Thursday, January 25, 2024
In bed around 9, awake at 5:22, au at 5:35. 33°, high of 37°. DENSE FOG ADVISORY until noon. 0.3" of rain expected. Little wind, NE off the lake. Sunrise at 7:14, sunset at 4:54, 9+39.
Treadmill; pain. Woke up with normal mid-back, left shoulder, and right wrist pain plus some neck pain that went away upon rising. At 1:30, 31:21 & 0.75 watching the 1st part of an interesting OVID documentary on the bio of Edward Said, his early life in West Jerusalem under English protectorate, Cairo under English hegemony, and Lebanon, where his family spent their summers in the mountains above Beirut. After the family moved to the U.S., Edward went to Princeton & Harvard, having won the lottery of birth into a rich family.
I'm grateful. For a long time now, I have reflected on how fortunate I was, and am, in having an old-fashioned education, both in high school and in undergraduate school. Challenging courses in the natural sciences and mathematics but also courses in classical and modern languages, history, philosophy, and especially literature. Of course, I have forgotten most of what I learned and most of what I learned had no clear and immediate usefulness in my work life. But what that copious exposure and engagement with the richness and complexity of life provided me was some sustaining and illuminating framework, some lenses through which to see life as I have lived it from the beginning of World War II until now, a period many will view, rightly or wrongly, as encompassing the rise and fall of the American Empire and the American Experiment. To whatever extent I haven't fallen prey to some of the pernicious falsities that besiege all of us and which so many of our fellow citizens have come to embrace, to that extent I thank my high school teachers and my liberal arts college education so many years ago. I'm especially grateful to my English language and literature teachers, from Mr. Bly in my 1st year at Leo H.S. and Brother Coogan in my last year to Professors Pick and Parr and Father Bruckner at M.U.
Thinking of Ukraine and Gaza. I am reminded of an essay on war that James Boswell wrote in 1777:
"Were there any good produced by war which could in any degree compensate its direful effects; were better men to spring up from the ruins of those who fall in battle, as more beautiful material forms sometimes arise from the ashes of others; or were those who escape from its destructions to have an increase in happiness; in short, were there any great beneficial effect to follow it, the notion of its irrationality would be only the notion of narrow comprehension. But we find that war is followed by no general good whatsoever. The power, the glory, or the wealth of a very few may be enlarged. But the people in general, upon both sides, after all the sufferings are passed, pursue their ordinary occupations, with no difference from their former state. The evils therefore of war, upon a general view of humanity are as the French say, à pure perte, a mere loss without any advantage, unless indeed furnishing subjects for history, poetry, and painting. And although it should be allowed that mankind have gained enjoyment in these respects, I suppose it will not be seriously said, that the misery is overbalanced."
Looking at America in 2024, this old man thinks of two pieces of literature:
Deuteronomy 28:34: The sights you see will drive you mad.
Raskolnikov's dream in Crime and Punishment:
"He had dreamed that the whole world was doomed to fall victim to some terrible, as yet unknown, pestilence spreading to Europe from the depths of Asia. Everyone was to perish except for very few chosen ones. Some new trichinae had appeared, microscopic creatures that lodged themselves in men's bodies - spirits endowed with reason and will. Those who received them became possessed and mad. But never had people considered themselves so intelligent and unshakeable in the truth as did these infected ones. Never had they thought their judgments, their scientific conclusions, their moral convictions and beliefs, more unshakeable. Entire settlements, entire cities and nations would be infected and go mad. Everyone became anxious and no one understood anyone else; each thought the truth was contained in himself alone . . . they did not know whom or how to judge, could not agree on what is evil, what is good, whom to accuse, whom to vindicate."
Crime and Punishment published in Russia in 1866, 158 years ago. Was Dostoevski prescient?
Journaling. One advantage of journaling while vacationing is that my journals can remind me of my tendency to be a jerk years after I've unabashedly demonstrated it. In May 2000, Geri and I were in Ravenna, Italy, where we had dinner al fresco at the Ristorante Bella Venezia. During dinner, I remarked how great our server was and how the other server looked kind of like a trollop, skirt too short, decolletage too plunging, heels too high, etc. Our bill came to 114,000 lire, in those pre-euro days. I left what I thought was 120,000 lire but in fact left 210,000 lire, about $45 too much. The chianti or the late hour or the nighttime outdoor lighting led me to leave two 50,000 lire bills instead of the two 5.000 lire bills I thought I was leaving, along with the 100,000 and 10,000 lire bills. We learned of my mistake when we were about a block away from the restaurant and around the corner from it when one of the servers ran us down on the cobblestone street to tell us we had left too much money. She literally ran after us, over cobblestones, shouting "Signore, signore!", wearing that short skirt and those high heels I had just been disparaging. "You paid too much." To make matters worse, I didn't have the proper currency to give her the 120,000 lire I intended, or the 114,000 lire exact amount of the bill. She insisted on taking only 110,000 lire. So the "trollop" I had been looking down my nose at ended up giving back the small tip we left and knocking 4,000 lire off the bill. I appropriately felt 6 inches tall and painfully humbled. In browsing that entry in my journal I was reminded of some favorite lines from "The Great Gatsby": "Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth." As between the two of us, she had the lion's share. I've never forgotten her goodness, or what a jerk I can be.
Sixty-five years ago this summer, over a period of 6 days, the Watts neighborhood in south central Los Angeles was engulfed in riots that started when an African American resident was arrested for suspicion of DUI. The California Highway Patrol arrested him and claimed he resisted. Six persons died, more than 1,000 were injured, and an estimated $40,000,000 in property was destroyed, mostly by fires. I read about it in Vietnam where I was 'making the world safe for Democracy' by playing a bit role in killing people and destroying property in South Vietnam, North Vietnam, and Laos. Not surprisingly, that experience (and many others over many years) resulted in a deep cognitive dissonance in me that in turn resulted in a deep skepticism and indeed cynicism. But as hard as the 1960s and 1970s were, from the Kennedy assassination in 1963, the assassinations of Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy and the Democratic Convention in 1968, to the Americans and Vietnamese being airlifted off the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon in 1975, there was reason to harbor hope. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights and Medicare acts of 1965, and many beneficial pieces of legislation passed during the Nixon Administration (Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, National Environmental Policy Act [EPA], OSHA, etc.) provided reason to believe that the Nation was addressing its vital challenges.I was young then. I am old now and I find myself missing those terrible days in the 60s and early 70s when, notwithstanding all the challenges, there was reason to believe, not naively, that we were making progress in forming a more perfect Union, establishing Justice, insuring Domestic Tranquility, and promoting the General Welfare. Alas.
No comments:
Post a Comment