Lots of questions for you. I do have a reason for asking this that I will get to later.
How much of another culture would you be willing to adopt if you chose to marry someone and live in that culture? Where do you draw the line? How OK are you with bringing your own thoughts into that culture knowing they are quite different from the prevailing attitude? Do you find it arrogant (or fill in the blank) of someone to come into another culture knowing she won't obey all the cultural rules? knowing she may disrupt the norm and possibly cause other women to get radical thoughts that might, oh, challenge (or change!) the cultural norm?
How well do you think cross-cultural marriages work? Do you think it definitely works better in some and not others? Why or why not? Do you have any experience with this in your own relationships or with people you know or have read about?
Any other thoughts on this?
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Friday, July 20, 2012
Russia Again
Trivia question: I asked this on Facebook and someone actually got the
right answer. According to a survivor of the Leningrad siege during the
Patriotic War (that'd be World War II), what was on the first train that
made it past the blockade? The lady telling the story said everyone
came down to the train station to see this and it was "funny, really."
I'll answer in the comments in case you want to guess now and then check
your answer.
Can you imagine? "Ten times more people died in Leningrad during the blockade than were lost in the atomic bombing over Hiroshima. At first they died during the bombardments. Later, during the siege, they also starved and froze." It was very difficult to find room for all the bodies. In one museum, the basement was used as storage for employees who died. One survivor recalled going past corpses on the street on the way to buy bread, and when he returned parts of these same people were missing as Leningraders tried to survive their extreme hunger by eating human body parts. (pg. 235, 238)
These are more interesting tidbits from the book - Night of Stone by Catherine Merridale - which I finally finished this evening. (First few chapter notes here.) I tell ya, I have not been reading a lot this month. Should I blame our having company from West Virginia for much of the week of the 4th? Or the fact that I am constantly distracted by Facebook - so many interesting articles. And then there are blogs to read, oh, and the news out of Syria. I've spent a few hours this week talking (instant messaging rather) Samer's twin brother as he's shared how things look like or sound from the family home in Mezze neighborhood. Anyway, I finally finished this book about death in Russia.
Some other things that took my attention.The sheer number of people dying, corpses lying around, and bones being unearthed. In some places, people were dying and their bodies were left in the garbage or lying around until someone had the time or strength to move them. People got used to seeing bodies lying on the sides of roads. Children used skulls for soccer balls and for picking blueberries!
Chapter 6 mentioned the awfulness of famine in such a descriptive way that I've had to reread these few sentences ... just to fully grasp the horror.
"Starvation itself is not a private matter. It certainly is not quiet. The people weep; they plead; they keen over their dead; their children scream and beg. You cannot hide a swollen body, either, or wasted limbs, infected sores. A human being who is dying from cholera suffers from violent and near-continuous diarrhea; he loses the lining of his guts and then he vomits wheylike, speckled spew until there is no fluid left in his exhausted tissues. The diseases of famine, like starvation, visibly consume a living body, noisily destroying the individual, the person, before they kill their biological host." (pg. 157)
Sadly when Irina told her story about leaving Kiev with her parents and brother, she said they were so hungry they had to eat grass. But the locals complained: "we were stealing their pasture." (pg. 232)
I was introduced to the term "dekulakized" in chapter 6. These were people "driven from their homes, locked in prisons, transported to the remotest parts of the taiga, shot, or starved to death." (pg. 167).
The chapter on the gulags was interesting as the author described all the frozen skeletons and mass graves still to be unearthed (there are "millions of complete skeletons" left to find). One person told her the easiest form of suicide for the prisoners was trying to escape.
The remaining chapters discuss things like World War I ("neglected" by Russians), World War II (celebrated by Russians as they feel they saved the world from fascism), the Afghan war (highly unpopular and the treatment of vets reminded me of our own Vietnam vets. The book said the World War II vets would often look down upon the veterans of this unpopular war.) The role Chernobyl played in bringing about openness was interesting. The author also discussed PTSD which one lady called "post-dramatic." Those types of diagnosis aren't sought very much in Russian society. Or they weren't when this book was written. I don't know how things have changed in those dozen years.
OK,I think that's it for this book! Now I'll see what other books from my stash I'll read. I found a little consignment shop near my parents' house last week and got 3 more books for a good price. The 2 paperbacks were 89 cents and the hardcover was $1.50. I couldn't just leave them there.
