The Women Of Trachis, 1

Deianira, wife of Heracles, frets.  She had been saved from a miserable future when Heracles had taken her from home and married her.  But since then he has always been away, on one gods' adventure after another.  Currently, he has been gone over a year, with no word of his whereabouts.

Deianira's nurse suggests she ask her son, Hyllus, if there is any news of his father.  Hyllus: "Oh, Heracles?  Yeah, he was a slave to a Lydian woman.  Now he's in Euboea fighting Eurytus.".  Deianira: "Huh.  That's exactly what the prophecy said he'd be doing."  Hyllus: "What prophecy?"

[The lack of communication before today is absurd.]

Hyllus goes to find more information.  The Chorus enters and commiserates with Deinira, but ultimately reproves her for her pessimism: this is Heracles, after all, and he's made it through worse scrapes before.  But Deinira explains that when he left this last time, he had told her that in a little more than a year, he would either be finished with the tasks forever or he'd be dead.  That day of reckoning has now arrived.  [Which kind of explains why everything came to a head all of a sudden.]

A messenger arrives with news from Heracles's herald, Lichas.  Heracles is on his way back home.  The messenger expects a tip.

And there was much rejoicing.

Lichas himself arrives with a gaggle of captured women in tow.  Heracles is taking care of some divine promises, but will be home shortly.  It seems Heracles had visited Eurytus in peace, but was dissed badly while he was there.  Shortly after, he killed Eurytus's son Iphitus in a fit of rage, by throwing him off a cliff.  As punishment, Zeus handed him over to the Lydian woman for a time.  When that was through, Heracles went back to get his revenge on Eurytus who got him into the trouble in the first place.  Simple.  And utterly ridiculous.

The women, meanwhile, are the pillage from the victory, and are screwed.  Deinira pities them, and focuses especially on one young, possibly noble girl [named Iole].  She asks Lichas for the details about this one, but he knows nothing-- she's been silent since her capture-- and can't figure why she'd care anyway.  The women are sent inside.

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I've read this about five different times, and simply can't get interested in the story.  Partly, it's because the Heracles mythology is kind of coming out of nowhere.  He's been referenced, of course, in many of the previous works, but this particular episode is totally new, and doesn't seem to have any importance at all.  So far.

Or maybe it's the translation, by a guy (Michael Jameson) I haven't read before.  The introduction, at least, was impenetrable-- like he was writing an analysis just to fill out the assignment, and couldn't care less if what he said was interesting or not.  I've written papers like that myself.

So far, this play is a dud all around.

The Secret Knowledge (David Mamet)

Interesting and enjoyable, though it wasn't exactly what I expected before I started reading. 

The beginning was very thought-provoking as Mamet presented his critiques of different aspects of modern political society-- and his criticisms of the education system were especially apt.  As the book progressed, though, I found it to jump around from topic to topic, and even from thought to thought, without landing on any one place or developing any one idea to its fullest.

After a few chapters of this, I realized what I was missing.  This is not a book that presents an argument of any kind.  It is simply one man's exploration of his own developing ideas of how society works, and relating those ideas to different specific examples from his own everyday experience.  Once I caught on, it was very effective-- because this is how we all actually think through these problems most of the time.  We don't sit down and logically work out a master philosophy.  Instead, different events grab our attention in different ways, and sometimes they grab us enough that we insert those experiences into an overall impression of the world.  Then we plow ahead with the rest of our lives.

In Mamet's case, his overall impression wasn't working anymore, so he sought new information to develop it further.  But the process is still the same-- some of the new information catches his attention more than others, and as a writer he gets to present it to the rest of us.  For the rest of us, we could, if we had the skill, write an entirely different exploration of our own ideas.  In the end, the important thing is that we all do have a different set of ideas, and that we all get the chance to explore and develop them independently.  The worst difficulty comes when an authority attempts to interrupt that exploration and impose a uniform approach on all of society.

As I said, the sections about education caught my attention more than any other.  We really do need a way prepare adolescents to take care of themselves by developing useful skills.  (And there's nothing wrong with those useful skills actually being the Humanities he rails against-- so long as they're actually useful-- meaning attractive to some customer somewhere.  And public funding alone doesn't count.)  A good start would be to explain to the adolescents that this needs to be the end result.  Following their dreams is not useful advice.  Coming up with strategies for self-sustenance, by following their dreams if possible, is useful.

One other passage was especially original: Mamet's discussion of the Monty Hall problem.  What was unusual was that he didn't treat the problem as a mathematical exercise.  Instead, he looked at it as an actual offer by a real person offering a deal, and developed a real insight out of it that I never would have come up with myself.

Essentially, he imagines that the game show host must offer the following bargain: After the contestant selects a door, the host must give the opportunity to switch to the remaining doors.  Backed into this corner (if that's the way the game is presented, he's screwed), the host ingeniously comes up with the only way to turn the odds back toward his own favor: by playing a con.  The host offers additional information, pretending to be helping the contestant with the next stage of the game.  The contestant, blinded by what he sees as a fatal mistake on the part of the host, overinterprets the information and pounces on the perceived advantage by standing pat.  The host then coasts away with the odds in his own favor once again.

In other words, the whole problem is a design on the part of a disadvantaged player in order to regain the advantage, camouflaged (as all cons are) by the wishful thinking of the mark.  And that's why everyone falls for it.

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A couple other items of note: I took notes in pencil in the margins of the book, when Mamet's words (or rather, the gaps between his sentences-- this is consistent with the way he writes his plays) brought to mind examples that are rattling around in my own current perception of the world.  I don't know if these notes are helpful, or if I'll ever look at them again, or what, but it was a way to hold onto themes even as the reading of an entire book was spread over several days.

I purchased this book in July 2011, the same time I got my iMac and in the shopping spree that accompanied it.  It had been reviewed in, and Mamet had been interviewed by, all my favorite podcasts, including Ricochet and Uncommon Knowledge.  I couldn't pass it by.

