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From renting DVDs to ultimate cosmic truth

[ posted by the philosopher ]
So I'm wandering through Netflix, and I see Slaughterhouse-Five, and I realize that while I've read the book several times, I've never seen the movie. It seems like a good time to do it, as I recently rewatched Donnie Darko, and if there's one story that truly presages Donnie's screwed-up time-travel tripping, it's Billy Pilgrim's life spent "unstuck in time." So I click the Add button. Netflix adds it to my queue, and then suggests the other movies it thinks I might enjoy: Catch-22, Fahrenheit 451, 2001, THX 1138.

Please tell me Netflix isn't so simple-algorithmed that it just thinks I like movies with numbers in them.

Well, no, it isn't, and it doesn't. I don't see 101 Dalmatians on that list, or 9 1/2 Weeks, or 10 Things I Hate About You. In fact, it doesn't even just think I like science fiction movies with numbers, or else 2010 and Space: 1999 would be there too. No, Netflix is actually making the case that there's something qualitative about those particular movies that puts them in a micro-category of their own. (According to users'' viewing tastes, that is.)

And of course it's right. Ask most people who read Slaughterhouse-Five in high school to name a couple similar books, and you can bet a handful of nickels that they, too, will come up with Catch-22 and Fahrenheit 451. Yeah, the numbers are part of it, but only to the degree that they serve as a mnemonic, a shorthand notation that signifies something deeper. These particular stories all have numerical titles for a reason: They're all about the world's insanity.

(Let's bomb one of Earth's most beautiful cultural centers into a screaming mass of burning flesh. Let's feed people an endless stream of interactive "reality television" so they're too distracted to actually think about anything ever. Let's make sure the law treats everyone equally: No matter who they are, as long as they qualify to do something, then they can do it, but if they do it, that means they no longer qualify. Let's program a computer with contradictory directives sure to drive it out of control, then put it in charge of safeguarding people's lives.)

All these stories of humans doing truly insane things point out a common truism: When faced with insanity deep within our lives, most of us try very hard to convince ourselves that it's really perfectly normal -- because who wants to accept insanity? One of the ways we do this is with numbers. They seem so absolute, so rock-steady, so authoritative. What's that you say? You're being forced to live and work in a slaughterhouse? Oh, well, yes, of course, that's Slaughterhouse-Five. One through Four are up the road. It's an instant reframing of the question from "Why?" into the much less existential "How?" So you don't think this government rule, Catch-22, makes any sense? Look, doesn't the very fact that it's called Catch-22 imply that there are at least 21 other rules, and if we've got this whole list of rules, then they must have been very carefully thought out, so you can stop worrying about it!

Numbers mean science! Numbers mean statistics! Numbers mean truth!

Think about such rationalizations for more than a second, and they don't hold up. But oh, how easy it is to just go along with them. Because, as fractals or a Sudoku grid show, numbers are beautiful and true. What we can do with them -- that's where the lies come in.

Of course, you can safely ignore this post, because these stories were all written in the '60s, so none of them can possibly have any bearing on life today whatsoever. Or, as Catholic League president William Donohoe authoritatively insisted this week while attacking President Bush's holiday cards because they don't explicitly say "Merry Christmas": "Ninety-six percent of Americans celebrate Christmas, so spare me the diversity lecture."
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08 December 2005 at 12:38 PM | permalink | 3 comments

Ancient history versus the 21st century

[ posted by the philosopher ]
Alas, the birthplace of civilization continues to produce real-life horror stories. Two days ago, the news media reported that German-born archaeologist Susanne Osthoff had been kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents as a hostage to use against the German government. But aside from the report on Science magazine's website, the American news stories -- which have been more concerned with the roughly simultaneous abduction of Virginian peace activist Tom Fox -- have mostly neglected to detail Osthoff's years of heroic work in Iraq, where she helped excavate the ancient Babylonian city of Isin almost 20 years ago.

More recently, Osthoff has risked life and limb to document the wholesale looting of archaeological treasures after the U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein's government. Along the way, she worked to personally bring mass quantities of food and medicine to innocent Iraqi civilians in need. (A Mother Jones magazine feature from 2003 shows Osthoff in the field, and the Iraq War & Archaeology website archives much related material.) Whatever anyone thinks of the war in Iraq, it's pretty clear that the abduction of a noble, caring and courageous earthling like Osthoff, who's out there trying to save not only ancient civilization's legacy, but living human beings as well, should be an outrage to us all.
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01 December 2005 at 2:47 PM | permalink | 1 comments