Can you imagine? "Ten times more people died in Leningrad during the blockade than were lost in the atomic bombing over Hiroshima. At first they died during the bombardments. Later, during the siege, they also starved and froze." It was very difficult to find room for all the bodies. In one museum, the basement was used as storage for employees who died. One survivor recalled going past corpses on the street on the way to buy bread, and when he returned parts of these same people were missing as Leningraders tried to survive their extreme hunger by eating human body parts. (pg. 235, 238)
These are more interesting tidbits from the book - Night of Stone by Catherine Merridale - which I finally finished this evening. (First few chapter notes here.) I tell ya, I have not been reading a lot this month. Should I blame our having company from West Virginia for much of the week of the 4th? Or the fact that I am constantly distracted by Facebook - so many interesting articles. And then there are blogs to read, oh, and the news out of Syria. I've spent a few hours this week talking (instant messaging rather) Samer's twin brother as he's shared how things look like or sound from the family home in Mezze neighborhood. Anyway, I finally finished this book about death in Russia.
Some other things that took my attention.The sheer number of people dying, corpses lying around, and bones being unearthed. In some places, people were dying and their bodies were left in the garbage or lying around until someone had the time or strength to move them. People got used to seeing bodies lying on the sides of roads. Children used skulls for soccer balls and for picking blueberries!
Chapter 6 mentioned the awfulness of famine in such a descriptive way that I've had to reread these few sentences ... just to fully grasp the horror.
"Starvation itself is not a private matter. It certainly is not quiet. The people weep; they plead; they keen over their dead; their children scream and beg. You cannot hide a swollen body, either, or wasted limbs, infected sores. A human being who is dying from cholera suffers from violent and near-continuous diarrhea; he loses the lining of his guts and then he vomits wheylike, speckled spew until there is no fluid left in his exhausted tissues. The diseases of famine, like starvation, visibly consume a living body, noisily destroying the individual, the person, before they kill their biological host." (pg. 157)
Sadly when Irina told her story about leaving Kiev with her parents and brother, she said they were so hungry they had to eat grass. But the locals complained: "we were stealing their pasture." (pg. 232)
I was introduced to the term "dekulakized" in chapter 6. These were people "driven from their homes, locked in prisons, transported to the remotest parts of the taiga, shot, or starved to death." (pg. 167).
The chapter on the gulags was interesting as the author described all the frozen skeletons and mass graves still to be unearthed (there are "millions of complete skeletons" left to find). One person told her the easiest form of suicide for the prisoners was trying to escape.
The remaining chapters discuss things like World War I ("neglected" by Russians), World War II (celebrated by Russians as they feel they saved the world from fascism), the Afghan war (highly unpopular and the treatment of vets reminded me of our own Vietnam vets. The book said the World War II vets would often look down upon the veterans of this unpopular war.) The role Chernobyl played in bringing about openness was interesting. The author also discussed PTSD which one lady called "post-dramatic." Those types of diagnosis aren't sought very much in Russian society. Or they weren't when this book was written. I don't know how things have changed in those dozen years.
OK,I think that's it for this book! Now I'll see what other books from my stash I'll read. I found a little consignment shop near my parents' house last week and got 3 more books for a good price. The 2 paperbacks were 89 cents and the hardcover was $1.50. I couldn't just leave them there.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
On Russia and Death
I recently went to a book warehouse in the county and bought a book about Russia for ninety-nine cents plus tax -- Night of Stone
by Catherine Merridale. For that cheap of a price I didn't care too
much what it was about. It seemed interesting from my brief look at it,
but I didn't realize until later that it was almost entirely about
death***. You know Russians = death culture, right?
Each chapter has interesting tidbits. Like I didn't realize Russians thought animals didn't have souls. Well, I don't know that I do either, but the author mentioned BEARS being an exception. As in they might have souls. The first chapter deals with peasant life and I noted how important being buried on home turf was. How some took cup fulls of dirt with them in case they died while away from home. Everyone wanted to be buried near home because Russians visit the graves of relatives - regularly. Take food (eggs, honey), picnic in cemeteries, and commune with the dead. Or they did traditionally. I'm still reading the book so I'm not sure if this is still practiced, but pre-Communism, this was the tradition.
Since this book is quite lengthy, yet has pretty neat facts, I decided to jot down a few tidbits about each chapter. I hate when I get to the end of a book and realize, while I found some interesting stuff along the way, I didn't note any of it (which translates to I will probably forget about it.) When I write stuff down such as I'm doing now, I tend to recall it better. Who knows when information about Russian deaths will come in handy.
Chapter 2 began with the low life expectancy. Such as even in the mid-1990s, it was 58 for Russian men. Wow. The chapter discussed the high suicide rate, public executions, and children with playground games of "death penalty" inspired by the prevailing culture. One five year old "accidentally strangled her three-year old brother after condemning him to death in a mock trial in their nursery." (pg. 67)
The third chapter mentioned the Immortalization Committee which had the thought "preserve the mortal body using science, and one day science, too, will resurrect it." (pg. 93). Also the differences in "Red" and traditional funerals, and the way the Russians "neglected" their history in World War I were mentioned at some length.