And finally, I didn't consider this a sidelight from the rest of the project.  I have to mix in some modern (i.e. 20th-21st century) works with the others if I don't want to simply be cataloguing the past.  This is expecially true for political and economic works, so stay tuned for more to come.

Year 1, In The Books

Honestly, I didn't mean for that to be a pun.  Liked it so much, I kept it.

Job and Ecclesiastes

The Iliad

The Odyssey

The Agamemnon

The Libation Bearers

The Eumenides

Prometheus Bound

Ajax

Antigone

The Histories of Herodotus

Common Sense

The Spirit of Laws

Second Treatise of Civil Government

The Anti-Capitalist Mentality

The Joke

Speed-The-Plow

Radical Chic

Mau-Mauing The Flak-Catchers

The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby

The Dark Knight Returns

Batman: Year One

The Killing Joke

The Killing Joke (Alan Moore)

I read this out of an Alan Moore collection from the library.  And I read a few of his Superman stories from that collection before this one.  It turns out that, for the most part, comic books are stupid.

This one wasn't, though.  Even if I didn't get the end.

The overall idea is an interesting one: how close are we each from giving up on our moral compass and devotion to the social ethic?  If we undergo an experience traumatic enough (caveat: it's more interesting when the Joker doesn't have a backstory.  But within this book, it's not clear if the backstory is true, anyway) how will we react in an attempt to process what has happened?

Batman himself is right on that knife's edge.  His traumatic loss of his parents has driven him to near lunacy.  The only difference is he holds himself to a self-imposed moral code, but it's not at all clear that he does this out of any kind of rationality, or if his own irrational response just happened to take the form that it did.  The Joker fell on one side of the line, Batman fell on the other, but the Joker is essentially right about the irrationality and amorality of the universe.

Commissioner Gordon, though, emerges as the moral rock at the center of Batman's world.  Exposed to the same kind of trauma (worse, probably), he holds to the same moral principles he has always held-- and is not being irrational when he does so.  He has always understood why Batman does what he does; he will not allow himself to fall into a similar gray zone of justice.

The Joker's adoption of the carnival freaks as his minions make an interesting symbolic point.  There really is an unexplainable unfairness in the universe, that allows innocent individuals to be born into such handicaps.  It is a condition that cries out for a justification.  And, if none is forthcoming, it is easy to conclude that there is no justice to be bound to in the first place.

The Dark Knight did a good job of exploring these influences on and implications of the Joker's actions, but this story nails down the themes in a very succinct and concrete way.

But the end of the book was lousy.

The Joke (Milan Kundera)

This is a nearly random one-shot novel that was referenced in one of Mark Steyn's National Review columns.  No association with anything else-- except, when I see well-read people refer to something, I feel like I should know what they're talking about.

For the first half of the book, I was viewing it as a terrifying illustration of the operation of a Communist state-- the point that Steyn was making.  But the introduction warned against treating it as a political novel.  The introduction was right.  By the end, I viewed it much more as an exploration of different viewpoints of life in general, and the paradoxes of filtering reality through our own subjective consciousness. 

It's also a good thing that I read the book in under 48 hours.  The shifting-narrator structure wouldn't have made sense otherwise, and I never would have caught on to the reemergence of characters from their fleeting mentions in prior narrations.  It felt like an episode of LOST at times.  Very effective.

Bullet points:

• Much romantic life-- at least each individual side of an unrequited love-- is a struggle to impose a coherent narrative on what is objectively unconnected events and actions.


• In a related way, the political project of Communism is the imposition of control of control and coherence on what is necessarily (because it depends on the actions of independent agents) a series of isolated social interactions.  In the same way the lover is seeking bliss, the Communist seeks to achieve social perfection.


• This involves the replacement of organic culture with a simulation instead-- a simulation designed toward the imagined utopia of the future.  It is believed that the artificial imitation can do the job of culture just as well as the genuine article, as long as it is simply successfully inserted into the correct social position.


• This is most notable-- and off-putting-- when religious ceremonies are stamped out in favor of Party social rituals.  The actions are drained of their content, leaving only a shell of an empty formalism.


• Perhaps the most drastic imposition is forced labor camps, designed to simulate acts of penance against a controlling moral authority.


• I was greatly impressed by the plot twists sprinkled throughout the story-- especially the revelation that Ludvik was pursuing Helena purely as revenge against his enemy Zemanek.  Hidden very well until the last name was suddenly mentioned.  It's also possible that Ludvik was originally marked for special attention by the Party at school because of his defense of Kostka's religiosity.  The only one that didn't work for me organically in the story was Lucie's relationship with Kostka after Ludvik's relationship with her ended  It was simply too coincidental that those two characters' paths would cross separately from their prior relationships with Ludvik.


• I would have enjoyed a chapter narrated by Zemanek, covering his perspective of Ludvik's trial, and the gradual lessening of his intense devotion to Party.


• I enjoyed the explanation that the next generation at the school was entirely uninterested in the battles fought by the prior classes and their devotion to the Party.  Another instance of an attempt to impose an overarching logic onto a reality that simply refuses to support our aims.  This was also illustrated well by Jaroslav's son blowing off the folk ceremony.


• Ludvik's final identification of the "mistakes" that controlled his life was also interesting.  What we call "errors" can only be so against a backdrop of correct actions-- defined in reference to the logic we're trying to impose or extract from the world.  But from the perspective of History, all events are simply events.  The "errors" are the history-- and there is nothing else.


• And this is the theme of the book: that the world does not react to our grand designs for it.
  

Yes, suddenly I saw it clearly: most people deceive themselves with a pair of faiths: they believe in eternal memory (of people, things, deeds, nations) and in redressibility (of deeds, mistakes, sins, wrongs).  Both are false faiths.  In reality the opposite is true: everything will be forgotten and nothing will be redressed.  The task of obtaining redress (by vengeance or by forgiveness) will be taken over by forgetting.  No one will redress the wrongs that have been done, but all wrongs will be forgotten.

