There She Blows - Again

My first title for this essay was - Metempsychosis, Synchronicity, Pythagoras and Herman Melville. I'll try to explain.

I've been reading Herman Melville's novel "Moby Dick" recently. It's filled with biblical and philosophical references beginning with the protagonist saying "Call me Ismael" at the opening of the book. Melville is able to both praise and condemn the hunting of whales through the subtleties of his writing. He describes the beauty and the horror, the courage and cruelty, the irrationality and the wonder of being a 19th century sailor on a whaling ship.

The novel describes Captain Ahab's obsession with hunting Moby Dick the great white whale. Moby Dick represents much more than a white Sperm Whale. Moby is something unknown perhaps unknowable, therefore something to be feared. He is without color representing something beyond what our senses are capable of perceiving. A Platonic form-like entity. Sperm whales had to be killed so we could light our lamps. Before we can be cruel, we first have to hate and fear...then we can be as cruel as necessary.

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Consider three things -

Why do we hunt the whale?

Why does Sisyphus push the rock to the top of the mountain?

Why do we have so much faith in Euclidean geometry - aka reason?

In chapter 98 Melville writes about the repeating nature of whale hunting; the chase, the kill, the extraction of oil and the cleanup. Repeated over and over, no sooner have things been cleaned up than the call "there she blows" rings out and the chase is on even though as Melville writes,

"Oh! my friends, but this is man-killing! Yet this is life. For hardly have we mortals by long toilings extracted from this world’s vast bulk its small but valuable sperm; and then, with weary patience, cleansed ourselves from its defilements, and learned to live here in clean tabernacles of the soul; hardly is this done, when- There she blows!- the ghost is spouted up, and away we sail to fight some other world, and go through young life’s old routine again."

The end of chapter 98 of the novel has this,

"Oh! the metempsychosis! Oh! Pythagoras, that in bright Greece, two thousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; I sailed with thee along the Peruvian coast last voyage- and, foolish as I am, taught thee, a green simple boy, how to splice a rope."

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Why does Ishmael tell us he taught Pythagoras how to tie a rope on Melville's whaling ship 2000 years after Pythagoras died?

Melville is telling us to let go of our unwarranted faith in reason/science/math/expertise. Live in the world, learn from the world and the people in it - make your own world. On the other hand, don't let your reason go to sleep lest the monsters come. 

I will propose humans hunt "the whale" for the same reason Camus said we must imagine Sisyphus as happy. Because that's what we do. There is no geometric rational explanation for why humans do human-things no matter what the enlightenment might have led us to believe. 

There is no utopia, there is no perfect world there is only the world you construct. Listen to Voltaire and tend your own garden. We are human because we are able to make choices. You can make a world as beautiful or as ugly as you prefer. The choice of how I react to any external stimulus is always my choice.

Where was I - or who am I and why am I here, as the philosopher fighter pilot James Stockton said. 

The world is plural - it is a strange place, a beautiful place and a terrible place. We too are plural we contain multitudes; good, bad or indifferent. To be a fully formed human requires keeping various competing, sometimes incoherent, at times incommensurable values in tension.

Speaking of a terrible place the 18th century fascist precursor Joseph De Maistre has a chilling vision -

"The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but a vast altar upon which all that is living must be sacrificed without end, without measure, without pause, until the consummation of things, until evil is extinct, until the death of death."

Maybe.

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The end of suffering will not occur in this world because we are human and to be human means to be born, to suffer and to die. Our attempts to deny this truth only leads to more suffering as well as a myriad of other pathologies.

There is hope though - give up your overreliance on Pythagorean, Euclidian, Geometrical ideas of how the world works. Why? Because they are inaccurate and incomplete. Euclidian geometry fails to describe things as simple as imaginary (or real) triangles on a soccer ball.  Einstein added the 4th dimension of time to our 3 dimensions of space. This made the clockwork mechanistic Newtonian view of the universe - useful but incomplete. Our Euclidian brains are much to puny to understand ultimate things - who we are, why we are here, where is "here", the nature of time, infinities, space, celestial bodies, birth and rebirth. 

