None of the minor prophets knew that he was minor, of course

From From Poesy to Carrot Carnations by Michael Lind. An interesting thesis.

At one end of the spectrum are major arts, defined not in terms of cultural superiority but in terms of large audiences. At the other extreme are crafts like making carrot carnations. These are arts that have no audience, other than practitioners of the art itself. Another word for a craft is a hobby. In between the major arts and the crafts or hobbies are minor arts, which have a small audience whose members do not themselves aspire to practice the art.

The assignment of an art to one or another category has nothing to do with its quality. It is merely an assessment of the relationship between artist and audience.

I am intrigued by this idea of, essentially, a "net" audience. The number of consumers of the art form who are not also producers.

The two obviously go hand-in-hand. Great writers are often, though not always great readers as well (consumers of other's writings).

Lind begins to classify between major arts (many consumers who are not also producers) and minor arts (many consumers are also producers.)

In the 1920s, the cultural critic Gilbert Seddes wrote a book entitled The Seven Lively Arts, defending vernacular art forms despised by the literati like movies, jazz and comic strips. My somewhat similar list of the major arts with mass audiences would include cinema and television, pop music, genre fiction, and punditry or political commentary (the heir to the art of political oratory).

Today’s minor arts, I think, include theater, ballet, opera, symphonic music and literary fiction. These still include small audiences whose members are not also creators, audiences who patronize these arts in part out of an inherited feeling that these are superior to movies or genre fiction.

Then Lind gets to arts where most the consumers are also producers.

With the exception of rap, which has a mass audience, poetry has moved from the category of a minor art to a craft. In the course of numerous readings of my own published verse, I gradually came to the conclusion that almost everyone in the audience at a poetry reading is a poet or aspiring poet. My guess is that a majority of people who read poetry also write poetry.

Poetry in the twenty-first century is like pottery, woodworking, or the making of carrot carnations. Sophisticated verse was never a major art, and having lost even a small non-practitioner audience, it has lost its status as a minor art. At hobbyist conventions, celebrated practitioners of a craft address an audience made up of other practitioners of the craft, who will then go home and work at the art themselves. Poetry has more residual cultural prestige than carrot carnation making and other hobbies, but that is only because most of the poet-hobbyists are professors with MFAs, while there are no professors of table-setting.

I don't think he is wrong though it is regrettable. Absent standards and given the almost non-existent barriers to entry, there is a huge amount of unreadable drivel of a poetic vein. We can long for the days of Housman, Kipling, Newbolt whose poetry conformed to some set of standards and which, not coincidentally, was read broadly and deeply. There are no like writers today.

Lind believes that the shorty story may have already slipped from minor art to craft. His argument is solid but I am not convinced that he is right.

The short story, like poetry, already may have gone from being a minor art to being a craft. When I worked as an editor at Harper’s magazine in the 1990s, many acquaintances would comment on our essays and features, but I never heard anyone mention one of the short stories we published. The short story writers whom we published were almost exclusively MFAs who made a living by teaching short story and novel writing at liberal arts colleges. I may be mistaken, but I suspect that the same group that writes short stories today makes up the majority of those who read the short stories that are still published out of a sense of cultural responsibility in magazines like The New Yorker and Harper’s.

When it comes to literary novels, I think Lind is off in his absolute measures but perhaps right in terms of the trend. He pegs literary novels as a minor art slipping into craft but my assessment is that it was a major art which is now pretty firmly ensconced as a minor art. In some of the children's literature listservs to which I belong, the enthusiastic readers of YA literary fiction are almost all also writers of YA literary fiction. Obviously that is not a random sample but I suspect that it is indicative.

Lind finishes up with:

This is a horizontal ranking based on audience, not a vertical ranking based on quality or importance. As a political commentator, I write for an audience in the hundreds of thousands, sometimes more. As an author of nonfiction, I can expect an audience of informed readers in the tens of thousands. As a published poet, I have a much smaller audience made up almost entirely of other poets, when, that is, I have an audience at all. The only exceptions have been the times that Garrison Keillor has read my work for an audience of millions on NPR’s “Writer’s Almanac.” Poetry is the original digital art; its audience tends to be in the digits.

