To be philosophically alone: easy to feel lost, lonely, even if one has a reasonably solid compass of one's own. Idea of community: some parts of community guard a set of posts that define a group, notion of heresy/wrong path allows notion of right path. Sometimes ingroup/outgroup needed - no "fellowship of people who eat food" as part of how we define ourselvess. These cultural guardians can take many forms and have varying levels of authority and topics they might mark as defining. Control over the name of a movement, especially those that are very old, is a difficult matter - because of the nature of gathering people around defining elements, variations on those elements spring up on theoretical matters just as much as variations on other community guidance matters spring up in the practical matter. This is as true for political or philosophical movements as it is for religious ones - just as the series of various Workers Internationals tended to form out of different practical or theoretical differences the workers movement took (the first International included Anarchists, Social Democrats, Marxist Communists, Christian Socialists, and various others, while later ones were more strongly dominated by varying strands of Communists, some violently opposed to each other. We can trace similar trends in Judaism, Christianity, and other faiths/philosophies/etc). In times past, the borders of a movement were guarded, to protect that definition and identity - a heretic can be more dangerous than an unbeliever because with both their overall alignment with the values of a community (she's a "good person, but...") and their claim to be a member of the community, they threaten the meanings the community gathers around with their areas of dissent. In times past, many people died for stepping over these bounds in ways the leaders of the community found threatening - those who fail to meet norms but still hold them may be hypocrates, but they don't threaten the ordering of society in ways that heretics do. "Thinking different", from this perspective, can be a much greater crime than "doing different" (perhaps Nietzsche would've been assasinated if he had made more headway during his life in the "writing new values on new tablets" he spoke of, and had not died so early - Nietzsche fell short of a death like Trotsky either through illness or having a difficult message for most people to digest).

Two tied trends I think are emerging with modern culture - illusionary consensus disintegrates, and all people are "ambassadors" for their group. It is not uncommon for people to overestimate the universality of values within their group (or, related but less problematic, for them to not consider other groups to be considered in the same group despite claims to the same name) - the "no true scotsman" idea is a silly definitional game, but, being a claimant to membership of both the spheres of liberalism and socialism, I can understand how it would be nice to disclaim a lot of movements and individuals in practice and have Liberal Socialism as an identity that would only include thise with positions I approve of (for example, I won't claim responsability for Stalin any more than a lot of Zionists would want to claim Deir Yassin or Americans today would claim slavery or the atrocities against the Amerindians in times past). How are things changing? As educational levels continue to improve, in many areas the value attached to "careful debate by scholars" lessens as casual debates take prominence - in some ways the results are unfortunate, sometimes fortunate. Rhetoric too easily takes the place of substance - having given some study to Islamic Jurisprudence, Rabbinic Responsa, and the American legal system has led me to be impressed with the very careful, structured thought present in each (standard disclaimer mostly for a certain person who shall remain nameless *wink*: I do not claim to be remotely expert in any of the three). Having this replaced by the rhetoric common in politics and common discourse would produce less learned, less consistent interpretations and other results. Once universal discourse becomes common enough, people grow used to discussing fundamentals of their faith and possibly being challenged in ways that will convince them to change, and in a pluralist society (for whatever field the value-identity in question covers - we could easily imagine a society pluralist in political ideology but not faith, or vice versa) they may find themselves "ambassadors" for their group if they regularly associate with people from other groups or ungrouped people. I have never been Christian, and never been meaningfully theist, and I've heard enough from Christians, Judaists, Buddhists, Muslims, and other groups over the years where they claim something is true for their entire group, where others were different and sometimes claimed as universal something different, whether claiming it as a defining aspect of thir group or not. I believe the increased prevalence of this, as well as discourse on values not commonly part of a system, will eventually loosen our feelings of common-value community - a simple question about who accepts intellectual property in a crowded rooms can, for example, be very surprising for everyone there. Do we need this consensus for emotional stability?

I've already seen some interesting examples of this butting of heads with Christians, as not all hold the Nicene Creed, with routine condemnation of non-Zionist or anti-Zionist movements in Jewish culture, and with dialogue between Sunni and Shi'a led by members of the faith in religiously pluralist societies.

I wonder what the long-term effects of American and Canadian Islam will be, and what factors tend to create integrated faith as opposed to separatist faith - leaving aside the (still interesting) question of whether integration is inherently or tempting of heresy, comparison of various groups that have a similar divide that are similar may be enlightening, even though such a divide is not always binary - the Haredi, the Amish who have not turned their way of living into a circus attraction, various communes (some kibbutzim in Israel too). Management of identity, values/meaning, and how various kinds of pluralism challenge that will be increasingly important in times to come. For those of us with some sets of ideas ideas that we hold as philosophically universalist (that we would like to see everyone adopt), there are obvious conflicts with other sets of ideas that are universalist on the same topics and different in content. Some would call this arrogant, but just like those who use the term "fascist" to describe anything that falls outside of an interpretation of American political philosophy that is libertene, naïve, and idealised, it is in the nature of philosophies and other groupings of ideas to hold some to be universalist. It is natural that Muslims would prefer a Muslim world, Christians a Christian one, Philosophical Capitalists a Capitalist one, and Socialists a Socialist one, even if there is disagreement over acceptable paths towards any of these - as much as it irks me to hear Christians talk about missionary work and hoping to "plant their faith" everywhere, it makes sense that if they really hold to the christian notions of redemption and sin, it strongly follows from that that they would want that.

