The high life

One of the oddest neglected fields in sociology and psychology is the effects of living in high rise buildings. It's possible some studies have been done on the subject, but I've never read of any.

As the world's population surges alarmingly, an ever-larger proportion of it lives in multi-story hives. That holds true in large cities everywhere; the few that have held onto their historic centers, like Paris and Rome, have simply put the high rises in suburbs. Nor is it only in megalopolises that high rise residences flourish. Ritzy seaside enclaves boast towers for living too, so developers can sell as many sea views as possible.

High rise living was almost unknown until the recent past. Ancient Rome and Ostia had apartment buildings (insulae), limited to four or five stories height. They were notoriously shoddy and constantly falling down. Only the poor in rough neighborhoods like the Subura lived in them. After the fall of Rome, living on top of and beneath other people stopped for 1,500 years, partly because the technology and engineering skills weren't available, partly because land was plentiful. The poor lived in appalling conditions, but they lived in their own space -- "a poor thing, but mine own."

Apartment buildings began to make a comeback in late 19th century Paris and London, but even they were not much taller than those of the Romans. It had to wait for the invention of the elevator and steel frame construction for real skyscrapers, and eventually high rise dwellings, to dominate the urban landscape. So there have really been only three or four generations in which lots of people lived well above ground level.

Well, so what? Aren't high rise apartments and condos great? If the altitude of your pad is great enough -- and the most prestigious units, or "penthouses," are at the very top -- you get a view for miles and miles. It might be a dreary landscape of other tall buildings, freeways, and malls, but at night even that can become a magical panorama of lights. Heck, even supposed ecological visionaries like James Howard Kunstler love the kind of high-density housing that high rises permit, so people will be able to multiply their numbers at will and still not take up more suburban space. Plus, if they are city office workers, they can live near their offices and not commute by car. I don't know why Kunstler doesn't pursue his logic all the way and advocate living quarters attached to offices in skyscrapers. It would be terribly efficient. Terribly.

Anyway, it seems to me that there is a cultural and emotional gap between living in a single house with at least a bit of turf around it you can call your own and being one of hundreds on dozens of floors. Why would anyone want to be surrounded left, right, above, and below by others? Especially with the poor sound insulation of most modern high rise residential construction?

Yet many do. You can buy rooms in the sky on the 30th floor for millions of dollars in places like New York. Are we creating a new breed of people with different values from those of almost all previous eras?

Manhattan, where practically all residences are in high rises (except for Gracie Mansion, the mayor's house -- if dwelling height is so wonderful, why doesn't the mayor live at the top?), serves as an instructive example. Manhattanites are different from those of us who prefer houses, and while there are surely lots of reasons, spending their home as well as working lives packed vertically is a major one.

High rises turn people into mass man, the end goal of all forms of collectivism. My observation is that New Yorkers have become psychologically attached to density. They are unlike people who become uncomfortable in crowds. They will happily queue up around the block to get into a popular show or fashionable restaurant: being in a huge throng reassures them that they are in the right place.

Still, even New York -- because of its history (time to create some sort of manners for living with others constantly around them), residual wealth, and culture -- generally manages to blend a degree of civilization into the mix. That almost certainly isn't true of new high rise cities that have sprung up in the past 30 years, containing millions of people. What does the high rise life do to the heads of occupants who have gone in their own lives from peasantry to urban slabs in China, India, Brazil, Nairobi? 

In fact, while the people in Cairo who are currently tearing up their city undoubtedly have politics in their forebrains, is it possible that behind at least some of the instability is the shock of finding themselves uprooted and suspended in forests of concrete? Steve Sailer touches on Egypt's overpopulation issue, and as usual lots of short-sighted critics insist that the population growth party can go on forever, just like economists insisted that the great borrow-and-spend bubble could.

Maybe we are evolving into human ant colonies where individual space is a luxury for the very rich, and even many of them don't care about it. At least for the rest of my lifetime, it will be possible to live in a house if my luck holds. It would be nice if future generations had the same opportunity.

What next? U.S. to invade Egypt?

