“Creative Destruction”:
The phrase is much in vogue in Silicon Valley, and perhaps now in Washington, thanks to Elon Musk and others. It has come to mean not just that new practices replace older ones; now it often means you have to destroy the old, even before knowing what the new will look like.
The phrase first came into circulation through the work of
the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter (1883 – 1950) who saw such change as a driving force in capitalism. Later Karl Marx thought it would destroy old wealth and maybe capitalism itself.
Nowadays the phrase has wide application. It’s not just about old styles of manufacturing that need to be destroyed so new, more efficient, more profitable ones can find a place. It also goes after services, and beyond economics to, governance, and the operation of institutions public and private, and to traditions, norms, values, and all that holds communities together.
But, as another distinguished thinker, Alfred E. Neumann (1954 - ), has observed, “What, me worry about collateral damage when I am enjoying a little schöpferische Zerstörung?”
--
“First, Do No harm”
Hippocrates’ injunction (Epidemics 1 and adaptations thereof.) In Hippocrates it applies to the human body, but today should it not also speak to those who tend to the body politic? There is, however, one important difference: in medicine the concern is for the flesh and blood of an individual’s body. But when extended to the body politic, it applies to what citizens need most to protect -- norms, procedures, laws, and, perhaps, most crucially, institutions public and private. All these are vital but vulnerable. Harm them and we may all suffer lasting harm.
Two Men, Two Epistemologies:
The differences between Musk and Hippocrates are rooted, I suspect, in different epistemologies – Hippocrates’ humility before all that is still to be learned about the human body, and Musk’s confidence that he can always find a way through destruction to success.
--
After the Election:
All through the election campaign I was unable to write – at least in any way that might be of interest to readers of this Newsletter. Everything seemed gulped down into the great political gullet. After the election things got even worse. But then, temporarily at least, I became a Stoic – that is, I started concentrating on what I can control, not what I’d like to control.
That led me in two directions, first to thinking about history, and then about language. My knowledge of American history is sketchy, but while we cannot control events, we can recognize patterns in the past that speak to our present condition. I began to think about times in American history when things looked bleak, for example, 1856 – 1857 when an anti-slavery candidate was defeated in the presidential election, followed by a Supreme Court decision ( Dred Scott v. Sandford) that seemed to require Americans to tolerate slavery.
We’ve been through rough times before and come out better despite them.
Stepping back from the present has helped me. And so has renewed attention to the way I speak and write. I try to avoid terms like fascist and communist, and want to step back from cliches, slogans, insults – all the things a political campaign normalizes. I’m not very good at this, I fear, but the effort seems to help.
--
Practical Stoicism:
The best guide to putting Stoicism to work is still, in my opinion, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor. The emperor, of course, is Marcus Aurelius but the life experience of the author, Donald J. Robertson, gives his book great immediacy.
--
A Motto juste:
“Keep dead languages alive,” is the motto of the linguistics program at the University of Texas at Austin. Yes! But how does one do that? History helps, of course, alertness to how speech patterns work, but also delight in language at play – ambiguities, puns, double entendres, rhymes, etymologies, riddles, metaphors, mixed and unmixed.
Enjoying such delights in dusty old languages has, I find, an unexpected benefit. One becomes more alert to the vitality of one’s own language, its exuberance and the tricks it sometimes plays on us.
--
Best Mixed Metaphors of the Month:
“It’s a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you in hot water.” Franklin B. Jones.
“He’s gone behind my back, right in front of my face!”
Attributed to Craig Bellamy, rugby coach
“Every lemon has a silver lining,” someone says; another replies “Yes, a bird in hand gathers no moss, while a rolling stone catches the worm.” Ian Nisbet cites ,“'When the dust settles on this tempest in a teacup, I want to broach the subject of...,” but adds, “Then I realized that this sounded silly, so I changed it to: ”When the dust settles on this can of worms...”.
Michael Gillespie suggests "It's clear that French pastries are not your kettle of fish."
--
A Friendly Challenge on the Purpose of a University:
In the last Then and Now Newsletter I gave my view of the purpose of a university education – Fletch Waller isn’t quite coinvinced, writing “With respect to your comments about the core mission of universities: “the advancement, preservation and dissemination of knowledge.” “Does not the development of values fit in, also? Values are formed in families, of course, but institutions also play a powerful role, a welcome role in many cases. I’m thinking of churches, courts and legislatures, and schools and universities. It seems to me a quite desirable and societally useful role for teachers and professors to play, i.e., to provide philosophical and historical context and a forum in which alternative values are examined and their application explored.”
