Accesibility as a Necessary Criterion for Physicality and its Implication for the Existance of a Soul -- Thought Jot by Yonza the Barbarian

Physicalists assert that the world is made up of only physical substances. Dualists assert that there exist physical substances as well as nonphysical substance like the soul.

Could universal access be a necessary criterion for a substance's physicality? My intuition tells me 'yes.' A rock is a physical object. It contains the property of having universal accessibility. What I mean by this is that any given person's physical body has the possibility of being in direct causal contact with the rock. Anybody could -- and this does not mean everybody does -- touch/see/hear/taste/smell the rock. Access to this causal contact is not denied to anyone.

If it is agreed that the possibility of universal access extends only to physical objects then it is easy to show how the dualists are correct. There do exist things where only a subset of persons (agents) have access. For example, my visual experience of the computer screen. Only a subset of persons (agents) have access to this thing, the subset containing only one member. The member happens to be me, Yonza the Barbarian.

It would be near impossible for a physicalist to deny that my experience is only accessible to me (to think that modern fMRI thought-reading techniques put this notion to the test is to misunderstand the notion of accessibility. It is conceivable that technology might allow us to rig a system where your experience is identical to my experience, but just like identical twins aren't the same person, identical experiences are not the same experience). The only point of attack would be that accessibility is not a necessary feature of physical objects. I cannot think off the top of my head how anyone could clearly deny it, although, admittedly, I have not given a rigorous argument for it, and have relied merely on intuition. I suspect most people will have similar intuitions.

Death of the American Hero, by the Dr.

On January 11th of 2008 (Anno Domini) Sir Edmund Hillary died at the age of 88 in his homeland of New Zealand. Owing much to his Sherpa guide, Tenzing Norgay, Hillary achieved the unimaginable in becoming the first man to summit Mt. Everest (all 29,029 feet of it) in 1953. After reaching the top of the world, Hillary crossed the Antarctic, formed a foundation for building schools and clinics in Nepal, served as president of New Zealand’s Peace Corps, and wrote numerous books about his experiences. Still, climbing Everest endured as Hillary’s most lasting triumph, and, in recalling the adventure, he once stated, “I have had a dream and it has come true, and that is not a thing that happens often to men.”

For his audacity in aspiring to and then realizing his dream SEH became a global hero, and the anniversary of his passing draws my attention to a disturbing trend of disappearing heroes in American culture. The archetypal national heroic types of Patriot and Cowboy have receded into traditional folklore (or, perhaps more tellingly, been designated as names for vaunted NFL franchises – a trade commodity to be bought and sold in the marketplace) and many of our proud historical figures have faded under Time’s blinding, unblinking light. The courage and achievements of old idols do not resonate with us as they did the generations that preceded because of the relative temporal distance between us. Those of us that are studious and interested may be wary of our history, but an individual intuitively attunes to and immerses himself in his own time, lest he find himself an outcast and half-mad relic – the 7th grade history buff who curses Lincoln up and down (in the present tense) and stoically cloaks himself in Confederate Gray.

The shelf-life of today’s “hero” expires before there is time to be inscribed in the history books. As a result of the staggering rewards offered for success and a ubiquitous and mosquiton Media, the would-be-hero of yesterday faces constant scrutiny. In a land whose proud slogan has always been that any man can make something of himself, Americans delight in the debasement and disparagement of men, particularly those with a touch of the Self-Made to their story. We have developed a ravenous and insatiable appetite for seesawing our heroes, catapulting them to epic heights only to swing them violently earthward. The thrill in glorification and debasement seems, to me, a perversely contemporary (and diagnostic) national attitude.

In our time we have seen O.J. Simpson accused of a double murder (and convicted of armed robbery in Vegas, where the American Dream went to die), Bill Clinton receive oral favors from an intern, Stephen Ambrose plagiarize several works, Jeffrey Skilling and Dennis Kozlowski convicted for fraud and misappropriation, Michael Jackson accused of molesting children, Michael Jordan (the greatest, period) divorced for infidelity, and a slew of professional athletes (including gold-medal winners and modern day record holders) charged with using illicit hormones and steroids. These selections represent not only achievers who reached the apex of their respective field, but also are drawn from the traditional fountains of modern heroism: sports, politics, entertainment, business, and academia. In another era, some of their misdeeds might have gone unnoticed. In our time, they have a depreciating effect on the perpetrator.

