zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — creativity, IARPA, HipBone Games, h/t Hermann Hesse ]

.
Funny thing, that.

In 1997, Derek Robinson wrote a short piece about my HipBone Games, indicating what they were good for. Read it – then read the IARPA solicitation that just came out.

My approach is to lure people into discovering analogies, metaphors, parallels and oppositions by playing a game which elicits them as game moves — a live process, and one that cuts to the very heart of creativity — IARPA wants an automated version, which will be clunky by comparison. And as Derek points out in his piece — pointed out, that is to say, fourteen years ago, quoting an even earlier (1995) comment from Douglas Hofstadter:

If, instead of using the real world, one carefully creates a simpler, artificial world in which to study the high-level processes of perception, the problems become more tractable.

That’s what my games are — “a simpler, artificial world in which to study the high-level processes of perception” — specifically, “of analogy, metaphor, resemblance, the making and taking of meaning”.

I’ve been working on this stuff for at least fifteen years… inspired by a book Hermann Hesse published in 1943.

*

And oh yes, there’s a “future of search engines” hiding in there, too.

[ by Charles Cameron – endtimes humor, a bit sad really ]

.

.

The best rapture humor I ran across this week was the (probably viral) Velocirapture image, below:

Here’s my follow up question:

The Biblical injunction to pastors (the word means “shepherds of the flock”) is feed my sheep…

Feeding them disinformation — or “to the wolves” — does not count.

[ By Charles Cameron — apocalyptic movements, best readings, budget shortfalls, lack of support for scholarship in crucial natsec areas — and with a h/t to Dan from Madison at ChicagoBoyz for the video that triggered this post ]
.
.
What with rapture parties breaking out all over, billboards in Dubai proclaiming The End and thousands of Hmong tribespeople in Vietnam among the believers, this whole sorry business of Harold Camping‘s latest end times prediction is catching plenty of attention. I thought it might be helpful to recommend some of the more interesting and knowledgeable commentary on Camping’s failed prophecy.

*

First, three friends and colleagues of mine from the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University, about which I will have a further paragraph later:

Richard Landes of BU has a text interview here, and a TV interview here. His forthcoming book, Heaven on Earth, is a monumental [554 pp.] treatment of millenarian movements ranging “from ancient Egypt to modern-day UFO cults and global Jihad” with a focus on “ten widely different case studies, none of which come from Judaism or Christianity” — and “shows that many events typically regarded as secular–including the French Revolution, Marxism, Bolshevism, Nazism-not only contain key millennialist elements, but follow the apocalyptic curve of enthusiastic launch, disappointment and (often catastrophic) re-entry into ‘normal time'”.

Stephen O’Leary of USC wrote up the Harold Camping prediction a couple of days ago on the WSJ “Speakeasy” blog. He’s the rhetorician and communications scholar who co-wrote the first article on religion on the internet, and his specialty as it applies to apocalyptic thinking is doubly relevant: the timing of the end — and the timing of the announcement of the end. His book, Arguing the Apocalypse, is the classic treatment.

Damian Thompson of the Daily Telegraph is a wicked and witty blogger on all things Catholic and much else beside — the normally staid Church Times (UK) once called him a “blood-crazed ferret” and he wears the quote with pride on his blog, where you can also find his comments on Camping. Damian’s book, Waiting for Antichrist, is a masterful treatment of one “expecting” church in London, and has a lot to tell us about the distance between the orthodoxies of its clergy and the various levels of enthusiasm and eclectic beliefs of their congregants.

Three experts, three highly recommended books.

*

Two quick notes for those whose motto is “follow the money” (I prefer “cherchez la femme” myself, but chacun a son gout):

The LA Times has a piece that examines the “worldwide $100-million campaign of caravans and billboards, financed by the sale and swap of TV and radio stations” behind Camping’s more recent prediction (the 1994 version was less widely known).

Well worth reading.

And for those who suspect the man of living “high on the hog” — this quote from the same piece might cause you to rethink the possibility that the man’s sincere (one can be misguided with one’s integrity intact, I’d suggest):

Though his organization has large financial holdings, he drives a 1993 Camry and lives in a modest house.

*

Now back to the Center for Millennial Studies.

While it existed, it was quite simply the world center of apocalyptic, messianic and millenarian studies. CMS conferences brought together a wide range of scholars of different eras and areas, who could together begin to fathom the commonalities and differences — anthropological, theological, psychological, political, local, global, historical, and contemporary — of movements such as the Essenes, the Falun Gong, the Quakers, Nazism, the Muenster Anabaptists, al-Qaida, the Taiping Rebellion, Branch Davidians, the Y2K scare, classic Marxism, Aum Shinrikyo and Heaven’s Gate.

And then the year 2000 came and went, and those who hadn’t followed the work of the CMS and its associates thought it’s all over, no more millennial expectation, we’ve entered the new millennium with barely a hiccup.

Well, guess what. It was at the CMS that David Cook presented early insights from his definitive work on contemporary millennial movements in Islam — and now we have millennial stirrings both on the Shia side (President Ahmadinejad et al) and among the Sunni (AQ theorist Abu Mus’ab Al-Suri devotes the last hundred pages of his treatise on jihad to “signs of the end times”)…

Apocalyptic expectation continues. But Richard Landes’ and Stephen O’Leary’s fine project, the CMS, is no longer with us to bring scholars together to discuss what remains one of the key topics of our times. When Richard’s book comes out, buy it and read it — and see if you don’t see what I mean.