Chapter 4 dealt with the trauma of civil war and how mentally ill patients were treated. Also children would play civil war: Reds vs. Whites. (One daughter of an Old Bolshevik noted that the girls always had to be the Whites.) (pg. 117) Suicides were mentioned again. They were deemed too individualistic for Soviet society.
E.M. Yaroslavskii, the "Communist Party's ideological spokesman" said "suicides were 'weak-willed, weak of character' and lacking in faith in 'the power and strength of the Party.' A Russian historian of the issue recently added that suicide, by the late 1920s, appeared to some to be 'a witness to the free right of an individual to choose its own fate. And that did not suit Soviet power at all.'" (pg. 120)
I read most of chapter 5 today and who ever knew learning about the backlog of funerals could be so interesting? No really, there were so many bodies to be buried, yet the workers only did 7 burials per day so some bodies were in storage for over a month! Some were shipped by train to other places. The Communists finally decided to cremate bodies (which was highly frowned upon in Orthodox Christianity, but who cares about them at this point). But their crematory was terrible and after many hours of building it, it burned to the ground after cremating only a small percentage of what was needed. The leaders finally decided to take over the cemeteries. They took down the monuments and made them parks. This chapter also mentions the plundering of church icons and buildings and taking gold and silver for state use (some villagers fought this unsuccessfully). The death and preservation of Lenin was amusing to me. He was refrigerated, displayed, rotting so they decided finally to embalm him and then display him so the adoring masses could visit and commune with the departed leader. An atheist approach to death mentioned: skip the coffins and rituals; my body "should be sent to a factory without any ritual, and in the factory the fat should be used for technical purposes and the rest for fertilizer," wrote M.S. Ol'minskii in July 1924. (pg. 142)
I'm on chapter 6 now so I won't bother with any more notes, but I'll go ahead and post these in case anyone is interested in these Russian death tidbits. What did you find most interesting?
*** (Er, I suppose the subtitled should have tipped me off: Death and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia)
Each chapter has interesting tidbits. Like I didn't realize Russians thought animals didn't have souls. Well, I don't know that I do either, but the author mentioned BEARS being an exception. As in they might have souls. The first chapter deals with peasant life and I noted how important being buried on home turf was. How some took cup fulls of dirt with them in case they died while away from home. Everyone wanted to be buried near home because Russians visit the graves of relatives - regularly. Take food (eggs, honey), picnic in cemeteries, and commune with the dead. Or they did traditionally. I'm still reading the book so I'm not sure if this is still practiced, but pre-Communism, this was the tradition.
Since this book is quite lengthy, yet has pretty neat facts, I decided to jot down a few tidbits about each chapter. I hate when I get to the end of a book and realize, while I found some interesting stuff along the way, I didn't note any of it (which translates to I will probably forget about it.) When I write stuff down such as I'm doing now, I tend to recall it better. Who knows when information about Russian deaths will come in handy.
Chapter 2 began with the low life expectancy. Such as even in the mid-1990s, it was 58 for Russian men. Wow. The chapter discussed the high suicide rate, public executions, and children with playground games of "death penalty" inspired by the prevailing culture. One five year old "accidentally strangled her three-year old brother after condemning him to death in a mock trial in their nursery." (pg. 67)
The third chapter mentioned the Immortalization Committee which had the thought "preserve the mortal body using science, and one day science, too, will resurrect it." (pg. 93). Also the differences in "Red" and traditional funerals, and the way the Russians "neglected" their history in World War I were mentioned at some length.
Chapter 4 dealt with the trauma of civil war and how mentally ill patients were treated. Also children would play civil war: Reds vs. Whites. (One daughter of an Old Bolshevik noted that the girls always had to be the Whites.) (pg. 117) Suicides were mentioned again. They were deemed too individualistic for Soviet society.
E.M. Yaroslavskii, the "Communist Party's ideological spokesman" said "suicides were 'weak-willed, weak of character' and lacking in faith in 'the power and strength of the Party.' A Russian historian of the issue recently added that suicide, by the late 1920s, appeared to some to be 'a witness to the free right of an individual to choose its own fate. And that did not suit Soviet power at all.'" (pg. 120)
I read most of chapter 5 today and who ever knew learning about the backlog of funerals could be so interesting? No really, there were so many bodies to be buried, yet the workers only did 7 burials per day so some bodies were in storage for over a month! Some were shipped by train to other places. The Communists finally decided to cremate bodies (which was highly frowned upon in Orthodox Christianity, but who cares about them at this point). But their crematory was terrible and after many hours of building it, it burned to the ground after cremating only a small percentage of what was needed. The leaders finally decided to take over the cemeteries. They took down the monuments and made them parks. This chapter also mentions the plundering of church icons and buildings and taking gold and silver for state use (some villagers fought this unsuccessfully). The death and preservation of Lenin was amusing to me. He was refrigerated, displayed, rotting so they decided finally to embalm him and then display him so the adoring masses could visit and commune with the departed leader. An atheist approach to death mentioned: skip the coffins and rituals; my body "should be sent to a factory without any ritual, and in the factory the fat should be used for technical purposes and the rest for fertilizer," wrote M.S. Ol'minskii in July 1924. (pg. 142)
I'm on chapter 6 now so I won't bother with any more notes, but I'll go ahead and post these in case anyone is interested in these Russian death tidbits. What did you find most interesting?
