Buenos Aires May 30, 2015
I am in South America.
I first imagined coming here when I was in high school. In Spanish class we had to write a couple paragraphs describing some place we’d like to visit. I don’t actually recall what I wrote, but in my memory, I wrote a great tale about riding motorcycles with the gauchos on the pampas in Argentina. To be honest, I may not have written that, and the assignment may have been in college, and there’s a possibility I’m conflating a couple different assignments. Worst case, I may have confused myself with Jorge Luis Borges whose early stories are about gauchos. At ant rate, I have fragments of memories about South America going back at least as far as my late teens. Moreover, during my journey through Mexico and Guatemala in 1987, I often imagined a future trip going further South. But most significantly, in 2007, experiencing a fleeting moment of unimaginable wealth, I made a firm commitment to South America. Having conquered Alaska and India, I planned an 8 month round trip to the Southern tip of civilization: Houston to Ushuaia. In fact, I announced this trip to friends and family; I even told the university that I was going to take a year off. But the fleeting moment passed, and then I was broke, destitute, living in the streets scrounging for grubs. Well, I suppose I was never as wealthy as I thought nor as broke as I felt, but there were some hard years there, financially and emotionally. Having lost my trip to South America, I became only more dedicated to the gauchos.
I am in South America.
I proclaim this as an accomplishment in itself. But now that I am here, what shall I do? As I have mentioned to some, in accord with my plans from 2007 my goal is to use this journey as an opportunity to express philosophical beliefs, and even though this trip is shorter and less ambitious than my original idea, the philosophical component has only grown in significance. Yes, I intend to write about the nature of existence. Motorcycling through South America blogging about metaphysics! Can one live a greater fantasy? Is there a higher calling for humanity? I shudder to consider the awesomeness.
As this day approached I’ve felt conflicted emotions. I’m not courageous, I’m not a great motorcyclist, and I’m not a very good philosopher. I know I live in a culture in which we are encouraged to assert confidence and overcome our inadequacies by denial, but as excited as I am, and as proud as I am of my appearance on this continent, I’m full of trepidation. I’m paranoid about getting kidnapped, I’m worried about driving off the side of a mountain, and I’m mildly concerned about rabies (thanks travel clinic), but all of these issues pale in comparison to my deepest, most legitimate fear, that I cannot successfully communicate the reality of existence. Put this way, it should be pretty obvious why I’m doomed to failure…
I don’t know many quotes, but here’s one of my favorites: Samuel Beckett: When you’re in the last ditch, there’s only one thing left, to sing. Sitting in my hotel, sipping wine, awaiting the arrival of a motorcycle, it’s not altogether obvious I have any ditches to sing from. On the other hand, I think Mr. Beckett would agree that we are never far from the last ditch, and it’s always time to sing.
Reality is disjointed; as will be this blog.
I have arrived in Buenos Aires on the 25th of May. This is Independence day in Argentina, and everyone is meeting at the Plaza de Mayo to celebrate. I knew none of this this morning, but because God watches out for me, by mid afternoon I was marching with socialists into the heart of the chaos. Waving flags, beating drums, grilling cows, Argentina comes together to commemorate independence from Spain, and to incite the next generation of revolutionaries. Without any very good reason, I fell into the complex current of bodies pressing against each other on the plaza. I became unnaturally close to a great many Argentinians. Fortunately, none of them bit me so I think have avoided rabies for today. Moreover, no one made a sucesful effort to kidnap me nor even to steal my decoy wallet full of fake credit cards; I was slightly disappointed. An ancient woman wearing a beret attempted to engage me in conversation about the illusion of time, or perhaps she was asking me to get off her foot; I could not hear her over the drumming. And then she vanished. Kidnapped?
Having fulfilled my daily quota of experience, I wriggled out of the plaza and wandered the streets until I found a restaurant with a bull in front of it. I asked the waiter for a recommendation. I think he suggested a cow; I nodded assent. I received a massive steak served under thinly sliced ham and a fried egg. It was good.
