—last night in Toronto we saw Rodrigo and Gabriela at the Phoenix Theatre. AMAZING. (I would [not so] secretly like to be Gabriela.) They played the above song, Tamacun, for the encore after a perfectly entertaining and entirely too short two hours of intense and mesmerizing performance. (Someone’s already posted the Toronto encore from last night here. Though the quality is not good, you may be able to appreciate some of the wonderful intensity of the show; we were about three people back from Gabriela, stage right.)

I would watch and listen again and again. But I can’t. The call of biochem and genetics starts to drown out even the resounding and wonderful echo of last night’s show. Que barbaridad.

Another beautiful wonderful example of craftsmanship.

Posted via mjs. on March 6, 2010 with 2 notes

putthison:

lonelysandwich:

“Ironing techniques by professional craftsmen (shirt)” - プロの職人によるアイロンがけテクニック(ワイシャツ)

This short instructional film showcases unmatchably masterful ironing technique that we’d all do well to learn from, but it’s also one of the most absorbing, delicious demo videos I’ve ever seen.

via Joel Zimmer, from a series of similarly beautiful instructional videos at Garra.jp (WARNING: ALL-FLASH and Japanese)

What a pleasure it is to watch someone do something well! This is the part of the intrinsic good of craftsmanship.

Posted via lonelysandwich on March 5, 2010 with 431 notes

We are under grace, and we are ourselves the objective of its attack. Not only is it impossible for us to escape it, but we cannot even stand aside as spectators watching the progress of the assault and waiting for it to die down. We are, moreover, ourselves the attacking party, for, as we may pass from death to life, and may discover that we are ourselves united to God in His active contradiction of our ‘life’. Through this divine contradiction the new individual, created and redeemed by God, is shown forth as the invisible reality of our very existence, while our visible reality is declared to be untruth. The divine contradiction means that we are not we, and the attack develops from our existence in God — His servants ye are. There is no other existence running side by side with our existential existence. We are servants, slaves, existentially appointed unto obedience. We are servants to God, existentially appointed unto obedience to the divine ‘No’, which is pronounced in us against sin. We are in no position to say ‘Yes’ to sin.

Barth, 1968 p217, on Romans 7:16

Posted on March 1, 2010

Grace, then, means neither that men can or ought to do something, nor that they can or ought to do nothing. Grace means that God does something. Nor does grace mean that God does ‘everything’. Grace means that God does some quite definite thing, not a thing here and a thing there, but something quite definite in men. Grace means that God forgives men their sins. Grace is the self-consciousness of the new man, the answer to our question concerning out existence. We are not in a position to say anything which is relevant concerning grace and sin, until our perception has been sharpened and we are protected from pantheism by being reminded of the critical significance of the death of Christ; until we have been liberated from obsession with the problem concerning what we can or ought to do or not to do. Grace is the Kingdom of God, His rule and power and dominion. Grace is radically contrasted with the whole realm of human possibility, the sphere of the sovereignty of sin. Though grace, on account of this contrast, lies beyond all human possibility, yet nevertheless, for the same reason, it judges human life and launches a disturbing attack upon it. In so far as in this contrast God is encountered, human life is refashioned and provided with a new hope and a new promise. Grace, as the power and authority of God over men, can never be identified with the actions or with the passivity of the men of this world. Grace is the unobservable truth of men: it is their impossibility, which constitutes the veritable possibility of their acting or not acting; it is their veritable existence, which can be defined only as non-existence. The man who is under grace has this contradiction in himself. Grace is not ‘something’ which a man has in himself, it is that which God has in him, by which the man of sin is contradicted. Since, however, we know only the man of sin, this contradiction contradicts all men, and it contradicts ourselves. We are therefore compelled to say quite definitely that to possess grace does not mean to be or not to be this or that, or to do or not to do this or that. The possession of grace means the existential submission to God’s contradiction of all that we ourselves are or are not, of all that we do or do not do. ‘Grace possessed’ means that we are presented unto obedience to the contradiction, and that we are His servants. This possession of grace occurs as the impossible possibility of God which is beyond every possibility of our own: it is the freedom which God takes to Himself in us. HE takes it, and He takes it IN US.

Barth, 1968 p216-217, on Romans 7:16

Posted on February 28, 2010

The functioning of a competition not only requires adequate organization of certain institutions like money, markets, and channels of information — some of which can never be adequately provided by private enterprise — but it depends, above all, on the existence of an appropriate legal system, a legal system designed both to preserve competition and to make it operate as beneficially as possible. It is by no means sufficient that the law should recognize the principle of private property and freedom of contract; much depends on the precise definition of the right of property as applied to different things. The systematic study of the forms of legal institutions which will make the competitive system work efficiently has been sadly neglected; and strong arguments can be advanced that serious shortcomings here, particularly with regard to the law of corporations and of patents, not only have made competition work much less effectively than it might have done but have even led to the destruction of competition in many spheres.

Hayek, 2007, on individualism and collectivism, p87.