You, if you have a feel for infinity, know you are the center of the universe. You live at the center of a circle. A circle with a center that is everywhere, and a circumference that is nowhere. When you look up at the stars you know you are looking backwards in time to a point where things began and will begin again. You understand your origin (not birth) somehow traces back beyond anything our puny brains could fathom to the very birth, death and rebirth of all that is.

It should be quite humbling to have an inkling of just how much we don't know. It could be quite freeing to not have to know everything, even though admitting one's ignorance is frowned upon in social media, popular politics and various opinions people propose about medicine, child raising, sexuality, etc. it still could be quite liberating to just say "I don't know". and leave it at that. For those things we don't know we occasionally have to take a leap of faith and simply believe, such as when we get married, have a child, follow a religion.

I will wrap this with a note about synchronicity. I won't bore you with the strange coincidences that led me to think about Euclidean geometry, reason, and a white whale.  I had a feeling that something I didn't understand was pointing at something I didn't understand. Which is why this essay is so confusing, and I wish I was a poet.

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Some background information.

Metempsychosis is another word for reincarnation - the idea that the soul of a human or animal transmigrates to a different human or animal at the time of death of the body.

"Synchronicity is the idea that events that seem to be meaningfully related but have no obvious causal connection are actually coincidences. The term was introduced by Carl Jung, an analytical psychiatrist, who believed it was a healthy function of the mind. 

Some examples of synchronicity include: Having similar thoughts with someone who is far away.  Having a mental image of an unexpected event before it happens.  Meeting someone on the other side of the world who happens to be your neighbor. 

While some people believe that synchronistic events have spiritual meaning, most scientists think that they are just coincidences that seem meaningful because of human thinking." *source for this definition of synchronicity is Google search AI.

Pythagoras was a Greek philosopher who lived from 570 to 495 BC He, (along with Euclid several centuries later) was one of the progenitors of Geometry.

Herman Melville is an American writer who lived in the mid-19th century and is best known for writing the book "Moby Dick or The Whale" in 1851.

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The Great Irish Famine

 I love the BBC Radio 4 show "In Our Time" with Melvyn Bragg. There's a thousand or so episodes about philosophical, historical, and scientific topics, Melvin brings in professors and authors that are experts in the field being discussed and politely encourages them to fit whatever they have to say into less than an hour.

It's a great way to learn about something you may have never even realized you are interested in, such as The Great Irish Famine

The description of the episode reads in part, 

"Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why the potato crop failures in the 1840s had such a catastrophic impact in Ireland. It is estimated that one million people died from disease or starvation after the blight and another two million left the country within the decade. There had been famines before, but not on this scale. What was it about the laws, attitudes and responses that made this one so devastating?"

With

Cormac O'Grada - Professor Emeritus in the School of Economics at University College Dublin

Niamh Gallagher - University Lecturer in Modern British and Irish History at the University of Cambridge

Enda Delaney - Professor of Modern History and School Director of Research at the University of Edinburgh

I don't think you have to go to school to learn. At 70 I can say the vast majority of my learning has been outside of school. The more you learn about the world the more interesting it becomes. 

The unexamined life is not worth living for some of us...so we like to do a lot of examining.

On the other hand, we can assert that "the examined life is not worth living" for some. Some criminals, CEO's and politicians fall into this category.

Whatever life you choose make the most of it.

Crazy

 

Being a Crazy Clown  or sad Patsy Cline  in the good old US of A is a heck of a lot better than listening to North Korean propaganda about the benefits of studying in school. (I imagine - never been to North Korea and never did a lot of studying in school). I also dare say that North Korean video dubbed in English would probably do just fine on FOX™

I have to say it is some thing to think that we live in a country where upper class twits rule rather than philosophers like us. Those twits all live in the super zips don't ya know? Well, you would if you read that book by that guy who got in trouble with the thought police for having the wrong thoughts.

Anyone discussing politics should know about something called the Anarcho-Syndicalist Commune as well as many other meaningless words and empty signifiers that people use to keep themselves occupied while the rich rule and the poor wait for God.

