cave temples near Mumbai, and came to the museum in 1865. It venerates the vulva, or the source of creation, she explains, even though oral sex was considered transgressive at the time. On the other side of the sculpture, a woman stands between two men, one impressive lingamheld between her breasts.

The carving is called erotic maithuna, a Sanskrit term often translated as sexual union. It is just one of the items that will be on display in the museums upcoming tantra exhibition. Im getting a sneak preview of Tantra: enlightenment to revolution, which opens on 23 April. It promises to be the first exhibition to look at the whole history of tantra, from ancient inception to impact on global modern culture.

The rest is here:
Sting, Shakti and sex: The exhibition changing our understanding of tantra - The Independent

The history of liberalism is entwined with racism, wrote Imraan Buccus in these pages, drawing parallels between Hitler and the liberal tradition.

One should probably dismiss such a crude attempt at reductio ad Hitlerum out of hand, but lest anyone think there might be a grain of truth in this piece of historical revisionism, I will spend some time critiquing it.

Classical liberalism, to put it clearly, was racism, he asserts, aiming his venom not only at modern apartheid apologists, but also at a liberal and often English-speaking version of white denialism, which he believes can be found at classical liberal think tanks like the Institute for Race Relations.

This is patently absurd. Buccus confuses the early development of liberal thought in an era that was deeply racist with the belief that those liberal principles actually supported racism then, and still do so now. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Liberal thought emerged in Europe during the Age of Enlightenment of the 17th to 19th centuries. Racism and slavery, however, had been ingrained in societies across the globe since time immemorial. They were not products of the Enlightenment or of liberalism. They were not even products of pre-Enlightenment Europe.

Africans themselves engaged in slavery long before the Atlantic slave trade began. Many Africans became wealthy not only by selling other Africans into slavery, but also by expropriating their properties. Taking conquered peoples into slavery was as routine in Africa as it was everywhere else in the world.

North Africans took slaves in England. There were white, British and Irish slaves in America in the 18th century. The Ottomans took Christian slaves for centuries. Slavery was common in China, Japan, Korea and South-East Asia. Slavery dates back to the very first civilisations, such as the Sumerians in Mesopotamia.

Although slavery is technically illegal everywhere in the world now, the practice persists in places like West Africa, India, Myanmar and the Middle East, without needing any help from white racists.

Buccus argues that early pioneers of liberal thought, such as John Locke, John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant, were racists and slavers. Of course, they were a product of their age, in which slavery was normal, not only in Europe, but around the world.

It is true that Locke was invested in the slave trade. However, his writings did not endorse slavery. Let me quote academic research on exactly this point:

Locke owned stock in slave trading companies and was secretary of the Lords Proprietors of the Carolinas, where slavery was constitutionally permitted. He had two notions of slavery: legitimate slavery was captivity with forced labor imposed by the just winning side in a war; illegitimate slavery was an authoritarian deprivation of natural rights. Locke did not try to justify either black slavery or the oppression of Amerindians. In The Two Treatises of Government, Locke argued against the advocates of absolute monarchy. The arguments for absolute monarchy and colonial slavery turn out to be the same. So in arguing against the one, Locke could not help but argue against the other. Examining the natural rights tradition to which Lockes work belongs confirms this. Locke could have defended colonial slavery by building on popular ideas of his colleagues and predecessors, but there is no textual evidence that he did that or that he advocated seizing Indian agricultural land.

To put it clearly, classical liberalism, as a historical reality, meant rights for whites and genocide, slavery and colonisation for everyone else, Buccus writes. But the idea that Lockes writing somehow supported or advanced racism and slavery, instead of laying the intellectual foundations against them, is simply wrong. In fact, Lockes philosophy contradicted his own actions. At worst, he could be accused of hypocrisy.

(As an aside, the adjective classical is used to distinguish a philosophy premised on economic liberalism and individual liberty from the more left-wing social liberalism that Americans would call simply liberal.)

John Stuart Mill explicitly argued against slavery and against the idea that race determined the nature of human beings. Again, we go to the academic literature:

It is shown that Mill although he did indulge himself in the discourse based on race, geography or climate to a minor extent made strenuous efforts to discredit the deterministic implications of racial theories and to promote the idea that human effort and education could alter beyond recognition what were supposed to be the racially inherited characteristics of various human groups.

