There are a couple of nice little nuggets I’d like to pull out of this second video of American Philosopher.  First, I was excited to see the late John E. Smith join the video as an interviewee, though he seemed not to be mentioned in the teaser.  Smith was a great distiller of good information, and his work Spirit of American Philosophy has much merit.  That said, I am a bit skeptical about the claims he makes about the origin and character of archetypal American philosophy.  While it’s easy to see that pragmatism as an trend more readily absorbed into American academia.  Here are some of the claims from the film blurbs that I’ll address in kind.

• “I think our practicality had so much to do with our need to subdue a continent.” –Smith
• “I don’t think that pragmatism would ever have existed without the USA.  I just don’t think it could have developed on the soil of European philosophy at that time.” –Sartwell
• “There’s a tendency among Americans to want to solve problems.” –Lachs

While I’m all for American philosophy and the laudable insights of pragmatism, phrases like this go a bit too far.  Sure, the American context may have been conducive to the flourishing of practical thought, but to say that America is the only possible progenitor of this thought is narrow-minded.  I think already in the time of Ancient Greek philosophy there are some decent examples of a pragmatic turn (Aristotle expresses a number of these characteristics).  Roman philosophy expresses a bit of this tendency, as do a number of aspects of Eastern philosophies (of which there is an implicit, almost chauvanistic, dismissal in Sartwell’s comment).  Furthermore, there is a sense in which Europe was already leaning towards a practical form of Existentialism (evident in Nietzsche and Heidegger, I think), and now the continent has their own pragmatists (Habermas, Vattimo, etc.).  I sincerely doubt Americans want to solve problems more than people in other countries, nor are they necessarily in general more practical.  My sense is that what got America a reputation for solving problems and being pragmatic is simply that a few of the proponents of such ideas found their way into higher academia and were accepted anyway¹.  America is great and we’ve had some great philosophical insights, but let’s not give ourselves too much credit or resort to denying the possibility of historical counterfactuals wherein we didn’t provide such thought.

More interesting to me were Bernstein’s reflections on the relevance of philosophy to the American practicality (as opposed to the relevance of practicality to it’s philosophy).  It is actually surprising, if the textbooks are to be believed, that philosophical thought (particularly Enlightenment European philosophy) would have had such a powerful influence on the statebuilding process.  The founding fathers myths and stories are dripping with tales of inspiring figures with particular philosophical ideas conjoined with the concomitant practicality required to compromise where necessary to make them effective.  Likewise, American history is at least characterized as following a trajectory of philosophical self-awareness at the time of various social revolutions.  As Bernstein put it, “you couldn’t make any sense of America without understanding philosophy.  Very frequently the most significant progressive moments in American life is a coming together of a certain kind of practical-idealism.”  I nearly laughed when I heard the start of this sentence, but Bernstein, Anderson, Campbell, and Anne Rose (also not mentioned in the teaser) actually make a pretty decent, if succinct, case for this idea that philosophy is actually relevant to progress in American culture ².  I have elsewhere read exchanges between Bernstein and Rorty arguing more broadly on this topic–whether philosophy really has the ability to impact culture.  I have always thought that whether or not it was true (I suspect it is) that Bernstein’s position is the more “pragmatic”; in other words, it is good for us to at least act like philosophy can influence culture and human progress.  Nobody is arguing that it can provide insight, so there is no need to dismiss the possibility that that insight can have a fruitful consequential bearing on our practical experiences unless we have a more effective replacement.

Also interesting was the brief defense of philosophy as a bastion of practicality.  John Sturh and David Vessey (both uncredited in the teaser video) made this point by essentially stating that philosophy is the only discipline that really systematically gravitates towards questions of what we ought to do–or how our choices and actions can be used to alter ourselves and our world.  It’s certainly an argument I would love to flesh out more in discussion.