I do not wish to suggest or imply that any person should be elevated above the law or freed from punishment or consequences. But perpetual media attention has such a humanizing (isn't it sad how that word assumes a negative connotation?) effect that accomplishments often get overlooked or diminished. The hero, totally humanized, loses his aura and influence. His ability to inspire is decimated.

While studying in Argentina, I found the treatment of heroes abroad totally different. There, the culture of the hero still flourishes, albeit in a far more immemorial manner. Borges and Gardel are universally appreciated national figures. Despite confounding extraprofessional behavior and a litany of drug addictions, Diego Maradona is lionized as the greatest fútbol player to ever dribble; his La Mano de Dios goal in the 1986 World Cup against England considered a profound act of national destiny. Eva Peron – though polarizing for her politics – is worshiped by her supporters as a goddess and was hailed as the savior of the working class. Although not without her detractors, Evita joins the others on the strength of her supporters to compose an irreproachable group of national heroes. This tradition is not necessarily better; it grants its heroes immunity through their daunting accomplishments, effectively making them one-dimensionally good. Cast as such, they become noncomplex caricatures.

The path to redeeming the nature and idea of the Hero involves relearning the definition. Among such characteristics as courage and ability, the OED includes in its definition of hero the word “demigod,” which word refers to a figure that is half-god, half-human. Within this definition lies hope for the future of the American hero. Demigod implies a being that is illustrious, yet fallible; enlightened, yet reproachable; deified, yet mortal. Through the Hero's Dream, the holy Immortal is accessed, and we relate to the vessel through which the Dream is channeled - the Hero, himself - through his humanity. It is in our best interest to recognize the dichotomy of the Hero, who needs but 2 things: a dream and supporters. The Hero’s duty is to provide the dream, as SEH did, and do his utmost to attain that dream, to push the boundaries and limitations of humankind and in so doing make us all the better for it. It is our duty, the rest of us, to provide the support without which the hero and his dream will surely die.

Why "B" is the most Gangster Letter by Yonza the Barbarian

B Boys, Beat boxing, bass, beat, beatings, bitches, Biggie Smalls -- spend a little time in the gangsta’ rap world and you’ll immediately notice that the letter 'B' is overrepresented. But perhaps overrepresented is a misnomer since the letter accords perfectly with the style and content of gangsta’ rap. But why is the letter 'B' so fuckin' gangsta’? A quick summary of some of its phonetic components might reveal its bangin' secrets. 'B' is what is known as a bilabial plosive which basically means that it is a letter where closure of both lips cause the stoppage of airflow (other letters, such as labiodental fricatives V and F are not plosives and do not cause the stoppage of air flow, and some non-English letters make use of nasal or glottal stops).

But what is so special about being a bilabial plosive? After all, 'P' is a bilabial plosive and that is probably the nerdiest, most white boy letter in the fuckin alphabet (you heard me right, P Diddy). The difference between B and P is small, but it is significant. 'B' is a voiced bilabial plosive while 'P' is a voiceless bilabial plosive. A voiced speech sound is one that uses the vocal chords; it tends to rise from the gut, to sound bassier, and to just be leagues more gangsta'. A very clear difference between voiced and voiceless is the difference between "Z' and 'S'. Z is much deeper, more masculine, bordering on leonine growl while 'S' is effeminate and taciturn and bordering on a house cat's purr. And while 'Z' is pretty gangsta’ (tip of that hat to you, Jay Z) it is no 'B'. What makes 'B' so gangsta’ is the way the voiced speech sound seems to explode with the bilabial outpush of the lips. It sounds like a thump, a bass drum, or the sharp, resounding explosion of a bullet. To make it more gangsta', try relaxing your lips. Allow your cheeks to puff out before you release the push of air. And it is no coincidence that these suggestions (puff cheeks, relax lips) are built in to the facial structure of the king of gangsta' rap Bs, Biggie. He has big floppy lips and puffy cheeks and the B's explode off them like the "Bang!" of a shotgun. Take the opening line from Things Done Changed "Remember back in the day." The word "remember" is a just a prelude to the real first explosion of the song -- that being the "back" -- which kicks it off like a car getting jump started or the initial crack of a cord-pull lawnmower before its blades buzz into full grass-chopping speed.