"U.S. warns Cairo: Halt crackdown or we halt aid."

"Riots in Egypt: President Obama must choose between Hosni Mubarak and protesters' cause."

"Axelrod: President Obama has 'on several occasions directly confronted' Mubarak on human rights for the past 2 years 'to get ahead of this.' "

"Obama admonishes Egypt's Mubarak on protests."

Flipping hell. Could we, for once, mind our own business?

I don't know if the rioters in Cairo are revolutionary champions of freedom trying to overthrow a typically corrupt Middle Eastern regime, or a bunch of Islamic fundamentalist yobs. Neither does Barack Kenyatta, and neither does our leftist State Department. Why does our government assume that it always must take sides in every crisis, guaranteeing that one (or, more likely, both sides) will acquire another reason to loathe the U.S.?

What if our official response was: "We trust everybody will cool their jets and work things out. It's particularly important from our standpoint that the Egyptian antiquities in the Cairo Museum be safeguarded."

What if our official response was nothing?

I propose that the following words be chiseled in marble at the entrances to the Oval Office and the State Department:

NOT OUR PROBLEM.

It would remind our elected and unelected doofi that most of the time we can do no good, but easily do harm.

Kenyatta has chosen the latter course (surprised?). 

The Barack Obama administration has decided to lift a ban preventing Muslim Scholar Professor Tariq Ramadan from entering the United States. Ramadan, an Egyptian currently living in Switzerland, is a leading member of Europe’s Muslim Brotherhood branch and the grandson of the movement’s founder Hassan al-Banna. The Muslim Brotherhood is the parent organization for Hamas and some of the groups that recently merged into al-Qaeda, including Ayman al Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

So, our answer to an unpopular Egyptian regime is to roll out the welcome mat for a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the fount of much militant Islam in the world today.

Heaven help us.

Eppur, si muove

Eppur, si muove. Nevertheless, it does move.

That, supposedly, is what Galileo said (very quietly, one supposes) after the Inquisition forced him under threat of torture to recant his belief that the earth moves around the sun.

Eventually, of course, the scientific method was completely accepted and saw off any theological objections to its findings. We can all be thankful for that, not only because of the many life-improving inventions that were developed as a result of scientific research, but because it corrected a mis-application of metaphysics. The phenomena of this world, as perceived by the senses and tested through experiment, yield their secrets to science, not metaphysics and certainly not to religious dogma.

But there is a class of borderline phenomena between the physical and the metaphysical, namely, what we call psychic or paranormal. Physical and (in many cases) measurable effects are produced, but there seems no physical cause or explanation.

You would think that science, with its claim to open-minded investigation and testing of hypotheses, would be intrigued by the paranormal. Not so. With a few honorable exceptions, scientists don't want to know. Don't want to admit there is anything to know. Orthodox science occupies the low ground that the Inquisition held in Galileo's time.

Recently it was announced that a paper on extrasensory perception, including precognition -- knowledge of what hasn't happened yet -- would be published in the peer-reviewed scientific Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. As usual, that set the cat among the pigeons.

Prof Bem, of Cornell University, New York, said the results of nine experiments he had carried out on students over the past decade suggested humans could accurately predict random events.

His peer-reviewed work was described as "pure craziness" and "an embarrassment for the entire field" by scientists who allege it has serious flaws and that ESP is a myth.

Articles of this sort in the mainstream media are hard for the educated reader to make any sense out of, since they focus on the conclusions of the study while providing scant information about the experimental protocols, including how the findings were tested for statistical significance. For that matter, even the alleged "serious flaws" aren't specified. All you get is hot air, a controversy, which is what interests journalists. And of course most newspapers can't resist illustrating the story with a corny picture of a gypsy fortune teller, although the overwhelming majority of psychics, people who experience paranormal phenomena, and psychical researchers have nothing in common with so-called fortune tellers.

Maybe this research did have methodological flaws, although for many skeptics, doing the research in the first place was the essential flaw.

Pieces like The Telegraph's, usually written by generalist reporters, give the impression that no scientific research has ever previously been conducted into the paranormal. A hundred and thirty years of serious psychical research might as well never have been undertaken, since few reporters or conventional scientists will waste their time reading about it.