Immanuel Kant really was racist, and expressed many deeply offensive prejudices about race in his anthropological studies. His place in the classical liberal pantheon, however, is a point of considerable dispute. Some of his views were substantially liberal, but many were distinctly illiberal. His ideas about social order and duty to the state are in no way liberal. It is in Kant that one can make the best argument for the idea that liberalism and racism coexisted in a single persons philosophy.

However, one cannot attribute all of Kants ideas to classical liberalism. He also influenced Marxism and critical theory, yet neither of those philosophies can take the blame for everything Kant wrote.

That some early liberal philosophers, living in a racist age, held ideas about race that conflicted with their political philosophy does not change the fact that liberal principles inherently preclude racism.

A core tenet of the liberal school of thought is that individuals are born equal, are free to act, within the law, as they see fit, and ought to be judged according to their own thoughts and deeds. This anti-collectivist conception of liberty logically precludes the group categorisations that are essential to racism or nationalism.

Liberal ideas took time to develop into a more coherent political philosophy. Societies, in turn, took time to adopt these ideas into their political organisation. That illiberal features of society, or authoritarian tendencies in government, remained while liberalism began to spread is not the fault of liberal ideas.

Buccus provides no source for his claim that only tiny minorities of liberals opposed slavery. Thats because he cannot. The movement to abolish slavery began in Britain and France, in the 18th century, as a direct consequence of the evolution of Enlightenment ideas and liberal thought. In this respect, the liberal democracies of Europe were far ahead of their slave-owning peers in the rest of the world.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, which explicitly grants equal rights to all and prohibits slavery, is a direct descendant of the early liberal manifestos such as the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789.

Liberals were also at the forefront of other human rights struggles, such as the movements for the universal franchise, gender equality and gay rights.

The Liberal Party of South Africa was founded in 1953 by Alan Paton. It was multiracial and opposed to apartheid right from the start. Does Buccus propose to call Alan Paton or the old Liberal Party racist?

During the apartheid years, the only outspoken critic of the regime inside Parliament was its lone liberal member, Helen Suzman. Was she, too, a racist?

If so, why did the racist establishment routinely deride liberals? Why, if liberalism was racism, as Buccus claims, would liberals oppose the racial discrimination of apartheid?

Buccus expresses the laughable view that Hitler was inspired by liberal ideas and figures. Everything about Hitlers totalitarian, nationalist, collectivist, dehumanising and genocidal approach to government contradicts the liberal ethos of individual liberty, the consent of the governed, and equality before the law.

Everything he did contradicts the liberal principles of peace, democracy, tolerance, limited government, individual civil and human rights, gender and racial equality, free markets and trade, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion.

Assuming Buccus is neither monumentally stupid nor historically illiterate, one can only conclude that he intends a heinous smear by suggesting that Hitler either admired, or was admired by, liberals.

In trying to re-appropriate non-racialism for the radical left, he runs headlong into the preposterous claim that the Black Consciousness movement was non-racial. It explicitly defines itself by reference to race and racial solidarity! How can one possibly describe it as non-racial?

The new liberal zealots are trying to appropriate non-racialism from its radical roots in order to misuse the concept to oppose attempts at anti-racism, Buccus writes. Yet the term non-racialism not only rejects racism and racialism. It also, as an ideology, positively affirms liberal democratic ideals.

His suggestion that one can support non-racialism but oppose attempts at anti-racism makes no sense, unless one assumes that by anti-racism he means policies aimed at racial redresses such as affirmative action and black economic empowerment. Whatever their good intentions, these policies are explicitly racial in nature. They are not the same thing as anti-racism. It is entirely defensible to oppose racial redress on purely anti-racist grounds.

One might wish to argue whether one ought to oppose racial redress policies, but it is certainly not grounds to declare classical liberalism to be racist.

It is worth conceding that some of those who identify as classical liberals today might indeed be racist, but that is not because classical liberal principles are racist. This is a consequence of the fact that those people, who used to benefit from racial policies that favoured white people, now profess to prefer non-racism to racial policies that favour black people and disadvantage them.

Tarring all classical liberals with that brush, however, is not justified. This phenomenon cannot reflect negatively on classical liberal principles, any more than it reflects negatively on the African National Congress that the New National Party, the successor to the architect of apartheid, ended up merging with it.

The history of liberalism, as theory and as a practice, coexisted with racism, but was never deeply enmeshed with it, as Buccus argues. It certainly never advocated, justified, supported or condoned racism, genocide or slavery.