Do you agree or disagree? (I have come around to agreeing with Fletch. All institutions, whether they know it or not, are value machines, and had better be clear about which values they are manufacturing and disseminating.)
--
Poem of the Month:
The thought of what America would be like
If the Classics had a wide circulation
Troubles my sleep,
The thought of what America,
The thought of what America,
The thought of what America would be like
If the Classics had a wide circulation
Troubles my sleep.
Troubles my sleep.
Nunc dimittis, now lettest thou thy servant,
Now lettest thou thy servant
Depart in peace.
The thought of what America,
The thought of what America,
The thought of what America would be like
If the Classics had a wide circulation . . .
Oh well!
It troubles my sleep.
.
Ezra Pound Cantico del Sole
Question for Mr. Pound: Why should this induce insomnia, dear Mr. Pound? Is it that if all of us Americans read the Classics, we would speak differently, and so, think in radically different ways, and ultimately act differently? Are they disruptive classics, lurking in our libraries, waiting to strike?
--
A History about History:
Oswyn Murray’s new book, The Muse of History: The Ancient Greeks from the Enlightenment to the Present surveys the changing understanding of the ancient Greeks over the past several centuries – or, read in another way, it puts the ancient Greeks to work illuminating British and European intellectual history during this period.
Here are two discussions: first, a provocative review by Spencer A. Klavan; then, a masterly essay by
Katherine Harloe (the director of the Institute of Classical Studies in London.) It’s in the London Review of Books for 10 October. 2024. Thanks to Catesby Leigh and to Judith Peller Hallett for steering me to these discussions.
--
Challenge: Can You Identify This “Old Fable”?
In Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit Samuel Taylor Coleridge alludes to “the old fable of Love and Death, taking each the arrows of the other by mistake.“ Can anyone identify that fable for us? If not, can you make up your own version of the story? I don’t know the answer but if you do, Messrs. Eros and Thanatos will join in the applause.
Thanks to Brooks Graebner for steering me to this essay by Coleridge.
--
Ponderable Statistics:
Figures from Harvard
--
Another Antiquity Goes Home:
A beautiful necklace that was "probably looted" from a tomb in Turkey in the 1970s will soon be returned after it was held for decades in the collection of a Boston museum, Masslive reports.
Now Reading:
The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Christopher Columbus, His Son and the Quest to build the World’s Greatest Library, by Edward Wilson-Lee.
Never have I so vividly imagined what it was to be alive in the Renaissance! Thanks to Jean Anderson for steering me to this book, and to Jean Houston for the news that one American college (which shall remain nameless but may well be followed by others) has decided it no longer needs a library. Welcome to the anti-Renaissance!
--
Quotable:
“Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thought on the unthinking.”
D.E.I. Sub Numine Viget?
The old motto ([This university] flourishes under divine guidance) takes on new meaning in our acronymic age. The most pressing issues in American higher education at this moment, I believe, are raised by programs in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (D.E.I.). It’s a hot potato, but I want to write about them in the next Newsletter, but first I’d like to hear from readers with direct experience of them. To what extent are they, to parody the old motto, providing the guidance that makes a college or university flourish? If you have had some experience with such a program, let me hear from you at [email protected]. Anonymity guaranteed.
--
A “Second Renaissance”?
Hyperbole from the Guardian? I suppose so, but let’s not underestimate the potentialof scrolls buried by Vesuvius in the eruption of 79 CE are only now being deciphered. Most recently: New readings shed light on Plato and his Academy. Check out The Guardian’s report here. Stay tuned; new texts keep coming.
--
Recipe of the Month:
Paul Cartledge reacted to the last of these Newsletters by likening it to salmagundi, which as one dictionary says, is “a mixture of chopped meat and pickled herring, with oil, vinegar, pepper and onions..” Sounds awful, but I take Cartledge’s analogy as a compliment. The dish was, popular in 18th century Britain, then adopted by the Americans both as a dish and as a title for literary magazines and collections of essays, beginning with those by Washington Irving and others in 1807. The purpose was “simply to instruct the young, and reform the old, correct the town and castigate the age.”
So, thank you, Paul, for the compliment and to all, Bon Appetit.
Bob Connor
[email protected]
PS: I almost forgot to thank
David Derbes
Judith Hallett
Jean Houston
and, as always, Callie Connor, for their continued help, ideas, suggestions and corrections. Keep ‘em coming! And, please, keep forwarding Then and Now to friends who might have a taste for such salmagundi.
The phrase is much in vogue in Silicon Valley, and perhaps now in Washington, thanks to Elon Musk and others. It has come to mean not just that new practices replace older ones; now it often means you have to destroy the old, even before knowing what the new will look like.