The evidence for psychical phenomena (sometimes called psi) is overwhelming, but partly for that very reason, doesn't lend itself to easy summation. To get the true picture, you have to read not just a handful of accounts of experiments or descriptions of spontaneous experiences, but -- as with any other field of inquiry -- explore the subject in some depth. That takes time. And, say the perma-skeptics, what intelligent person would waste time on such obvious nonsense? Thus continues the perfect circle of ignorance.

Occasionally someone asks me to recommend a single book that would convince an open-minded scientist of the reality of psi. I'm not sure that any one book can do such a thing, because even a book is limited in the number of examples it can offer, and any particular instance is open to theoretical objection, no matter how far-fetched. It's the sheer quantity of solid evidence that is the clincher.

For the scientist who wants to get a first, rational look at psychical research, I would recommend you push the boat off with Dean Radin's The Conscious Universe. Radin is a scientist and his tone is objective.

But, short of an overall change in the materialist assumptions of modern life, I don't expect psychical research to become any more respectable than it is now. Only some individuals will explore its findings to expand their understanding of the nature of life. To admit there are levels of consciousness and existence that are beyond the reach of the ordinary senses (while they can at times affect normal consciousness and the physical world) is just too uncomfortable a leap for most.

Eppur, si muove.



1/26 
I have just learned from Guy Lyon Playfair that he recently wrote a review with a similar theme. It can be found here.

A cloud no bigger than a man's mouth

I see a cloud coming up out of the sea,
no bigger than a man's hand

— I Kings 18:44

It's a modern-day guilt ritual: a public figure says something a little colorful that a thin-skinned member of a protected class claims is racistsexisthomophobicislamophobichateful. The thought criminal quickly recants: "I am deeply sorry if I offended anyone. It was utterly unintentional. Wash me clean. Please, put a dunce cap on me, a rope around my neck, hang a sign on me, parade me in the streets, jeer me."

Steve Cohen (D-People's Republic of Congress), seated:

"I didn't intend to offend anyone."

The most recent apologia comes from Steve Cohen, a Democrat congressman, for his remark in the House chamber:

They say it's a government takeover of health care, a big lie just like Goebbels. You say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, and eventually, people believe it. The Germans said enough about the Jews and the people believed it, and you had the Holocaust.

The Germans said enough about the Jews and people believed it--believed it and you have the Holocaust. We heard on this floor, government takeover of health care. Politifact said the biggest lie of 2010 was a government takeover of health care because there is no government takeover.

For the first time I can remember, a man of the Left has had to dance the shimmy. And for a genuine outrage (not a slip of the tongue, or a joke that didn't go over). This is no occasion for conservative triumphalism, but it might be significant. A vicious comparison of Obamacare opponents to Hitler's assistant ranter, which (I hope) would draw groans from a high school debate audience, has actually gotten a big government booster in hot water.

Steve, we don't need to crown you with a dunce cap. You've done that for yourself.

Simon says

John Simon, who has written engagingly about theater, film, literature, and music for decades, now has his own blog: Uncensored John Simon.

Simon's criticism — especially of theater — has frequently generated strong reactions, pro and con. He is extremely knowledgeable about his subjects, writes a stylish and often witty prose, and tends to be conservative (in his tastes; I don't know anything about his politics). Simon's critical judgments can be severe — if he was censored by his publishers, it doesn't show — and no other modern critic has punctured inflated reputations and taken down avant-garde pretension with as much gusto.

The hard rap on John Simon is that he is excessively nasty as a reviewer, treating work that doesn't satisfy him as virtually a crime. He has also set some teeth on edge by including in his denunciations put-downs of an actor's appearance. Not costumes or make-up, but bodies and features. He once wrote of Shelley Winters playing a role after she'd gained a lot of weight — I'm quoting from memory, but I think this is pretty close — "she is a disaster, or perhaps considering her girth, it would be more correct to call her a disaster area."