On the contrary, its fundamental philosophical principles always professed that people by nature are equal, have inherent natural rights that include the right to life, liberty and property, and that individual rights trump group identity. Racism, racial discrimination, slavery and indeed genocide inherently contradict all these liberal principles.

Buccus does not present historical fact, as he claims, but a crude attempt at historical revisionism that appears to be designed to defame and discredit the classical liberal movement as being associated with the radical, racist right.

What his motives might be one can only speculate, but the entire basis of his argument is riddled with flaws, inventions and absurdities. His attack on classical liberals and its modern supporters as racist simply cannot be sustained, and should be rejected out of hand. DM

Full disclosure: the author recently became a member of the Institute for Race Relations, and was elected to the Council, which directs the organisations policy and ideology.

Ivo Vegter is a columnist and the author of Extreme Environment, a book on environmental exaggeration and how it harms emerging economies. He writes on this and many other matters, from the perspective of individual liberty and free markets.

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Continued here:
Painting classical liberalism as inherently racist is a revisionist smear - Daily Maverick

In 2008, the world successfully pulled together with Britain playing a catalytic role when faced with the threat of financial collapse. In 2020, confronted with the threat of a global pandemic, it is every country for itself. There has been no international health summit of national leaders supported by the World Health Organization although the World Bank has announced a $12bn package of assistance. There are frantic national efforts to create a vaccine and no effort to ensure that, when found and produced in sufficient scale, it will go to the places of need in all our interests. Britain, with no vaccine production capacity of its own, is especially vulnerable.

Instead there are national bans on exports of key products such as medical supplies, with countries falling back on their own analysis of the crisis amid localised shortages and haphazard, primitive approaches to containment. The standards on isolation, quarantine and contact tracing medieval approaches to disease control in any case, according to Prof Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine vary hugely between countries.

The WHO, underfunded for decades, with the threat of further draconian loss of funds made only last month by Donald Trump, struggles to make itself relevant, undermined and ignored by its own members. China applies immense pressure so that its manipulated data or effectiveness are not challenged. Trump has airily dismissed the WHOs warnings of an imminent pandemic because they do not conform to his hunch that the health risks have been wildly overstated. In short, if you want to create a pandemic with wholesale abdication of global leadership, do what is happening now.

The approach extends to the economy. Stock markets rightly worry about an approaching global recession flagged by collapsing air passenger revenues and the parallel collapse of seaborne trade signalled by the lowest freight rates since 2008. However, government and central banks are not coordinating their economic response to the threat. When the US Federal Reserve cut interest rates by half a percentage point, no others followed suit. The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, is preparing his budget under the close direction of Boris Johnsons malign amanuensis Dominic Cummings rather than as part of an international economic response.

It is the triumph of nationalism and anti-Enlightenment values across the world. So of course Johnson, leader of the supremely anti-Enlightenment and nationalist Brexit project, complete with its disdain for experts, gave a press conference last week in which he could not call for an internationally coordinated response and the rebuilding of European and international public health capacity. Gordon Brown, in parallel circumstances during the financial crisis, did call for such coordination. Britain would contain, delay, research and mitigate on its own, Johnson declared fighting Covid-19 metaphorically on the beaches. There would be no surrender. Britain alone would beat this foreign incubus.

Yet Covid-19 spares neither Leave nor Remain, neither imam nor Chinese doctor, and respects no national border. So even as national leaders fall back on atavistic national responses, the dictates of science and reason have to surface there is no other way forward.

The awfulness of Johnsons sub-Churchillian press-conference rhetoric was mitigated by him being flanked by two representatives of the best of Enlightenment thinking the governments chief medical officer, Prof Chris Whitty, and chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance. They at least talk sense based on evidence and reason. That is cause for hope, for all the babble that Covid-19 has fatally killed globalisation and that the new era will be all about competing populist nationalisms. Whitty and Vallance were sobering at Tuesdays press conference, counterbalancing Johnsons breeziness with recognition of the policy trade-offs, the potential for economic dislocation, and the imminence of the disease becoming a pandemic.

Covid-19 spares neither Leave nor Remain, neither Imam nor Chinese doctor, and respects no national border

But then they are part of a global scientific community talking to each other even if national leaders are not. A reliable test was established within days as Covid-19s gene sequence was fast decoded. Vaccine prototypes exist and will soon be trialled on humans. Antiviral treatments are already being clinically trialled. There is an emerging consensus about the risks of infection, the mortality rate and the effectiveness of varying containment strategies. This can and will be beaten.