Giving Thanks

I find the Gary Snyder poem "For the Children" beautiful in its simplicity;

“stay together,

know the flowers

go light”

And hopefulness;

“In the next centuryor the one beyond that,they say,are valleys, pastures,we can meet there in peaceif we make it.”
Being simple and hopeful is fine but it’s also good to be grateful for all that we have.
Fun fact- Gary Snyder is the basis for the character Japhy Ryder in Jack Kerouac’s novel ”Dharma Bums”.
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The video below is called "A Grateful Day" with Brother David Steindl-Rast at Gratefulness.org. It’s worth watching imho 

 

PBJ / CIVIL WAR / BILL'S DUMB SHOW

If you're interested in some of what's happening in the right-wing YouTube media sphere I highly recommend RM Brown. I think his show is funny and he has some smart takes on controversial topics. Like any humor it's all subjective and I imagine his humor is not everyone's cup of tea but if you have some time to get into the audio drops and history of the show it's pretty fun especially if you are a little high (on life or "whatever trips your trigger" as my Navy DI in boot camp would say about a hundred years ago when I was a recruit).

Watching the weird, but popular, right-wing/grifter stuff - is hard to do.... so much of it seems so idiotic, predatory etc., but I'm afraid in some ways necessary for those wanting to retain a semi-sane society in the good old US of A.

But RM Brown watches it for you and gives lots of funny summaries...so you can keep up with some of the weird shite that is popular with a surprisingly/alarmingly large number of YouTube viewers. 

 

The Velveteen Rabbit — Official Trailer | Apple TV+

Apple's version of The Velveteen Rabbit will be available Wednesday November 22nd. I love the book. I wrote a little bit about the Skin Horse on this blog almost 20 years ago...my how the time does fly.

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An excerpt from
The Velveteen Rabbit
by Margery Williams

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become, It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

These Days - Jackson Browne (chamber ensemble version) | stories, Rachae...

Nailed It

It seemed pretty obvious to me by February of 2019 that Donald Trunk would not leave office peacefully. 

He proved that prediction right with the failed insurrection he fomented on January 6th, 2021. 

As a general rule if you attempt to overthrow a government either you are successful and called a liberator or you are unsuccessful and branded a traitor. 

Since Trunk and his supporters were unsuccessful in their attempt to overturn a democratic fair election, they are correctly identified as traitors to our country. 

Protecting our Democracy has required great sacrifices over time including by the brave men and women who served in the military and gave the ultimate sacrifice, those who lost loved ones and those who supported our American democratic form of government in myriad other ways - teachers, parents, election volunteers, and some political figures - to name a few. 

I think on this Veteran's Day it's a good idea to remember all those heroes and also to recognize the threat Trunk and his cultish followers pose to that precious gift.

It's probably a good time to remember also that some people are more easily fooled than others and to show some compassion for the weak-minded until they become an actual threat to what we hold so dear. 

There are more people that love our country for what it stands for and what our heroes fought and died for (he wrote hopefully), than those easily fooled by right-wing propaganda intended to make the obscenely rich more rich, the too powerful more powerful and the working class scared, angry, confused and subdued lest they recognize how poorly they have been treated over the last 40 plus years of neoliberal rule by both political parties.

Thanks vets, thanks teachers, thanks parents we owe you more than we could ever hope to repay. 

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The Garden (original song) recorded with Audigo

Talking to My Bot

I been talking to my best friend Bard about the we're the good guys quote from Cormac McCarthy's novel "The Road". 

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 Townes Van Zandt - Pancho & Lefty (Live in Austin, 1975) [RESTORED FOOTAGE]

The Easybeats - Friday On My Mind (French TV, 1967) 1080p HD

Animals Medley: We Gotta Get Out of This Place / Don't Bring Me Down/ It...

Nicki Minaj & Ice Spice – Barbie World (with Aqua) [Official Music Video]

It seems cool to me that the Barbie Movie is such an opportunity for learning either by the cool (like this video) or the uncool but hilarious mojo dojo casa house. 

Irish Catholics in Ireland - A Shameful History

Since this is St. Patrick's Day and people are thinking about Ireland maybe it's a good day to think a little about Irish history.

