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Bobby Fischer’s Endgame
By Andy Hume / January 18, 2008
Bobby Fischer, one of the great chess players of the last century, is dead, aged – what else? – 64.
The controversial former world chess champion, Bobby Fischer, has died in Iceland at the age of 64. The US-born player, who became famous for beating Cold War Soviet rival Boris Spassky in 1972, died of an unspecified illness, his spokesman said.
He was granted Icelandic citizenship in 2005 as a way to avoid being deported to the US.
“Controversial” is a very British way of saying that the guy was, at least in his latter years, a deranged, anti-Semitic loon.
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I use the “Adam” (from Northern Exposure) avatar just about everywhere I go. It suits me perfectly. :)
“Ze ha-yom asah adonai, nagila ve-nismeha bo”
Now, bring on the pasta!!
Peace,
Yitro
Yo Reclusive,
Welcome to the paradox. You can see it as a myth, I don’t. But that’s not the point because neither of us can prove our position to the other. Nevertheless, you can see it as an exercise in resolving contradiction (which you have shown that you noticed) and getting used to paradox. You can see it as an intellectual puzzle rather than seeing it as a myth. You can be your own research institute. You don’t have to, of course. But I think that’s where you’ll find your answer.
I’m saying that somehow that comfort and ability to work with paradox might have something to do with the scientific achievements that you see. It’s not the faith, it’s the power of the paradox, which, paradoxically, grounds the ‘faith’ in reason once you get on a roll, finding a method for resolving the contradictions.
Or, let’s look at it like this. Take Foucault, please. But seriously, compare the way that knowledge is ‘packaged’ in western civilization, as ‘facts’ and compare it to the way knowledge is packaged in the world of Torah, as infinite conversations. So on the one hand, you fill your brain with finite items that are either true or false, or you fill it with infinite structures. What do you think the outcome will be, over time, through generations?
I think ending this post with that question might be best. Good luck. And Shalom right back at ya.
Vitro, your pic could be the nightmare poster for millions of skinny white kids. “This is your new cell mate, Dwayne. Vitro. Vitro Testosterone.” The look is perfect. You should market it. And thanks again for a chess players perspective. Good writing.
Naftali: Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I am but an observer of the sciences, not a player. But peptide chains have much to reveal, for certain. An old friend did his post-doc work studying them at Scripts back in the seventies. I didn’t want to border on threadjacking so I didn’t present links to studies ongoing. An exploding field. And I’m quite aware how self deprecating most Jews are, contrary to some stereotypes. To a man/woman ALL my Jewish friends find my views embarrassing at best.
I read all of the Torah long ago. I see it all as myth, which is now detracting from our progress as it did for so many years in the last 2 centuries. This said, in the case of the Jews the myths provided cover of a strange sort, and kept the gene pool from being diffused via marriage with outsiders. I suspect faith has very little hold on the youth today, which this site in many ways reflects. Have you seen the “Hot Rabbis” video? Blasphemy!!!! They ain’t gonna buy it-thank god. Heheeheh. It just goes to prove my point about intelligence. Nearly every Jew I know is an atheist. Of course there are many very bright believers also-especially among the Rabbis. But I’d bet theres a higher percentage of Jews who don’t buy the dogma-even in Israel-than among Christians. Not surprising, at least to me.
Perhaps YOU need to read the Torah again Naftali. Spare the claw and spoil the 32 childen? A ‘loving’ god? Move to the next dimension and observe the 3 that create the shadows on the cave’s wall. The myths once served a purpose. Now they hold us back. Look to the very pinnacle of achievement within your ethnic group, and you will see an impressive line up from Einstein on down that discarded the false faith of religion for the quantifiable hope of science. Shalom.
No friends for Yitro? How can this be so?
This needs to be looked into at the highest levels.
(It’s because I’m Italian, isn’t it?)
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"Son, we'd like to keep you around this season but we're going to try and win a pennant." – Casey Stengel
I was hoping my previous post would be right under the Reclusive Prophet, but no. So, I was replying to Mr. Prophet.
