Wednesday, February 15, 2023
Tuesday, January 17, 2023
The Front Desk: Vow of Silence ft. Fred Armisen
Tuesday, November 08, 2022
Reading From Will and Ariel Durant's "The Story of Civilization" Book VII Chapter XIX
"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?"
"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.
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Monday, November 07, 2022
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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Friday, January 22, 2021
Poet Amanda Gorman reads 'The Hill We Climb'
Thursday, November 05, 2020
Livin Large
Walt Whitman wrote in his poem Song of Myself,
"Do I contradict myself?Very well then I contradict myself,(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds..."
and perhaps also when he wrote,
"It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them."
________________________
Consider how you might define your self and find meaning in your one precious life. Don't sell your self short, don't be afraid to be ignorant, or to put it another way - don't let your hard-headedness or hard-heartedness prevent you from learning; or finding compassion for fellow beings.
You could define your self as something small and constraining such as a member of a political party, state, or nation.
or
You could think of your self as a precious unique individual with expansive possibilities - a human living in a civilization that is the product of thousands of years of human history, millions of years of geological history, on a planet, in a solar system, in a galaxy, in a universe that is infinite.
Many many possibilities - it's up to you to make the world you live in. In that vein consider another quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson -
“I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”
As is so evident in contemporary American society what we read, listen to and watch has extraordinary impacts on who we are (or at least who we think we are).
The right-wing media ecosystem has for decades encouraged millions of Americans to be fearful, angry, hateful, and aggrieved at one another; as well as promoting distrust of science, expertise and traditional journalism i.e. fact-based and error-correcting.
This blame displacement exercise has led to the richest country on earth lagging other economically developed nations in key aspects of how our society cares for it's citizens - health care, education, wages, family leave etc. while a large portion of it's citizens have been propagandized into blaming each other, rather than holding those with power (wealth), who control the economic and political structures, accountable.
That's bad...but here's the silver lining.
Humans who are ensnared in the right-wing media ecosystem aren't necessarily racist, or stupid, or mean...they are just people. Forgive them for they know not what they do...if you want to be angry you could be angry with those with power (wealth) who created and control these vast right-wing propaganda machines in order to use people as a means to their own selfish ends.
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Saturday, October 10, 2020
Friday, October 02, 2020
Sunday, September 27, 2020
BREAKING NEWS! Trump Challenges Biden to Pissing Contest!!
"We think that fundamentally, anyone who insists on claiming that we cannot draw conclusions about which side is biased, and which side gravitates more closely to the truth, must explain how the media sources most trusted by consistently conservative survey respondents—Fox News, Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck—are the equivalent of the sites that occupy the same positions among consistently liberal respondents: NPR, PBS, the BBC, and the New York Times."
Saturday, September 26, 2020
Handmaiden Nominated for Supreme Court
Amy Coney Barrett, nominated to replace Justice Ruth Ginsberg, is a member of the group People of Praise. This ecumenical, but mostly Catholic, group subscribes to non-Catholic theology in their belief that husbands are the "head" of the family and wives "handmaidens".
I'm being a bit unfair with the "handmaiden" label. In 2017 when Ms. Barrett was nominated for her first judgeship on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals the leader of the group People of Praise, Mr. Lent, said the group’s system of heads and handmaids promotes “brotherhood,” not male dominance. He said the group recently dropped the term “handmaid” in favor of “woman leader.”
Catholic doctrine does not teach "male headship", which is a belief held by some evangelical sects.
"Male headship" contradicts Catholic doctrine which states that in the mutual relationship of man and woman in marriage -
The woman cannot become the "object" of "domination" and male "possession".
The group People of Praise also believe in prophecy, speaking in tongues, divine healing and most troubling - discriminating against some of God's children, namely LGBTQ people.
This snippet from a South Bend Tribune article is illustrative of the groups treatment of LGBTQ people, specifically a young woman named Flannery who joined the group at 18 -
When she returned to South Bend after graduating, she was allowed to transfer to the South Bend branch. At that time, Flannery was realizing that she was lesbian or at least bisexual. During a women’s group meeting, she talked about her “big life change” and how she had met a woman she was interested in, and she was struggling with the fact that she no longer identified as straight, she said.
