Friendship & Politics: 15th Annual Conference at the Hannah Arendt Center, Bard College

Two of my favorite subjects in life and in philosophy are Friendship and Politics. 

So I was delighted to attend the 15th Annual Conference at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College. This year’s title was: 

Friendship & Politics.

Roger Berkowitz

The opening talk was by Roger Berkowitz, director of the Hannah Arendt Center. He talked about Arendt's view of friendship as the center of a good life and critical to functioning politics.  

Esther Perel

There were so many good discussions, all in person and available on Zoom.  The one that most filled Olin Hall was on Friday morning.  Psychotherapist, international best-selling author and popular TED talk presenter Esther Perel discussed the Power of Friendship with psychologist and professor Marisa Franco, also a best-selling author and popular TED talk presenter.  Several groups of students filed in just before the Perel and Franco spoke.  

Marisa Franco

Franco talked about her recent book Platonic. She talked about the importance of friendship then Esther Perel asked the audience questions about their relationships and the importance of friendship in their lives.  

Niobe Way

Niobe Way made another high-energy presentation about her work on the crisis of connection in modern life and the crisis of masculinity.  She Professor of Developmental Psychology and the founder of the Project for the Advancement of Our Common Humanity at New York University. 

Earlier this year I attended the Summer Social at the Hannah Arendt Center. 

I went to two of the several breakout sessions.  More about those in the next post. 

In 1997, the Italian novelist Umberto Eco wrote an essay titled "Ur-Fascism" describing the 14 characteristics of fascism. His little book How to Spot a Fascist was published in 2011 in English. The "Ur-Fascism" essay is the first of three in the slim volume. I read it last month as many countries around the world flirt with electing fascist dictators.  

In the essay, Eco is clear that while Nazis are fascists, not all fascists are Nazis.  The Nazi regime had a clear, horrible, ideology. Fascists can have an ideology, but they can also change ideologies as needed. Mussolini did not persecute Jews until his Nazi allies became his overlords.  Then he deported Italian Jews to death camps.

Eco was born in fascist Italy under the rule of Mussolini in 1932 living most of his childhood in a nation at war, then in a defeated nation after the war. He saw fascism in triumph and utter defeat.

Reading Eco's list, it will be very easy to see Vladimir Putin, Victor Orban, and Erdogan of Turkey. It is just as easy to see Donald Trump, but only as a wannabe. Trump is a coward. His cowardice saved America in 2021 when any would-be dictator with a pair of balls would have walked to the Capital with his mob and taken over on the spot. 

Trump allowed himself to be led back to his TV and snacks.   If he gets in power again, we may not be so lucky. His rage for revenge may overpower his cowardice. 

The 14 Characteristics of Fascism:

1. The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.” 

2. The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.” 

3. The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.” 

4. Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.” 

5. Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.” 

6. Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.” 

7. The obsession with a plot. “Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.” 

8. The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.” 

9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.” 

10. Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.” 

11. Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.” 

12. Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.” 

13. Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.” 

14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”

Yom Kippur War, 50th Anniversary, Remembering the Carnage of Armor

A Syrian Tank in the Golan, 1973

On 2pm on October 6, 1973, near the end of the Yom Kippur fast by Jews, Egypt and Syria, backed by auxilliary soldiers from many Arab nations, attacked Israel.  It was a surprise attack with devastating Israeli losses of 2,521 killed and more than 8,000 wounded.  

This week I learned that in addition to the soldiers from Arab countries who went to Egypt and Syria to fight, Cuba sent 500 tank commanders to the Syrian Army. These tank commanders led crews that fought in The Valley of Tears near Mount Bental in the Golan Heights between Israel and Syria.  

In the battle, 160 Israeli tanks stopped the advance of 1,500 Syrian  tanks. The Syrian tanks had to funnel through a narrow valley. At the end of the battle 153 of the Israeli tanks were damaged or destroyed. Nearly all the Israeli casualties in the battle were tank crewmen. Only seven Israeli tanks survived the fight. 

The Syrians lost more than 600 tanks with many more damaged. Thousands of armor crewmen in these Soviet-built tanks were killed and wounded. Of the Cuban tank commanders, 188 were killed, 250 were wounded. Just 62 went back to Cuba uninjured after the war. 

