Noam Chomsky

I see that Sam Harris is trying to get the Noam Chomsky notch on his belt, trying to engage him in a public debate.

Chomsky is 86 years old, but while he might not speak quite as quickly as he used to, and perhaps moves a little creakily, he still has his wits and genius about him. Sometimes I think he will be with us forever. I discovered him only very late, in the 90s, when I was already finished with my studies and wiped out, catching one of his talks on C-SPAN. He was quite a revelation. It is very rare to hear such a 'lefty' who speaks with that kind of authority and with a complete command of facts and history. I was in awe and became a fan.

Then 9/11 happened. Although I am not one of those people who believes America can do no wrong, I thought Chomsky went too far in not seeing that at least some of the grounds for the attack rested on the internal problems of these Islamic countries with their theocratic governments, rather then being entirely a rational response to American and Western aggressions in the region.

Harris obviously feels that he got the best of his e-mail exchange with Chomsky, and he proudly posts it on his blog. I think Harris is fooling himself, and Chomsky still has it, that brilliantly burning intelligence. Harris is no lightweight, but genius is genius.

Harris feels that he got Chomsky on his supposed failure to give due weight to the intentions of an aggressor: the Americans may have a lot of collateral damage in their attacks, but the do not really want that; it is unavoidable and a sad fact of life when a great nation tries to defend its interests; and for Chomsky it is just about body count. Chomsky counters with the argument that negligence or indifference can be as bad, if not worse, than malicious intentions: for American governments, killing brown people can be a lot like stepping on and killing ants unconsciously as one walks down the street, a matter of cold indifference. I'm thinking: point, Chomsky.

[Source: Sam Harris Blog]

William Blake

I am in God’s presence night & day,
And he never turns his face away

-- William Blake

The most striking paradox that I find in Blake is the prevalence and strength of Christian motifs in his work as against the fact that he is apparently not a supernaturalist. The power of Christianity for him is in what it does for one’s imaginative visioning of the world, providing a rich source of archetypal concepts and images.

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“What,” it will be Question’d, “When the sun rises, do you not see a round disk of fire somewhat like a guinea?” O, no, no, I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.”

-- W. B.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I take it that Blake is not the wild-eyed religious fanatic that this statement suggests, but that he is mostly countering reductionist science and materialist philosophy, and how impoverishing such thought is to our imagination and ways of thinking, at least if we take it outside the labs and lecture halls as the way to think about life in the universe. He really does see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wildflower, but this says more for the power of his imagination than for the sand or the flower.

[Source: Northrop Frye, “Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake”]