These are the a B c’s of gangsta’ rap.

Peace out…bitches

Art, Subjectivity, Objectivity, and an Experimental Proposal by Yonza the Barbarian

A central question in Philosophy of Art is whether art is objective or subjective. In its most basic and simplified form, the objectivist argues something like "there must be something about the Mona Lisa that makes it better than a four-year-old's scribble of a smiley." The subjectivist argues, "even amongst the most refined critics there is disagreement over what paintings are good and what are bad. How could we conclusively say that some of these critics are wrong and some are right, and who has the authority to say such things?"

What makes characterizing art criticism as an objective science difficult, is the fact that there are no agreed upon criteria with which to criticize works. Furthermore, any proposed criteria, unless rigorously supported, would seem arbitrary and subjective in itself, and so would actually deepen the problem rather than resolve it.

One attempt to create such a criteria, undertaken by the great David Hume in his essay Of the Standard of Taste, comes close to providing some solid arguments for why there is an objective standard of art that could be provided by hypothetical "Perfect Judges," which are basically critics with no prejudices, no biases, and perfectly refined taste. If you want to see his argument check out the essay (I'm sure it can be found online somewhere and if not check out the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

Hume's proposal is a good first crack at setting up a well-founded mechanism for objective art criticism. Below I will propose another possible foundation and an experiment which might have implications on objective art criticism. Note: my argument is a conditional one in that I am not arguing that art is objective, I am arguing that if art is objective then the theory below might be a good way to start developing objective criteria. Much of what I will write below might seem flimsy, but that is okay because I'm not going for a super-rigorous point here. Just a suggestion of thought, rumination, and experimentation.

Okay, so, I'll start off with a whopping proposal with little foundation: let us say that art is simply communication (as countenanced by Tolstoy). Let us also say that communication can be broken down into units of information, something that can be objectively measured in bits. So if I say to you, "I am 23 years old" let us say that this statement has X number of information bits. If I said to someone else that "I am 23 years old and I am male" let us say that statement has Y number of information bits. Now, it is clear that the following is an objectively true proposition: X " < " Y, or, in English, I have communicated less information in the first sentence than I communicated in the second sentence.

So if (1) art is communication and (2) communication can be directly measured in bits then (3) art can be objectively measured. Now this doesn't prove that art is objective qua art, it proves it is objective qua its communicatory mass, after all, Tolstoy would claim only that art is communication, not that the more it communicates the better it is (if he did contend this, then the OED would be far superior to the Mona Lisa!).

Now I am going to my a claim (more like, a suggestion) and this is a big leap, I know: let us assume that there is an analogy between elegance in mathematical proofs and in the quality of art works. When we talk about elegance in mathematical proofs, we are usually referring to how simply a proof can be successfully contrived. If student A proves some postulate in 10 steps, and student B proves some postulate in 30 steps, we can say that A has a more elegant proof. He has managed to demonstrate (communicate?) the exact same thing using less Space (the word "Space" is very ambiguous. Defining my use of "Space" here would take a whole other essay so I'm gonna forgo further explanation for the time being).

My conclusion is that perhaps we can measure the quality of art the same way we measure the elegance of mathematical proofs: the amount of information bits communicated per unit Space (Space used ambiguously). In this sense, the best writer would be able to communicate the same amount of content, emotion, etc. etc. (all reducible to information bits) in a smaller amount of Space (here Space might = words, sentences, lines, pages , but not necessarily). The sentence "It is me and my age at this particular moment in time is equal to the number that is three more than 20" is much worse than the sentence " I am 23" because both sentences communicate the same thing but one takes up much less Space.