Michael Lind is a gifted intellectual functioning effectively and productively in many fields: journalist, pundit, editor, author, policy civil servant, think-tank leader, etc. It is interesting to see his observations of the different patterns given his different writing activities.

With poetry in particular, I wonder if the fault lies not with the readers but with the writers and the technology. Specifically, there is an opportunity cost to reading, it takes some of your limited time. Our poetry writing MFAs seem to have drifted away from the reading public but between foundations and on-demand printing, virtually anyone can put out a book of poetry. I think most of what is written does not resonate with the reading public as illustrated by poetry book sales in the dozens or low hundreds of copies in a nation of 310 million. The reading public is probably burned out as well. Given the overwhelming number of aspirant, but often very bad, poets, the probability of finding a poet whose poems you enjoy is very low. It creates a disincentive from trying new contemporary poets.

But there are good poets out there. Here is one of Lind's from his collection Parallel Lives.

The Minor Prophets

None of the minor prophets
knew that he was minor, of course. Habakkuk, I imagine,
thought that his visions earned him
standing as Ezekiel's peer, if not indeed Elijah's.
Then there was Obadiah,
who could be forgiven if he thought he might be a Moses.
How they would be remembered
Providence concealed from them all, though they could see the future.

Maybe it doesn't matter.
If you're on a mission from God, sent to rebuke a city
or to redeem a nation,
where by canon-makers you're ranked may be inconsequential.
Nor is the voice within you
any less authentic for not having a distant echo.
Seers of the world, be heartened.
Even minor prophets can have genuine revelations.

That's not ironic. That's outrageous.

A pretty shocking report - Eric Holder’s Justice Department rocked by nepotism charges from The Washington Times. The rule of law is an unappreciated lynchpin to our system of governance and anything that undermines that undermines the whole system.

For a government department to have multiple reports of an issue over the better part of a decade and to not do anything about it, indeed, to let it get worse is appalling.

It’s not the first example of nepotism at Eric Holder’s Justice Department. A November investigation by the inspector general found that certain offices in the department had a “pervasive culture of nepotism and favoritism.” It’s at least the fifth inspector general report since 2004 to find hiring problems at the agency.

Not only did the Executive Director of the Interpol office hire his son.

The INTERPOL office’s Executive Director, Warren Lewis, also abused his position to help three people with connections to his son obtain jobs at the agency — even though he had never personally met two of them, investigators said.

“Lewis had no personal knowledge of their professional abilities,” the inspector general said. “After the three individuals all failed to make the certified lists of qualified applicants, Lewis took steps to overcome their exclusion.”

And just as in the UNC fake classes, fake grades for athletes case last year, they had to add insult to injury.

Ironically, Mr. Lewis is listed as the Justice Department’s Ethics Official for his office, according to department records.

That's not ironic. That's outrageous.

The Workers

The Workers
by Walt Mason

Here's to the man who labors and does it with a song!
He stimulates his neighbors and helps the world along!
I like the men who do things, who hustle and achieve;
the men who saw and glue things, and spin and dig and weave.

Man earns his bread in sweat or in blood since Adam sinned;
and bales of hay are better than are your bales of wind.
Man groans beneath his burden, beneath the chain he wears;
and still the toiler's guerdon is worth the pain he bears.

For there's no satisfaction beneath the bending sky
like that the man of action enjoys when night is nigh.
To look back o'er the winding and dark and rocky road,
and know you bore your grinding and soul-fatiguing load—

As strong men ought to bear it, through all the stress and strife—
that's the reward of merit—that is the balm of life!
I like the men who do things, who plow and sow and reap,
who build and delve and hew things while dreamers are asleep.