*** (Er, I suppose the subtitled should have tipped me off: Death and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia)
Thursday, July 12, 2012
The Bible as a Mirror
"Every war needs killers and they can always be found. We always put
ourselves in the skin of the victims and not of their killers - we never
put ourselves in the skin of a Nazi or Khmer Rouge. Yet between them
and us there is very little difference, no more than between the victim
and us." (from this post)
Thanks to those who took the time to comment on my last post about those yucky Bible passages. I was nodding my head at times as I read each of them. They are things I've either encountered in this book, The Human Faces of God by Thom Stark, or not so long ago in other books. It was kind of neat seeing them restated by all of you!
So what does the author suggest we do about those disturbing passages in the Bible? Instead of glossing over them, ignoring them, or cutting them out of our text, we should retain and condemn them!
His argument throughout the book is that while the Bible may be inspired by God, it is not inerrant. It argues with itself and he believes God wants us to wrestle with the text, with what is stated and then come to just solutions for our societies.
Why acknowledge these texts are there? Why not cut them out completely? Because they are there. And they shape many of our backgrounds more than we realize. He suggests the Bible is a mirror. It shows the good and bad of human nature. It shows what we are capable of. What we are capable of justifying in God's name! How many of us are appalled at radical Muslims who strap bombs to themselves and say "God is greater" right before blowing themselves up and often killing fellow Muslims? How many of us are stunned that the Crusaders and people today of their same mindset can kill others because they believe God would have it that way? And Jews who believe the land is theirs and if people are in the way they've got to go. Either they need to leave or face unpleasant consequences. All because God - the scapegoat - said so.
The Bible shows not perfect people, but imperfect prophets, kings, patriarchs and ordinary folks. Yes, even amongst the "chosen people." You want to destroy your enemies? You want to keep virgin women as your own after conquering their people? OK, write the history and say God commanded it. Simple as that.
"The Bible reflects our doubt and our mediocrity. It mirrors our best and worst possible selves. It shows us who we can be, both good and evil, and everything in between." (pg. 218)
The author quotes John Collins who states, "There is no reason in principle why a text that is shocking might not be inspired. Such a text can raise our moral consciousness by forcing us to confront the fact that immoral actions are often carried out in the name of religion ... Rather than ask whether a text is revealed (and by what criteria could we possibly decide?), it is better to ask whether a text is revelatory, whether we learn something from it about human nature or about the way the world works. A text that is neither historically reliable nor morally edifying...may be all too revelatory about human nature." (pg. 219)
You may recall this post from the American who was hosting a book club in Kosovo. I remembered her words this morning as I thought about what to write in this post.
...Is their bitterness, their fear so great that they could do to Serbs what Serbs did to them? Could soft-spoken Veton burn a Serb village because his own was burned by Serbs? Would sweet, wide-eyed Enver, who loves basketball and never misses a class, stand by and watch while atrocities were committed? Could any of these bright, kindhearted young people kill Serbs because they are Serbs?
And if I were in their shoes, what would I be capable of? Have I come to grips with the darkness in my own heart?
Thom Stark in The Human Faces of God believes God can speak to us through the texts. Whether they are passages that inspire us, make us feel the love or shock or disgust us. They mirror humanity, and show us what we are capable of doing to each other.
Feel free to share the texts that inspire or disgust you the most. What do you think of the author's idea that "their status as condemned is exactly their scriptural value"? Do you think people are capable of all sorts of evil or just the rare few? Any other thoughts?
Thanks to those who took the time to comment on my last post about those yucky Bible passages. I was nodding my head at times as I read each of them. They are things I've either encountered in this book, The Human Faces of God by Thom Stark, or not so long ago in other books. It was kind of neat seeing them restated by all of you!
So what does the author suggest we do about those disturbing passages in the Bible? Instead of glossing over them, ignoring them, or cutting them out of our text, we should retain and condemn them!
His argument throughout the book is that while the Bible may be inspired by God, it is not inerrant. It argues with itself and he believes God wants us to wrestle with the text, with what is stated and then come to just solutions for our societies.