 

Batman: Year One (Frank Miller)

Color me unimpressed.  Batman needs villains, and he didn't have any here.  The whole thing felt like it never got off the ground.  Yeah, yeah... Batman needs to be created, and he doesn't quite know what he's doing at first.  But ultimately, nothing is at stake except for some (mostly) petty crime.  I needed a bigger conflict to hold my attention.

I suppose this was a good exploration of the psychology of Lt. Gordon.  If that hadn't been delved into before, it was very nicely done.  And it nicely wraps together a whole slew of characters that I recognize from other references-- Harvey Dent, Carmine Falcone, Catwoman, and Det. Flass among them.

But Batman needs villains.

Though the overall theme made for one helluva movie.

The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality (Ludwig von Mises)

I felt like a needed a little background before getting into my Hayek books, and according to Russ Roberts, Mises was a big influence.  I don't think I'm up for academic tracts, though, so this was a relatively short sample (picked basically at random out of what was available in the library) of what I can expect from popular economics.

At first, I didn't appreciate Mises' hectoring tone, scolding the unsuccessful for their jealousy of the rich.  I mean, even if he's right, he doesn't have to say it like that.  But I realized throughout the book that Mises felt that tone was necessary to wake up his audience to the damage that could be done by the enemies of capitalism.  If he was writing this in the 70's, he was writing in a crisis moment.  There was no time for gladhanding the naysayers.  It was buck up the capitalists, or perish.

Bullet points I picked up on throughout the book:

• The consumer is ultimate sovereign.  If the public won't buy your product, your business will fail.  Economic growth (not to say success or moral goodness) only comes from serving the fulfilling the public's desire.
• The players that produce real progress are the saver who provides capital, the entrepreneur who attempts to create a product to sell to the masses, and the technologist who invents means of greater efficiency.  All other participants are bit players, essentially interchangeable parts.  Resentment at recognizing this leads to the anti-capitalist mentality, even as the successes of the progress-makers ("progressive classes") improve the lives of all (as witnessed by their eager consumption of those goods).
• SAVING is the primary act.  Growth can't come intially from spending, or from boosting demand as the first step in the chain (although all these actions are cyclically related to each other).  But saving is primary-- it gives the essential "slack" (my word) necessary to attempt something new, the success of which is the basis for real economic growth.
• Capitalism is accused of debasing the culture-- by flooding the market with trash literature, it crowds out real art and real profundity.  Poppycock.  Goodness and badness in art is independent of commercial success.  Commercial participation in the arts in no way precludes the possibility of great art.  Capitalistic participation merely indicates a desire of the public that was previously unmet-- THEY determine what sells.  And in prior days, profound art was unavailable for public consumption anyway, no less so than today.  Existence in a capitalistic society in no way precludes the pursuit of great art, if that is what the artist wants from his life.
• Capitalism and communism-- identical to socialism-- are diametrically opposed.  There is no middle ground, no waystation, in interventionism-- it is only a step toward communism.  The founders of communism certainly saw it that way.
• Anti-capitalist literature depends almost fully on a misrepresentation of the conditions of people-- both the poor it tries to inspire to rise up, and of the businessmen it accuses of unadulterated treachery.  It is silly not to recognize this as it is happening.
• Mises goes into a severe criticism of the concept of natural rights-- though it's not clear if he would disagree with Locke's concept of natural rights or the Founders' concept.  His main point seems to be only that there is no natural right to an even share in the  goods or the wealth within the society-- for where did that wealth arise from to begin with?  Only through the tortured application of reason and ingenuity on the part of human actors.  Nature provides nothing.  This is an argument against the concept of a natural right to freedom from material want as put forward by the early 20th century Progressives.
• Increased efficiency (either through improved technology or entrepreneurial insight) raises the marginal value of the labor employed in the process (possibly because it gets by with a lower total amount of it?).  That increase in value corresponds to rising wages within that industry.  In turn, this raises the wages of labor throughout society, for employers must pay more to prevent employees from leaving to enter the improved industry.  This is all possible system-wide essentially because of the gradual accumulation of capital-- that is, through the saving made possible by the increased efficiency.  And saving is sustainable only because useful production outpaces consumption-- and that happens through the application of human ingenuity.
• Me : Is this the ultimate argument against centrally planned economy?  A government CANNOT save; it will always insist on distributing for consumption ALL of its production.  Even a longer-term plan on the part of the government will have the eventual future consumption locked into law, undeferrable.  Capitalism, and the progress it generates, requires private property rights and private control of the means of production, because only a private actor can accumulate capital by saving-- by foregoing consumption-- in the first place.  Only a private actor can plan ahead and recognize an opportunity for future benefit through delayed gratification.
• The ultimate source of this idea is the concept of individual liberty first proposed by the Greeks (flawed as their concept was).  The modern capitalist age drew explicitly on the cultural tradition first laid down by the Greeks.  The actions of this century's perverted liberals-- adopting a sort of "super-liberalism" (Mises' word) that sought the emancipation of all people from the vicissitudes of Nature and of inequality (not recognizing how that inequality arose)-- first sought to overturn the primacy of the ancient cultural tradition from the public mind.  This is a complete reversal of real liberty.
• p. 101: "Freedom under capitalism means: not to depend more on other people's discretion than these others depend on one's own."  We ourselves make the rich rich by buying their products.  In turn we gain the benefits of the improvements they try to sell.  Everyone is reliant upon everyone else-- but everyone has skin and a say in the game as well.  What more do we want?
• The hectoring of the intellectual class, through their freedom to express their views, is the price we pay to secure the freedom required for the capitalists to do their thing without government interference.  What it requires in turn is vigilance, and active argument in support of our own point of view.

Wow.  I got a lot more out of this than I expected.  On to Hayek!