The only questions are how long will it take and at what cumulative cost. The lack of global public health capacity, standards and enforcement are crippling. The USs problem is not only that it is led by a fool and a knave, but that its hugely expensive private healthcare system does not invest in public health capacity such as isolation beds for patients stricken with a contagious virus.

Yet Americas problem just like Chinas problem over unregulated markets for wild animal meat is our problem, too. One of the foundations of the rise of the left in the 19th and early 20th centuries was the growing recognition that no individual, however wealthy, was insulated from disease epidemics. Sanitation, clean water and immunisation were public goods necessary for everyone to stay alive. The left was their champion.

Now, one form of unregulated, free-market globalisation with its propensity for crises and pandemics is certainly dying. But another form that recognises interdependence and the primacy of evidence-based collective action is being born. There will be more pandemics that will force governments to invest in public health institutions and respect the science they represent with parallel moves on climate change, the oceans, finance and cybersecurity. Because we cant do without globalisation, the imperative will be to find ways of managing and governing it.

Todays Brexiters are of a mindset that is certain to wither. No more Britain alone. Faced with a deadly virus, working with others is a matter of life or death. This emergency will open the way for more, not less, international governance.

Will Hutton is an Observer columnist

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Coronavirus wont end globalisation, but change it hugely for the better - The Guardian

CBSE 10th History board exam is scheduled to be on 18th March 2020. Students who have started their last-minute revision must check the important set of questions & answers of Chapter 5 (Print Culture and the Modern World). The given questions are from the latest Social Science sample paper and CBSE prescribed NCERT book. These questions are also expected in CBSE class 10 Board Exam 2020.

Q1- Why theeffect of easily available printed booksfeared some people?

Ans- The availability of the printed books feared some of the people because they were worried about the consciousness and enlightenment that the print culture will bring among the people. The voice of reason will rise giving way to the social reforms.

CBSE 10th Social Science Board Exam 2020: Important Questions & Answers of History - All Chapters

Q2- Discuss the way in which theprint culture assisted the growth of nationalism in India.

Ans- The growth of nationalism in India was assisted by the print culture as it gave easy access to nationalist ideas. The idea of freedom was communicated to the masses. Social reformers started putting their views through newspapers and encouraged the idea of public debates and struggle.

Q3- In what way the spreading of print culture of India in nineteenth-century affected women?

Ans- There were major educational reforms in India for women due to the print culture. Women were encouraged to be educated by their liberal husbands and fathersat home.Some even sent women to school. They also began to write in journals or newspapers.

Q4- Why Gandhijisaidthatthe fight for Swaraj is a fight for theliberty of the press,liberty of speech and freedom of association?

Ans- Gandhi believed that the fight for Swaraj is a fight for the liberty of the press, liberty of speech and freedom of association because he considered them to be the powerful mode of expression. These forms of freedom were important for self-rule and independence.

CBSE Class 10 Social Science Board Exam 2020: Check Important Questions & Answers of Civics (All Chapters)

Q5- Why Martin Luther was in favour of print and why he spoke out in praise of it.

Ans- Martin Luther spoke in favour of print and praised it because print media gave him a platform of spreading his ideas and popularizing it.

Q6- How the poor were impacted with the spread of print culture in the nineteenth century?

Ans- The poor were benefitted from the spread of print culture in India because it made the low priced books available, there were also libraries with the essays and books which talked about caste discrimination and social injustices.

CBSE Class 10 Social Science Previous Years' Question Papers (2012-2019)

Q7- Why some people in eighteenth-century Europethoughtthat print culture would bring enlightenment and end despotism?

Ans- Some people in eighteenth-century thought that the print culture will bring enlightenment and end despotism because the easy availability of literacy will mean that it is not only limited to the upper class. They feared the awareness and questioning that will rise against the set ideologies.

Q8- Woodblock print only came to Europe after 1295.

Ans- Woodblock print was invented in China around the sixth century.In 1295, Woodblock print came to Europe with Marco Polo. He travelledto Italy after many years of exploration in Chinaandbrought the knowledge of woodblock print with him on his return.

CBSE Class 10 Social Science Syllabus for Board Exam 2020

Q9- What was The Vernacular Press Act?