The phrase first came into circulation through the work of
the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter (1883 – 1950) who saw such change as a driving force in capitalism. Later Karl Marx thought it would destroy old wealth and maybe capitalism itself.
Nowadays the phrase has wide application. It’s not just about old styles of manufacturing that need to be destroyed so new, more efficient, more profitable ones can find a place. It also goes after services, and beyond economics to, governance, and the operation of institutions public and private, and to traditions, norms, values, and all that holds communities together.
But, as another distinguished thinker, Alfred E. Neumann (1954 - ), has observed, “What, me worry about collateral damage when I am enjoying a little schöpferische Zerstörung?”
--
“First, Do No harm”
Hippocrates’ injunction (Epidemics 1 and adaptations thereof.) In Hippocrates it applies to the human body, but today should it not also speak to those who tend to the body politic? There is, however, one important difference: in medicine the concern is for the flesh and blood of an individual’s body. But when extended to the body politic, it applies to what citizens need most to protect -- norms, procedures, laws, and, perhaps, most crucially, institutions public and private. All these are vital but vulnerable. Harm them and we may all suffer lasting harm.
Two Men, Two Epistemologies:
The differences between Musk and Hippocrates are rooted, I suspect, in different epistemologies – Hippocrates’ humility before all that is still to be learned about the human body, and Musk’s confidence that he can always find a way through destruction to success.
--
After the Election:
All through the election campaign I was unable to write – at least in any way that might be of interest to readers of this Newsletter. Everything seemed gulped down into the great political gullet. After the election things got even worse. But then, temporarily at least, I became a Stoic – that is, I started concentrating on what I can control, not what I’d like to control.
That led me in two directions, first to thinking about history, and then about language. My knowledge of American history is sketchy, but while we cannot control events, we can recognize patterns in the past that speak to our present condition. I began to think about times in American history when things looked bleak, for example, 1856 – 1857 when an anti-slavery candidate was defeated in the presidential election, followed by a Supreme Court decision ( Dred Scott v. Sandford) that seemed to require Americans to tolerate slavery.
We’ve been through rough times before and come out better despite them.
Stepping back from the present has helped me. And so has renewed attention to the way I speak and write. I try to avoid terms like fascist and communist, and want to step back from cliches, slogans, insults – all the things a political campaign normalizes. I’m not very good at this, I fear, but the effort seems to help.
--
Practical Stoicism:
The best guide to putting Stoicism to work is still, in my opinion, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor. The emperor, of course, is Marcus Aurelius but the life experience of the author, Donald J. Robertson, gives his book great immediacy.
--
A Motto juste:
“Keep dead languages alive,” is the motto of the linguistics program at the University of Texas at Austin. Yes! But how does one do that? History helps, of course, alertness to how speech patterns work, but also delight in language at play – ambiguities, puns, double entendres, rhymes, etymologies, riddles, metaphors, mixed and unmixed.
Enjoying such delights in dusty old languages has, I find, an unexpected benefit. One becomes more alert to the vitality of one’s own language, its exuberance and the tricks it sometimes plays on us.
--
Best Mixed Metaphors of the Month:
“It’s a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you in hot water.” Franklin B. Jones.
“He’s gone behind my back, right in front of my face!”
Attributed to Craig Bellamy, rugby coach
“Every lemon has a silver lining,” someone says; another replies “Yes, a bird in hand gathers no moss, while a rolling stone catches the worm.” Ian Nisbet cites ,“'When the dust settles on this tempest in a teacup, I want to broach the subject of...,” but adds, “Then I realized that this sounded silly, so I changed it to: ”When the dust settles on this can of worms...”.
Michael Gillespie suggests "It's clear that French pastries are not your kettle of fish."
--
A Friendly Challenge on the Purpose of a University:
In the last Then and Now Newsletter I gave my view of the purpose of a university education – Fletch Waller isn’t quite coinvinced, writing “With respect to your comments about the core mission of universities: “the advancement, preservation and dissemination of knowledge.” “Does not the development of values fit in, also? Values are formed in families, of course, but institutions also play a powerful role, a welcome role in many cases. I’m thinking of churches, courts and legislatures, and schools and universities. It seems to me a quite desirable and societally useful role for teachers and professors to play, i.e., to provide philosophical and historical context and a forum in which alternative values are examined and their application explored.”
Do you agree or disagree? (I have come around to agreeing with Fletch. All institutions, whether they know it or not, are value machines, and had better be clear about which values they are manufacturing and disseminating.)