The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (Tom Wolfe)

Las Vegas... demolition derby... self-promoting DJs... Jersey teeny-boppers... Phil Spector... custom cars... Cassius Clay... NASCAR country... Cary Grant... seedy gossip tabloids... the IT girl... urban archetypes... public trendsetters... conservative aesthetic crusaders... the Art Scene... men's fashion... nanny culture... the generation gap... Sunday leisure... rich divorcées...women's prison... doormen... status in the city.

America rocks.*

What I got out of this book is utter delight in and celebration of the strands of American culture.  I could also see Tom Wolfe dipping his toe into the stream-of-consciousness style.  Most importantly, he treats all of his subjects with glowing, genuine respect.  Only when he's writing about the ultra-rich does a wink sneak in to acknowledge the utter ridiculousness of their behavior.  (As opposed to his portrayal of the hippies in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, in which he never stopped winking.)

*(Except for Phil Spector.  On the other hand, anyone who could write this:



can't be all bad.)

The Dark Knight Returns (Frank Miller)

This is the first graphic novel I've ever read.  And it's the first comic book I've read since Dennis the Menace Learns the Our Father (the Protestant version, anyway).  The plan is to get a feel for the format with a few Batman titles before diving into Watchmen.  In any case, I'm impressed.

What surprised me the most was the inferences I had to draw as the reader from very few details in each panel.  And yet, the the implications were all fully there on the page.

Another aspect that I enjoyed: the critical commentary about many elements of modern society that I privately rail against as well.  Unserious media, relativistic reluctance to name evil as evil, hippie parents, therapeutic solutions to spiritual problems... it's all there.

I love Batman making fun of Superman.  Come on, you pansy.

So apparently it's well-established that Frank Miller wrote Batman as an explicitly Catholic character.  To that end, I loved the shout-out to Catholicism's devotion to absolute truth in the face of ever-changing worldly fashions:

The Pope today declared that the Church's stand on contraception will not change, despite yesterday's firebombing of St. Peter's Square.

That's right.

Speed-The-Plow (David Mamet)

What I love about Mamet's plays is the way the context of the conversation changes in a instant, but it's immediately evident what the new context is.

Excuse me.

Character 1: The thing about Mamet is, is the context turns on a fucken' dime...

Character 2: On a fucken' dime.

Character 1: Right, on a fucken' dime, but it's clear as day what everybody's state of mind is.

Character 2: Bullshit.

Anyway, you've got two producers who seem to be pleased with their work-- they're making a good deal on a movie project!

Boom.  Nope, they're only excited about the money.

Boom.  Nope, what they really want is to shove the money in the faces (or up the asses) of everyone who stood in their way.

Karen walks in, and the guys start showing off by being more vulgar than before.  What they actually want is sex-- but they're mostly insecure about it.  Enchanting.

At Gould's place, Karen makes her pitch (though she is unable to make the one-sentence pitch a movie deal requires.)  It doesn't work.

Boom.  She switches to seduction.  Gould doesn't notice.

In the office, Fox is livid.  (Actually, he goes through Denial, Anger, and Bargaining in about a page and a half).  He's actaully been jealous of Gould his whole career, but was willing to hide it as long as he could be dragged upward with him.

Ultimately, the movies are a business where everybody claims to be producing art, while in actuality it's entirely built on power plays.  "It's about people."  Still a half-truth.

Mau-Mauing The Flak Catchers (Tom Wolfe)

It's all an illusion.  Government programs, class struggles, status-climbing, identity politics, community organizing-- all of it.

Those who design top-down programs and solutions think that they will make a dent in the problem.  What's the problem?  Well... clearly there is a problem, and clearly we have in mind that we will do something about it, and in the end, clearly that will indeed come to pass.  Because how could it not?

Every participant uses the system in place for ends other than what the system was put in place for.  Community leaders hand out favors to friends.  Government bureaucrats check boxes on a checklist, their assignments fulfilled.  Status-seekers see an opening and make a move for themselves.  Children are conscripted for image management purposes.  Teachers create lessons to raise awareness-- the most important thing that can be done for a learner.  Writers claim to have discovered The Answer, while cultural guideposts pick winners nearly at random.  Money is flung around because money is the only medium known to produce results-- the mere use of it must be part of the solution!

Is there an alternative?  Well... an alternative to what?  If you never define the problem you can insist that only your actions can possibly solve it.  Who can propose a better way?  How could they possibly show their way to be better?

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I guess I hinted at this same problem in the last post, but here it is again.  Trying to wrap my head around macroscopic sociological problems-- or even macroscopic descriptions of society-- drives me crazy.  Wolfe's style is very helpful in explaining why this might be so-- because the most likely case is that it doesn't make any sense.  The best way to realize that is to see whaat we actually see in our everyday experience of the world and the large society we live in-- only disjointed facts and impressions, that whirl around while the rational part of our brains try to tell some kind of narrative that makes sense.  It could very well be that we're not wired to make sense of that level of abstraction.

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On another note, I have noticed that my posts tend to be written in the voice of the author I just read-- or at least a facsimile of that voice.  This is not a new phenomenon.  Thinking back to high school and my first years of college, I often fell asleep trying to read whatever was in front of me (that I had put off until I was too tired to actually get through it-- some things never change).  Fiction, non-fiction, magazines, whatever.  And I always had dreams narrated in the style of whomever I had been reading.  I can distinctly remember this happening with Tom Clancy more than anything else.  Upon waking, I'd notice that whatever the narrator had been saying was utter, utter nonsense, and then the content of that narration would fade completely.  But the tone remained (even if I was unable to reproduce it while I was awake).

Anyway, it's happening again, especially in the entries for Chesterton and Wolfe.  I'm glad that it is.  In Chesterton's case, his tone is so lofty I want to capture it as my own.  In Wolfe's case, it would be impossible to take careful sequential notes of what he writes-- and I wouldn't want to anyway.  As I mentioned above, the free-wheeling style is the only way to make sense of his subject matter in the first place.