If you are ever present in a conversation when Jews are talking about Jews, the one thing we all agree on is that the rest of us are idiots and have no idea how to run our own lives.
Still on a mundane level, I believe that as a group, we are more comfortable with the idea of paradox than most other folks, who find paradox quite repulsive to their sense of cause and effect, truth and falsity, even right and wrong.
If you read through the Torah, it is one paradox after another, either the paradox is through a comprehensible story, or the paradox is in a particular law which, through its seeming incomprehensibility, will run you right into your own logical dead ends.
Now, it’s possible to resolve these apparent contradictions–that’s what one is supposed to do, I believe. But when the resolution happens, it’s usually something that was always so obvious that you are faced with your lack of intelligence.
To me, on a spiritual level, the journey is an almost weekly confrontation with the limits of my own intellect, which is why so many Jews are looking for ANY other way to be spiritual that this continual assault on our ego. In the big picture, it’s actually pretty funny. Laughing our way to enlightenment.
If you want to stay on the level of biochemistry, you might want to look at the relationship between neuropeptides and DNA. If you find something in this quest, there’s a Nobel Prize in it for you–now how hard was that?
Fischer actually began his anti-semitic rantings, albeit on a smaller scale, at age seventeen or eighteen (1961) when he was quoted as saying something to the effect of “Jews are ruining chess because they don’t dress so nice (sic)”. He had become a clothes horse by that time as a reaction to his contemporaries’ knowledge of his base ignorance in all matters not directly related to chess. He found some manner of self-respect in buying and wearing expensive suits, probably as a defense mechanism.
Make no mistake, he was a mentally ill person from very early on in his life, easily masked by his chess prodigy, then superstar, status.
His self destruction began in the early sixties as well, becoming increasingly petulant, demanding, and neurotic over playing conditions; everything had to be just right for his taste or he would simply quit a tournament, or not show up at all in some cases.
Peace,
Yitro
Sometimes people with mental disorders like schizophrenia or bi-polar disorder manifest their illness by becoming paranoid and begin adopting conspiracy theories that can be anti-semitic.
These illnesses often have an onset in the late 20s or early 30s. This corresponds to the time period that Bobby started to exhibit a change in behavior.
Perhaps, he had some undiagnosed mental disorder and went into isolation to deal with himself.
In short, I am saying that change in behavior to antisemitism over a short period of time could be related to mental illness. Bobby could have been speaking from a sick mind rather than a hateful one.
though as you point out we will always be ‘uncertain’ as to which ones. And I would never attempt to anticipate the direction of Jews or Israel. There’s also the ‘Observer Effect’ to consider. I suspect its all a lot like Number Theory. You don’t understand things-you just get used to them.
I am a student of the Ashkenazim phenomenon. I focus on the anomalies in the DNA. Long ago I also began keeping score on a qualitative scale. Areas of knowledge where the very outstanding pioneers-IMHO-were all from this one tribe. Totally subjective, naturally. But a strong case can be made that our Bobby was just another manifestation of a genetic structure that actually seems to favor intelligence. It is all just conjecture at this point, yet I believe in time some physiological explanation will be found that explains the how the intellectual achievements of this one group are so out of proportion to their numbers. Bobby was but one of many who towered above others in his field. Culture plays a role, obviously. It can not explain all of it.
You tossed in allusions to every religion in that last paragraph on purpose, didn’t you?
And I know OF Roy Cohn, but I don’t remember him.
Regarding Israel and the Jewish people, much like an electron, if you think you know where it is then you can’t know its direction, and if you think you know its direction, then you don’t know where it is.
It’s one of those things you just have to get used to.
Incredible eulogy, Vitro! Such an amazingly objective, overlapping view of Fischer’s life. Really enjoyed reading it.
As I mentioned earlier, I think his denial of his own Jewish roots is not that uncommon among Jews of his generation and especially earlier. I think of it as a kind of cultural ‘Stockholm Effect.’ Not that Jews have any lock on self flagellation. Hoover persecuted homosexuals. But after what so many Jews had witnessed, could anyone blame them for wanting to discard the association with an ethnic group that had made them so vulnerable? With a 180 scanner who knows what kind of interconnected visions Bobby might have been haunted by.
