Shunya's Notes

Numen Inest

A slideshow of my landscape photos set to music (7 mins).

The Orangutans of Sumatra

In May 2009, Usha and I visited the Gunung Leuser National Park in north Sumatra to see orangutans in the wild. We hired a guide in the gateway village of Bukit Lawang and hiked several miles into a dense primary growth forest. Heavy rain on the previous night made the hike rather treacherous and we had to grab on to branches and roots to go up and down the hilly terrain. But the forest was beautiful, abundant with tropical flora and fauna (some of it unique to the island), rushing streams and animal sounds, and we did get lucky: we saw about ten orangutans on our daylong hike. One middle-aged female—rescued years ago by the orangutan center in Bukit Lawang and reintroduced into the wild—even came down and held Usha's hand! Other primates we saw include gibbons and Thomas's Leaf-monkeys.

The orangutan (“person of the forest”), whose habitat has shrunk to parts of Sumatra and Borneo, has cognitive abilities that rival those of the gorilla and the chimpanzee, the only primates more closely related to humans. Placid, deliberate, and mostly vegetarian, orangutans are known for their ingenuity and persistence, particularly in manipulating mechanical objects, and for their "cognitive abilities such as causal and logical reasoning, self-recognition in mirrors, deception, symbolic communication, foresight, and tool production and use. In the wild, orangutans use tools, but at only one location in Sumatra do they consistently make and use them for foraging, [defoliating] sticks ... to extract insects or honey from tree holes and to pry seeds from hard-shelled fruit." We saw one juvenile male using a stick as a tool.

Here is a slideshow of my best orangutan shots set to music (2 min, 25 sec). Check out some more pictures and a primer on orangutans.

The Omo of Ethiopia

(Photography by Hans Silvester. Link via Maniza Naqvi @ 3QD)

A Treasure Trove of Archival Footage from Around the World

I recently came across a YouTube channel, the Travel Film Archive, with over 300 short videos featuring archival footage from around the world, from the city streets of Trinidad, 1938, to the Ituri Forest in Africa, 1929; from the New York subway, 1905, to the Sahara Desert, 1953, or Sri Lanka, 1932. Much of the footage is silent, with only title frames to describe the location or action, but some is accompanied by documentary style voiceover. One James A. Fitzpatrick, something like the Rick Steves of his day, is a frequent narrator.

The footage itself, along with the commentary, is a fascinating glimpse into the past, a window on how people lived 60 or 90 years ago. We see bits of fading or vanished cultural practices in their local context, from a time when they were still real: Native Americans in Idaho in full feathered regalia, participating in a drumming ceremony; Australian Aborigines painted in white stripes, throwing boomerangs; Alpine Germans carving wood and staging the Passionsspiele; young Tahitian women dressed to pass as their French colonizers; life in a Sinhalese village, when coconut was king and people remained happily unfettered by excessive clothing.

Though the commentary will strike the modern viewer as naive, amusing, or poorly informed about the world (perhaps even offensive), one can't also help but be impressed by the boldness of those who endured the foreign climates and conditions, huge heavy cameras in tow, to learn something about other peoples and produce what's clearly meant to be a mind-expanding educational experience for the millions back home, who would never in their lifetimes have opportunity for such adventure themselves. The power of such films to transport us and bring us the mysteries of the world today is damped by the ubiquity of images and information. But I imagine that in their day, these gems must have gone some way toward enriching the lives and minds of their viewers.

The collection also provides a window on how Westerners (mostly Americans, here, it seems) thought of Others in those days, how little they saw as they looked on so earnestly. What struck me generally, as I watched and sampled many videos, was the way that things have changed as much as they have remained the same.

The full range of videos is definitely worth perusing. Here are a few random highlights that may be of interest to readers of this blog:

Vietnam: American Holocaust

I came across this 2008 documentary film made by Clay Claiborne and narrated by Martin Sheen, Vietnam: American Holocaust. Below is a short excerpt (9 mins); the entire film (87 mins) is online here. It contains some of the most horrifying and disturbing war footage I have ever seen. The oddly persistent idea that the United States was/is a "benevolent hegemon" seems utterly depraved in light of this. While at it, also check out this archival footage of a Napalm air attack on a Vietnam village. Be warned: you may need a stiff drink afterwards.

Wired for War

Amy Goodman in conversation with PW Singer, author of Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century.