Why acknowledge these texts are there? Why not cut them out completely? Because they are there. And they shape many of our backgrounds more than we realize. He suggests the Bible is a mirror. It shows the good and bad of human nature. It shows what we are capable of. What we are capable of justifying in God's name! How many of us are appalled at radical Muslims who strap bombs to themselves and say "God is greater" right before blowing themselves up and often killing fellow Muslims? How many of us are stunned that the Crusaders and people today of their same mindset can kill others because they believe God would have it that way? And Jews who believe the land is theirs and if people are in the way they've got to go. Either they need to leave or face unpleasant consequences. All because God - the scapegoat - said so.
The Bible shows not perfect people, but imperfect prophets, kings, patriarchs and ordinary folks. Yes, even amongst the "chosen people." You want to destroy your enemies? You want to keep virgin women as your own after conquering their people? OK, write the history and say God commanded it. Simple as that.
"The Bible reflects our doubt and our mediocrity. It mirrors our best and worst possible selves. It shows us who we can be, both good and evil, and everything in between." (pg. 218)
The author quotes John Collins who states, "There is no reason in principle why a text that is shocking might not be inspired. Such a text can raise our moral consciousness by forcing us to confront the fact that immoral actions are often carried out in the name of religion ... Rather than ask whether a text is revealed (and by what criteria could we possibly decide?), it is better to ask whether a text is revelatory, whether we learn something from it about human nature or about the way the world works. A text that is neither historically reliable nor morally edifying...may be all too revelatory about human nature." (pg. 219)
You may recall this post from the American who was hosting a book club in Kosovo. I remembered her words this morning as I thought about what to write in this post.
...Is their bitterness, their fear so great that they could do to Serbs what Serbs did to them? Could soft-spoken Veton burn a Serb village because his own was burned by Serbs? Would sweet, wide-eyed Enver, who loves basketball and never misses a class, stand by and watch while atrocities were committed? Could any of these bright, kindhearted young people kill Serbs because they are Serbs?
And if I were in their shoes, what would I be capable of? Have I come to grips with the darkness in my own heart?
Thom Stark in The Human Faces of God believes God can speak to us through the texts. Whether they are passages that inspire us, make us feel the love or shock or disgust us. They mirror humanity, and show us what we are capable of doing to each other.
Feel free to share the texts that inspire or disgust you the most. What do you think of the author's idea that "their status as condemned is exactly their scriptural value"? Do you think people are capable of all sorts of evil or just the rare few? Any other thoughts?
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Those Yucky Bible Passages
So I'm reading a book someone recommend many months ago and I got for my birthday. Anyway there is a question in the last chapter about what we should do about disturbing biblical passages. The main ones discussed were the ones about the genocide against Israel's enemies. You know where they are commanded by God to kill every man, woman and child. And in others where one could stay alive if she were a virgin woman (I suppose for sex slave purposes), but not if one were not a virgin - and definitely not a man. Still others where God seemingly cared more for trees than people. (Sounds like some extreme environmentalists I've heard of.)
I was going to share the author's words about those, but figured first I'd ask you.
Should we allegorize them? Excise them from the text? Ignore them? Condemn them? Learn how to defeat our own enemies from them? Celebrate them as God's plan for keeping the line for the Messiah safe?
All, some, or none of the above. Please tell me how you view them. How do you deal with them and explain them to others?
I was going to share the author's words about those, but figured first I'd ask you.
Should we allegorize them? Excise them from the text? Ignore them? Condemn them? Learn how to defeat our own enemies from them? Celebrate them as God's plan for keeping the line for the Messiah safe?
All, some, or none of the above. Please tell me how you view them. How do you deal with them and explain them to others?
Friday, June 29, 2012
June Books
Half the year is almost over! Hope you are enjoying your summer. Here are the books I finished in June.
The Chosen Peoples by Todd Gitlin and Liel Leibovitz -- The authors discuss the idea of chosenness - especially related to the Jews of old, America and the state of Israel - and how it has shaped world events. They also touched on the "unchosen" or people other than these who believe they are also Chosen (e.g., Muslims).
"The idea of chosenness by a single God, having shaken a polytheistic world millennia ago, set off aftershocks that continue to shake the ground well into our own day. And there is, in principle, no limit to the violence that can be justified against a people who were, after all, stamped long ago with the mark of Cain." (pg. 173)
A Short History of the Jewish People by Raymond P. Scheindlin -- a very readable, and somewhat interesting look at the Jewish people from ancient to modern times. I had these two things on Facebook at one point.