Tragedy - when logic ignores emotion or when emotion trumps logic.

I like this observation from 10,000 Hours with Reid Hoffman: What I Learned by Ben Casnocha.

Reason is the steering wheel. Emotion is the gas pedal.

It captures the fact that in decision-making, whether as an individual or as a team, there are two steps, the decision-itself and then the decision to act on the decision. Two very different things.

The decision itself is predicated on knowledge, logic, rationality, empiricism and imagination. There are risks and biases and ignorance and prejudices which all stand in the way of making good decisions, particularly under constraints (time and resources) but those issues can be consciously tackled with some degree of improvement likely.

But once the decision is made, there is the separate, but intertwined, decision to act on the decision. Getting people inspired and motivated or reigning in your own dispositions.

These two issues align with the ancient Trivium. Grammar and Logic address the first step of making a decision. Rhetoric tackles the second step of stirring up the emotions to the point of acting on the decision.

Tragedies arise when the decision-making process is truncated; when letting logic supercede emotion or emotion supercede logic.

You can belt-tighten your way out of a 5% fluctuation in tax collections

Thomas Edsall has an opinion piece, The Problem With Middle Class Populism in the NYT. His argument is that Democrats are going to be challenged in their redistributionist goals because most people don't view themselves as affluent and, more importantly for his argument, more people who are traditional Democrat supporters are now affluent than in the past.

The piper has to be paid and it is convenient when the piper belongs to some other group, an out-group. Edsall's argument is that it is very hard to make someone in your in-group pay the piper and that that is the position in which Democrats find themselves. When rich people were out-group Republicans, it was morally easy - you just tax them more, punishing them for being rich or for being Republican, it didn't much matter as they were treated as synonymous. Now that your in-group, Democrats, include a lot of former out-group members, the rich, it is much, much harder to raise taxes.

All true as far as it goes.

But there are three other items I think are relevant to this critique.

First, many people who are nominally affluent are not in fact affluent. You have to take into account both the cost of living in a particular location as well as the after-tax income of the household. $200,000 living in Manhattan is probably the equivalent of $75,000 in Springfield, Illinois. In addition, the nominally affluent Manhattanite also has a significantly greater tax burden than the nominally middle class denizen of Springfield. When you do the math to get to the PPP (purchasing power parity) of their respective after-tax incomes, I believe it will be obvious that the $200,000 affluent Manhattanite has a significantly lower real after-tax income than the middle-class resident of Springfield. So if you are a Democratic operative going after the "affluent" base in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco, their top line affluence is highly misleading.

There is also a perception issue which is discussed in Who’s Really Middle Class? by David Leonhardt. For any of a variety of reasons, many people who are objectively affluent, still consider themselves as middle class.

The third issue is complex but of significant magnitude. There are four components 1) The affluent in the US are already highly taxed compared to most other OECD countries. That doesn't make it wrong to increase their taxes yet further but it does suggest that if there is a limit to how much you can use the affluent as the golden goose to cover freebies to everyone else, then we in the US are closer to that limit than others. 2) The more you tax the affluent, the more incentive they have to design their financial affairs in such a way as to minimize their tax bill, thus distorting investment and consumption decisions in ways that are almost always sub-optimal for them and for the economy. 3) A too great reliance on the very wealthy is financially risky. While the very wealthy as a group have been doing exceptionally well over recent decades, theirs is also the group whose annual income is also the most volatile, rising and plunging as much as 30% in a given year. The more a government depends on the very wealthiest for the bulk of its taxes, the more volatile will be that tax base consequently making the state tax income stream both uncertain and precarious.

You can belt-tighten your way out of a 5% fluctuation in tax collections. You have to slash your way out of a 30% swing.

4) Finally, the fourth issue is that numerically the middle class is big, 50-75% of all households depending on you define it. You have to take an awful lot from the 10% in order to pay for something that is going to cover the 75%. That is just math and regardless of how hard the math might be, it is still an unavoidable reality.

