The Star Wars

I do not plan on seeing the latest Star Wars film that everyone is so excited about.

I was intensely devoted to the series as a youth--so much so that I have, to this day, most of the dialogue of the original three films memorized. The films completely dominated my childhood imagination and toy-collecting. Later, I read the novelizations, some of the comic books, and listened to the (surprisingly good) radio adaptation of the film.

This great well of enthusiasm for The Star Wars was steadily diminished, and then actually transmuted into an equally intense revulsion, through the strange alchemy of the Star Wars prequels.

I have no doubt that Disney and J. J. Abrams have succeeded in producing cinematic fare that is less infuriatingly awful than Episodes I to III of the Star Wars saga. However, what the latest film appears to have in common with the prequels (by all accounts) is the absence of any shred (howsoever slender) of authentic human interest or emotion. Instead, all of these films are skillfully but cynically created vehicles for Disney's Galactic Empire of merchandising and tie-ins.

It's true that the Star Wars films were intended as vehicles for merchandising from the beginning. However, the first three films (Episodes IV to VI) at least managed to combine their frenetic action, obsession with sound and visual effects, and barrage of space vehicles and other sci-fi hoo-ha with well-drawn (if simple) characters, genuinely interesting (if occasionally choppy) plot arcs, and dialogue that was at least not uniformly wooden and terrible.

The first Star Wars film (1977) was also genuinely innovative with respect to the wider world of cinema. To wit: the aforementioned sound and visual effects were at the time revolutionary and ushered in a cascade of technical innovations; the pacing and editing of the films set a new standard for action films; and George Lucas' deliriously bizarre but somehow deeply coherent mash-up of the space opera, samurai, Western, and war film genres was genuinely inspired.

So here is a fistful of links to solemnly mark this week's epoch-making cinematic event (ahem). Enjoy!

1. Original Star Wars concept art.

2. Cracked's David Wong on "5 Things 'Star Wars' Fans Don't Understand about 'Star Wars'."

3. George Lucas' Star Wars Rough Draft from 1974.

4. Prescient but spoiler-free review of "The Force Awakens."

5. Thoughts on the issue of race in "The Force Awakens."

A Modern Western View of the Buddha's Awakening

I like James Ford (see his blog "Monkey Mind"), the author of a recent article about the Buddha's awakening, but he has made several incorrect and misleading statements in this piece that seem to be pretty common among Western Buddhists.

Ford begins by suggesting that we will never know what the original teaching of the Buddha was, because of the distance which separates the texts from the life and language of the Buddha:

he preached sermons that were memorized and no doubt polished by those who transmitted them, and then polished some more. Finally, some four hundred or so years after these words were spoken, they started being written down, principally in two languages, Pali and Sanskrit. Neither was the language he spoke in his lifetime.

While it's true that the sutras of the Buddha were not written down until centuries after his death (see chapter 2 of Rupert Gethin's The Foundations of Buddhism), the preceding oral transmission of the texts was probably just as reliable or even more reliable than the later manuscript transmission, because of the elaborate techniques for memorization of oral texts used in south Asia (and still practiced by Brahmins today who recite the Veda).

Second, while the Buddha did not technically speak Pali, the language of the sutras, it is probably very close to whatever dialect of Middle Indo-Aryan that he did speak; Pali was a standardized form of Middle Indo-Aryan that combined features of dialects spoken across northern India at the time.

Third, Ford states that the Buddha was born a prince, the son of a king, and that he was prophesied to be either a great king or a great teacher. This is a story about the Buddha from a later, legendary biography, and is not told in the earliest texts we have about the Buddha's life, i.e. the Sutta and Vinaya Pitakas of the Pali Canon. The story of the Four Passing Sights is likewise from this later source.

Finally, this is not an error or misleading statement, but it should be noted that James Ford's last sentences are reflective of Zen Buddhism (and Mahayana Buddhism in general), but not of Theravada Buddhism, which makes a distinction between the awakening of different sentient beings:

And you and I awake together. All beings. One body.

In the Theravada view (and, apparently, the view of the Buddha himself, as described in the Pali Canon), one being's awakening does not entail the awakening of all beings. That's why the Buddha decided to teach after his own awakening--because he knew that other beings were still suffering, and that there was a chance that at least some of them would attain awakening if he showed them the way. On the Mahayana view of the interconnectedness of awakening, either the Buddha's awakening was impossible (because there were still other, unawakened sentient beings out there), or his teaching of the Dhamma was pointless (because all sentient beings attained awakening at the same time as the Buddha). This view of awakening makes nonsense both of the Buddha's claim to have fully awakened, and of his decision to teach the Dhamma to other sentient beings out of compassion, respectively.

Carlo Rovelli on Physics and Philosophy

In this Philosophy Bites interview, Carlo Rovelli argues that physicists benefit from studying philosophy both in terms of (1) increasing their sense of what is possible in conceptual space and (2) increasing their methodological awareness. Rovelli argues that these two factors were crucial in both Newton's and Einstein's ability to revolutionize in the physics of their day. Speaking of scientific revolutions, Rovelli also criticizes the excessive influence of Thomas Kuhn's philosophy of science among theoretical physicists, because Kuhn does not give sufficient emphasis to the fact that science is a cumulative endeavor, such that even revolutionary advances build upon and encompass previous discoveries.

Ineffective Altruism?

Critics have been stumbling over themselves to undermine the Effective Altruism movement, which endeavors to make charitable giving more effective.

Richard Yetter Chappell offers a convincing rebuttal to a recent critique of Effective Altruism by Judith Lichtenberg (published in The Atlantic).

The critics have the winds of Status Quo Bias blowing strongly from behind, and that alone might be enough to win the day. Sigh.

The Duties of a Professor

Jean-Baptiste Regnault,  Socrates dragging Alcibiades from the Embrace of Sensual Pleasure, 1791.

This blog post was prompted by a former student of mine who currently teaches undergraduate students; she recently expressed regret at possibly having acted inappropriately in front of her class.

I too have said and done things in class that I later regret or at least seriously question. It is disturbingly easy to say or do something inappropriate--so inappropriate, perhaps, that one's career would never recover.

We have a big responsibility as professors that often goes unacknowledged. We are held to a high standard of maturity, we are expected to always treat our students with the utmost respect, and we are even expected to model certain values--such as opposition to racism and other forms of bias or discrimination against marginalized groups.

Unfortunately, the popular culture and our own personal habits make it difficult to live up to these standards, because of the pervasiveness of inappropriate humor, cynicism, and sarcasm. Moral seriousness is quite rare, and when it does appear it is typically the subject of ridicule. It's easier for many of us to be rude and inappropriate than it is to be paragons of responsibility and maturity.

In order to fulfill our duties as professors, I think we should reflect on these facts, and make a personal commitment to do our best to treat students with respect regardless of the circumstances, and to model intellectual and other virtues.

We also need to cultivate a healthy attitude of shame when we fail to live up to the appropriate professional standard--a shame that is not enervating, but which is motivated by a sense of dignity and honor--the sense that certain behavior is beneath us (see Thanissaro Bhikkhu's dhamma talk on "Shame, Compunction, and Ardency"). If we engage in behavior that we regard as beneath our dignity, we need to be able to acknowledge that, but also motivate ourselves to do better in the future.