Remember the transformation that took place after Israel began it’s sharp right turn in the eighties? From assisting Reagan’s puppet army of thugs dubbed the ‘Contras’ in Nicaragua to helping Charlie Wilson in promoting his war in Afghanistan, Israel has become what it was created to escape. As in this country, a small percentage of religious zealots in Israel exert influence far beyond their numbers. A sentient being such as Bobby could likely see these flaws and thus was unable to accept his own connection. All the negatives Booby perceived about Jews had some truth; he simply failed to acknowledge the astounding contributions. In a way he could never have come to terms with, he was one of them.
We are ALL more critical, in default mode, of our own ‘tribes’ than of any others. Yiddish is replete with caricature expressions defining distinctly Jewish cultural affectations. Introspection is as ingrained in the Jew as hutzpa. Not an easy cross to carry for the cognoscenti. Bobby clearly had both traits, and his life should stand as a lesson. You folks are always forgetting the balance. The laurels of this tribe of Abraham so far exceed it’s transgressions it seems unlikely to this outsider that it could ever sink into a karmic deficit.
There are a lot of people with the problems that Yitro described. But, what you consider to be judging is actually a reaction to hurt, a deeper knowledge of history, that the public words of Jews have historically had greater and sometimes deadly ripples within the Jewish community.
In many ways Yitro is absolutely correct. But there is another aspect, that although it is comforting to look past the outwardly destructive, even self-destructive behavior to see the tortured soul beneath, it is a mistake to overlook and not respond to the behavior on the surface.
This overlooking is the mistake that most well-intentioned people make when trying to help, or perhaps a better word is heal, another person. It’s a normal response, the will to help and heal, the desire to feel compassion. Unfortunately the process works best by continually dealing with the behavior at hand, until the person is able to look at themselves clearly, and make the changes that need to be made.
The inability to be introspective turns into a variety of types of pain inflicted on those around you. In Fisher’s case, such a public figure, that pain spread far and wide.
It’s over now. I doubt many Jews will dance on his grave, because it is, his death, his life, all of it, was completely tragic. Nevertheless, our collective pain has to be addressed, has to be dealt with in some way, and then we move on. As natural as the will to compassion, there is a process of grief, and this involves trying to settle what was not settled in life.
He was a great chess player, and he also hurt a great many people. Eventually it would be nice if he were remembered only for the former, but it’s going to take quite a bit of dealing with the latter to get there.
what makes some people think they can know a person by
merely looking at their social persona or some of their
extemporaeneous remarks?
fischer gave me the impression he was a tortured soul.
what right does anybody have to judge him or accuse him?
who could be so arrogant?
BOTH Fischer’s parents were Jewish; do a little research, at least. Although Hans-Gerhardt Fischer is listed on his birth certificate as his biological father he (Hans)never entered the United States after Mrs. Fischer returned to America in 1939 (Bobby Fischer was born in 1943). Fischer’s biological father was instead determined to be Jewish Hungarian physicist Paul Nemenyi, a long time friend of Regina Fischer and whom paid child support to Regina until his death in 1952. This has been WIDELY documented and is almost ubiquitously considered to be the truth, courtesy of Hoover-era FBI files kept on the entire Fishcer family, with Regina Fischer’s file becoming publicly available after her death in 1999. I suggest you read the article from the Philadelphia Enquirer (Peter Nicholas and Clea Benson) dated 11-17-02.
It is also noteworthy that as Fischer sank deeper and deeper into madness and bitterness, and his anti-Semitic remarks became more coarse and hateful, a fairly large percentage of the small number of people who maintained relationships with him were in fact Jews themselves. While globe-hopping during his expatriate years he was known to have stayed a lengthy visit at the home of the world’s first family of chess, The Polgars, in Budapest.
Jews; and a family ravaged by the Holocaust.
Susan Polgar, by the way, eventually beat Gary Kasparov in 2002; one of only a handful of humans to do so and the only woman. She studied with Bobby some.
