Russian Thinkers

 I

Legal Intern at Philip Morris! How cool would it be to work for a smoking company. They definitely would turn a blind eye to multiple cigarettes an hour. Maybe you could even smoke inside. Legal intern though would be tough. And intern at 40 doesn’t really work. There was a film with Robert De Niro I think, called The Intern. I didn’t watch it, what a boring premise. England won the women’s football Euros. I watched the last one but was still skeptical. Now I’m a convert. It’s not as fast, powerful or technical as men’s football but it’s still a good watch and if England win, well they never win at men’s football. Also, the players seem to be less ego-driven than the men. Probably because they aren’t bazillionaires. I wonder where Grealish will go this summer. He is my favourite player. I hope he doesn’t stay at City, because they want him out. He was never a good fit for City anyway. He should be playing at a mid-table club where he is the main man. And a manager who lets him play at 10 and roam where he wants. I don’t like American sport. Which they call sports. We went to see the Seattle Mariners baseball team last time we were here and it was pretty boring. The guys in front of us tried to explain it but it all seems so stat-driven as a spectator enterprise. I have a natural distrust of stats and data. I watched a TED talk on the plane by a cognitive scientist, who made linguistics seem so dry and impersonal. Even if they are right, it’s much less interesting than Wittgenstein. The problem with science is that it’s a collective endeavour so one person can’t do everything. But I love minds, which try to figure out everything on their own. It’s the job of the intellectual to try a bit of everything. Science or what I call The Engineer is slowly eroding that sort of amateurish intellectualism. Not to say that I’m a Maoist. I read that he got rid of the engineers for being too bourgeois and then all the Chinese bridges started collapsing and he had to import engineers from other countries to fix them. Where he was right is that engineers invented capitalism. Capitalism is the triumph of The Engineer. Unfortunately, if you want anything done then you need those guys. I mean, even I need paper and pens and amplifiers and guitars and if I want to share anything with anyone computers and the internet. So I try to keep it in perspective and just observe that there are different types of people and we need everyone to co-exist. It would be great if there were more people with the Philosopher mindset in charge of certain things. Not building bridges, but say parts of the government. I feel like even music and art has been taken over by The Engineer and that’s problematic. It’s very difficult as an Artist or Philosopher type to find your way in this world. Can I call it an American world? I wrote a song once called We’re All American Now, which my Dad said I should change to We’re All Famous Now. I think the re-jigged title makes more sense but what I meant is that America was responsible for late-stage capitalism in its current guise. I love the term mature or late-stage capitalism - as if there is going to be a revolution afterwards and it will be the end. Whereas, as we all know capitalism will endure.
 
II

“We think the purpose of a child is to grow up because it does grow up. But its purpose is to play, to enjoy itself, to be a child. If we merely look to the end of the process, the purpose of life is death”

There’s a fabulous book called Russian Thinkers by Isaiah Berlin. In it, he dissects Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Belinsky etc. but two other thinkers stand out for me. The first is Herzen, from whom I take the above quote. He was a socialist, who refused the idea that revolution was good. He was chastised by both the right and left. The other is Bakunin. Bakunin was an anarchist. He was a punk. He hated Marx and Marxism. He’s famous for ‘the passion for destruction is a creative passion too’, which I paraphrased earlier in my blog. But there’s so much more to Bakunin. I highly recommend the aforementioned book by Berlin as a starter. From the Other Shore by Herzen is the natural continuation followed by Selected Writings by Bakunin.

III

How do you get somewhere in music if you’re not a hipster? I’m not asking for worldwide or even local fame. Just the first rung, the hardest one. Maybe a show that people come to who I don’t know. Or a single that people listen to, who I don’t know. And I don’t want to prostitute myself to get it, like for example I don’t use social media. I didn’t upload to Spotify for the longest time either but that’s just ridiculous, considering that nobody listens to bandcamp and everybody listens to Spotify. But Spotify is evil. I wish more consumers understood that. Maybe they do understand, but don’t care. I say you need to be a hipster because hipsters are cool in the way that vegan milk is good. They are with the times, they are the opposite of authentic. They care so much about making it that they conform to every little trend that comes along. That’s why their fashion changes constantly, their look, their attitude, their playlists. If one were to have to divide up musicians into three groups there are hippies (mostly harmless), hipsters (yuppies in disguise) and punks. Punks are for real. Lou Reed was a punk. My recordist is a punk. My friend name redacted 5 is a punk. He worked hard and made maybe the second or third rung. He’s released an album on vinyl and played on tour. But this took a lot of effort and living in Berlin, which is full of hipsters.

IV

The real question, and I’ve been getting there, is what’s the alternative? Is believing in the status quo alternative? Because if it’s not then most of the hipster / hippy left-wing stuff is not very alternative. Almost everyone I know believes in the same stuff. It’s entitled, bourgeois garbage. It’s why Trump won. It’s why the right is so attractive to so many poor people. The right is not right. No way. But nor is the left at the moment. It’s a real problem and IMHO the only way out is through the bottom of the compass, libertarianism or anarchism. I don’t mean blow stuff up. I mean really care about yourself as an individual. Don’t get drawn into groupthink on either side. That’s where you lose. I finish this post with a longish Bakunin quote. 

“Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult the architect or the engineer For such special knowledge I apply to such a "savant." But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the "savant" to impose his authority on me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. I do not content myself with consulting a single authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions and choose that which seems to me soundest. But I recognise no infallible authority, even on special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, the tool of other people's will and interests.”