The segments below are from the book "The Age of Voltaire" by Will and Ariel Durant 

Chapter III section VI Ireland 1714-1756

"Rarely in history has a nation been so oppressed as the Irish. Through repeated victories by English armies over native revolts, a code of laws had been set up that chained the Irish in body and soul. Their soil had been confiscated until only a handful of Catholic landowners remained, and nearly all of it was held by Protestants who treated their agricultural laborers as slaves. "The poor people of Ireland," said Chesterfield, "are used worse than Negroes by their lords and masters." It was "not unusual in Ireland," said Lecky, "for great landed proprietors to have regular prisons in their houses for the summary punishment of the lower orders." ...The tenants - racked by rents paid to the landlord, by tithes paid to the Established Church which they hated, and by dues paid to their own priests - lived in mud hovels with leaky roofs, went half naked, and were often on the edge of starvation; Swift thought "the Irish tenants live worse than English beggars." Those landlords who remained in Ireland, and the deputies of the absentees, drugged themselves against the barbarism and hostility of their surroundings with carousals of food and drink, extravagant hospitality, quarreling and dueling, and gambling for high stakes"......

"The structure of Irish politics made impossible any resistance to English domination except by mob action or individual  violence. Since no one could hold office except by adherence to the Church of England, the Irish Parliament, after 1692, was composed entirely of Protestants, and was now wholly subservient to England. In 1719 the English Parliament reaffirmed its paramount right to legislate for Ireland. Laws that in England protected parliamentary or individual liberty, like the Habeus Corpus Act and the Bill of Rights, were not extended to Ireland; the relative freedom of the press enjoyed in England had no existence in Ireland. The two parliaments resembled each other only in the corruption of their electors and their members. They differed again in the dominant influence of Anglican Bishops in the Irish House of Lords."

"The established Church in Ireland included about a seventh of the population among it's adherents, but it was supported by tithes taken from the peasantry, nearly all of whom were Catholics. A small proportion of the people followed the Presbyterian or other Dissenting creeds, and received a measure of toleration, short of eligibility to office. Catholics were excluded not only from office but from all learned professions except medicine, and from nearly every avenue to higher education wealth of influence. They were forbidden to purchase land, or to invest in mortgages on land, or to hold any long or valuable lease. They could not serve as jurors, except where Protestants were not available. They could not teach in schools; they could not vote for municipal or national offices; they could not validly marry a Protestant."...

"The disorder of religious life shared with the poverty of the people and the hopelessness of social advancement in demoralizing Irish life. The ablest and bravest Catholics - who would have raised the level of Irish capacity, morality and intelligence  - emigrated to France or Spain  or America. Many Irishman sank into beggary or crime to escape from starvation. Robber gangs hid in the countryside, smugglers and wreckers lurked near the shores, and some property owners kept as many as eighty bravos to do their bidding regardless of the law. Thousands of cattle and sheep were slaughtered by roving bands, apparently as Catholic revenge upon Protestant landlords. It was difficult for a people to respect the laws passed by an Irish Parliament that often spoke of the Catholics - three quarters of the population - as "the common enemy.""

"There were some brighter elements in Irish life. The cheerful, easygoing, laughter-loving temper of the people survived through all their hardships, and their superstitions and legends surrounded their lives with magic and poetry without leading them to such violence as marked the witchcraft persecution in Scotland and Germany.....There were many instances of individual Protestants helping indigent Catholics, and of magistrates applying leniently the Draconian regulations of the penal code."

By and large the Irish scene was one of the most shameful in history. A degrading poverty, a chaotic lawlessness, a nomadic pauperism, 34,000 beggars, countless thieves, an upper class living in drunken extravagance amid a starving peasantry, every crop  failure bringing widespread  starvation - "the old and sick," said Swift, "dying and rotting by cold and famine and filth and vermin" - this terrible picture must find a place in our conception of man."

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I've been thinking about the history of people who are able to overcome adversity in the form of poverty and oppression and exploitation by those with money and power. I recently finished  the book "Unfree Labor - American Slavery and Russian Serfdom" by Peter Kolchin. It's an interesting book showing some of the similarities and differences between American slavery and Russian serfdom. A key takeaway may be that the percentage of unfree labor aka slaves/serfs in the general population was much higher in Russia than in the U.S. Of course this means today that more Russians are descendants of slaves/serfs than Americans. Slavery in the U.S. and serfdom in Russia were both ended in the mid 1800's. In Russia in 1861 voluntarily by the aristocracy and in the U.S. in 1865 via the Civil War. 