Radical Chic (Tom Wolfe)

Man, I love that stream-of-consciousness style.  It really does paint the room, and even the subjective experience of the room.  And I've found the less carefully you read-- the more you just let the words stream in-- the clearer the picture.

Maybe I just know a lot more than I did before, but it was surprising how familiar the names were in comparison to those in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.  Leonard Bernstein, Barbara Walters, William F. Buckley.  Cool stuff.

Biting commentary on the whole idea of high society.  Intended that way?  Isn't Tom Wolfe a member of high society?

The political tensions are clear enough.  It's probable that social gulfs can't be bridged in one evening.  What progress did they actually expect to make?

Loved the continued insistence at the end that it was a "meeting, not a party."  Oh, but the white servants...

I was taken aback by the final turn of the tale.  In the end, the movers and shakers lost control of their image, and of the story.  A good lesson there: With status comes notoriety, but not necessarily a whole lot of power.  Trend-setters can set the trends within those arenas that others look to them to set trends.  But political trends come from elsewhere.  Or were they simply trying to plant the next flag against an up-and-coming new wave of high society-- was it merely a social experiment?  Simply a gamble-- within their own world-- that didn't pay off?

I'd like to see Buckley's essay about the meeting.

One theme that has bothered me more and more in general, and that struck me in particular in the essay (so I might as well bring it up now): I don't think I understand the psychology of identity politics.  Meaning, I genuinely don't think of myself as represented by, or representative of, any class at all.  That's easy enough to say as a white middle-class man, but it applies to those minority groups of which I am a part as well-- I never felt nor do I feel personally implicated in any criticism of the Catholic Church, for instance.  In the realm of abstraction, I'll think through arguments implicating the abstract idea.  And I'll take note of how other individuals within the group are treated as individuals.  But I never feel like the abstract idea has much of an effect on me.  In the end, I see myself as an individual who works and lives, and is treated in a certain way by the people I interact with, and take those interactions as significant only for myself-- because how could the other person actually be acting as if they are interacting with an abstraction?  How could I?

So what am I doing wrong?  Because given the way other people talk and write about the way they see and behave in the world, it often feels like I'm missing out on something big.

Sidelines (Ed.: Sidelights?)

It can get awfully boring limiting oneself to a set sequence of books.  And it can get mighty annoying reading just enough to outline in a post, and no more.  I'm getting a little sick of it at the moment.  Can't I just read?

So, a new addition.  Random insertions of non-classics, read quickly and immersively (well, more immersively).  Library books, many of them will be.  They'll get single entries, and I'll feel free to move on.  Capice?

Sudden panic, however: do I call these sidelines, or sidelights?  Apple's Dashboard dictionary says:

sideline - an activity done in addition to one's main job
sidelight - a piece of incidental information that helps to clarify or enliven a subject

They're both right!  Ummm..... sidelights it is.  (The whole damn blog is a sideline.)

Antigone, 4

The prophet Tiresias enters to tell off Creon.  He has seen only bad omens-- bad, bad omens.  Creon blows him off, and accuses him of faking bad news for payment.  Creon is losing all control.  So Tiresias finally lays out all his crimes and sins in one fell swoop.  1) Sentencing a mere child to death.  2) Dishonored an honorable soldier's body.  3) Defied his own flesh and blood.  4) Fomented revolution among the people he is supposed to lead.  Tiresias walks out in disgust.

Creon is finally shaken in fear.  He will free Antigone if he can, and regrets defying the law of the gods.  The Chorus beg to Bacchus to come and set things right.

After a time, a messenger arrives with news of Creon's despair.  Haemon is dead by suicide.  Eurydice (Creon's wife and Haemon's mother) enters distrught, and the messenger tells the story.  He and Haemon went and performed the proper burial rites on Polyneices rotting body.  Haemon then went to free Antigone, but found her having hanged herself.  Creon also arrived, setting off Haemon's rage.  He lunged at his father, then stabbed himself with his own sword, embracing Antigone in his death.

Eurydice leaves, and Creon enters with Haemon's body.  He is broken.  The same messenger enters again with more news: Eurydice has killed herself with her dagger.  What is more, she cursed and blamed Creon for all the death's before committing the act.  Creon has lost everything.

The Chorus's final lesson:

Where wisdom is, there happiness will crown
A piety that nothing will corrode.
But high and mighty words and ways
Are flogged to humbleness, till age,
Beaten to its knees, at last is wise.

--------------------------

Very bloody ending, moreso than anything I've read so far.  Inspiration to Shakespeare?

In the end, Creon did respect a higher authority-- the words of the prophet shook him to his core.  He really did understand that his actions were subject to the law of the gods.  But in his arrogance, he would not believe any of those who tried to warn him of that, distrusting their motives-- even disbelieving the prophet for a time, treating him as a huckster.  A little paranoia mixed in with the megalomania, I think.

Another lesson: justice does indeed come in the end onto those who test it.  From the very beginning of his rampage, Creon's fate was sealed.  It was only a matter of time.

Antigone, 3

Haemon enters, and states that he plans to speak as Creon's son.  Creon is pleased, and tells his son he shouldn't marry such a disobedient girl.  Also speaks at length on the right of a political leader to rule his people with an iron fist-- in that true justice lies.  Haemon quietly rebukes him, saying that as his son he begs his father to do real justice for Antigone, and that the people in the streets of Thebes are uniformly against their leader.  The words between them grow heated, and nearly hysterical on Creon's part.  Haemon continues to plead for the justice of heaven be done, while Creon contends that the justice of power is justice.  Haemon walks out.  Creon describes the punishment that Antigone will receive: isolation in cave until she expires.

The Chorus lament the effects of love on familial relations.

Antigone is brought in once more to face Creon.  She is resigned to her punishment, and sees it as the culmination of the curse upon her family.  Creon enters to give the final sentence, and Antigone is defiant to his face once again.  She also gives a final justification for her act: her love for her dead brother cannot be made up for toward any other.  She maintains the justice of her actions, and only hopes that true justice will eventually be done to those who wrong her.

