[FRIAM] Kissing Kissinger
Steve Smith
sasmyth at swcp.com
Sat Jun 11 13:46:45 EDT 2022
> Mary Catherine Bateson was a close friend of mine. She and Gregory
> (her father) worked closely together. She and I once shared a long
> train ride where she talked about her life in relationship to not one,
> but two (Margaret Mead) famous parents. Before Covid, in 2019, she
> invited me for a long weekend to her get-away house in the New
> Hampshire woods. I interviewed her about the early days of systems
> thinking, cybernetics and the Macy conferences. It was mid-March, and
> I drove her to a wee public house nearby to hear some St. Patrick's
> day music. We lifted a pint and exchanged stories about the Irish for
> whom we shared a special regard. Mary Catherine died last year. I
> miss her still.
M -
Thanks for this personal anecdote... the biographical sketch I am
reading is Noel Charlton's "Understanding Gregory Bateson"...
I'm glad you got a "last pint" in with her. My Mary is just now
reading (finished actually) Harold Blume's collection of "Last Poems"
("'til I end my Song") by poets from 16c to 2002. Not always their very
last poem or even ones contemplating mortality but those also. A
finely curated collection IMO.
Here in Weesp, borrowing Jenny's house, her books, and even her
friends, I met someone who I think you have to meet. By coincidence (or
not) he was just in Sweden meeting with our mutual colleague Anders
Varger there... Stephen and I know Anders through Hubville, but their
work together involves bringing the very young and the very old together
to cogitate/ideate about the future (the former have a lot of energy and
a big stake, the latter have some perspective and limited stake)... I
don't know if the work comes through well in the translations, it sounds
more meaningful when Hank (Kune... educore.nl) speaks about it
in-person. I haven't checked in with Anders yet.
https://en.framtidensroster.org/
- S
>
> On Sat, Jun 11, 2022 at 8:00 AM Tom Johnson <jtjohnson555 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> I'm reading John Markoff's biography of Stuart Brand, who was
> heavily influenced by Bateson.
>
> =======================
> Tom Johnson
> Inst. for Analytic Journalism
> Santa Fe, New Mexico
> 505-577-6482
> =======================
>
> On Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 6:57 AM Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> In 1978 as I was about to leave Pittsburgh for a job at Bell
> Labs my wife and I were staying with with Scott and Penny
> Fahlman since our furniture was on a moving van. Scott was an
> AI hotshot who had recently arrived at Carnegie Mellon. I was
> typing the final revision of my numerical analysis
> dissertation on my Smith Corona when Scott said, "Frank, that
> will be the last computer science dissertation ever written on
> a typewriter."
>
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
> On Sat, Jun 11, 2022, 5:20 AM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com>
> wrote:
>
> Holy Moley!
>
> The references to Kissenger et. al.'s "The Age of AI: and
> our Human Future" here lead me to find his 1950 Senior
> Thesis at Harvard (scanned copy of the typewritten
> original
> <https://ia903000.us.archive.org/23/items/HenryAKissingerTheMeaningOfHistoryReflectionsOnSpenglerToynbeeAndKant/Henry%20A%20Kissinger%20-%20The%20Meaning%20of%20History_%20Reflections%20on%20Spengler%2C%20Toynbee%2C%20and%20Kant.pdf>).
>
> https://ia903000.us.archive.org/23/items/HenryAKissingerTheMeaningOfHistoryReflectionsOnSpenglerToynbeeAndKant/Henry%20A%20Kissinger%20-%20The%20Meaning%20of%20History_%20Reflections%20on%20Spengler%2C%20Toynbee%2C%20and%20Kant.pdf
>
> I am only 20 something pages into this 400 page tome and
> definitely over my head in several ways. His language
> reads a little *overly* flowery and technically specific,
> and yet that may just be a result of the *era* and it's
> topic as an analysis of three writer's take on history
> itself (Spengler, Toynbee, Kant). I have tried resolving
> several obscure terms such as "genus Culture", references
> to which I can only find in archaic botanical texts? I
> have not read Spengler and only skimmed Toynbee and the
> Kant I read is now 40 years past, so of course I don't
> have much more than an effing clue of what he is effing on
> about here, yet it is fascinating nevertheless.
>
> Even reading the typewritten type carries a sort of
> spectre of the time and place this was generated. It
> adds significance that I gifted my last working typewriter
> (at times I have had as many as 5 or 6 which could be made
> to work with a little care in use) to one of our
> house-sitters while we travel. She may well be typing on
> it as I type this. The unevenness of a manual typewriter,
> the waviness of the line and the uneveness of the
> impression reflects in some way the mechanical device but
> also the operator. My instinct is that Kissinger did not
> type this final manuscript himself if in fact he even
> typed any of it. It has the evenness (relative, given
> the limits of the type of device) of an accomplished
> typist, typing in a workman-like way. The digital copy
> (pdf) appears to be a scan of a photocopy to boot, adding
> contrast enhancement and some subsequent elision of bits
> by thresholding.
>
> I was tempted to cut-n-paste a few choice lines (images,
> not txt) and comment on them, but realize that perhaps
> nobody else here cares and it would just be a manual
> exercise for myself to no point otherwise. OCR is good
> enough these days to make it possible to render it as txt,
> etc. but since I am bogged down in the text itself and
> distracted by trying to graze through Jenny's library here
> in Weesp, while quaffing the entireity of one of her
> favorite tomes (a biography of Gregory Bateson), I will
> leave it now and see if anyone else delves deep enough
> into the source material to spark a conversation here that
> I can join or simply enjoy.
>
> So many books, so little time! If I had more time I would
> learn to speedread so I can have more time to read more.
>
>
>
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> --
> Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
> Center for Emergent Diplomacy
> emergentdiplomacy.org <http://emergentdiplomacy.org>
> Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
>
> mobile: (303) 859-5609
>
>
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