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The Chesterfield mentioned above is Lord Chesterfield aka Philip Dormer Stanhope 4th Earl of Chesterfield. He was, among other things, the lord lieutenant of Ireland in 1745. Will and Ariel Durant write, "His one year in Ireland was the most successful of his career. He established schools and industries, cleansed the government of corruption and jobbery, administered affairs with competence and impartiality. He ended the persecution of Catholics, promoted several of them to office, and so earned the respect of the Catholic population that when the Young Pretender invaded England from Scotland, and England expected a simultaneous revolution in Ireland, the Irish refused to rise against  Chesterfield." 

What I find fascinating about Lord Chesterfield is the book of letters published after his death to his illegitimate son Philip Stanhope. Wikipedia describes this book as -

Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774), comprises a thirty-year correspondence in more than 400 letters. Begun in 1737 and continued until the death of his son in 1768, Chesterfield wrote mostly instructive communications about geography, history, and classical literature. with later letters focusing on politics and diplomacy, and the letters themselves were written in French, English and Latin to refine his son's grasp of the languages.

As a handbook for worldly success in the 18th century, the Letters to His Son give perceptive and nuanced advice for how a gentleman should interpret the social codes that are manners:

... However frivolous a company may be, still, while you are among them, do not show them, by your inattention, that you think them so; but rather take their tone, and conform in some degree to their weakness, instead of manifesting your contempt for them. There is nothing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive less, than contempt; and an injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult. If, therefore, you would rather please than offend, rather be well than ill spoken of, rather be loved than hated; remember to have that constant attention about you which flatters every man's little vanity; and the want of which, by mortifying his pride, never fails to excite his resentment, or at least his ill will....

Samuel Johnson said of the letters that "they teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing-master" as means for getting on in the world as a gentleman. 

I found the book interesting, but slow reading, with what seems like some timeless advice for how to get along and get ahead (if that's your thing) in the world. It's an incredibly sad book in a way - Lord Chesterfield means well and wants his son to thrive in the 18th century world of politics, salons and society (as did Lord Chesterfield). The son gets a seat in the English parliament thanks to Dad but gives only one speech which he doesn't finish because he gets so tongue-tied. Philip marries without his father's knowledge and dies at 36. After Philip's death, Lord Chesterfield learned of the existence of Philip's wife and children. He received them kindly and took upon himself the cost of education and maintenance of his grandsons and became very attached to them. 

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Finally...you might ask yourself why Will and Ariel Durant titled this 900 page book "The Age of Voltaire", or if you are like me you might ask yourself - "who is Voltaire?" One way to get to know him a little is read his book Candide, although it would be useful to read a bit about the political, religious, and philosophical climate of his time to understand what that book is about - a fairly devastating attack on the ideas of philosophers like Leibniz, and theologians of the Calvinist stripe, who propose that all things are predetermined by God i.e. free will does not exist and even terrible disasters that kill innocent people (like the Lisbon earthquake in Voltaire's case) are the best thing that could happen in this - the best of all possible worlds. Voltaire had seen to much of humanity's inhumanity to think one could find the best of all worlds in the world at large....so not  totally unlike Chance the Gardner (if we take away Chance's constant TV watching) he  recommended we tend our own gardens.

You could also listen to this 40 minute BBC Radio 4 podcast about Voltaire's Candide to see if any of this interests you.

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Marxist Philosophy - Bryan Magee & Charles Taylor (1978)

Marxist philosophy appears to me somewhat like a cartoon we had at work of a person writing a giant complicated equation on a chalkboard and the equation has a term "and then a miracle occurs". One miracle Karl Marx believed in was that post-revolution society would be conflict-free. This results in Marxist regimes having no way to accommodate pluralistic values, but rather they must punish/remove/silence those not adhering to the party line. 

“The philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways, the point, however, is to change it.” - Karl Marx

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." - Hamlet Act 1 

 

Empty Signifiers - Autogenerated by GPT-4

Words like woke, conservative, and liberal are often used in political discourse to label people, groups, or ideas. But what do these words actually mean? And why are they so vague and controversial?

