Brian's Friends

Last night I attended my fifth concert in the span of a month. That is about five more than a normal month for me, and possibly 4 more than my previous record.

Weird Al: I hadn't seen him since the late 90s, I don't think. He always gives a great show, but this was the Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour where he only did his original songs. It seemed like something I should go see, and I wasn't disappointed. I had been eager to see what song he selected just for Seattle, as he had been covering a different straight rock song at every show. For us he did Foxy Laaaahdy by the Jerry Hendrix experience. (Foxy Lady but lady is said in a Jerry Lewis style every time. We were one of the few times he didn't do a straight cover.) There is a collection on YouTube of all the 77 different songs he did which is worth exploring. It's quite the range of material!

Bare Naked Ladies: First time seeing them. Also first time seeing Better Than Ezra, who opened for them, and are complete douches. Also, it rained and the show had to be paused because of lightning for a bit. (Outdoor show, btw.) But BNL were great, and it was clear they have a great relationship with their fans. It would be easy to wonder why they're still around, but they obviously have a very comfortable niche worked out.

Janelle Monae: Stunningly great, and the audience atmosphere was just electric. It was the beginning of her tour, with her new explicitly bisexual material, during Pride month, in the Seattle area. The crowd was suuuuuuper queer, and it was awesome.

Special bonus baseball game: I finally went to a Mariner's game. My first MLB game and my first baseball game at all in like 25 years. It was fun enough, but we were in the direct sun for 2+ hours, and that kind of sucked.

Violent Femmes: My third time seeing them, once being just last year. But I'd never done one of the Woodland Park Zoo concerts, and it sounded fun. And it was! Despite being a family-heavy event, they didn't adjust their set list any to accommodate that. Kind of weird seeing families dancing with little kids to some of the songs. One of those weird moments where my internal image of myself is still mid-20s, being confused that all these middle aged people are into the Femmes. They did a lot of material from Hallowed Ground, so that was cool. And even something from New Times!

Decemberists: My third time seeing them, though one of those was a joint show with Death Cab, fundraising for Planned Parenthood. This show was mostly material off their new album, which worked really well live. They've been playing with some trippy 80s synth stylings which are a lot of fun. The encore completely blew me away. First it was the super profane Ben Frankling song that Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote for Hamilton, intending it to have a Decemberists vibe, but ended up cutting. And then an extended Mariner's Revenge Song, with the audience first practicing how to scream like we were being eaten by a whale. (I couldn't help adding "OH NO IT SMELLS OF KRILL" and "THAT UVULA IS COMICALLY LARGE" to my screams, but it was too loud for even the people next to me to hear.) Then as the song progressed, the band got more and more goofy, ending with the wonderful wall of noise for the whale attack, ending with them all rolling on the stage playing their instruments as best as possible, with more trippy synth backing. And then A GIANT INFLATABLE FLOATING WHALE came out of backstage and was passed to the audience like a lost Thanksgivings day parade balloon. I was laughing too hard to keep screaming. Just wonderful all around.

I almost didn't read this, having been very underwhelmed by Popper's Logic of Scientific Discovery. However, the "paradox of tolerance" is coming up so much these days I figured I should really go direct to the source. And I'm extremely glad I did! This is a phenomenal book that had me nodding and taking notes all the way through it. (I almost never take notes!) One of those rare texts that I can feel rewiring my brain as I read it, leaving a lasting change in how I see the world.

Volume 1 is a glorious, extended attack on Plato. It put into words a lot that I had been feeling on the subject but never been quite able to vocalize before. Rather or not he is correct about how he splits the views of Socrates from those of Plato is unknowable and actually rather irrelevant. The important part is how Plato has been interpreted over history, and there he is definitely spot on. If you've ever read The Republic and been fascinated but still spluttering objections several times a page, you should at least read volume 1 here.

Volume 2 extends this thinking to Hegel and Marx, and the dangerous of grand, sweeping theories of historical forces. I haven't read any Hegel, so it's hard for me to judge how fair he is being there. I thought his analysis of Marx's Capital was spot on, though, and a refreshingly fair assessment of that book's strengths and weaknesses. I definitely like his formulation of how believing in any form of historical destiny inevitably leads to terrible outcomes. This volume also starts by taking Aristotle to task, and I'll never tire of that. "They show not trace of the tragic and stirring conflict that is the motive of Plato's work. Instead of Plato's flashes of penetrating insight, we find dry systematization and the love, shared by so many mediocre writers of later times, for settling any question whatever by issuing a 'sound and balanced judgement' that does justice to everybody; which means, at times, by elaborately and solemnly missing the point." This volume ends with one of my favorite sections from the entire book, arguing against the fundamental reality of any history, short of a complete chronicle of literally every human who has ever lived. This includes examining what it says that we still see the history of empires and oppression as the default, most important kind of history to be taught. I posted extended chunks of text to Twitter yesterday while reading it, and I could have posted a lot more. He doesn't phrase it in these terms, being written in 1945 outside of Paris, but he takes a deeply existentialist view of the meaningless of history, and how we need to find comfort in creating our own meaning, instead of having it thrust upon us by those who see meaning only in the conflict of countries or races or classes.

Overall, it is a powerful defense of incremental improvements to society, as compared to revolutionary changes. "The political artist clamors, like Archimedes, for a place outside the social world on which he can take his stand, in order to lever it off it hinges. But such a place does not exist; and the social world must continue to function during any reconstruction. This is the simple reason why we must reform institutions little by little, until we have more experience in social engineering." It also lays out a very good guideline for when a violent revolution should be considered: "In other words, the use of violence is justified only under a tyranny which makes reforms without violence impossible, and it should have only one aim, that is, to bring about a state of affairs which makes reforms without violence possible."

It's interesting that everyone points to this book as the source of the "paradox of tolerance". He does talk about it here and there, but it definitely isn't a focus, and he writes about it as an existing concept. This book is above all else a passionate -- yet very well reasoned and argued -- love letter to democracy. He makes a strong case that not only is it the best form of government we've discovered, but that anything better would still have to be democratic in nature, as it is only through those feedback loops that centralized power can be contained.