There is no question that Fischer was unnecessarily persecuted by the American government, after he had been used to full advantage for propaganda reasons. Publicly spitting on an order from the Treasury Dept. will get that for you. Of the several score American individuals and corporations who continued trading dollars with the Milosevic regime, only one person the world over – that means in the entire world, by the way – has ever been charged in connection with the sanctions and/or embargo violated by Fischer and Spassky in Sveti Stefan, 1992.
Spassky was glad and free to take his one-third of the $5M and go back to France with his ass-kicking.
When a man, particularly one clearly as mentally unstable as Fischer, makes the leap to stark raving lunatic you are charged to take inventory of the situation. A man with a tested I.Q. of 180-plus, mentally unstable from the point where his biography begins at age five (learning chess from the instructions on a boxed set), anti-social, obsessive and compulsive (although not necessarily OCD), grossly ignorant and uneducated, Explosive Intermittent Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, potentially schizophrenic ….. take your pick. No one really knows for sure.
Fischer was “great” for more than 17 …Be6!! … Fischer Random Chess … The Fischer Clock … The Fischer Variation of the Najdorf Sicilian … playing the shocking 1. c4!! in game 3 of the 1972 Spassky Match, down 0-2 already due to a game 1 forfeit followed by a tactical blunder but a strategic brilliance in game 2 … if cancer had caught his attention at five, rather than chess, we’d all probably be living free of the fear of cancer.
The chess player in me has been deprived the feint glimmer of hope of him competing again, triumphing. The American in me is mournful that he could not return to his home and end his days forgiven his illness. The Jew I am knows that he finally has peace that life obviously could not afford him, returned to The River from which he sprang.
Rest In Peace, Bobby.
And if you don’t think so then zark off.
(steps off sandbox)
Peace,
Yitro
from Wikipedia
In December 2004, speaking at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, Atzmon addressed students, saying; "'I'm not going to say whether it is right or not to burn down a synagogue, I can see that it is a rational act."[9]
Did Bobby Fisher ever advocate burning synagogues?
Aztmon thinks there is nothing wrong with 56 Muslim states, but feels that one Jewish state is too many. I think thats anti-Jewish. His music aint that good either. A toilet flush is more mellifluous and useful too
I concur with the condemnations of Fischer and Pound as anti-Semites, however brilliant they might be, but I do not see how Gilad Atzmon, even with his strident criticisms of Zionism, can qualify as anti-Semitic in the same way as the first two. Isn't this a bit of that conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism we've been seeing so much of lately? Surely Atzmon is entitled to criticise, even severely, a society he knows well? I have never read a word by him where he tars "Jews," as such, with a single brush, for the appalling excesses of the state of Israel. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Whoops.
I thought it sounded a bit off when it was reported that only his mother was Jewish. I remember seeing television segment about him, after he went around the bend, and one of his friends said–"I can't understand his anti-antisemitism, because both of his parents were Jewish." There may have been two times in my life when I spoke at the television, and this was one of those times, something to the effect of, 'you just explained it' followed by an expletive. I think it is more of a family issue, just the way his folks were, than it is tribal.
And do you mean 'tribes' only, or are you including groups living in a country in which they are the minority?
I thought it worth noting that actually Fischer was 100% Jewish. The link below reveals that according to the FBI his biological father was also Jewish, not just his mother. I suspect his kind of self hatred exist among all tribes, especially those historically persecuted. Sorry if this is off topic?
http://www.jinfo.org/Chess_Champions.html
Who said anything about your politics, jumped to any conclusions, or made any rash judgements? I was addressing the issue raised by the Terkel quote you mentioned. Having read some Terkel before, my judgement of him was neither rash nor il-informed.
As for your personal politics, I'm not the slightest bit interested. In your apparent narcissism, you failed to see that the issue I was addressing wasn't about you, but about the substance of the quote from Terkel you used to bolster your own prior post. Furthermore, if I were interested in your politics, gauging where you lie on the political spectrum wouldn't require any "tremendous analytical ability", as you put it, given the nature of the Terkel quote you provided, the nature of your prior argument, and the fact that you seem to think quoting Terkel lends positive substance to your own opinion.