On my return to the hotel I made an illegal cash exchange on the street. The official rate is artificially low. It fosters a thriving black market; the money changers line the tourist regions, chanting their mantra, "Cambio, cambio." Thrilled by the excitement of illicit trade, and armed with my first handful of Argentinian pesos, I visited a smallish food museum. The displays were not impressive, an unattractive array of cookies, chips and sodas, made all the less appealing by the cow I had just eaten. I admit to a certain fascination with the large bags of mayonnaise, though I was not tempted to purchase. I left with a single bottle of Malbec, a local variety of wine. I drank it quietly on the rooftop patio of my hotel, contemplating the tasks before me.
Task #1 Act, do something! Assert my existence on this continent. Throw myself into the chaos of a new city. Dent the fabric of Buenos Aires.
So I rent a bicycle made out of bamboo. I plunge headlong into the traffic. I remind myself: People do not desire to hit you with their cars. The trick is to ride assertively and decisively. Cars will give you space if they know where you’re going and you go there with authority. Except when they don’t, or when they’re buses, or trucks. Perhaps I didn't need to start at the port. I am surrounded by massive trucks; they shake the Earth like forces of nature. When they turn in front of you reality changes immediately.
It was a splendid day. I could have ridden with a tour, but I am not an idiot. If you don’t get lost you never learn anything. I didn’t bring a map and a compass for nothing. Moreover, I sincerely doubt the tours visited the highlights of my own personal tour, like the cement block village hidden along the port, or the muddy field I crossed to get off the highway (I’m still not sure how I got on the highway). Motorcycles are great, but to explore a city, the bicycle is best. You can ride on the street, on the sidewalk, through the parks, across the plazas, and right through the middle of the train station. You can ignore the traffic lights, and you can stop anywhere you want and pull out a map.
Buenos Aires is a bit like San Francisco without hills. There are plenty of people on the streets and they move with purpose, but they are not harried. There is no crush of humanity like you find in New York. The city feels remarkably sane and livable. The narrow streets in the center are charming; the architecture is diverse and attractive. Crisscrossing the neighborhoods, the wide avenues are dotted with monuments and extraordinary trees. It’s really a very nice city. Of course, there is a suburban wasteland extending miles from the center, but I’m pretty sure no humans ever go there, and it's probably overrun with rabid bats.
Full disclosure, there are actually bicycle lanes all over the city, and there's even a free map detailing where they are supposed to be. Of course, they're not always where they're supposed to be, and painting lines on the street with a picture of a bicycle between them doesn’t really keep the cars out of your space, much less the motorcycles, the pedestrians or the construction crews. And perhaps most importantly, you have to have a certain talent for staying on the beaten path to use the bike lanes. This is not my greatest strength.
Before long I'm wandering in uncharted terrain, venturing in the footsteps of the conquistadores. Will I find cities of gold, lost civilizations, or maybe a pleasant cafe? And then it started to rain, and I realized the hardships adventurers must endure. The temperature dropped quickly, and I retreated back to civilization. I arrived at the hotel soaked, shivering, filthy and triumphant. I sent my clothes to the laundry, bought a couple empanadas and a liter of Quilmes, and lay in bed thinking grand thoughts.
What if existence has no intrinsic structure? What if there’s nothing there? What if it’s not made of legos? What if it’s not made of atoms, or quarks, or strings? What if It’s not made of ideas in the mind of God nor even in the minds of men? What if existence just isn’t built out of anything at all?
Some questions are so awkward it’s hard to know how to ask them. Sometimes they expose assumptions that organize our thought, assumptions so deep we cannot normally recognize them as assumptions. This is one of the roles of philosophy: to bring to consciousness that which we take for granted. To my mind, this is the most important role of the branch of philosophy known as metaphysics. Traditionally, metaphysics answers questions about what’s really real, but these days metaphysics has a bad name for at least four reasons:
1. In popular culture, “metaphysics" is often associated with the occult: crystals, numerology and taxidermy. (Well, taxidermy is a little different, but it is kind of weird.) I blame the bookstores for the popular abuse of the term “metaphysics;" they needed a label to cover a wide array of nonsense so they stole “metaphysics.”