From Plato to NATO by David Gress -- the big book I started on my birthday and finished on June 8 (my goal was to finish it by the end of August)
A few things of note:
A Roman "peculiarity" -- "To a Roman, as to a Greek, the most basic freedom was freedom from slavery, or, as in Herodotus, from foreign occupation. But Roman freedom included another aspect that related more directly to later Western notions. This was the idea of freedom as the right of the citizen not to be abused by the government, the freedom that implied equality before the law, and that was guaranteed by time-hallowed and solemn laws and by designated officials. Roman libertas in this sense had little to do with the Greek idea that the mark of the free citizen was that he participated equally in political decisions. The government of the Roman Republic was elected by a small number of rich and influential people and the republic was always an oligarchy. So in Rome, to be free meant that however insignificant the citizen, there were certain things the government could not do to him, because he was protected by laws that stood above any government." (pg. 99)
"Americans prided themselves on being innovators and free of the past; Europeans, including the revolutionaries of France, prided themselves on continuity. Even the sign of the eagle changed character after its migration. In an amazing feat of symbolic transformation, Americans succeeded in defining their eagle as a bird of freedom and defiance, rather than symbolizing military conquest and the power of an authoritarian state." (pg. 125)
I found this cute: "In 269, in an ominous precedent, Gothic hordes invaded Greece. Their king told his men not to burn the libraries of Athens, because as long as the Greeks could study, they would not fight." (pg. 146)
"Many people in the West, including many in the liberal Anglo-Saxon democracies, believed that war was a test of national manhood and that periodic wars were necessary to purge the nation of degeneracy, which tended to spread if peace lasted too long. Angell recognized these ideas, but assumed they would die out and become unacceptable, just as, for example, the slave trade had become unacceptable to Europeans in the space of a single generation at the end of the eighteenth century. In the past, values had changed, sometimes quickly, and in modern society, value change was coming quicker still. Therefore, those who spoke of 'unchangeable human nature' and insisted that war was a permanent fact of life were - according to Angell - mistaken." (pg. 340)
"The praise of toil in the Georgics was unusual and subversive in antiquity. Greeks and Romans considered earning your bread by the sweat of your brow dishonorable; not having to work was the mark of the full citizen. In such a culture, Virgil's praise of the iustissima tellus, the most just earth, which yielded its fruits only to hard human labor, was original. Virgil's message in the Georgics, that all human life depended on the soil and therefore on labor, was, with Christianity, one of the reasons the later West turned the classical order of social and economic values upside down. Thus, where antiquity despised the man who had to work to buy his leisure time, the West, and especially America, regarded such a man more highly than the rentier, the 'man of leisure.' Work, in the West, ennobled the worker; in antiquity, it degraded him and made him unfit for the highest civic callings." (pg. 366)
"Pity and compassion, to the Greeks, were comprehensible only if they served pride and the drive for fame. To ancient philosophers, from Plato ... to Marcus Aurelius..., gratuitous pity 'was a defect of character unworthy of the wise and excusable only in those who have not yet grown up. It was an impulsive response based on ignorance. Plato had removed the problem of beggars from his ideal state by dumping them over the borders.'" (pg. 79)
"The Third Empire was a political and theological category and was not easily compatible with Hitler's own program, which is why he disliked and in 1939 forbade the phrase to be used." (pg. 385)
"Relativism, Gellner concluded, was 'an affectation, specially attractive amongst the more naive provincials in privileged cultures,' by which he meant American academics. It was popular among those who could afford it, who derived some moralistic and masochistic satisfaction from it, and who mistakenly believed that they were doing the rest of the world a favor by adopting it. But they were not; the poor countries did not want Western postmodernism but Western science and technology, and in particular the methods by which science and technology became prosperity. 'Precariously modernizing societies, with an uncertain grip on the new benefits, are perhaps a little less likely to indulge in an orgy of science-bashing. ... But a really rich industrial country,' like the United States, 'can and does afford the luxury of denouncing and renouncing it all.' It was therefore in America, where the liberal synthesis had worked best of all and was therefore taken for granted, that relativism found the most fertile ground." (pg. 511)
Iran:Empire of the Mind by Michael Axworthy -- This book explores Iranian history from Zoroaster to the present day (or 2007 since this is when it was published)
I found this interesting: "Since the 1979 revolution, Iranian women are subject to one of the most restrictive dress codes in the Islamic world, yet partly in consequence Iranian families have released their daughters to study and work in unprecedented numbers, such that over 60 per cent of university students are female and many women (even married women) have professional jobs." (xiv)
This was a pretty good book, covered a wide variety of topics and helped me better understand the Iranians and what shaped them. I must admit I struggled somewhat in following all the names, but I think I learned something so that's good!
The Call to Seriousness: The Evangelical Impact on the Victorians by Ian Bradley -- I can't even remember why I put this book on my Amazon Wishlist. I must have seen it recommended in another book sometime last year. It's not even a new book - as in, it came from a library. Likely they threw it out as too old to interest anyone. But, it was really quite interesting to me! These are Evangelicals of the Church of England sort. They greatly influenced the Victorian Age and, wow, about half the time I was really disliking these people when the author would share good things about them and I'd find myself admiring them. I could relate to much of this as it sounds like things I remember growing up. Things I may not have been taught, but practices that were from my grandparents' generation. Such as playing cards being a bad thing. We did it although we never gambled (a no-no in my circles). Attending the theater, reading novels, fairytales, dancing - all taboo amongst these Evangelicals. I guess the name of the book would tell you this: they wanted to be serious about life so amusements were frowned upon! Drinking alcohol in moderation was OK, however. This is different from how I grew up where alcohol was a terrible thing best avoided.