Here is a little experimental proposal that could put my theory to the test. Have a few artists and writers work together to do the following: take an already painted work of art, write a 3 page description of the work, and have another artist who has not seen the original work paint what the writer wrote. The writers goal is to have his artist's samizdat painting match the original painting as precisely as possible. My theory entails that, assuming the painters are all equal, a writer's work could be judged objectively based on how close the reproduced painting is to the original.

Meditation on the Possibility of Geometric Thought by Yonza the Barbarian

Sometimes my thoughts have edges
Some sharp, some dull, but nevertheless
The demarcation of an objects end
Where space can resume and can invite other objects.

Sometimes the edges are vivid
But sometimes they blur or coalesce or meld
Like two proximal beads of water
Pulling at one another with a tiny miraculous force
And stretching out like psuedopodia
And bursting into an ovoid for just a moment
Before emerging into existence as round, supra-massive bead

All thoughts have one dimension: time
But I think some of my thoughts have more dimensions
Because some of my thoughts are larger than others (spatially)
And they bully other thoughts
Push them from awareness
Invaginate them and assimilate them
Destroy them and table them and holster them

Some thoughts are
Of me
Some thoughts are somehow not
Of me

I generate them sometimes.
These are the thoughts that are Of Me.
But some thoughts intrude; anxieties, worries, etc.
These are not Of Me.

I try to pin my thoughts
Like a bug wriggling on the wall
But they always crawl out from under the pin
And recede and de-objectify and evanesce back
To unawareness.

But at least, sometimes
If I keep them pinned for a beat or two
And fix my gaze just long enough
I can get them on paper.
Trapped forever as verisimilitude

Some Tips On Taking the 6:18 New Haven Line From Grand Central to Larchmont by Yonza the Barbarian

The 6:18 New Haven Line train stopping at Mt. Vernon, Pelham, New Rochelle, Larchmont, Mamaroneck, Rye and Harrison will have all its seats taken by 6:15, so after 6:15 there is SRO. If you come before 6:15 and you are heading towards Larchmont, I have some helpful tips on maximizing your comfort for the ride home:

(1) Sit next to black people. Black people tend get off at Fordham or Mt. Vernon while white people tend to get off at Pelham, New Rochelle, Larchmont, Rye and Harrison. By sitting next to a black person, you maximize the chances that the seat next to you will be vacated early in the ride, thus allowing you more room to sprawl and reducing the chances of you falling asleep on the shoulder of the person in the adjacent seat, drooling on their neck, and being given an inconspicuous nudge awake, after which you spend about five seconds getting your bearings and then the humiliation sets in, and so you make sure to lean way towards the other direction when you rest your eyes but in doing so you just end up falling asleep on the shoulder of the guy sitting on that side, and so on and so forth.

(2) Sit next to women. The obvious: women tend to be more petite. Sitting next to a woman will give you more of a buffer zone, and thus more sprawling room. A less obvious benefit of sitting next to women is that they tend to have more respect for seat boundaries than men. When sitting next to a woman she will be sure to keep her body upright and will keep her coat, bag, and any other belonging neatly filed on her lap and is sure to tuck any over-spilling sleeves or cloth within the plane of the seat divisions. Men tend to have less respect for the seat divisions, and will often sprawl their legs as far as possible without making physical contact with your legs.