In the end, I think SIU Carbondale’s Randy Auxier really does the best job of giving a good “American character” to the conception of the American Philosopher:

It’s not the Anglo- or European- American experience; it just includes that.  It includes the Native American experience.  It includes the African American experience.  And all of these things come together to form the context of insight, intuition, and experience that gives rise to the philosophy.  You couldn’t have Ralph Waldo Emerson without the combined influence of all of those different traditions.  There is something in Pragmatism and American Personalism, American Idealism, and even in process philosophy that expresses the American experience.  The thing that I would say characterizes that most adequately has to do with a certain–not only practicality–but a certain assumption about the inseparability of the way a person lives and the way a person thinks. –Auxier

While Auxier is guilty of a few simplifications about what could have caused what, he does a good job of capturing the complexity and variety of “American” philosophy in a way that neither dilutes its definition to the point of meaninglessness nor narrowly overemphasizes specific content…other than the fact that this implicitly cuts the cord between so-called American philosophy and the defacto standard of philosophy in America, contemporary analytic thought.  Sartwell also has a quoteable nugget right at the end of this short which hints at many of the same assumptions:

I think the way I have tried to answer some philosophical questions has changed the way live…or, the way I live has changed my answers to philosophical questions.

The artificially spliced in editorial comment from Lachs, “That’s very American”, couldn’t have been a more apropos way to end the short film.

somewhere else

For myself, as both a self-diagnosed music junkie and a self-knighted meaning-ferreter, I am always particularly enticed by musicians who seem to work as hard as putting meaning into their pieces as I try to work getting it out.  That said, in my rather snobbish opinion, it is a rare album indeed which can exhibit a pretty clear goal¹ yet not dilute it to the point of total ambiguity, triteness, or perhaps just propaganda.  For succeeding where so many others have failed, I tip my hat to Charles Spearin.

Charles Spearin is certainly more well known as a membership in and contributions to Do Make Say Think

The Happiness Project by Charles Spearin (Arts & Crafts, 2009)

, Broken Social Scene, Valley of the Giants, and KC Accidental.  In fact, despite the Spearin’s undeniable musical talent, prior to the release his new record The Happiness Project, a Google search for “Charles Spearin” was more likely to take you to fans of his moustache than fans of his music.  This has since changed, and with good reason².

I should mention one quick caveat; Spearin’s Happiness Project falls within the much-maligned category of “concept albums”.  The so-called “project” around which the album centers is a series of seemingly informal interviews to which Charles Spearin subjected his neighbors, friends, and family on the general topic of happiness; Spearin and company then proceeded to arrange music inspired by the interviewees’ responses.  For my own part, before hearing the album I recognized this concept as laudable but likely dubious, at the risk of becoming trite.  However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the actualization came off as personal, particular, varied, and earnest enough to actually be insightful.  I suspect, also, that the apparent sincerity of the record’s attempt to broach the topic of happiness is not hermetically confined to Spearin’s respondents.  Certainly, if Spearin had much to do with the directional changes evident in Do Make Say Think’s marvellous last record You, You’re a History in Rust (Constellation, 2007), the topic of human happiness and interrelationship has been on the man’s mind for some time now³.

To finally get back to The Happiness Project itself, the album opens with one of the most conceptually simple, musically basic, topically relevant, an–in my view–powerful testamonials of disc.  If I may refer to each track as a case study, the first of these is of “Mrs. Morris” and her simple recipe for obtaining and mainting happiness.  As Mrs. Morris describes her basic application of love–rambling enough to show her sincerity and excitement, her rhythm and pitch are matched closely by a saxophone, forcing the listener to recognize the strange, comforting music flowing from her irrepressably human voice.  Mrs. Morris’s track clocks-in at under a minute and a half, and in a traditional musical sense it is certainly the most raw, sparse track on the whole album, yet she kicks off the album in a saliently meaningful way through her words, mood, attitude, as well as the surprisingly musical correspondence of her voice and mimicking instrumentation.  Although Arts & Crafts Records appears to be promoting the much more tradtional musical composition of track 2, Anna, I hold that Mrs. Morris’s account is the most dense, meaningful, and original–and I like to think that Spearin tacitly endorses my position by reprising Mrs. Morris at the end of the record.