Interesting that both of your subsequent posts have done nothing but fume and rage incoherently at me – apparently for not condescending to agree that there are countless "Mozart's" toiling in factories – while failing to address the issue I raised in any substantive way. I guess when substantive argument and reason fail, personal attacks and changing the subject are the are the only way some people know how to respond.Â
Uh, no.
And can you in your tremendous analytical ability even guess my politics? Same answer–uh, no. And which part of the political spectrum do you place jumping to conclusions and making rash judgments?
Being "a Mozart" has nothing to do with what's "in the heart and soul of each of those people" working on assembly lines. It has to do with talent – more than mere talent actually; it has to do with creative genius of the highest order. Someone of Mozart-level genius simply would not be working on an assembly line in the first place.Â
Turkel is simply engaging the standard banal left-wing premise that everyone could be a Mozart if simply given the chance, and that it's only oppressive working conditions and social constraints that prevent a million Mozarts from blooming. This is sheer nonsense. By definition Mozart-level talent and genius is extremely rare (it is, to use a word leftists hate, "elitist"). The idea that there are any number of potential Mozarts consigned against their will to working on assembly lines is absurd wishful thinking. It may make an assemply line worker feel good to tell him he's really "a Mozart" at heart, but if it were true he wouldn't be there in the first place.Â
Let's see, in the world there are millions of people working on assembly lines, and you confidently can say what is in the heart and soul of each of these people? Jeepers you got some high smarts floatin' in your head. One day I hope to be as smart as you, but (let me beat you to the punch) I know I'll never get there. Sad day all around, ain't it?
None. If one were truly a Mozart he wouldn't be on the assembly line in the first place. A banal question from a banal populist.Â
I think as a culture, we very wrongly think of intelligence as information retained, a high score on IQ tests, good grades, excellence in one area of life. We don't address, it's not even a passing thought, the idea of wisdom. It's almost as if we can't because it would simply shred a culture based on youth. Wisdom cannot be learned in a 7 Habits book, it can only be acquired through time or through a desire to find it, to become a seeker.
What we saw in Fisher, what we see in Atzmon, is intelligence without wisdom, and without wisdom the mind–soul–tends to twist into grotesque shapes. We give these people leeway because they can do what the vast majority cannot, or, living in our present technological trap, do not have time to explore, do not have time to find what's in their deepest heart and express it. In Studs Terkel's Working, the question is asked within the first three narratives, 'how many Mozarts are on the assembly line'?. Twain wrote a nice short story in which he describes his idea of heaven, not cloud sitting, beatific and boring harp playing, but rather a place where the greatest generals in history, Alexander the Great, Napoleon follow around and practically worship a hillbilly from Tennessee. Why? He had the greatest military mind of all, but could not express his gift. In Twain's world, the gift within each of us is expressed fully–this is heaven.
We do not like to judge others, to do so requires wisdom, it is a skill that summons more resources than Fisher could mount on a chessboard. It is, though, an activity in which it is too easy to engage–but again, it requires wisdom, and in the West, we just don't do wisdom, we do not grant that things have essences–that's my definition of wisdom, the ability to perceive essences.
I will not miss reading of the latest quote from Fisher, I also would not miss hearing the music of Atzmon, who, I promise, only has a following because he is twisted and bent and is ultimately a tool. Their work, in a world where the heart is given more freedom, would amount to sound and fury, but in essence, meaning nothing. That is the tragic price of a life without wisdom.
Indeed, Kiku. I was going to title this "I knew him so well", but that might have been misinterpreted…
"How far do we make allowances for genius that we would not for anyone else?"
We don't. That said, it's worth recalling Conquest on Pound:
Just b/c this crank isn't a good poet does not mean a crank can't be a good poet.
I agree, my life wouldn't much be affected if Fischer had never existed, but I would've had a sad childhood without the soundtrack to the stage musical Chess, in which Murray Head portrayed 'The American', a thinly-veiled Fischer, all paranoid delusion and brilliant playing.
And I like Wagner. I can't help it.
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