Posted on February 27, 2010

It is important not to confuse opposition against this kind of planning with a dogmatic laissez faire attitude. The liberal argument is in favor of making the best possible use of the forces of competition as a means of coordinating human efforts, not an argument for leaving things just as they are. It is based on the conviction that, where effective competition can be created, it is a better way of guiding individual efforts than any other. It does not deny, but even emphasizes, that, in order that competition should work beneficially, a carefully thought-out legal framework is required and that neither the existing nor the past legal rules are free from grave defects. Nor does it deny that, where it is impossible to create the conditions necessary to make competition effective, we must resort to other methods of guiding economic activity. Economic liberalism is opposed, however, to competition’s being supplanted by inferior methods of coordinating individual efforts. And it regards competition as superior not only because it is in most circumstances the most efficient method known, but even more because it is the only method by which our activities can be adjusted to each other without coercive or arbitrary intervention of authority. Indeed, one of the main arguments in favor of competition is that it dispenses with the need for “conscious social control” and that it gives the individuals a chance to decide whether the prospects of a particular occupation are sufficient to compensate for the disadvantages and risks connected with it.

Hayek, 2007, on individualism and collectivism, p85-86.

Posted on February 26, 2010

The dispute between the modern planners [socialist thinkers] and their opponents [liberal thinkers] is, therefore, not a dispute on whether we ought to choose intelligently between the various possible organizations of society; it is not a dispute on whether we ought to employ foresight and systematic thinking in planning our common affairs. It is a dispute about what is the best way of so doing. The question is whether for this purpose it is better that the holder of coercive power should confine himself in general to creating conditions under which the knowledge and initiative of individuals are given the best scope so that they can plan most successfully; or whether a rational utilization of our resources requires central direction and organization of all our activities according to some consciously constructed “blueprint.

Hayek, 2007, on individualism and collectivism, p85.

Posted on February 25, 2010

It must also not be forgotten that socialism is not only by far the most important species of collectivism or “planning” but that it is socialism which has persuaded liberal-minded people to submit once more to that regimentation of economic life which they had overthrown because, in the words of Adam Smith, it puts governments in a position where “to support themselves they are obliged to be oppressive and tyrannical.

Hayek, 2007, on individualism and collectivism, p84.

Posted on February 24, 2010

To the great apostles of political freedom, [“freedom,” the word] had meant freedom from coercion, freedom from the arbitrary power of other men, release from the ties which left the individual no choice but obedience to the orders of a superior to whom he was attached. The new freedom promised, however, was to be freedom from necessity, release from the compulsion of the circumstances which inevitably limit the range of choice of all of us, although for some very much more than for others. Before man could be truly free, the “despotism of physical want” had to be broken, the “restraints of the economic system” relaxed. Freedom in this sense is, of course, merely another name for power or wealth… . What the promise really amounted to was that the great existing disparities in the range of choice of different people were to disappear. The demand for the new freedom was thus only another name for the old demand for an equal distribution of wealth. But the new name gave the socialists another word in common with the liberals, and they exploited it to the full. And, although the word was used in a different sense by the two groups, few people noticed this and still fewer asked themselves whether the two kinds of freedom promised could really be combined.

Hayek, 2007, on the the great utopia, p77-78.

Posted on February 23, 2010

Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.

Alexix de Tocqueville, Oeuvres completes d’Alexis de Tocqueville, vol. 9 (1866), p.546, quoted in Hayek, 2007, on the great utopia, p77.

Posted on February 22, 2010

That socialism has displaced liberalism as the doctrine held by the great majority of progressives does not simply mean that people had forgotten the warnings of the great liberal thinkers of the past about the consequences of collectivism. It has happened because they were persuaded of the very opposite of what these men had predicted. The extraordinary thing is that the same socialism that was not only early recognized as the gravest threat to freedom, but quite openly began as a reaction against the liberalism of the French Revolution, gained general acceptance under the flag of liberty. It is rarely remembered now that socialism in its beginnings was frankly authoritarian. The French writers who laid the foundations of modern socialism had no doubt that their ideas could be put into practice only by a strong dictatorial government. To them socialism meant an attempt to “terminate the revolution” by a deliberate reorganization of society on hierarchical lines and by the imposition of a coercive “spiritual power.” Where freedom was concerned, the founders of socialism made no bones about their intentions. Freedom of thought they regarded as the root-evil of nineteenth-century society, and the first of modern planners, Saint-Simon, even predicted that those who did not obey his proposed planning boards would be “treated as cattle.

Hayek, 2007, on the great utopia, p76.

Posted on February 21, 2010

All we are here concerned to show is how completely, though gradually and by almost imperceptible steps, our attitude toward society has changed. What at every stage of this process of change had appeared a difference of degree only has in its cumulative effect already brought about a fundamental difference between the older liberal attitude toward society and the present approach to social problems. The change amounts to a complete reversal of the trend we have sketched, an entire abandonment of the individualist tradition which has created Western civilization.

Hayek, 2007, on the abandoned road of liberalism, p73. (Originally written in 1938.)

Posted on February 19, 2010 with 1 note

Actually, you are a human doing.

I appreciate the saying, “I’m a human being, not a human doing.” I think we usually use it to mean that we are more than what we do, or that we need time to rest and “be.”

But on its face, the statement is false and, at root, gnostic. (But I repeat myself.)

We are what we choose to do with these bodies, as much as what we are in our in our inner-life. So work, exercise, eating, sex, play — the physical things, or lack thereof — make us who we are as much as thoughts, prayers, hopes, dreams and intentions.

Posted on February 18, 2010