The Evangelicals showed how people could influence society by getting involved in politics. They wanted to impose their standards on the rest of society -- and not all of it was bad. Apparently English society was pretty rotten then and even many nonEvangelicals apparently liked some of the cleaning up of society that they legislated. While I might disagree with some of their stances - such as their desire to make people attend church on Sundays - on the grounds of individual freedom, I like some others as they were hugely involved in abolishing slavery and animals fights and working for better factory conditions for workers. They also contributed three-fours of the charity work in England and the author credits them with the volunteerism and charitableness of English people even today (or as of this book's writing anyway; it was published in 1976).
This is what I noted on Facebook about it:
I'm reading a book about the Evangelicals in England and their impact on the Victorians. They liked legislating morality and had their own policing tactics that makes me think of a mix between Communist regimes where neighbors spy and tattle on rule breakers and present-day Saudi Arabia and Iran. One guy was so into people observing the Sabbath that he introduced a bill which "included the closure of markets on both Saturdays and Mondays to prevent the necessity for Sunday travel"! Can you imagine? Thankfully the bill never passed and the guy was not re-elected, but still!
The Chosen Peoples by Todd Gitlin and Liel Leibovitz -- The authors discuss the idea of chosenness - especially related to the Jews of old, America and the state of Israel - and how it has shaped world events. They also touched on the "unchosen" or people other than these who believe they are also Chosen (e.g., Muslims).
"The idea of chosenness by a single God, having shaken a polytheistic world millennia ago, set off aftershocks that continue to shake the ground well into our own day. And there is, in principle, no limit to the violence that can be justified against a people who were, after all, stamped long ago with the mark of Cain." (pg. 173)
A Short History of the Jewish People by Raymond P. Scheindlin -- a very readable, and somewhat interesting look at the Jewish people from ancient to modern times. I had these two things on Facebook at one point.
On September 1, 1939 Poland was the country with the highest concentration of Jews in the world and was the main center of Jewish religious and cultural life.
How crowded was the Warsaw ghetto? When all 400,000 of its Jews were required to live within the 840 acre ghetto and then an additional 150,000 refugees were crammed into that space, the density reached THIRTEEN PERSONS PER ROOM, and homeless people were dying of exposure, hunger and disease in the streets.
From Plato to NATO by David Gress -- the big book I started on my birthday and finished on June 8 (my goal was to finish it by the end of August)
A few things of note:
A Roman "peculiarity" -- "To a Roman, as to a Greek, the most basic freedom was freedom from slavery, or, as in Herodotus, from foreign occupation. But Roman freedom included another aspect that related more directly to later Western notions. This was the idea of freedom as the right of the citizen not to be abused by the government, the freedom that implied equality before the law, and that was guaranteed by time-hallowed and solemn laws and by designated officials. Roman libertas in this sense had little to do with the Greek idea that the mark of the free citizen was that he participated equally in political decisions. The government of the Roman Republic was elected by a small number of rich and influential people and the republic was always an oligarchy. So in Rome, to be free meant that however insignificant the citizen, there were certain things the government could not do to him, because he was protected by laws that stood above any government." (pg. 99)
"Americans prided themselves on being innovators and free of the past; Europeans, including the revolutionaries of France, prided themselves on continuity. Even the sign of the eagle changed character after its migration. In an amazing feat of symbolic transformation, Americans succeeded in defining their eagle as a bird of freedom and defiance, rather than symbolizing military conquest and the power of an authoritarian state." (pg. 125)
I found this cute: "In 269, in an ominous precedent, Gothic hordes invaded Greece. Their king told his men not to burn the libraries of Athens, because as long as the Greeks could study, they would not fight." (pg. 146)
"Many people in the West, including many in the liberal Anglo-Saxon democracies, believed that war was a test of national manhood and that periodic wars were necessary to purge the nation of degeneracy, which tended to spread if peace lasted too long. Angell recognized these ideas, but assumed they would die out and become unacceptable, just as, for example, the slave trade had become unacceptable to Europeans in the space of a single generation at the end of the eighteenth century. In the past, values had changed, sometimes quickly, and in modern society, value change was coming quicker still. Therefore, those who spoke of 'unchangeable human nature' and insisted that war was a permanent fact of life were - according to Angell - mistaken." (pg. 340)