Ans- The Vernacular Press Act was passed in 1878. With this law, the government got the tyrannical rights to censor editorials in the vernacular press. In case a seditious report was published and the newspaper did not pay attention to an initial warning, then the press was seized. This law was an example of a violation of the freedom of expression.

Q10- Write a short note on The Gutenberg Press.

Ans- Johann Gutenbergestablished The Gutenberg Press.By 1448, Gutenberg hadperfected theprinting systemwith olive and wine presseswhile also using contemporary technological innovations. Biblewas the first book that he printed and made180 copies in 3 years.The Gutenberg Press was the first-ever knownprinting press in the 1430s.

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CBSE 10th Social Science Board Exam 2020: Check Important Question & Answers of History Chapter 5 (Print Culture and the Modern World) - Jagran...

International Womens Day has existed to promote the rights of women for well over 100 years. This year the theme was equality based on the belief that an equal world is an enabled world. But what does equality really mean in a gendered world?

If you bring a group of women together and ask them what equality means (and I have done this, so I know), the conversation, and ultimately the consensus collects around well-documented and much-discussed issues such as female visibility in the workplace, stereotyping, gender bias, and equal opportunities. All very real issues, which years of discussion and associated actions have done little to resolve.

But heres my challenge in a global culture where binary definitions of gender are rapidly losing traction, should we even have a day dedicated solely to women?

Its a complicated question, because to answer it first you need to define what it is to be a woman. Is our definition based on the biological concept (sex) or the societal one (gender)? And what happens when the two concepts overlap?

The reality is that we are living in an increasingly fluid world. How we define sex and gender is changing. More than ever, people do not believe in gender as a binary construct.

In the UK, NHS figures show that the number of young people with gender dysphoria (the belief that your emotional and psychological gender identity does not match your biological sex) referred for gender treatment has increased by over 4,000% in just ten years.

A recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Centre in the US found that almost 60% of Gen Z (those aged between 13 and 20) believe that the terms man and woman are not enough to describe the full range of gender identities in society. Half of Millennials (22-37) and just over 30% of Baby Boomers (54 to 72) agree.

These findings are hugely significant for two reasons. Firstly, because of the speed in which opinions have changed, and secondly, because of the scale of these opinions in society. Generations are not equal in size which makes them not equal in the impact they have in shaping the society in which we live. Millennials and Gen Z together represent nearly 50% of the UK population with over 50% of spending power which will only increase as the younger generation comes of age. The way these generations think and behave has the power to change our social, cultural and commercial future forever.

There is no doubt the world is changing and change is seductive. Whether worrying or wonderful, the newness of change has a tendency to steal attention away from what went before. Its true that we are living in an increasingly gender-fluid world but its also true that the female collective (however you define it) remains a social underclass.

Research from the American Psychology Association found that a persons gender has little to no bearing on their personality, cognition and leadership abilities and yet women are still less visible in many of the most respected industries and in the best paid jobs. Women still dont get equal pay for equal work, and dont even have total ownership of their own bodies.

Whatever your biological or social identity, if you identify as a woman, it is likely that the world does not look equal from where you are standing right now.

So, going back to the question in a global culture where binary definitions of gender are rapidly losing traction should we even have a day dedicated solely to women?

The answer is undoubtedly yes. Women represent half of the worlds population.

Whether cisgender, transgender, heterosexual, bisexual, lesbian, pansexual or any other identities, discrimination is in our wake, but the ambition must surely be to eliminate it from our future for the widest possible definition of womanhood.

As marketers we have a responsibility to help make that happen, but an even greater responsibility to ensure that our actions are based on fundamentally held beliefs and not a cynical attempt to joyride the wave of cultural enlightenment.

Here are three actions marketers can take next International Womens Day to help create an inclusive and equal world for all women.

Challenge yourself: Ask yourself what you believe in. Does your purpose align with an open belief system that supports and promotes equality? If it doesnt align how truly committed are you to change and how do you plan to do so?

Look into your past: Look at what you have. Products, services and messages may have been created in a different time. Explore how relevant these are in todays world and how they might need to change.

Plan for the future: Look ahead. Align your purpose with new actions and put your best corporate and cultural foot forward to become an instrumental force for a more equal and enabling world.

Erminia Blackden is strategy director at Engine

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Reflections on IWD: is it still relevant in a non-binary world? - The Drum