The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.

In the Decision Clarity Consulting decision-making methodology, defining terms is one of the critical steps necessary for effective decision-making to occur, especially when a team is involved, even more so when the team members are unknown to one another, and most critically when the team members come from different cultures and languages. In that context, I was delighted when I came across this saying, described as an old Chinese saying: "The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name," validating pithily that otherwise dry technical step in a methodology.

That's a great statement with a high value to word count ratio. But really? An old Chinese saying?

Google is my friend. Very quickly I find it attributed to Confucius which is hardly a confidence builder. Like Mark Twain, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, and a handful of others, Confucius is one of your go-to guys when you have a saying you want to attribute without having to research.

But then, sure enough, in Chapter III of the Analects via Wikiquote):

名正才能言順 - If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things.

Also paraphrased as "The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name."

There are indeed giants upon whose shoulders we stand.

Reason is the steering wheel. Emotion is the gas pedal.

From 10,000 Hours with Reid Hoffman: What I Learned by Ben Casnocha.

16 Lessons Learned (Among Many!)

People are complicated and flawed. Root for their better angels.
The best way to get a busy person’s attention: Help them.
Keep it simple and move fast when conceiving strategies and making decisions.
Every weakness has a corresponding strength.
The values that actually shape a culture have both upside and downside.
Understand someone’s “alpha” tendencies and how that drives them.
Self-deception watch: even those who say they don’t need or want flattery, sometimes still need it.
Be clear on your specific level of engagement on a project.
Sketch three possible outcomes for a project: the likely upside, likely ‘regular’, and likely downside scenarios.
A key to making good partnerships great: Identify and emphasize any misaligned incentives.
Reason is the steering wheel. Emotion is the gas pedal.
Trade up on trust even if it means you trade down on competency.
Tell the truth. Don’t reflexively kiss ass to powerful people.
Respect the shadow power.
Make people genuine partners and they’ll work harder.
Final: The people around you change you in myriad unconscious ways

His is such an easy, simple way to increase one's stature and enlarge one's personality.

From E.B. White: Notes and Comment by Author by Israel Shenker, The New York Times (11 July 1969).

What disturbs him now about himself? "I am bothered chiefly by my little fears that are the same as they were almost 70 years ago. I was born scared and am still scared. This has sometimes tested my courage almost beyond endurance."

"I have no heroes, no saints," he said, "I do have a tremendous respect for anyone who does something extremely well, no matter what. I would rather watch a really gifted plumber than listen to a bad poet. I'd rather watch someone build a good boat than attend the launching of a poorly constructed play. My admirations are wide-ranging and are not confined to arts and letters."

These are the kind of people who give him the willies; "Subtly corrupt people. Vaguely fraudulent people. Talkative people who have nothing to say. Power-hungry people. Creative people with their ear to the ground. People whose names begin with W."

Asked what he cherished most in life, Mr. White replied: "When my wife's Aunt Caroline was in her nineties, she lived with us, and she once remarked: "Remembrance is sufficient of the beauty we have seen.' I cherish the remembrance of the beauty I have seen. I cherish the grave, compulsive word."

Also,

"I wish instead I were doing what my dog is doing at this moment, rolling in something ripe he has found on the beach in order to take on its smell," he said. "His is such an easy, simple way to increase one's stature and enlarge one's personality."

I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.

Two quotes.

I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke. Book 1, Chapter 3, section 3.

and

What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.

Quid enim refert, quantum habeas? multo illud plus est, quod non habes.
Attributed to Seneca the Elder but actually from Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, bk. 12, ch. 2, sect. 13; translation from Riad Aziz Kassis The Book of Proverbs and Arabic Proverbial Works (Leiden: Brill, 1999) p. 159.

This makes it hard to plan the day.

From E.B. White: Notes and Comment by Author by Israel Shenker, The New York Times (11 July 1969).

"If the world were merely seductive," he noted, "that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."