2. Going back to the origins of Western philosophy, even before Socrates, metaphysics was central, but twentieth century philosophers learned better. Twentieth century philosophers have been embarrassed by the unjustified speculation that has led philosophers to assert so many outlandish and contradictory claims. Twentieth century philosophers wanted to situate philosophy more modestly as an adjunct to the sciences, offering clarification and formalization.
3. Many of these same twentieth century philosophers have argued that the human situation makes it impossible to know the nature of existence in itself, thus undermining the very goal of metaphysics. In general, these arguments are variations on the Kantian insight that we cannot experience the world as it is in itself, but only as it is given to us by our senses and conceptual categories. Normally we perceive objects as as having color and shape, extending in three spacial dimensions. But are color and three dimensionality intrinsic aspects of the objects we perceive? Our best current science gives us reason to be at least a little hesitant about such claims, but more importantly, no accumulation of observation or speculation can ever give us a definitive answer to questions about how things are in themselves unperceived. We cannot get outside of our own perceptual and conceptual prisons.
4. A more recent trend in twenty-first century analytic philosophy reasserts the value of metaphysics, but recasts it in the form of complex puzzles. Do numbers exist? What about holes or Sherlock Holmes exist, how many works of art are constituted by a collection of short stories, and whether unconceived children want to be born. Within philosophy itself there is the uneasy sense that the whole endeavor may have gone off the rails.
Against this backdrop of dubiousness I shall try to tell a meaningful story about the nature of existence; a story made only more difficult because a major premise is that existence has no intrinsic nature. It is a world without structure.
Wednesday I did nothing. Nothing makes me feel worse than doing nothing. To be fair, I’m deeply enamored of nothing, in particular, the sacred nothingness that lies behind the veil of existence, THE NOTHING, the one that nots, the nothing that fills the reflective psyche with dread and anxiety, I fear and admire that nothing. But that’s at best a tangential nothing to the one I worry about today, the nothing of inactivity... Excuse me, I am saying nothing.
I am not this kind of philosopher. Sometimes I enjoy the poetry of mucking about in meaning. It's art, it has value, it's amusing, it goes places analytic thought can't broach. However, it is my goal to express myself clearly and unambiguously.
Wednesday I did nothing. I tried to make my website work. I tried to contact people who are supposed to help with the motorcycle. I tried to create a mental image of a round square. I went for a walk, and tried to get kidnapped. I tried again, and again, and again to make my website work. I bought postcards; it cost $10 for 12 postcards and $35 to mail them! I tried again to make my website work. I ate a cow; it cost less than the postcards. I took a shower, and then I put it back.
I can’t have another Wednesday so on Thursday I rented another bike. This time I got a real bike. Don’t harass me about reality; it was “real" because it wasn’t made of bamboo. Geez, “real” means different things in different contexts, is that so hard to understand?
I liked the bamboo bike, but I kind of felt like I abused it; I wanted something more functional and less unique.
Thursday’s ride was thoroughly pleasant. The weather was perfect, the traffic was friendly, and I only went over the handlebars one time. It was as about as easy a day of riding in a foreign capitol as one might imagine. The great excitement of the afternoon was my first encounter with wild guinea pigs in the Parque Ecologico. It’s a rather sad little nature preserve along the coast, a stone's throw from the city center. There’s almost nothing there except tall grass, bushy trees, and wild guinea pigs. New animals are always intriguing, even little rat-like things without necks. They sit along the edge of the bike path, quiet and apparently harmless, but then I realized they're probably rabid. Horrid little furry brown death pigs!
As the internet informs me, the animals I saw are cavia, they are species from which guinea pigs were domesticated by the Indians over 2000 years ago. Something I already knew is that guinea pig is quite popular in Bolivia and Peru, and I'm looking forward to eating them.