--
Poem of the Month:
The thought of what America would be like
If the Classics had a wide circulation
Troubles my sleep,
The thought of what America,
The thought of what America,
The thought of what America would be like
If the Classics had a wide circulation
Troubles my sleep.
Troubles my sleep.
Nunc dimittis, now lettest thou thy servant,
Now lettest thou thy servant
Depart in peace.
The thought of what America,
The thought of what America,
The thought of what America would be like
If the Classics had a wide circulation . . .
Oh well!
It troubles my sleep.
.
Ezra Pound Cantico del Sole
Question for Mr. Pound: Why should this induce insomnia, dear Mr. Pound? Is it that if all of us Americans read the Classics, we would speak differently, and so, think in radically different ways, and ultimately act differently? Are they disruptive classics, lurking in our libraries, waiting to strike?
--
A History about History:
Oswyn Murray’s new book, The Muse of History: The Ancient Greeks from the Enlightenment to the Present surveys the changing understanding of the ancient Greeks over the past several centuries – or, read in another way, it puts the ancient Greeks to work illuminating British and European intellectual history during this period.
Here are two discussions: first, a provocative review by Spencer A. Klavan; then, a masterly essay by
Katherine Harloe (the director of the Institute of Classical Studies in London.) It’s in the London Review of Books for 10 October. 2024. Thanks to Catesby Leigh and to Judith Peller Hallett for steering me to these discussions.
--
Challenge: Can You Identify This “Old Fable”?
In Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit Samuel Taylor Coleridge alludes to “the old fable of Love and Death, taking each the arrows of the other by mistake.“ Can anyone identify that fable for us? If not, can you make up your own version of the story? I don’t know the answer but if you do, Messrs. Eros and Thanatos will join in the applause.
Thanks to Brooks Graebner for steering me to this essay by Coleridge.
--
Ponderable Statistics:
Figures from Harvard
- 45% of students feel uncomfortable discussing controversial issues in class, 38% outside of class.
- 51% of faculty are uncomfortable leading class discussions on controversial topics.
- 68% of faculty avoid discussing controversial issues outside of class, such as around students, faculty, or staff.
- 41% of faculty feel uneasy researching controversial subjects.
--
Another Antiquity Goes Home:
A beautiful necklace that was "probably looted" from a tomb in Turkey in the 1970s will soon be returned after it was held for decades in the collection of a Boston museum, Masslive reports.
Now Reading:
The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Christopher Columbus, His Son and the Quest to build the World’s Greatest Library, by Edward Wilson-Lee.
Never have I so vividly imagined what it was to be alive in the Renaissance! Thanks to Jean Anderson for steering me to this book, and to Jean Houston for the news that one American college (which shall remain nameless but may well be followed by others) has decided it no longer needs a library. Welcome to the anti-Renaissance!
--
Quotable:
“Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thought on the unthinking.”
- John Maynard Keynes, via Paul Krugman.
D.E.I. Sub Numine Viget?
The old motto ([This university] flourishes under divine guidance) takes on new meaning in our acronymic age. The most pressing issues in American higher education at this moment, I believe, are raised by programs in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (D.E.I.). It’s a hot potato, but I want to write about them in the next Newsletter, but first I’d like to hear from readers with direct experience of them. To what extent are they, to parody the old motto, providing the guidance that makes a college or university flourish? If you have had some experience with such a program, let me hear from you at [email protected]. Anonymity guaranteed.
--
A “Second Renaissance”?
Hyperbole from the Guardian? I suppose so, but let’s not underestimate the potentialof scrolls buried by Vesuvius in the eruption of 79 CE are only now being deciphered. Most recently: New readings shed light on Plato and his Academy. Check out The Guardian’s report here. Stay tuned; new texts keep coming.
--
Recipe of the Month:
Paul Cartledge reacted to the last of these Newsletters by likening it to salmagundi, which as one dictionary says, is “a mixture of chopped meat and pickled herring, with oil, vinegar, pepper and onions..” Sounds awful, but I take Cartledge’s analogy as a compliment. The dish was, popular in 18th century Britain, then adopted by the Americans both as a dish and as a title for literary magazines and collections of essays, beginning with those by Washington Irving and others in 1807. The purpose was “simply to instruct the young, and reform the old, correct the town and castigate the age.”
So, thank you, Paul, for the compliment and to all, Bon Appetit.
Bob Connor
[email protected]
PS: I almost forgot to thank
David Derbes
Judith Hallett
Jean Houston
and, as always, Callie Connor, for their continued help, ideas, suggestions and corrections. Keep ‘em coming! And, please, keep forwarding Then and Now to friends who might have a taste for such salmagundi.