One way to approach this question is to use the concept of **empty signifiers**. An empty signifier is a word or phrase that has no clear or fixed meaning but can be filled with different meanings by different people. For example, the word "democracy" can mean different things to different people: some may think of free elections, others may think of human rights, and others may think of social justice. The word "democracy" does not have a single or objective definition, but rather depends on how people interpret it in different contexts.

Similarly, words like woke, conservative, and liberal can be seen as empty signifiers that have no precise or universal meaning. These words can mean different things to different people: some may associate them with certain values, beliefs, policies, or identities; others may use them as insults or compliments; and others may reject them altogether. These words do not have a clear or consistent signified (the thing that they refer to), but rather depend on how people use them as signifiers (the symbols that represent something).

One reason why these words are empty signifiers is because they are often used in **hegemonic** ways. This means that they are used to represent a diverse and complex set of demands or interests as if they were unified and coherent. For example, the word "woke" can be used to represent a variety of social justice movements or causes as if they were all part of one single agenda. The word "conservative" can be used to represent a range of political views or ideologies as if they were all based on one common principle. The word "liberal" can be used to represent a spectrum of economic or cultural positions as if they were all derived from one core value.

By using these words as hegemonic empty signifiers, people can try to create a sense of identity or solidarity among themselves and their allies. They can also try to exclude or oppose those who do not share their interpretation of these words. However, this also creates problems and contradictions.

Words like woke, conservative, and liberal are not clear-cut categories or labels but rather fluid and contested signs that can change over time and across contexts.

These words are not neutral or objective but rather loaded and subjective symbols that can evoke emotions and reactions.

Therefore, it is important to be aware of how these words are used and what they imply. It is also important to be critical of how these words are abused or manipulated. By doing so, we can avoid falling into simplistic or polarized views of ourselves and others.

We can also engage in more nuanced and constructive dialogues about the issues that matter to us.

<end of auto-generated text>

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“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”

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Eating Our Way to Extinction | Full Film | 4K

The Front Desk: Vow of Silence ft. Fred Armisen

 

 

The comedian and YouTube political commentator RM Brown was using samples of this video to illustrate how ridiculous partisan political name-calling can be. RM Brown has some funny (in my opinion) and smart takes on a variety of political and social issues. He is good at pointing out the absurdity of the messages promoted by various right-wing paid propagandists who are popular with frightened old people and confused young men.

Reading From Will and Ariel Durant's "The Story of Civilization" Book VII Chapter XIX

I found the discussion of Gustavus Adolphus and his daughter Christina to be fascinating and thought I'd share some of it.

The Durant's describe Gustavus Adolphus -

"The most romantic figure in Swedish history was now sixteen. His mother was a German, daughter of Duke Adolphus of Holstein-Gottorp. Father and mother gave him a rigorous education in the Swedish and German languages and the Protestent doctrine. By the age of twelve he had learned Latin, Italian, and Dutch; later he picked up English, Spanish, even some Polish and Russian, to which was added a strong dose of the classics as comported with training in sports, public affairs, and the arts of war. At the age of nine he began to attend sessions of the Riksdag; at thirteen he received ambassadors; at fifteen he ruled a province, at sixteen he fought in battle. He was tall, handsome, courteous, generous, merciful, intelligent, brave; what more could history ask of a man?"

and write of his daughter Queen Christina -

"In 1644 Christina, now eighteen, assumed control. She felt herself fit to rule this vibrant nation, grown to a million and a half souls; and indeed she had all the abilities of a precocious male. "I came into this world", she said, "all armed with hair; my voice strong and harsh. This made the women think I was a boy, and they gave vent to their joy in exclamations which at first deceived the KIng." Gustavus took the discovery of her sex like a gentleman and came to love her so dearly that he seemed quite content to have her as heir to his power, but her mother, Maria Eleanora of Brandenburg, would never forgive her for being a girl. Perhaps this maternal rejection shared in making Christian as much of a man as her physique would allow. She conscientiously neglected her person, scorned ornament, swore manfully, liked to wear male dress, took to masculine sports, rode astride at top speed, hunted wildly, and bagged her game at the first shot, but: "I never killed an animal without feeling pity for it."