That is not say that Anna lack’s meaning.  Indeed, it is only a testament to the record’s strengths that a track like Anna could be considered below its cohorts on the album.  Anna is a more straightforward song, heavily jazz-oriented with bits sampled bird chirps, based again on the rhythm, and to a lesser extent melody, of the “music” already present in Anna’s voice as she provides a few brief, insightful comments about happiness and her work with challenged young women.  Anna is double the length of Mrs. Morris, with the bulk of the latter half being repetition of the more meaningful first half.

Vittoria, the third song, is a much more light-hearted, yet jazzy track inspired by the stuttering responses of young Vittoria as she talks, apparently, about her schoolwork.  While happiness does not seem to be addressed directly per se, I think we can all learn a little something about happiness from a little child who spits out the brief phrase “you don’t get to do work”–as if she is so uninitiated into the cultural pension for defining our duties as drudgery that she is still able to approach many hated tasks with enthusiasm.

Vanessa–who follows Vittoria–broaches the topic of happiness via a discussion of deafness and coclear implants–a topic certainly foreign to most musical compositions.  My personal experiences made this testamonial come alive, but any music lover without much experience with deaf culture should grab this track and mull for a while.  Musically, this piece moves from the upbeat, jazzier approach to a softer and more Do-Make-Say-Think-like hum with a bit of light piano playing in the background.

Marisa follows next.  Her voice is shadowed by a somewhat unmelodic harp, as if foreshadowing her eventual assertion that her attempt to answer Spearin’s questions was a failure.  Her thoughts focus on human interaction, and though she stumbles a bit, I suspect she does so no more than we all do in our attempts to consider the broad topic of human happiness.  Her track is both serious and fun; like her answer, the music is both melodic and experimental, depending on the moment.  Do Make Say Think fans should be able to invest in this track for the music alone without disappointment.

Next on the record is Ondine, another young girl with seemingly little of relevance to say, but determined and astute syncretizers will find a good way to equate her whining with insight on human happiness⁴.  If nothing else, I managed to glean a little happiness directly from this track, laughing just a little bit out loud as I considered how such a little thing seemed to have such a grand effect on the happiness of this child, while interpreting the violin which follows her voice as a tiny (read: world’s smallest) little instrument.

Mr. Gowrie engages in active conversation, then, with Charles Spearin.  With the exception of Mrs. Morris, Mr. Gowrie‘s track seems the broadest attempt to discussing happiness.  Spearin’s accompaniament begins by anticipating Mr. Gowrie‘s voice, and then later extends it into a vague, rolling atmospheric melody persisting through the song’s close with quiet assaults from other instruments, especially the violin.  At times in this short song I could not help but reflect soberly, but at other times I was struck by irrepressable smiles.

The Happiness Project closes with another rendition, this one more melodic and more musically complex, of Mrs. Morris.  This brings the album to a nice refrain and close, and I should hope it is enough to cause a bit of pause to encouring a little mulling on the topic which Charles Spearin initiated at the album’s outset.  Despite some of the simple responses that some of the interviewees give, I did not find  any simple answers, but I found a few new interesting questions and a bit more cause to reflect on questions with which I am already long acquainted.  I think many of these questions relate not as much to happiness specifically as they do to humanity in general, and perhaps that philosophical trope “the good life”.  If nothing else, Spearin’s voice-inspired music should give us pause for how to relate to humans in a different self-other relationship.  When others speak, what are we listening to?  What does it mean to “hear” each other?  Does it matter how we approach listening to others?  Perhaps listening to the music of the voice of the other is a romantic exaggeration of the respect we ought to have for our fellow humans.  Or, perhaps this notion is only a distraction from really listening; isn’t it the same as Kierkegaard’s aesthete who entertained himself not by understanding the philosopher’s drivel, but by watching the beads of sweat form and jump from his nose?

At any rate, I implore you to listen to the record and tell me or others what you get out of it.