The Chorus lament again, and name Antigone as the continuation of a long line of Greek women who suffered in seclusion and isolation.

------------------------

More development of the political philosophy here.  Creon does possess absolute power, but the people are free to resist and eventually to abandon their leader, and will do so if they do not see him aligning with their sense of a higher justice.

Antigone, 2

Chorus sings a song extolling the dominance of man over the world-- over the natural world, which he has subdued, and over the political world, which bends to his whims.  But end on a word of warning against ambition overstepping its bounds.

Sentry reenters with Antigone in tow.  He cheerfully and at great length tells how she was caught red-handed re-burying the body (after the guards had dusted it off the first time).  Antigone stands up to Creon, denying nothing, and claiming that she was following a higher law-- a law the Creon has not the authority to nullify.  Creon is angered even more.  Biting back-and-forth between the two, neither giving an inch.

Ismene is brought in, to be punished as an accomplice, a role she gladly accepts now that her remaining family is doomed.  Antigone ruefully denies her that title, for she wouldn't go along with her plan at the beginning.  Ismene tries to save Antigone by pointing out she is betrothed to Creon's son Haemon-- just throwing another duty onto the pile.  Taken aback, Creon sends them both to be locked up while he figures out what to do next.

The Chorus sings a song lamenting the terrible fate that continues to wend its way through the family of Oedipus.  The gods are exceptionally cruel, and wicked in their play.

Haemon enters.

Antigone, 1

After Oedipus's death, a war rages for the control of Thebes.  Oedipus's two sons, Polyneices and Eteocles, are killed on opposite sides of the battle.  Oedipus's brother Creon, now the acting king, declares that Polyneices's body should receive no burial, he being on the rebellion side of the battle.  Oedipus's daughter Antigone vows to give her brother a proper burial, just as Eteocles rightly received.  She tries to talk her sister Ismene into aiding her in the burial, but Ismene is too fearful to do so-- and does not want to contribute to her family's sad history of ignominy.  Disgusted, Antigone asks her instead to proclaim loudly what she intends to do-- she welcomes the punishment of death that Creon has threatened, as long as she is seen to do right by her family.

Thebes's soldiers (the Chorus) enter, bragging loudly over their victory.  Creon enters and clarifies to them his method of rule.  He will have utter allegiance to the city from its citizens and military.  All other relationships come second.  To that end, he explains his proclamation that Polyneices not be buried: it is the proper punishment for one who raised arms against the city. 

But on the first night, a Sentry enters, disheveled, confused, fearful, and hesitant to tell what he knows.  He finally explains that Polyneices body was sprinkled with earth-- enough to show that a burial ceremony had been performed.  The guards argued over who was at fault-- all declaring profusely that they were innocent-- before he was chosen to bring the news to Creon.  Creon, in turn, is apoplectic.  A soldier suggests it might be the work of one of the gods, but Creon declares that Polyneices was certainly not deserving of such an honor.  He decides that the guards around the body must have been bribed into allowing this to happen, and directs the Sentry to discover who defied his orders.  The Sentry protests, and Creon leaves in disgust.  Alone, the Sentry vows that he shall not return-- it's not worth the hassle.

----------------------------

The language here seems to be more... regal than in the Ajax.  I suppose that is in keeping with the characters we've met, who are of royal station.  But it might just be Roche being careful about that sort of thing (he did give the Sentry a Cockney accent to contrast with Creon).

There was a very quick, but useful, introduction of the overall conflict of the play: duty to family vs. duty to state.  Creon explicitly demands utter and complete loyalty to the state, even under penalty of death.  But implicit in this is the idea that the threat of violence is needed to maintain the loyalty to the state-- and that will have no effect on those willing to martyr themselves over their loyalty to family, as Antigone expressly states that she is.

Heretics, V - Mr. H.G. Wells And The Giants

It is our duty to those we call hypocrites to closely examine their beliefs, and thereby to perhaps discover the utter sincerity with which they hold them.  This applies most pertinently to the deeply religious of the past, who (we say) professed "crawling humility" and yet (somehow, we sneer) gained control over the whole world.  There is nothing hypocritical about this-- in fact, the former certainly opens the door to the latter.  By properly claiming that they deserved nothing, the Christians opened the way to achieving everything; by not always examining whether they had been slighted, those Christians opened themselves to immeasurable (because unmeasured!) gains.

A modern example of the same phenomenon of genuine humility is the truly great scientist.  He becomes great through his attention and devotion to a single small idea-- whose consequence is to completely overturn our understanding of the world.  It is the quiet devotion that achieves this, though, not the bombastic bragging over the enormous consequences.  "There were possible answers to Huxley; there was no answer possible to Darwin."  One specific example of this kind of humility is H.G. Wells.  His literary output is utterly fantastic-- but he comes to it from careful and sincere examination of the state of humanity around him.  Proof that he is no huckster: the softening of his futuristic vision from that of Morlock and Eloi to that of competent, knowledgeable citizens.

In another instance, he has abandoned his view that reproduction will become a matter of managed breeding of superior men.  He has come to view such a program as technically infeasible.  It is, instead, morally infeasible more than that-- good men will never allow themselves to be treated in this way.  The problem that he does not perceive, ultimately, is that he views health as a problem to be scientifically or medically managed-- hence, health care.  This is the opposite of the truth.  True health is that state in which we can afford to be bold, daring, striving, ambitious, and reckless.  The healthy man eats to fill his appetite and takes pleasure in doing so; exercises primarily to enjoy exertion and the outdoors; marries for love!  The other results-- stronger, well-operating bodies and offspring-- take care of themselves.