...

"She wished to rival not only the youths in sports and courtiers in politics, but also the scholars in learning, and these not merely in languages and literature but in science and philosophy as well. By the age of fourteen she knew German, French, Italian and Spanish; by eighteen she knew Latin; later she studied Greek, Hebrew and Arabic. She read and loved the French and Italian poets and envied the bright vivacity of French civilization. She corresponded eagerly with scholars, scientists, and philosophers in several lands. She brought together a splendid library, including rare ancient manuscripts which students came from many countries to consult.

...

"Pascal sent her his calculating machine, with a remarkably beautiful letter complementing her on being a queen in the realm of mind as well as government." 

...

"Her penultimate passion was for philosophy. She corresponded with Gassendi, who, like a hundred others, congratulated her on realizing Plato's dream of philosopher-kings. Rene Descartes, the outstanding philosopher of the age, came, saw, and marveled to hear her deduce his pet ideas from Plato. When he tried to convince her that all animals were mechanisms, she remarked that she had never seen her watch give birth to baby watches."

...

"Her fragmentary memoirs are vital and fascinating. The maxims which she left in manuscripts have nothing hackneyed about them. E.g.:

• One is, in proportion as one can love.
• Fools are to more feared than knaves.
• To undeceive men is to offend them.
• Extraordinary merit is a crime never forgiven.
• There is a star which unites souls of the first order, though ages and distances divide them.
• More courage is required for marriage, than for war.
• One rises above all, when one no longer esteems or fears anything.
• He who loses his temper with the world has learned all he knows to no purpose.
• Philosophy neither changes men nor corrects men. 

I included an audio file below so you can hear my beautiful voice instead of me clicking on this keyboard in silence. I probably should have taken the wad of tobacco out of my mouth and not tried to balance the book, a laptop and a small dog on my lap but hopefully it's semi-intelligible and may prove to be a sleep aid.

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Reading from book VII in the eleven-book series "The Story of Civilization". Book VII is titled "The Age of Reason Begins". It was published by Simon and Schuster in 1961.

This reading is a section from Chapter XIX "The Rise of The North: 1559-1648" discussing Sweden's King Gustavus Adolphus and his daughter - Sweden's Queen Christina. Begins". It was published by Simon and Schuster in 1961

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Speaking of Sweden, perhaps a Swede rocking out on a Hammond B3 organ with a Leslie speaker would be of interest? or the song Dancing Queen by the Swedish group ABBA? Before I go too far down a random "things Swedish" path I think I better wrap this and go enjoy some warm medicinal smoke to help myself focus....and laugh. Hope this day was good for you💖

Back In The Day

I'm almost through Volume VII of "The Story of Civilization" series by Will and Ariel Durant. Volume VII is titled "The Age of Reason Begins". At 647 pages it is one of the shorter volumes of the set so it's not suitable for reading on a smart phone or by those with more important things to do. It can be time consuming to read but if you are interested in time travel, reading history is a practical means that doesn't require a flux capacitor.

When I first started reading about this series of books I thought it was a joke that anyone could claim to write "the story of civilization." Luckily Will Durant has a sense of humor and created what seems to be a fair minded, necessarily partial treatment of history with all the limitations that any history writing has especially one of this scope that reaches back over 2500 years. If nothing else reading this type of history will give you some sense of perspective when considering our present time. It will also disabuse you of any notions of "exceptionalism" when it comes to nations, states, races, creeds, genders or colors. Exceptional individuals - yes; exceptional abstractions - not so much.

Fun fact - Will and Ariel Durant were awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by the Republican President Gerald Ford in 1977. It seems somehow instructive that the Republican President Donald Trump awarded this medal to the radio personality Rush Limbaugh in his 2020 State of the Union address.

So what's the point? 

You'll certainly learn by reading Will and Ariel's books that civilizations evolve and devolve. The moral arc of the universe may be long and bend towards justice as Martin Luther King taught but the actual state of society has varied wildly over the last couple of thousand years alternating between times of feast and  famine, war and peace, enlightenment and darkness.