Friday was a Wednesday, only less satisfying.
On Saturday I went in pursuit of the childhood home of Jorge Luis Borges. It's located in an infinitely complex neighborhood, situated outside of time, bustling with gauchos and librarians. Appropriately enough, I never found it.
Nonetheless, around the corner from where it wasn’t, I stumbled across a very fine food museum. Brightly lit and clean, the displays were orderly and well-stocked. Unfortunately, there was little of interest, most of the products were American brands in slightly awkward labels. It was kind of like an art museum stocked with drawings by your untalented friends. Truly, I can’t quite figure out why the packaging seems so wrong. Are the colors and odd gradients truly wrong, or merely unfamiliar? Most disappointing is that there are so few unfamiliar items. The produce section contained nothing of note, the cheese section was a huge disappointment, and even the canned meat section was little more than tuna. I did pick up a package of dulce de batata; it's basically bland marmalade made from potatoes.
Of course there was one remarkable sight: I stood in awe of a 12 foot section of bagged mayonnaise. True enough, the shelves were only 18 inches deep, but this was three full four foot runs of mayo in bags. I’m not even exaggerating. I’m sorry I didn’t get a picture. I can only speculate, but I imagine they use mayonnaise differently in Argentina than in other parts of the world. Maybe it's a remedy for rabies?
Finally, my first injury: In the checkout at the food museum, the woman in front of me knocked over a bottle of wine. It broke at my feet. I tried to help her pick up the broken glass, and cut my finger. It bled everywhere. No doubt the sharpness of this bit of glass is attributable to the peculiar physics of the Southern Hemisphere. It's one of those things, like the fact that you have to wear your gloves on the opposite hand. Of course, you can't tell because your arms are on the opposite sides of your body. My finger is recovering.
Buenos Aires Mas June 2, 2015
According to my map, La Biblioteca Nacional is located at Calle Agüero 2502.
I have gone there twice, and on both occasions I saw it. I fully expect that it has been there for many years, and it, or its ruins, will be there for many more. I’m confident that were I to go there today, I would see it again. You can find pictures of it on the internet posted by other people who report similar experiences to my own. This regularity of appearance, this shared experience of reality, surely this is as clear a demonstration of the intrinsic structure of reality as one could want. If reality has no intrinsic structure there could be no useful maps, no shared experience, no predictability, no libraries. There would be merely nothing.
It looks rather silly to claim that the world lacks structure.
Sunday. The weather is perfect; the traffic is sleepy; the bicycle calls to me again. This is my third day of riding. I ride everywhere. I find a flea market. There must be hundreds of stalls, but I try to see them all. I get a hotdog, sort of. I’m amazed at how relaxed everyone is. There are lots of people, but no one is in a hurry. There’s virtually no music, and nothing loud at all. No one tries to sell you anything. It’s low key and very civilized. My next stop is a different park a few blocks away. There’s easily a couple thousand people here. They stand and sit, on benches, on the grass, on blankets, alone and in small groups. They talk, they play with their kids, they hold hands. There’s old men and children, families and couples and teenagers and twenty somethings all together enjoying the afternnon. It’s so peculiar. And then I realize the problem: Where are the cell phones!? Someone has stolen all their cell phones! It’s so sad, an entire community bereft of technology. It’s like some crazy, nightmarish park scene out of a 19th century painting.
My punchlines have a certain predictability. I’ve grown up in a culture with a deep mistrust of sincerity.
Sincerely, I was impressed. I could spend a thousand years in that park and I would never be kidnapped. Perhaps Buenos Aires is not so dangerous. For not only are the people perfectly pleasant, but even the traffic is pretty tame. Sure, rush hour on the avenues is a dog fight, and the trucks near the port are trucks, but much of what I've seen is easy driving. Most significantly, almost everyone follows the rules. The cars normally drive in their lanes, and they stop at the lights, but not only do they stop at the lights, they stop in front of the lines painted in the street some 25 feet in front of the intersection. Clearly this is not India or Mexico City or Rome or even London. Even the motorcyclists are reasonably well-behaved. In fact, it occurs to me that the bicyclists are the worst outlaws; there’s not a lot of us, but we ignore traffic rules with impunity. Or is it just me? Horrible thought, what if I am the most dangerous person in Buenos Aires, coasting through intersections against the red light, flaunting traffic conventions. Bandido on a bicycle.