In June of 1975, I re-enlisted in the Army and went to Fort Knox, Kentucky, for Armor School.  The 1973 Yom Kippur War informed a lot of what we learned about tank tactics and about the short, violent life of tank crews in war. For instance, we were given the breakdown of casualties among Israeli tank crewman in the Yom Kippur War. 

Tank Commander 60%

Gunner 25% 

Loader 10%

Driver 5%

Tank commanders, according to the reports, "suffered fatal head injuries and hideous face and neck wounds." They had their hatch open and heads out to see the fight. Which helps to explain why almost 90% of the Cubans were killed or injured fighting on the losing side of one of the biggest tank battles in history. 

Within three days, the Israel Defense Force rallied and launched counter attacks against the invading armies.  By October 25, the IDF was shelling Damascus and was less than 60 miles from Cairo. 

In 19 days there was a cease fire and the war ended.  From the Sinai desert where the Egyptian Army invaded and retreated, to the Golan Heights where the Syrian columns began their invasion, the border areas of Israel were littered with the wreckage of tanks.   

Ig Nobel Prizes 2023

The 2023 Ig Nobel Prize Winners The 2023 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded on September 14. Video and details of the ceremony are at improbable.com/ig/2023-ceremony 

I wrote about the ceremony and emcee Marc Abrahams in 2018: 

https://armynow.blogspot.com/2018/10/marc-abrahams-turned-strange-science.html

Here are the new winners. Details here:  improbable.com/ig/winners/#ig2023 

I recently met a physicist on a train in Germany who had a photo from an Ig Nobel Prize winner on his phone:

https://armynow.blogspot.com/2023/08/ig-nobel-moment-on-german-train.html

CHEMISTRY and GEOLOGY PRIZE [POLAND, UK] Jan Zalasiewicz, for explaining why many scientists like to lick rocks. 

LITERATURE PRIZE [FRANCE, UK, MALAYSIA, FINLAND] Chris Moulin, Nicole Bell, Merita Turunen, Arina Baharin, and Akira O’Connor for studying the sensations people feel when they repeat a single word many, many, many, many, many, many, many times. 

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING PRIZE [INDIA, CHINA, MALAYSIA, USA] Te Faye Yap, Zhen Liu, Anoop Rajappan, Trevor Shimokusu, and Daniel Preston, for re-animating dead spiders to use as mechanical gripping tools. 

PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE [SOUTH KOREA, USA] Seung-min Park, for inventing the Stanford Toilet, a device that uses a variety of technologies — including a urinalysis dipstick test strip, a computer vision system for defecation analysis, an anal-print sensor paired with an identification camera, and a telecommunications link — to monitor and quickly analyze the substances that humans excrete.  

COMMUNICATION PRIZE [ARGENTINA, SPAIN, COLOMBIA, CHILE, CHINA, USA] María José Torres-Prioris, Diana López-Barroso, Estela Càmara, Sol Fittipaldi, Lucas Sedeño, Agustín Ibáñez, Marcelo Berthier, and Adolfo García, for studying the mental activities of people who are expert at speaking backward. 

MEDICINE PRIZE [USA, CANADA, MACEDONIA, IRAN, VIETNAM] Christine Pham, Bobak Hedayati, Kiana Hashemi, Ella Csuka, Tiana Mamaghani, Margit Juhasz, Jamie Wikenheiser, and Natasha Mesinkovska, for using cadavers to explore whether there is an equal number of hairs in each of a person's two nostrils. 

NUTRITION PRIZE [JAPAN] Homei Miyashita and Hiromi Nakamura, for experiments to determine how electrified chopsticks and drinking straws can change the taste of food. 

EDUCATION PRIZE [CHINA, CANADA, UK, HONG KONG, THE NETHERLANDS, IRELAND, USA, JAPAN] Katy Tam, Cyanea Poon, Victoria Hui, Wijnand van Tilburg, Christy Wong, Vivian Kwong, Gigi Yuen, and Christian Chan, for methodically studying the boredom of teachers and students. 

PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE [USA] Stanley Milgram, Leonard Bickman, and Lawrence Berkowitz for experiments on a city street to see how many passersby stop to look upward when they see strangers looking upward 

PHYSICS PRIZE [SPAIN, GALICIA, SWITZERLAND, FRANCE, UK] Bieito Fernández Castro, Marian Peña, Enrique Nogueira, Miguel Gilcoto, Esperanza Broullón, Antonio Comesaña, Damien Bouffard, Alberto C. Naveira Garabato, and Beatriz Mouriño-Carballido, for measuring the extent to which ocean-water mixing is affected by the sexual activity of anchovies.

 

Post COVID, Laundromats are Lonely Places

In three of the seven countries I visited on this trip, I went to a laundromat. When you travel with just a backpack, clean clothes run out fast.  In Vienna, Paris and Brussels I washed my clothes, in each case wearing the last clean shorts and t-shirt I had left.

Earlier this year, in Zurich, I got help with getting change for a laudromat.  But since the COVID pandemic, I don't talk to fellow travelers in laudromats anymore. The laundromats are empty.  We go to nearby coffee shops or parks while the clothes are washing and drying.  The delightful conversations I have had in laundromats in Paris with tourists from from Australia, and three sisters from America are a thing of the past.  And the amazing conversations I had in a Jerusalem laundromat will not be duplicated.    

But laundromats are still far cheaper than baggage fees or dragging a big suitcase, so I will still be searching "laundromat" on Google wherever I go.

 

Eurail Pass App--So Much Better and Cheaper than Tickets

When I wrote about airlines, good and bad, my conclusion was: choose the airline with the best app, because data matters.  This year I bought a Eurail pass rather than individual tickets partly based on great reviews of the app.  My experience was better than my best expectations. 

I bought a seven-day pass in one month. It allowed me to pick any seven travel days in a thirty-day period and travel as much as I want on those days.  I could book the tickets in advance or just take the next train as I arrived in the station. I did both. 

The advance ticket was for the last travel day. I took the Eurostar from Brussels to London.  It required a reserved seat which I bought through the app two weeks in advance.  Many trains require buying seat reservations and on the most popular trains the seats can only be reserved on line well in advance.  

But in major stations you can buy a seat any time up to departure in their ticket offices. I had to do this with several tickets.  But in person the reservations are often cheaper than on line.  

When buying tickets from on line apps, the prices rise cheap to pricey to crazy as the departure approaches.  The Eurail app allows last-minute changes with no penalty.  Any train in the network (most trains) are included in the price of the pass.  I have seen Eurostar tickets costing nearly $300.  Mine cost $51--one seventh of the $358 cost of my Eurail pass.  

One of my travel days was from Vienna to Geneva--11 hours on two trains. The prices on Omio range from $227 to $304. With the Eurail pass, it was $51 plus a $12 seat reservation. My trip from Amsterdam on the four-hour express train would be $180. The 6.5-hour slower train $94. I took an unreserved fast train. 

When I was in Grenoble, I could not book a seat reservation for Paris. Grenoble did not have a ticket office. So I took an unreserved train to Lyon, then got a seat reservation to Paris for $20. 

When I left Paris for Caen in Normandy, I could not book the seat reservations on line. I went to Gare Montparnasse and made the reservations in Person using the SNCF on line system in the station. The seat reservations were $2 each way. 

The seven days of rail travel:

August 26: Amsterdam to Frankfurt

August 29: Darmstadt to Vienna

August 31: Vienna to Geneva

(September 1, bought a $20 local train ticket from Geneva to Grenoble to avoid using a travel day.)

September 3: Grenoble to Paris (through Lyon)

September 8: Paris to Caen

September 9: Caen to Brussels (through Paris)

September 13: Brussels to London

Musee de l'Armee in Paris: A Vast Museum of French Military History

On this trip to Paris, I visited the Musee de l'Armee or the Army Museum. With more than 500,000 artifacts in 12,000 square meters (3 acres) of space, I walked a couple of miles seeing nearly a millennium of French military history.  The museum is located in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower on the south bank of the Seine River in the Invalides area of Paris.  
 

The featured exhibit currently is about the the French Resistance and about the Deportation of Jews to death camps. More than 250,000 Jews were sent east, mostly to die under Nazi occupation.  

The collection also includes suits of armor from Medieval France. 

Weapons and uniforms from the Napoleonic era up through World War II