I wanted to include a bit of Volume VII to give you a taste of the style of the Durant's writing, which of course changed some over the 37 years they spent on their project but remained always informative, surprising (to me at least) and somewhat wry. This is from the chapter "Imperial Armageddon" in a section titled "Morals and Manners" describing the German empire in the mid 1500's. It may cause you to wonder if there is anything truly new under the sun or if humans are actually acting out some variation of an absurd, sometimes beautiful sometimes cruel and ugly, drama with only the names and dates varying over the millennia. Hopefully it will also make you laugh a little at us apes wearing pants and pantsuits. 

From Will and Ariel -

If we believe the moralists of this half century before the war, the moral picture was as dark as the economic. Teachers complained that the youngsters sent to them were not Christians but barbarians. "The people bring up their children so badly," wrote Matthias Brendenbach in 1557, "that it becomes obvious to the poor schoolmasters...that they have got to reckon...with wild animals." "All discipline appears at an end," said another in 1561;"the students are refractory and insolent in the extreme." In most university towns the citizens hesitated to go out at night for fear of the students, who on some occasions attacked them with open knives. "A chief cause of the general depravity of the students," said Nathan Chytransin in 1578, "is undoubtedly the decline in home training...Now that we have slipped the yoke of ancient laws and statutes from off our necks...it is no wonder that we find, among the larger part of our young people, such unbridled licentiousness, such boorish ignorance, such ungovernable insolence, such terrible godlessness." Others thought that "not the least among the causes why the young lapse into immorality and lasciviousness are the comedies, spectacles, and plays."

As for adults, the preachers described them as quarrelsome hypocrites, gluttons, drunkards and adulterers. Pastor Johann Kuno complained in 1579, "Vice of all sorts is now so common that it is committed without shame, nay, people even boast of it in sodomitish fashion; the coarsest, the most indecent sins have become viirtues...Who regards common whoredom any longer as a sin?" Pastor Bartholomaus Ringwalt thought in 1585 that these were "the last and worst times which have come upon the world." Profanity was almost universal among the men, regardless  of the creed. Calumny had a festival. "My superintendent," wrote the Count of Oldenburg in 1594, "has complained to me of the manner in which Dr. Pezel, at Bremen, has abused and slandered him in one of his books, making out that he spent his days in gluttony, drunkenness and debauchery, that he...was a sheep-devouring wolf, a serpent, a he-goat, an abortion...and that he must be gotten rid of by hanging, drowning, or imprisonment, by the wheel or by the sword." The court preacher of the Elector of Saxony found that, "almost throughout the length and breadth of Germany it has been falsely reported that I earn large gilded goblets in drinking matches, that...I so fill myself with wine that...I have to be propped up and laid on a wagon and carted off like a drunken calf or sow."

Eating and drinking were major industries. Half the day of a well-to-do German was consumed in passing edibles from one end of the anatomy to the other. Burghers were proud of their appetites, which like the dress of their women, served as heralds of prosperity. A circus performer earned national fame by eating at one meal a pound of cheese, thirty eggs, a large loaf of bread--after which stint he fell dead. Dinners lasting seven hours, with fourteen toasts, were not unusual. Weddings were in many cases riots of gourmandizing and intoxication. A jovial prince signed his letters "Valete et inebriamini" (Be well and get drunk). Elector  Christian II of Saxony drank himself to death at the age of twenty-seven. A temperance society struggled against the evil, but its first president died of drink. It was asserted that gluttony was shortening the tenure of life. Said Erasmus Winter in 1599: "Owing to immoderate eating and drinking there are now few old people, and we seldom see a man of thirty or forty who is not affected by some sort of disease, either stone, gout, cough, consumption, or what not."

We must not take these contemporary complaints too seriously. Probably the majority of the people were hard-working, long-suffering, and literally God-fearing folk; but in history, as in journalism, virtue makes no news--which proves it usual.

I hope you can find time to read something that makes you realize how complex and in some sense unknowable this world and the people in it are, while also seeing the common virtue of human individuals throughout time. If nothing else it's like a billion piece puzzle you can enjoy spending your life trying to piece together and in the end knowing the effort was the point. In other words - there are plenty of dittoheaads what the world always needs more of are independent, thinking, evolving humans.

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