Book Review: Michael Gelb, Body Learning: An Introduction To The Alexander Technique

This book (its German edition) was given to me by my Alexander teacher when I asked her for a recommendation.

I like it. It is well-structured: 

1. basic terms, 
2. a in my opinion honest and enthusiastic exposition of the possibilities this technique has to offer (spoiler: it's not only about posture), 
3. exemplary, in my opinion sometimes pessimistic, exposition of the possibilites this technique has to offer when teached in schools, and 
4. a tentative list of suggestions for self-experimentation without teacher.

I am not sure if I would have understood the d) part as I do now after some Alexander lessons. I think lessons are some kind of shortcut to the experiences Alexander has to offer.

Mindblowing for me was how close related Alexander-Technique and John Dewey's philosophy are. I am still sorting this out.

Book Review: Stefan Klein, Alles Zufall (German)

Ein gutes Sachbuch: angenehm, ja unterhaltsam zu lesen. Der Autor schreibt in Geschichten und vermag mich manchmal zu berühren.

Die Geschichten, woran ich mich erinnern werde:

Die Liebeserklärung an die Libelle in Kapitel 6, ein wunderschöner Organismus für ein Leben im Fliegen, gefolgt von dem Hinweis, dass die Fliegen (und damit auch die Mücken) evolutionsbiologisch aus etwas der Libelle Ähnlichem entstanden sind. "Nur weil die Evolution zufällig verläuft, war dies möglich." Was meine Vorstellung über die Position des Menschen in der Evolution verändert hat.

Die Charakterisierung des Mathematikers John von Neumann in Kapitel 8 als jemand, der eigennütziges Denken als Naturgesetz betrachtete. Die ganze Spieltheorie wirkt auf mich wie eine Theorie des Kampfes jeder gegen jeden.

J.v.Neumann war dann auch derjenige, der die Städte ausgewählt hat, auf die die ersten Atombomben abgeworfen wurden, und die Aufrüstung Amerikas mit Atomraketen empfahl. Er diente als Vorbild für "Dr. Seltsam oder wie ich lernte die Bombe zu lieben".

Das Layout, die Anmerkungen und das Literaturverzeichnis, alles sehr schön aufgemacht und gefällt. 

Als Mathematiker und potenzieller Glücksspieler muss ich aber doch am Gesamtkonzept herumnörgeln und will nur 4 von 5 Sternen geben. Die sehr kurzen Ausführungen zur Entropie in Kapitel 3 reichen mir nicht aus. Hier wäre auch eine gute Geschichte möglich gewesen, angefangen von Laplaces Prinzip der Indifferenz hin zum Prinzip der maximalen Entropie. Die wichtige Gleichgewichtsvoraussetzung des Prinzips der maximalen Entropie fehlt, und damit machen die ganzen Ausführungen zum Leben recht wenig Sinn für mich. 

Man merkt, dass der Autor sich in seinem akademischen Leben mit Hirnforschung befasst hat und seine vorhergehenden Sachbuchpublikationen u.a. Fragen der Evolution behandelten.

Book Review: L.A. Paul, Transformative Experience

There are decisions that we cannot make through reason. These are, for example, decisions that change us in such a way that we cannot imagine the situation after the decision. Should I have a child? Should I join the church? Or, to quote an example from a book I recently finished: Should I accept the inheritance or not? L.A. Paul speaks of transformative experiences and sheds light on the problems that a rational, reason-based approach entails:

1. Is the information available on the consequences of the decision applicable to me?
2. Problems of merging information: "There might be a mistake in trying to reduce the richness and quality and character of human experience to numbers".
3. Diachronic decision-making: "Which self matters: the self making the decision, or the self that would result?"

It's about the value of first-hand experience. There is a difference between getting explained what "red" is and seeing red. It is worth pursuing this value of self-made experiences and not relying or not relying solely on the views of others. "There's a role for first-person experience for evaluating quality of life".

The book by L.A. Paul is for me an example where reason shows limits to reason. "I want us to recognize what we can do and what we can't do. What we can know, and what we can't know. Not set ourselves impossible tasks. So, take a stance involving epistemic humility; and then, from that stance, look at what kinds of decision models we might be able to build". I like that. Other examples for me are Karl Popper on truth and Noam Chomsky on the limits of knowledge that follow from language.

Actually, I didn't read the book at all, but heard an interview about the book. From her voice, the author seems to have found peace in reason. I am not planning to read this book, but am waiting for her next book, "Transformative Religious Experience and the Paradox of Empathy", expected 2021.

Me at “We Are Millions“

Assange

Berlinale: Sweet Thing

A film from a loving father, showing the faces of his beautiful daughter and son. If he were a painter, he would paint like August Macke painted his wife.

Apart from this love, the film didn't tell me much new.

Berlinale: Surge

A part of me seeks balance, avoids big changes. When big changes are inevitable, the system can get out of balance and remain in a screaming state for a while until a new balance is found.