(3) Asses your tolerance for risk, and choose a bench accordingly. The 6:18 has two types of benches: three seaters, where there third seat is a half-backed-midget-seat, and two seaters. If you have your pick of either type of bench, first be sure not to pick the midget seat if you have another option. The midget seat might seem alright at first glance, but after you sit down and start getting sleepy and you see all the people around you leaning back in comfort, you become so desirous that you’ll often do a false head-lean, where, despite your better knowledge, you sort of lean your head back with a deluded expectation that there will be a cushion there to put your head and neck at ease, but of course the delusional hope is never realized and you get frustrated until your are completely consumed by the fact that your head has no place to rest, and all you can think about is your flimsy neck muscles propping up your head and all the effort you are putting in and how nice it all could have been if you just chose the seat with the back. Now: assuming you are wise enough not to choose the half-backed-midget-seat your next choice would be either window two-seater or window-three seater. I will not go into the advantages/disadvantages of choosing either (for the sake of brevity). Suffice it to say that either choice is rational, but the choice should be made according to risk tolerance.

(4) After you enter the vestibule, head towards the group of seats in the direction opposite to that which you were walking as you walked on the platform next to the train. By doing this, your path, from entering on to the platform in GCS all the way to your seat, should look like a cane; you are going straight down the platform and then Uing into your seat (e.g. if you are walking down the platform and the train is on your right, you make a right into the train door, then once in the vestibule you make another right and sit down in those seats). The reason why you should do this is because people, for some reason, tend to continue walking into the train in the same direction they were walking on the platform (e.g. if you are walking down the platform and the train is on your right, and you make a right into the vestibule, most people will turn left, thus heading in the same direction they were walking down the platform -- it looks like a cubing function). I’m not sure why people do this, but I suspect that it has something to do with a subconscious desire to continue on a similar a path as possible, like a psycho-kinetic version of momentum, I suppose. Anyway, by not falling for this psychokinetic blunder, you maximize your chances of having the seat next to you not taken, allowing you to sprawl.



(5) From my experience – this tip I’m a little less confident in than the rest – you want to go three-quarters of the way down the platform to find the car with the fewest people. The theory goes that some people are just lazy and so they take the first few cars, and some people think they will get the least-crowded car if they walk a little, so they walk about half way. But the people that figure they should walk three-quarters of the way are so hardcore that they figure they might as well go all the way, since surely nobody but them would be willing to walk that far down the platform, where –who knows! – there might be giant mutated rats, and breeds of cold war era dwarf-men that chose to hide in the GCS tunnel because of their apocalyptic predictions related to ICBMs and the like (and surely these are the people, who, when they existed in the supraterranean world, sat comfortably on the half-backed-midget-seats and all was right as rain), and so the brave souls can’t puss out at ¾ of the way. So then there is dearth of people who would go three quarters -- and only three quarters – of the way down the platform. Or so the theory goes.

Bon voyage.

Preliminary Thoughts on Media Archetypes and Personality Types Through Time by Yonza the Barbarian

To what degree to media archetypes create personality types?

Subsumed questions:

(1) To what degree do we (intentionally or unintentionally) model our personality after media archetypes?
(2) To what degree do other people interpret our personalities so as to conform their interpretations to media archetypes?

Related questions:

(1) Assuming we are more media saturated in the present than we were in the past, is it safe to say that that personality modeling based on media archetypes is more prevalent and/or more pronounced nowadays? Does this imply that the distinction between the media and reality – specifically, reality pertaining to personality types – disintegrates as time goes on?
(2) Are questions about media archetypes and their relation to personality types as they change through time something that can be answered, or do these questions fall prey to certain Heisenberg Microscope-type paradoxes? I ask this because, what comes to my mind, is the fact that trying to discover things about the past requires some medium (e.g. a history textbook) and such a medium -- being human artifice and therefore unnatural – becomes the very archetype-creating instrument that is our subject of study. It would be like scrutinizing a brand of microscope for flaws in the lens, through a microscope of that same brand.

Tangential questions:

(1) Assuming it is even possible to make sense of the notion of “personality,”


[“And there is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others” Montaigne, Of the Inconsistency of Our Actions]


what are its components and how can we measure it? Do we measure it in tradition of behaviorism? But then what is the difference between the Actor and the Genuine?
(2) Is it possible that emulation of media archetypes doesn’t recreate personality, but acts as a personality-superstructure on top of a nonmalleable foundation? If this is the case, what can we call this superstructure? We couldn’t call it acting, because it seems more genuine than acting.