“I did not ask them to approve of what I did or to pat me on the back and say ‘good job,’” she said. “I just needed to tell somebody so I could talk about it.”
Flannery said she was shocked to learn that the women then reported what she said to her leader, who, a few days later, called her to a meeting at her house and said the women “were very uncomfortable that you were talking about that.”
“She said, ‘Either you never mention this again, or you leave.’ I said, ‘I’ll leave, I don’t want to live like that.’”
Not commenting specifically on Flannery’s case, Lent said the group would end the membership of a person who admits to homosexual activity, or any other “ongoing, deliberate, unrepentant wrongdoing.” He said the group believes that only married people should have sex, and only men and women should marry. Homosexual attraction is not sinful, but acting on it is, Lent said.
Aside from the group’s views on homosexuality, Flannery said she “absolutely” would have been concerned if Barrett had received the Supreme Court nomination.
I don't know anything about Amy Coney Barrett - she sounds like a good person from what I've read. Looking at a group like People of Praise as an outsider doesn't tell me what it's like to be in the group interacting with it's members. It has some aspects that sound appealing to me but there are other aspects that sound quite disturbing. I don't have any issue with people joining non-traditional religious groups it's just that I'm not sure if being a member of a group like People of Praise should not be disqualifying for anyone wanting to be a judge in secular society or at least that a member of that group should be questioned and explain how her membership does not skew her ability to be an impartial judge.
Friday, September 25, 2020
One of The Golden Texts of Philosophy
The quoted text below is from volume I pages 667-669 of Will and Ariel Durant's series of books "The Story of Civilization" -
"The Confucian program is expressed pithily and profoundly in the famous paragraphs of The Great Learning:
The ancients who wished to illustrate the highest virtue throughout the empire first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their own selves. Wishing to cultivate their own selves, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things.
Things being investigated, knowledge became complete. Their knowledge being complete, their thoughts were sincere. Their thoughts being sincere, their hearts were then rectified. Their hearts being rectified, their own selves were cultivated. Their own selves being cultivated, their families were regulated. Their families being regulated, their states were rightly governed. The states being rightly governed, the whole empire was made tranquil and happy."
Will Durant goes on to write -
"This is the keynote and substance of the Confucian philosophy; one might forget all other words of the Master and his disciples, and yet carry away with these "the essence of the matter," and a complete guide to life. The world is at war, says Confucius, because its constituent states are improperly governed; these are improperly governed because no amount of legislation can take the place of the natural social order provided by the family; the family is in disorder, and fails to provide this natural social order, because men forget that they cannot regulate their families if they do not regulate themselves; they fail to regulate themselves because they have not rectified their hearts - i.e., they have not cleansed their own souls of disorderly desires; their hearts are not rectified because their thinking is insincere, doing scant justice to reality and concealing rather than revealing their own natures; their thinking is insincere because they let their wishes discolor the facts and determine their conclusions, instead of seeking to extend their knowledge to the utmost by impartially investigating the nature of things. Let men seek impartial knowledge, and their thinking will become sincere; let their thoughts be sincere and their hearts will be cleansed of disorderly desires; let their hearts be so cleansed, and their own selves will be regulated - not by virtuous sermonizing or passionate punishments, but by the silent power of example itself; let the family be so regulated with knowledge, sincerity and example, and it will give forth such spontaneous social order that successful government will once more be a feasible thing; let the state maintain internal justice and tranquility, and the world will be peaceful and happy.
It is a counsel of perfection, and forgets that man is a beast of prey; but like Christianity it offers us a goal to strike at, and a ladder to climb. It is one of the golden texts of philosophy."
Wednesday, September 23, 2020
Buy The Ticket Take the Ride
"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ''Wow! What a Ride!''Hunter S. Thompson
Sunday, September 20, 2020
Friday, September 18, 2020
Tuesday, September 15, 2020
Smoke (1995) - Auggie's Photo Album
Monday, September 14, 2020
Ophelia (The Band cover) - With Tuba - Reina Del Cid
Sunday, September 13, 2020
Saturday, September 12, 2020
Friday, September 11, 2020
In Praise of Doubt
Tuesday, September 01, 2020
All Day Long