An amazing revolution is taking place on the battlefield, starting to change not just how wars are fought, but also the politics, economics, laws, and ethics that surround war itself. This upheaval is already afoot -- remote-controlled drones take out terrorists in Afghanistan, while the number of unmanned systems on the ground in Iraq has gone from zero to 12,000 over the last five years.  But it is only the start. Military officers quietly acknowledge that new prototypes will soon make human fighter pilots obsolete, while the Pentagon researches tiny robots the size of flies to carry out reconnaissance work now handled by elite Special Forces troops.

Wired for War takes the reader on a journey to meet all the various players in this strange new world of war: odd-ball roboticists working in latter-day “skunk works” in the midst of suburbia; military pilots flying combat mission from their office cubicles outside Las Vegas; the Iraqi insurgents who are their targets; journalists trying to figure out just how to cover robots at war; and human rights activists wrestling with what is right and wrong in a world where our wars are increasingly being handed over to machines.

Part 2 of 2 here.

The View from Gaza

Here is an outstanding documentary by Al Jazeera reporters Ayman Mohyeldin and Sherine Tadros, who were in Gaza during the recent Israeli-Palestinian war. Watch it for a glimpse of how the brutal Israeli assault was experienced by ordinary Palestinians (~45 mins; via 3QD).

Dreyfus on Heidegger

Heidegger's Being and Time is among the most profound philosophical works of the 20th century, but the man retains a controversial image—a cold genius without heart or fellow feeling, and a great capacity to delude himself (despite the centrality he placed on "authenticity" in his magnum opus). One might even forgive his anti-semitism, intellectual support of Hitler, and membership of the Nazi party to its very end, were it not for his perverse lack of an apology or remorse later in life (d. 1976). Indeed, he does violence to the literal meaning of the term 'philosopher', i.e., 'lover of wisdom'. Notably, Heidegger's works also happen to be utterly devoid of ethical concerns, preoccupied as he was with "pure insight".

And insight he had aplenty, leading to a revolutionary new way of thinking about how human beings are related to the world. Interest in Heidegger has grown enormously in recent decades, starting with attempts to rehabilitate him by none other than Hannah Arendt, his former student and a Jew who fled Nazi Germany and later migrated to the US, and with whom he once had a passionate affair (read Mark Lilla's article in the NYRB on this astonishing story—subscription is required; psssst! email me if you want the article's text). But for an overview on Heidegger first, check out this BBC film on his life and philosophy, which also talks about his relationship with Arendt: clip1, clip2, clip3, clip4, clip5, clip6.

Here is an illuminating talk from the early 80s between Bryan Magee and Hubert Dreyfus, a leading Heidegger scholar from UC Berkeley. The conversation traces the roots of existentialism from Husserl, to his pupil Heidegger, to the "brilliant misunderstanding of Heidegger" by Sartre (and his waning reputation), to Merleau-Ponty, to Heidegger's enormous impact on almost every contemporary academic discipline. The talk is spread over five clips: clip1, clip2, clip3, clip4, clip5 (clip1 shown below). 

Those interested in further pursuing Heidegger may wish to listen to the full audio of Dreyfus's 2007 Fall course on Heidegger's Being and Time at UC Berkeley (~25 hours of podcast). A good teacher and expositor of Heidegger, his classes seem to be always oversubscribed.

Searle on Wittgenstein

In this video (likely from the early 80s), Bryan Magee talks to John Searle about the ideas and legacy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who I'd say is among the top three western philosophers of the 20th century to have influenced me most (besides Foucault, who could be seen as "applied Heidegger," and Berlin). This relatively accessible conversation covers Wittgenstein's early work, the Tractatus, as well as his posthumously published, Philosophical Investigations. The talk is spread over five clips of about 7-10 minutes each: clip1, clip2, clip3, clip4, clip5. Enjoy.

Who Speaks for Islam?

Here is an interesting debate between two Muslim women in the US: Irshad Manji and Dalia Mogahed. Manji, a vocal critic of Islam, sees herself as a reform Muslim; it is easy to understand why young Muslims in the West, as well as those fearful of Islam, would be drawn to her. Mogahed identifies herself as a mainstream Muslim who is "passionate about moderation."

I found Mogahed's analysis of the Muslim world more illuminating, including her response to whether Islam is a religion of peace, and how radicalization is so often rooted in politics but then takes on the language of religion. I did squirm a bit when she referred to Prophet Muhammad's wars of conquest as models of just wars. She also showed remarkably little enthusiasm for ijtihad—even when led by qualified Muslim clerics—rooting instead for classical religious scholarship and its more liberal interpretations of Islamic faith and jurisprudence.

More articles by Mogahed: Muslim true/false and What Makes a Muslim Radical. (Video via 3QD.)