Is it more the technology or the social changes that lead to the increased difficulty with Kafir? How is modern Jurisprudence related?

In other news:

• For now, gays can marry again in California. How long this will last and how the upcoming US presidential election will be affected remains to be seen. It's too early to celebrate, I think.
• Lebanon is again not far from another possible civil war, as fighting has flared up between Hezbollah, Druze, and government forces. A rare confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran over each's objectives in the region involves both the ideas of form of government (Iran's present foreign policy supports Hezbollah in the hopes that if it wins, an Islamic Republic will be established, while Lebanon is presently a republic with some institutions reminiscent of the Ottoman Millet system, with reserved positions for various recognised minorities) and faith (as Hezbollah, with consistent support of Iran, has made Shiite Islam into a major force in Lebanon). Saudi Arabia's interests have usually followed from a more pragmatic, state-moderated model of culture, hence their strong support for most monarchies and other strong leaders instead of "puritan movements" (compare their relations with Egypt versus those with the Muslim Brotherhood, for example).
• Chávez seems to intent on rivalling BushJr in making stupid statements on the international stages, having recently called a former PM of Spain a Fascist (prompting the King of Spain to tell him to "shut up"), calling Chancellor Angela Merklel a political descendant of Hitler, and having recently crossed himself and talking about his Christian faith at a speech in a public event in Saudi Arabia (the last is more "not prudent" than disturbing, as the practice of other religions is a very sensitive matter in SA).
• For those of us interested in "new media"'s effects on politics, this discussion between Bill O'Reilly and Jon Stewart on how Stewart's show affects politics. For a discussion involving O'Reilly, it's pretty reasoned and non-shouty. Stewart still seems a little dodgy about the effects of his program on culture, but less so than in some of his other interviews on the topic. Is Stewart in fact an element (albeit in an unexpected form) of Al Gore's hoped-for liberal news network?
• McCain has both angered ostrich Republicans and liberals by talking about his plan for pollution credits to fight global warming. He might get a similar reception if he talked about "corruption credits" or "murder credits" to deal with crime - some folk (particularly the corrupt) would refuse to accept that corruption or murder even exist, while others (like myself) believe that taking big strides against both of them is important even while we recognise that enforcing anything has an interplay with a lot of other values. Money, we hold, is at best a poor measure for the general public good, and comprimises involving the environment should instead be made by a more careful, managerial approach that attempts to directly measure the public good and weigh it against the environmental good. I hold that Cato's products on the value of happiness as measured by the market is wrong-headed.
• Ivan Kristíc thinks the OLPC Foundation is messed up both in their current direction and their past one - he criticises both Negroponte's intent to ship Windows (in what will eventually likely be a fairly stock version) on future versions of it and members of the Free Software community for caring so much that it be as open as possible. I agree with the former - shipping Windows on the OLPC is giving up on the goals of the device - being a better learning tool. However, I don't agree with his criticism that the OS is unimportant - connecting education to the open source movement is actually a good connection for learning - our community is in fact based around openness, and as open a software stack as possible leads to systems that are more possible to learn/modify on the deepest levels (it is easier to understand X11 or the Linux kernel than the Windows GDI layer or Windows kernel architecture). The abiliy to have local experts on various topics and levels should not rely on a Microsoft presence in the area, and the more decentralised the software model (Linux's being highly decentralised, at least beneath the "Sugar" UI on the OLPC), the more easily expertise is attainable. Unfortunately, Sugar is not in many people's hands outside of OLPC developers - that needs to change somehow. (speaking of which, I upgraded my OLPC to the latest "joyride" snapshot (very bleeding-edge branch of the OS), and it's much improved.
• Slavoj Žižek had a fantastic interview with Democracy Now on large-scale politics. He's one of my favourite modern-day philosophers, and brings up a number of issues with the modern left here, asking it to reinvent itself, rehabilitate taboo ideas, and make a break with the multiculturalist liberals. Of political philosophers and figures around today, I probably identify most strongly with his positions (I will not claim the same about his ideas on philosophical areas outside of social theory/political philosophy, some of which I am not even sure I understand).

A bit more on that front, how long should we expect movies, as-is, to keep existing? I suspect that the software to produce hollywood special effects will eventually be in everyone's hands, and that indie films will destroy Hollywood as an institution (perhaps Lars Von Trier's efforts will be seen as "culturally futuristic"-but-retro by then). With the right enabling technologies (Youtube, Apple, possibly Amazon will be the first generation companies in-the-centre of this), creativity and storytelling will presumably be the core of what films are about.

Slight update on the moving thing:

• I need a LOT of boxes. If anyone knows where I might acquire them, I would be appreciative. My packing is now blocked by not having nearly enough boxes to put things in.
• I sent out emails to several landlords - hopefully that part will come together soon.
• Stress and sadness are both strong in me right now. There are a fair number of people and places I'm going to miss. Not taking classes might also suck terribly.