Loyalty

Loyalty is a track off Blue Scholar's latest album (ep) Butter & Gun$. There is an official music video, but the hosts have disabled embedding. I highly recommend visiting YouTube and searching for 'Blue Scholars - Loyalty' to see their amazing music video.

Blue Scholars is composed of rapper Geologic, a Filipino communist & community organizer, and producer Sabzi, an Iranian jazz pianist and practitioner of the Bahá'í faith. Together they produce hip hop music that is reciprocally tangible emphasizing the the 'daily grind', '9 to 5', and everyday experiences of working peoples.

Blue Scholars have released one full-length album (Self-Titled, 2004) and an 8-song EP (The Long March, 2005) emerging out of the Northwest hip-hop scene with soulful beats, poetic yet political rhymes and a reputation for energetic live performances. With their second full-length release, Bayani, due out on June 12, 2007 on MASSLINE in collaboration with Rawkus Records, the torchbearing Seattle duo seeks to blend the personal and the political, while not afraid to party in the process.

On Optimism, Part II

Does optimism outweigh pessimism? To answer this question one begins to ask one’s self questions like ‘Is optimism more useful than pessimism?’, ‘Is optimism a moral imperative?’ etc. Here we are using scales to define the relation of optimism to pessimism but we haven’t grasped which scale(s) to use.

The scales:
(1) The categorical imperative; a moral maxim applicable to anyone in similar situations;
(2) The scale of historical necessity; a phenomenon appears out of the workings of history;

The first scale is inadequate but so is the second. ‘Historical necessity’ — those features of living that are defined by collective agency — demands that some situations generate an attitude of pessimism or optimism. We this in Western society where we confront death similarly, but we also confront death on individual grounds. This is where the element of the ethical appears — actions within our control. Varying degrees of confrontation unravel: the grand-collective, the social group, and the personal — each with growing freedom of action.

Pessimism forces humanity to confront the nitty-gritty: death, dirt, tragedy, and melancholy. It is at its core a reflexive attitude unlike optimism which is only superficially reflexive. In literature this movement manifest itself in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. The life of Raskolnikov picks up in a squalid flat with meagre food amidst poverty, disease, and ever-present unattainable desires. After his crime Raskolnikov confronts himself and the inescapable humanness of human life — in Hegel’s terms reflection into self. The Hegelian movement from fundamental pessimism or pessimistic being into essential pessimism is straightforward but the conceptual pessimism is not pessimism as such. Before it can reach the level of concept it must wrestle with optimism — and continually so. Where optimism gains the missing element of reflection (the Subjective) from this duel pessimism gains the element of hope (the Idea).

Pessimism is no longer pessimistic — it is confrontational with death and drama, yes, but it now has this element of hope — what Cornel West calls ‘tragicomic hope’. The belief that through all this darkness, all these murky waters that we will find a way to sustain ourselves as long as we have the will to act.

On Optimims, Part I

The clouds are building up. I think it might rain today. We could use some rain: the summer’s been dry. I don’t feel so out of whack but I still feel sluggish — like an anemic rhinoceros. Last night I went back to the bluffs. I played my own little version of hopscotch — the rule is you can only step on rocks unless there aren’t any. My grandmother was there. She’s nearing her mid-seventies. She trooped through those trees, climbed on those rocks, and waded through that water in good shape.

Today I thought about optimism and its impact on the human condition. So I conjured a thought-experiment and began to Socratically question all the clouds of perception surrounding the word ‘optimism’. For instance,

1. What virtues and mechanisms foster optimism?
2. In what situations is optimism appropriate?
3. Does optimism outweigh pessimism?
4. On what scales do we measure optimism and pessimism?

People tend to define optimism as a virtue itself but I would rather define it as an objective phenomena. Therefore the question is not what virtues foster optimism but what virtues does optimism foster? Let us think of an optimistic person — Susie — who people consider optimistic because she always looks on the sunny side of things and she is always grateful for the things she possesses — or in other words she is humble. Now let us think of another optimistic person — Meagan — who always looks on the sunny side of things but is always excited about her potential to take advantage of Susie. Both of these persons are optimists. Both are optimistic in an egocentric manner — Susie with her possessions and Meagan with her conniving ability. Both, however, differ in their rationale for optimism — Susie is a fatalist whereas Meagan is a voluntarist. Also by recognizing that there is an egocentric dimension we also recognize there is a non-egocentric dimension of optimism: an other-centric dimension.

Hence we’ve discovered four types of optimism: fatalistic egocentric optimism (I), fatalistic other-centered optimism (II), voluntaristic other-centered optimism (III), and voluntaristic egocentric optimism (IV). We could classify certain behaviors and even certain persons as Type I, II, III, or IV. Those with delusions of grandeur could be Type Is whereas persons like Robespierre are Type IIs. Therefore the question arises, under which conditions do certain types become appropriate? And from whose perspective?

In an ‘appropriate’ situation the phenomena of fatalistic optimism would correlate to a situation of historical necessity — that is, in situations in which the forces outside one’s control or a group’s control override or determine the subjective activity of individuals. So in a case of historical necessity the question arises from which perspective can we deem an attitude as appropriately egocentric or other-centric? Here Sartre’s notions of seriality and totality bear weight on our judgments. A serial group — the bourgeois for instance — have permanent interests in egocentric pursuits and only under certain conditions, short or long, do they begin to take on the process of totalization: of other-centering one’s alignment.

We’ve determined that in cases of historical necessity it is the issue of seriality and totality of a social group that determines the centering of the type of optimism expressed. So what defines the centering in questions of free and conscious, or ‘ethical’, activity? A serial group would likewise act in a way that would benefit the ‘I’ the most whereas a totalized group would desire collective benefits. However, ethical life is more complex as it is subject to the varying degrees of consciousness and will of individuals. Hence a person must come ‘in line’ as it where with the appropriate ethical behavior, more so in totalized groups. Here self-criticism and criticism become a prime factor in the advancement of a certain social group.

Here a question pops up: do social groups come ingrained with the mechanisms of self-criticism and criticism or do they construct them? I think a page one of our history textbooks would clearly judge in favor of the construction hypothesis. Therefore one of the primary ethical activities of a social group is the questioning of all ethical activities.

On Pessimism

The weather outside is sunny but from in here it feels dreary. My brain feels light and my body feels sluggish. Yesterday I went on a short hike around a local lake. The bluffs were amazing. There was one part of the trail where each side was covered in high standing daisies.

On one of the bluffs there was this spot that overlooked the lake and this spot was perfect. The particular arrangement of rocks, trees, and bugs produced a spirit of rejuvenation and contemplation. It is a perfect spot to brood over the existential. Melancholy and joy, tragedy and comedy burst from one’s mind into a grand understanding of the human condition. I came to realize several things there:

1. Life is a series of missed opportunities;
2. A life of joy is one lived by living out those opportunities that one would regret wasting the most;
3. Humans are not allotted enough time to contemplate all of one’s possible opportunities;
4. Therefore, humans often miss out on the opportunities they miss the most;
5. Therefore, grief and melancholy are inscribed into human existence;
6. To deal with our grief and melancholy is, in one part, to embrace it as part of the human drama and, in another part, develop mechanisms for responding to human grief and melancholy.

I think I’ll return to that spot more often.