A bit full of myself, and quite full of the hotdog sort of thing I had eaten, I rode on, following the yellow lines through the idyllic afternoon. It took me awhile to realize that things began to change; the quiet, tree-lined streets with colorful houses got dustier, and the colors began to fade. And then there were no trees. By the time the sun was about to dip below the buildings I had lost the yellow lines, and finally I had found a part of the city in which I should not be, and lo and behold I wished I was not there. There was no traffic. There were young men drinking on the street corners. They stared as I passed. Someone shouted something. My heart raced. I rode faster. And then out of the corner of my eye, I saw it, a sign, hand scrawled on a piece of plywood “kidnapper’s hideout.” Well, actually, it was in Spanish, and I didn’t get a close look, but I’m pretty certain that’s what it said. I turned around and pedaled fast as I could, back towards the safety of my yellow lines. I knew they lie north in the direction of the dwindling sun. I tried to calm my breathing. This is so stupid, I thought.
It really was stupid; I’ve ridden through more dangerous areas around University of Houston. If I had any courage, I’d ride up to those young men, engage them in conversation about Evita, cows, and magical realism, share their cheap wine, and take a selfie. AIas, I am not that person.
I am not the most dangerous person in Buenos Aires nor the most courageous. I don’t even have the largest beard. Surprisingly, I’ve seen quite a few men here with long hair and beards. I don’t know what’s wrong with them; they look so stupid. They need hats.
By dark I was again on familiar terrain in the city center. I put on my fluorescent vest and rode up and down the narrow streets until my legs hurt. Then I stopped at a steak house and ordered a salad.
Is Buenos Aires a breeding ground of rabid kidnappers? Is Buenos Aires an oasis of social stability, girded by centuries of gaucho values? It's neither of these things. They are both mistaken. Are there true sentences which uniquely capture the character of the city, the people, the reality of Buenos Aires?
Philosophy is full of opposing isms. Rationalism and empiricism. Dualism and physicalism. Realism and relativism. Moreover, each pairing has been interpreted with different nuances by different philosophers. It’s easy to make fun of the proliferation of competing views, but they serve an important function. Philosophical understanding rarely comes from identifying the unique correct description of a phenomenon; to the extent it comes at all, philosophical understanding emerges through stalking an issue from multiple angles. Surrounding it, and wrestling with it, between the prongs of various perspectives. Most philosophical understanding is not like KNOWING that 2+2=4 nor understanding the formulae that describe the transformation of water into steam. Philosophical issues are in general, too slippery, too complex and too amorphous to be corralled into declarative sentences.
Competing isms do much of the large scale work of framing philosophical understanding.
I want to emphasize what I take to be a relatively under-appreciated opposition of perspectives, that between the view that all of reality is determinate and the view that not all of reality is determinate.
This blog is titled World Without Structure so not surprisingly, I'm going to be making the case that existence is not fully determinate. In fact, in certain moods I will suggest that existence is utterly without structure at all. But I recognize that no such claim is literally completely ultimately correct. As I've just pointed out, that's not even how philosophy works. But here's the thing: In Western philosophy, in particular contemporary analytic philosophy, there is such a deep assumption that existence must be fully determinate, that the alternative perspective isn't even on the table. It's not discussed; it's not even considered. That's what i want to try to do, to create the conceptual space to take seriously the idea that existence is not fully structured in itself. In the end, I won't ask you to believe this, but I'll ask what is possibly even harder, that you see that this claim is not in contradiction with the claim that existence is in fact fully structured.
Today comes the motorcycle.