He is pretty old now, in his mid-80s. We will see on his blog if he has mellowed (I suspect not). His erudition will still be in evidence, as will his mastery of language. (Simon was raised in Belgrade and came to the United States when he was 15. Like the Pole Joseph Conrad, he learned to write elegantly in an acquired language.)

Here he is, musing in his blog on New Year's Day the consolations of a long life:

… First there is work.  There is this blog with which to reach out to the others who can be talked to, befriended, and lose some of their otherness.  …

Then there are books, books that can be read or reread and offer consolation. When I was very young, I thrilled to Rosamond Lehmann’s Dusty Answer; an autographed copy sits on my shelf.  The print is devilishly fine, but I have my trusty glasses.  It is a novel about young people growing up—but perhaps old people, too, can still do some growing up. …

Essays are always good; they challenge the mind into thinking rather than complaining. …

And there is music—my huge collection of classical CDs.  How about a Samuel Barber concerto, to set me dreaming?  Or some Janacek?  His string quartets?  Or an opera?  There is wonderful tamed wildness in his music that can break out into colorful indignation or subside into jocular intimacy in a trice.  Or for amusement, but amusement tinged with exquisite sentimentality, a little Poulenc?  The ravishing Sextet, or a ballet, or any of the sonatas? …

Finally there is bed, sleep and dreams.  This is where you can truly surprise yourself if you can transport your dream scenarios into your waking memory.  The other night I had a long dream that, if I could have fully captured it and written it down, would have—damn it—made a terrific short story.  But forgetting also has its rewards: dreams are like a collection of stories in a book especially written for you, and you want to get on to the next one.  I say “for you” rather than “by you” because they are written by another self astonishingly lodged inside you.  Close as a twin yet different.  

John Simon over the years has taught me to appreciate things that otherwise might have been lost on me and probably made me a better reviewer when I was in that line. At times I, like many others, found him too negative or cruel. Still, I appreciate that he is passionate about the humanities, and much rarer, he understands what he is passionate about and why. He is a warrior on behalf of Western culture, and takes slovenly thought, tastelessness, and lack of ability in those who call themselves artists very personally. If he is freer than before to speak his mind, he's earned it.

She is Shelby Lynne

 

Years ago when I heard Shelby Lynne's first popular album, I Am Shelby Lynne, it didn't make much impression on me. I am impressed by her recent Tears, Lies, and Alibis.

It goes under the heading of "country" because of the singer/songwriter's background and some of the arrangements, but this is about as far as you can get from from the debased commercial Nashville sound. Tears is personal without being "confessional," relatively spare in its instrumentation. Acoustic guitar (I'm not sure if she is the player) predominates in most songs, and several in their bleak power remind me of the kind of music I heard in folk music clubs long ago.

Lynne produced the album herself, seems to have known exactly what she wanted, and got it. The Allmusic site says some of the tracks were laid down with her own band and augmented by studio musicians in Nashville. That she was serious about sound quality is confirmed by the fact that it was mastered by the great audio engineer Doug Sax, who among many other accomplishments co-founded  Sheffield Lab, perhaps the first audiophile label.

I'll reiterate that this is dark, way removed from the honky-tonk frivolity and teary bathos of most of today's plastic country product. The third track, "Like a Fool," sets the tone while drawing you to its depths of love and need.

Tears, Lies, and Alibis is an album that matters.

 

That brings me to another recent release, Allison Moorer's Crows. She has six previous albums in her discography, none of which I've heard, but Crows (on which she wrote most of the songs) is accomplished and winning. 

Like the Shelby Lynne album, Crows has a tenuous connection with the country scene, being neither glitzy nor neo-traditionalist. The tracks are generally moody, owing just enough to pop music to enable them slide down easily. Guitar lines are fairly evenly divided between acoustic and electric.

Whereas Lynne's voice is finely polished steel, Moorer's is liquid gold that can boil over when the theme calls for it. The intelligent lyrics are a further attraction.

I love everything about this album, including the photo of Moorer as a contemporary Scarlett O'Hara. 

By the way, Shelby Lynne and Allison Moorer are sisters. Musical talent and strikingly good looks run in this family.