Wells's devotion to a scientific approach leaves him with other blind spots as well.  His view of man starts with the material, when any simple examination shows you must start with the spiritual.  His vision of Utopia is built first on its citizens' shunning the concept of original sin-- but a simple examination shows this to be the most self-evident concept we have!  "He would have found... that a permanent possibility of selfishness arises from the mere fact of having a self[.]"  Every venture into Utopia suffers from the same defect, of course-- that of assuming the big problems have gone away, and organizing society to deal with the small.  "They first assume that no man will want more than his share, and then are very ingenious in explaining whether his share will be devlibered by motor-car or balloon."  But this Utopia is impossible because man's devotion to his ideals-- to the point of fighting for them-- is his defining characterisitic.

The scientific devotion leads to the shunning of metaphysics, and so to ridiculing a belief in or fixation on ideals and universals.  But such an attitude implicitly rejects the possibility of knowledge in the first place.  You cannot say we have left our silly theories behind and have moved to more solid and reasonable foundation of knowledge unless there is a direct relationship between the old and the new; unless there is an ideal state of knowledge that both participate in, the new in greater measure than the old; unless there be a commonality through which we make the valid comparison.  Noticing a difference necessarily comes after noticing a similarity-- otherwise, why make the comparison at all?  "When we say the hare moves faster, we say that the toroise moves.  And when we say of a thing that it moves, we say, without need of other words, that there are things that do not move.  And even in the act of saying that things change, we say that there is something unchangeable."  Put another way: yes, surely North and South are relative concepts, but the very idea of direction requires that there be a fixed North Pole.  We say that one object is dimmer or brighter than another-- but we are only able to do so coherently because we have a fixed idea of absolute light against which we compare them.

And so Wells's sociological speculations suffer from the defect of his metaphysical incoherence.  In one book, he examines (like Shaw) the Nietschzian idea of the Superman.  If the Superman is truly beyond the comprehension of men, they will react to him with simple indifference.  [Is our reaction to, for instance, the weather any different?]  It is only if a valid comparison to common men can be recognized that they will react to the Superman with awe or devotion.  And that comparison will always be made according to the same standards.  Jack's Giant may have viewed himself as a kind of Superman, but the only question for Jack was whether the Giant was good.  The fundamental measure, and hence the central characteristic, of man is moralness-- a spiritual quality.

And in other ways, hypothesizing a devotion to a proposed Superman misidentifies the essence of man.  We value courage, but courage is not a quality possessed by a Superman.  Rather, courage is a quality shown by the small man in challenging the Superman.

And, "If the Superman is better than we, of course we need not fight him; but in that case, why not call him the Saint?"

This fixation on the Superman who is beyond human is only a modern development.  Our ancient heroes were, instead, simply more human-- and that in their superior display of the central characteristics of humanity.  Achilles is heroic because his deeds on the battlefield emerge from his love of his fallen friend.  We cheer even the peasant who challenges Robin Hood when he grows too full of himself.  The hope of humanity is in the dignity and self-possession of the underdog.  It will be ever thus.  Utopia will have to wait.

------------------------

Wow.  This chapter is a tour de force.

Irony alert: Chesterton writes of the passing of the great scientific period-- in 1905.  The new advances in relativity and quantum dynamics were right on the doorstep.  It is interesting, though, that Einstein seemed to possess the same qualities that Chesterton admired in the great scientists: devotion to a simple idea, and the careful working out of the consequences.

On the other hand, we currently seem to be in a lull in the advance of fundamental science.  And yet, we do see self-aggrandizement on the part of those who wield scientific authority.  Look at the grand (and ever-changing, and ever-magnifying) predictions made by climate science in the popular press.  And the response of many is to tune them out, or to fight back.  Einstein didn't make political hay out of relativity.

What a wake-up call in Chesterton's diagnosis of the "health care" problem, even in his own time!  The mistake is-- still!-- in thinking that health is an ever-present problem needing daily management.  It is not.  Prudence demands planning and insuring against catastrophe.  Between emergencies, health is a condition to be celebrated, or a state to be simply maintained.

In his discussion of Utopia, Chesterton hits on the fundamental flaw in the liberal project: imagining that humanity's problems might be ultimately "solved", but only through a fundamental change in the essential character of man.  It imagines that man's vices-- greed, ambition, selfishness-- might be expunged, while simultaneously mischaracterizing man's virtues-- especially an individual's sense of self-worth-- as dangerous problems to be tamped down.  Ultimately, the thought that man can be manipulated stems from a rejection that there even is such a thing as human nature-- which either stems from or leads to the thought that there are no fundamental natures in anything at all.  Then, the problems that the meddler is trying to solve are problems only in the sense that they violate the observer's personal sense of justice-- and the meddling instinct stems from the egoistic assumption that that personal sense is sacrosanct.

Ajax, 4

Menelaus arrives and decrees that the body should not be buried-- Ajax should be treated as an enemy with all the penalty that entails for his plan to murder the Greek leaders.  Further, his greater crime is insubordination against his superiors.  A city cannot thrive unless the citizens submit to authority and recognize their betters; an army cannot survive unless the soldiery submit absolutely to their commanders.  It was Ajax's great fault that he never did this.

Teucer angrily rebuts.  Ajax did not join the war as a soldier under Menelaus; Ajax was not even a subject under the region of Menelaus's kingdom.  Ajax always acted as a free man-- and his greatness in battle was a testament to this self-regard.  Rising anger as Menelaus and Teucer shout back-and-forth, each pleading his case:  Menelaus saying there must be penalty for his crime, Teucer retorting that no crime was actually committed-- except perhaps denying Ajax the prize that was deservedly his.  Menelaus slinks away looking for backup.

Teucer hastily begins the burial process, with the help of of Tecmessa and Eurysaces.  Instructs Eurysaces to cling to the body-- no intruder would dare separate the two of them.  Agamemnon arrives to tell of Teucer, with a much firmer and angrier tone than Menelaus.  He rightly claims authority as Ajax's general in battle-- so Teucer's previous arguments have less weight.  He also hurls personal insults about Ajax's questionable lineage (through his captive mother), putting him in his place as a subordinate to the great leaders around him.  But Teucer comes back even more directly and forthrightly than before-- reminding Agamemnon of Ajax's brave defense of the ships, of his eagerness to face off against Hector alone, and of Agamemnon's own questionable lineage through his father Atreus's evil actions.  It's ugly.