Or read Jean-Pierre Filiu‘s Apocalypse in Islam.  Please. Or Tim Furnish‘s recent paper.

*

And while it may not see Judgment Day or the beginning of the end of the world as predicted, what this week has seen is the end of funding of Fulbright scholarships for doctoral dissertation research abroad.  But then as Abu Muqawama points out:

hey, it’s probably safe to cut funding for these languages. It’s hard to see Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan or anywhere in the Arabic-speaking world causing issues in terms of U.S. national security interests anytime soon.

Right?

So the CMS isn’t the only significant scholarly venue we’ve lost to terminal lack of vision.

[ by Charles Cameron — all middle and no end ]

.

And while I’m at it, I might as well post one of the very first DoubleQuotes I put together when I was first experimenting with the format, sometime between October 2003 and June 2004

I thought then, and I think now, that a walkway lined with dozens of little plaques presenting odd snippets of fact like either one of those would be a marvelous device for triggering associations in ambulatory analysts…

And it is a recurring pattern, isn’t it?

Ominously, there have been cases of terrorist pirates hijacking tankers in order to practice steering them through straits and crowded sea-lanes-the maritime equivalent of the September 11 hijackers’ training in Florida flight schools. These apparent kamikazes-in-training have questioned crews on how to operate ships but have shown little interest in how to dock them. In March 2003, an Indonesian chemical tanker, the Dewi Madrim, was hijacked off Indonesia. The ten armed men who seized the vessel steered it for an hour through the busy Strait of Malacca and then left the ship with equipment and technical documents.
.
Gal Luft and Anne Korin, Terrorism Goes to Sea, Foreign Affairs, Nov/Dec 2004

It helps to be alert to rhyming between ideas…

[ by Charles Cameron ]
*
.

McGill grad student and blog-friend Christopher Anzalone (Ibn Siqilli) has blogged the al-Qaeda Statement on bin Laden’s Death (see above), and the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) has posted an English translation.

The statement is headed “In the name of God”, declaries its authorship to be “The al-Qaeda Organisation – General Leadership”, uses the epigraph “You have lived in glory and died as a martyr” and is titled “A statement about the dignity and martyrdom of Sheikh Osama bin Laden, may Allah have mercy on him”.

A few quick notes on the ICSR text:

Bin Laden is described as:…

the mujahid leader zahid [aesthetic] muhajir [immigrant], Sheikh Abu Abdullah Osama bin Mohammed bin Laden

I am pretty sure the meaning of “zahid” is closer to “ascetic” (pious, self-denying) than “aesthetic” – a not infrequent confusion — and “mujahir” which I have seen translated both “emigrant” and “immigrant” today, means one who, like the Prophet leaving Mecca for Medina in what is known as Hijra, has left his home in service to God.

He was killed in a moment of sincerity where he combined words and actions, with dawah and proof to join the caravan of great leaders, loyal soldiers and honest knights who refused to let their religion fall to a lower status …

The phrase “honest knights” is of interest, with its suggestion of chivalry (and thus implicit link with Salah ad-Din / Saladdin).

He faced weapons with weapons, force with force, and he accepted the challenge of arrogant forces who came with machinery, weapons, aircraft, and troops to subjugate the people. He was neither weak before them, nor did he capitulate.

I take this to be a counter to American statements that he was unarmed: he may not have had a weapon to hand at the time of death, but in a longer perspective he was a fighter who “kept fighting a battle with which he was familiar, and from which he did not desist” as the next phrase has it.

Then comes an astonishing rhetorical flourish to describe the man who brought down the Twin Towers, a sort of triumphant book-ending of the two moments:

However, he challenged them face to face, like a towering building which no one can surmount.

We should compare here his own remark shortly after 9/11, “What was destroyed were not only the towers, but the towers of morale in that country” and again in 2004, “… as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America…”

Here, from the perspective of AQ Central, is his mortality, and the form that his immortality will take:

… the life of the Sheikh of jihad of our times has ended, so that his blood, words, stances, and finality will stay as a spirit that will run through the body of Muslim generations for years to come.

See also (for what I’ll call “metaphoric immortality”) al-Awlaki’s description of a person like Qutb, who “wrote with ink and his own blood” and others like him, “and after they died it was as if Allah made their soul enter their words to make it alive; it gives their words a new life”.

I have no doubt that the symbolic tone of the piece will have powerful impact on peoples – Arab and Pashtun among others – with a keen ear for poetry:

The blood of the mujahid Sheikh Osama bin Laden is more precious to us and every Muslim than to simply be spilled in vain. We assure there will be a curse hunting the Americans and their agents, chasing them both outside and inside their countries. Soon, God willing, their joy will turn to sadness and blood will mix with their tears.

Finally and fairly ironically – it is dated 3 May 2011 but was issued on the forums today, May 6 — the piece ends with this warning:

We are warning the Americans against humiliating the corpse of the Sheikh or mistreating any of his dignified family members whether alive or dead. The corpse should be delivered to the families. Any mistreatment will only increase your hell, for which you will only have yourselves to blame.

I am sure others will view this document from different angles and provide further informative commentary – these are the pieces of the picture which drew my attention.