This balancing movement is, for example, set to music in Gustav Mahler's First Symphony, 4th movement "Stormily agitated – Energetic" and also the subject of Rita Kalnejais' film "Surge". The increasingly wobbly camera work is intended to underline the movement. The leading actor was known to me as Grenouille from "The Perfume". I liked looking at him and at some point I sympathized with his transformation.

When I ride my bicycle home, next to the highway, the cars at walking pace like every working day at this time, I wonder why these compensatory movements are so rare.

Berlinale: Siberia

The plot leaves the real world when the gambler turns into a bear. The film ends with a talking fish.

For me, the film is an intense, partly disturbing firework of memories and feelings, as they are typically experienced by a man. It is about the soul, about life and death, about parents, about the women/wife, about reason and its limits.

Now and then there is an allusion to the "black arts", for me a Faustian motif. Abel Ferrara was unknown to me before; I would like to see more films by him. I will probably watch Siberia a second time.

Berlinale: FREM

The filmmaker took some beautiful pictures of Antarctica using drones. But instead of one more episode of "National Geographic" she decided to add an idea: How would it look, how would it feel if an A.I. starts getting interested in life?

The result is some analog visual effects and a nerve-racking sound, which in my opinion is almost a psychological torture. The sound reminds me of a song by Hüsker Dü from 1984. I, for one, suffered so much that I slid back and forth in my cinema chair and my mobile phone slipped out of my pocket unnoticed and got lost.

But after the movie I don't know anything new about A.I.. My feeling is that an A.I. would not simply collect images, but would interact with the environment. The researcher Karl Friston once joked that A.I. stands for active interference.

The film didn't teach me anything new about life either. Since in Antarctica, it doesn't distinguish between plants and animals.

What remains are some landscapes from the Antarctic, which show me that even non-life, relaxation processes in the thermodynamic sense, can lead to beauty. And there remains some envy of the filmmaker who made this trip to Antarctica. (My cell phone was found the next day.)

Berlinale: Los Lobos

For me the most disturbing film I have seen this year at the Berlinale. An autobiographical film about a mother who goes to the United States with her two sons. While she takes on several jobs, the sons remain alone in the apartment.

The film got under my skin because the truth slowly unfolded. At first I thought it was "only" the three people, a single incident, but later I realized that there are whole districts in which such precarious conditions prevail. And it takes a while before I understand that the at first playful climbing action of the two boys serves to urinate in the kitchen sink because the overstrained, exhausted mother has locked herself in the bathroom.

The role of the church is dubious. The gestures of gratitude have something compulsively sick about them, especially because the mother stands sceptically beside them and actually only wants to have food.

Berlinale: Petite Fille

Before the movie, I didn't know that there were boys at 7 or 8 who thought they were girls -- "gender dysphoria"

During the movie, I thought, how can you know what it means to have gender x or y at age 7 or 8? Isn't it more like being told: you're a boy, you have a penis. And the consequences, all the stuff with the dolls, the clothes, the long hair comes after, step by step? And why does the mother say "Madmoiselle" and not "Sasha"?

After the film, while listening to the director, a present, calm, sensitive man, I thought, maybe there really is such a thing such as a child becoming irreversibly attached to the opposite sex.

In the end, I believe that most of the problems of "gender dysphoria" would be obsolete if we would stop forcing gender stereotypes on children at an early age.

Berlinale: H is for Happiness

Australian

Book

Cinematographically

Developed.

Eventually,

Felt

Happiness.

Berlinale: One of these days

My first film at the Berlinale this year was the premiere of the panorama film "one of these days". The next morning, I was once again standing in the queue at Kudamm to buy new tickets in advance. It was drizzling, and I thought about the film.

The film is about a competition: Twenty people stand around a car and touch the car with at least one hand. The last person standing wins the car. Basically, it's an advertisement for the car salesman on whose premises the competition takes place.

It's about how much you really want something. It's a little bit like waiting in line at the Kudamm. After ten minutes in the drizzle, one or the other person has left. In front of me there were two who took turns: one in the queue, the other under the rain roof. Others had chairs with them.

I had hoped for more from the film. A cinematic representation of waiting, an interior perspective with changed colours for example. Something about the motives to participate and about the occasions to give up. I had firmly expected the sentence: "It's only a car". Despite the two hours the director gave away a lot. In this respect, the film was a disappointment to me.

One character from the film comes into contact with his fear of not being enough for his beautiful wife and fails because of this fear. A fear I can well understand. The beautiful woman is played by Callie Hernandez and looks a little bit like the ticket seller at the box office at Kudamm, where I've been three times already and who has this glow in her eyes. Since it was the premiere of the film, some of the people involved in the film came on stage afterwards. Besides the beautiful Callie, I also noticed "The Notwist", a band I heard 25 years ago when I was at school. Nice to know they are still around.