As a disclaimer to this review, I ought to mention that Steve Long’s book is the first I’ve read on the subject of rock climbing, and I am an extremely callow climber. That said, my general inexperience as in the subject might be helpful for others interested in gaining introductory insights into climbing, and my review might also elucidate whether this book is too elementary for more experienced climbers.

The book has an ambitious, remarkably broad set range of topics discussed–including history of the sport, genre divisions in rock climbing, safety techniques, travel and climbing-site specific information, tips on picking out equipment, instructions on climbing maneauvers, tips on diet and exercise, notes on competitions, and much more. Considering both the eagerness of the project and the slightly-larger-than-pocket size of the text, it should not be unexpected that while the general topic of climbing is discussed in a very complete fashion, some specific individual topics are exceptionally abbreviated discussions.

Overall, the book seems inclusive, outlining most of the climbing approaches and equipment which i would have anticipated or hoped for, plus a few which i did not. The book is chock-full of illustrations, diagrams, photographs, and the like, which to me seem an absolute necessity for any adequate hands-off presentation of climbing technique. There were a few places in the text where perhaps a superfluous (but often aesthetically inviting) photo of a glorious rock face with an attached climber or a diagram for an exceedingly simple technique or a redundant tip bubble might have been omitted in order that the abridged description of a procedure might be made more clear. However, in general these tended to add clarity to my novice understanding of materials, procedures, setup, safety, knots, equipment, and the like.

There were two sections which I felt were particularly well-constructed–namely “essential safety skills” and “key techniques”. Each seemed helpful, descriptive, comprehensive, and–with several notable exceptions–left me with relatively few unanswered questions compared to many of the other sections. Thankfully, these two sections seemed to make up the real meat of the books, such that the best information was available from the largest and most interesting portions of the work. To me, the simplest of diagrams and photographs–those intending to portray only one idea, technique, or feature–were by far the most helpful. Grip techniques were very clear, as well as most of the vital diagrams describing safe anchoring techniques for cams, webbing, rope, pitons, and the like. I found some diagrams attempting to explain, for example, rope techniques which became confusing by attempting to illustrate full sequences of connections in a diagram without proper correlating explanations.

The most salient pitfalls of the text are with overall clarity and organization. Most notably, I think that readers as green or greener than myself might experience some difficulty with climbing techniques or terms not being properly described before they are used in the book. Some very basic terms in climbing have quite different jargoned meanings from their status quo definitions, and many of these–protection, jug, second, natural, and psych come to mind immediately–are defined much later than they are first used (and in some cases, never defined at all, even in the glossary). Perhaps the guide is not intended for those of us too callow to recognize these terms or techniques, but if this is the case, then it is a mistake for the work to define them–as it often does–later on. Prusik, for example, is used multiple times at the beginning of the book, but is not defined in the glossary and not explained in the book until page 48. Likewise, jug is needed to understand a suggested exercise on page 91, but is not defined until page 94. Psyching is used on page 82, but explained on 85. Conversely, sometimes terms or procedures are defined redundantly; the munter hitch, for example, is described in nearly the same words on both pages 53 and 64. Additionally, some portions simply seem out-of-place. Rigging a repel, ascending and descending, and constructing a prusik are relegated to the back of the book, away from the other sections on other related in-climb techniques. Sometimes a bit more information might have been provided, such as diagrams (page 57 could have used one concerning threads) or simply further description (page 53 mentions some configurations being “weak” for equipment, but does not describe them). I thought that the sections on techniques and safety skills might have benefited from the addition of a brief section consolidating and describing the fundamental ideas of loading, directionality, and force.

These weak points should not entirely overshadow the benefits of the book, however. By the end of the work, many of the questions and problems and confusions that were left by individual sections were largely answered. Unfortunately, this was often only after they were mentioned elsewhere in the book, such that a full understanding of equipment and procedure might require two readings for some novices. In general, instruction is succinct and clear, and the information is relevant. True, the book could use enough editing to warrant a second edition, but it is certainly an excellent source of information in its current form.