Odysseus arrives, and quickly (and calmly) says Ajax ought to be buried-- even offering to assist in the burial.  His reasons are many-- he recognizes Ajax's previous greatness, he recognizes the slight he experienced, he knows he has own enemies who could try to impose the same insult after his own death, and Agamemnon (like a politician looking to save face) can claim a spirit of generosity back among the men he leads.  Agamemnon, not happy about it, concedes.  Ultimately, Teucer takes on the burial himself, for he knows that Ajax and Odysseus were true enemies; Odysseus acquiesces and leaves.  The body is carried off.

------------------------------

Teucer is awesome.  Two amazing speeches.  First, an exchange with Menelaus (1143-1158):

Menelaus: I observed a man once of fast and saucy speech
Who had pressed sailors to make a voyage in a storm;
When the weather got really rough, you couldn't hear
Him piping anywhere: he hid himself in his cloak,
And anybody aboard could step on him at will.
And very possibly you and your reckless speech--
If a big whistling storm should suddenly come
Out of a little cloud-- your clamorous uproar
Might be quenched in a  very similar fashion.

Teucer: And I once saw a man inflated with foolishness,
Who insulted the misfortunes of his neighbors.
And another man, closely resembling me,
Quite like me in temperament, gave him a straight look
And said to him, "Man, don't outrage the dead.
You certainly shall regret it if you do."
That was the advice he gave that worthless man.
I see him now, and he is, it seems to me,
You, and nobody else.  Am I speaking in riddles?

Then, he tells off Agamemnon in the most devastating way possible (1266-1314)

Alas!  How fugitive is the gratitude
Men owe the dead, how soon shown to deceive!
This man has no trifling remembrance,
Ajax, of you, though oftentimes for him
You risked your life and bore the stress of war.
All that is gone now, easily tossed away.
You, who just now spoke that long, foolish speech,
Can't you remember any more at all
How you were penned once close behind your picket,
And all but ruined in the rout of war
With flames licking the ships' quarter-decks
Already, and Hector high in the air, leaping
Over the fosse to board, but Ajax came,
Alone, to save you?  Who fended off that ruin?
Wasn't it he, the very man you now
Declare fought nowhere but where you fought too?
What do you say?  Did he deal fairly then?
And when that other time he closed alone
In single fight with Hector, not conscripted,
But chosen when each champion put his lot
Into the crested helmet-- Ajax then
Put in no shirking lot among the rest,
No clod of moist earth, no! but one to skip
Lightly, first and victorious, from the helm.
It was he that did those things, and I stood by him:
The slave, yes! the barbarian mother's son!
Wretched man, why do you light upon that taunt?
Aren't you aware that your own grandfather,
Old Pelops, was a barbarous Phrygian?  Or
That Atreus, yes, your actual father, set
Before his brother a most unholy dish
Of his own sons' flesh?  And you yourself
Had a Cretan for your mother, in whose bed
An interloping foreigner was discovered,
And she consigned, and by her parent's order,
To drown among the fishes of the deep.
These are your origins.  Can you censure mine?
Telamon was my father, and he won
My mother as his valorous prize of war.
She was a princess by her birth, the child
Of King Laomedon, and Heracles
Distinguished her to be my father's gift.
Two royal races gave me to the world.
How shall I shame my kin if I defend them
In their adversity, when you with shameless words
Would fling them out unburied?  Listen to this:
If you should venture to cast Ajax out,
You must cast out the three of us as well,
Together in one heap with him.  I make my choice
To stand in public and to die for him,
Rather than for your wife-- or was it your brother's wife?
So!  Think of your own case, and no merely mine;
For if you vex me, you may wish you had been
a coward, rather than too bold with me.

Love the references to the stuff I've already read.  It's working!

Ajax, 3

A messenger comes with news. Teucer arrived at the Greek camp and was scolded and abused over the rumors of Ajax's crime. The messenger brings the instruction that Ajax is to be kept in his tent for the remainder of the day. The seer Calchas has said that his raving lunacy is due to the influence of Athena, and is only temporary. It is punishment for Ajax's overconfidence and pride, first expressed to his father when he initially left for battle, and recently boasted to Athena herself when Ajax shunned her help and declared his self-sufficient strength. The news throws the Chorus and Tecmessa into a panic, and they split up into search parties to locate Ajax before tragedy strikes.

Ajax, alone by the beach, prepares his sword in the ground so that he may fall on it.  He makes his final peace and pleas with the gods.  To Zeus: that Teucer might find his body first and protect it from desecration.  To Hermes, that the death may be swift.  To the Furies, that they may ensure a similar end to Agamemnon and Menelaus.  To Helios, that he may shine on his homeland and parents.  His final farewell is to his home country.  Ajax slays himself.

The search parties reunite, and it is Tecmess who finds the body.  Wailing.  The Chorus sees that Ajax had fooled them with his farewell talk before.  They speak of revenge against the enemies in the Greek army who drove Ajax to do this, with special anger toward Athena and her favoritism of Odysseus.  None appreciated Ajax while he lived.

Teucer arrives and vows to protect the body.  He summons for Ajax's son and vows protection for him, too.  He laments his own inability to forestall this-- and dreads returning home and living under the quiet anger that will surely come from his father, Telamon.  He recognizes a singular irony: the great enemy warriors Hector and Ajax exchanged weapons and armor under friendly terms.  Hector was then done in when he was dragged from a chariot by Ajax's girdle; Ajax killed himself on Hector's sword.  There must be a plan of the gods guiding all these events.

The Chorus and Teucer hear an approach and swiftly hide the body.  Menelaus arrives.