"The praise of toil in the Georgics was unusual and subversive in antiquity. Greeks and Romans considered earning your bread by the sweat of your brow dishonorable; not having to work was the mark of the full citizen. In such a culture, Virgil's praise of the iustissima tellus, the most just earth, which yielded its fruits only to hard human labor, was original. Virgil's message in the Georgics, that all human life depended on the soil and therefore on labor, was, with Christianity, one of the reasons the later West turned the classical order of social and economic values upside down. Thus, where antiquity despised the man who had to work to buy his leisure time, the West, and especially America, regarded such a man more highly than the rentier, the 'man of leisure.' Work, in the West, ennobled the worker; in antiquity, it degraded him and made him unfit for the highest civic callings." (pg. 366)
"Pity and compassion, to the Greeks, were comprehensible only if they served pride and the drive for fame. To ancient philosophers, from Plato ... to Marcus Aurelius..., gratuitous pity 'was a defect of character unworthy of the wise and excusable only in those who have not yet grown up. It was an impulsive response based on ignorance. Plato had removed the problem of beggars from his ideal state by dumping them over the borders.'" (pg. 79)
"The Third Empire was a political and theological category and was not easily compatible with Hitler's own program, which is why he disliked and in 1939 forbade the phrase to be used." (pg. 385)
"Relativism, Gellner concluded, was 'an affectation, specially attractive amongst the more naive provincials in privileged cultures,' by which he meant American academics. It was popular among those who could afford it, who derived some moralistic and masochistic satisfaction from it, and who mistakenly believed that they were doing the rest of the world a favor by adopting it. But they were not; the poor countries did not want Western postmodernism but Western science and technology, and in particular the methods by which science and technology became prosperity. 'Precariously modernizing societies, with an uncertain grip on the new benefits, are perhaps a little less likely to indulge in an orgy of science-bashing. ... But a really rich industrial country,' like the United States, 'can and does afford the luxury of denouncing and renouncing it all.' It was therefore in America, where the liberal synthesis had worked best of all and was therefore taken for granted, that relativism found the most fertile ground." (pg. 511)
Iran:Empire of the Mind by Michael Axworthy -- This book explores Iranian history from Zoroaster to the present day (or 2007 since this is when it was published)
I found this interesting: "Since the 1979 revolution, Iranian women are subject to one of the most restrictive dress codes in the Islamic world, yet partly in consequence Iranian families have released their daughters to study and work in unprecedented numbers, such that over 60 per cent of university students are female and many women (even married women) have professional jobs." (xiv)
This was a pretty good book, covered a wide variety of topics and helped me better understand the Iranians and what shaped them. I must admit I struggled somewhat in following all the names, but I think I learned something so that's good!
The Call to Seriousness: The Evangelical Impact on the Victorians by Ian Bradley -- I can't even remember why I put this book on my Amazon Wishlist. I must have seen it recommended in another book sometime last year. It's not even a new book - as in, it came from a library. Likely they threw it out as too old to interest anyone. But, it was really quite interesting to me! These are Evangelicals of the Church of England sort. They greatly influenced the Victorian Age and, wow, about half the time I was really disliking these people when the author would share good things about them and I'd find myself admiring them. I could relate to much of this as it sounds like things I remember growing up. Things I may not have been taught, but practices that were from my grandparents' generation. Such as playing cards being a bad thing. We did it although we never gambled (a no-no in my circles). Attending the theater, reading novels, fairytales, dancing - all taboo amongst these Evangelicals. I guess the name of the book would tell you this: they wanted to be serious about life so amusements were frowned upon! Drinking alcohol in moderation was OK, however. This is different from how I grew up where alcohol was a terrible thing best avoided.
The Evangelicals showed how people could influence society by getting involved in politics. They wanted to impose their standards on the rest of society -- and not all of it was bad. Apparently English society was pretty rotten then and even many nonEvangelicals apparently liked some of the cleaning up of society that they legislated. While I might disagree with some of their stances - such as their desire to make people attend church on Sundays - on the grounds of individual freedom, I like some others as they were hugely involved in abolishing slavery and animals fights and working for better factory conditions for workers. They also contributed three-fours of the charity work in England and the author credits them with the volunteerism and charitableness of English people even today (or as of this book's writing anyway; it was published in 1976).
This is what I noted on Facebook about it:
I'm reading a book about the Evangelicals in England and their impact on the Victorians. They liked legislating morality and had their own policing tactics that makes me think of a mix between Communist regimes where neighbors spy and tattle on rule breakers and present-day Saudi Arabia and Iran. One guy was so into people observing the Sabbath that he introduced a bill which "included the closure of markets on both Saturdays and Mondays to prevent the necessity for Sunday travel"! Can you imagine? Thankfully the bill never passed and the guy was not re-elected, but still!
Monday, June 25, 2012
The Importance of the Opposites
I've heard people say there has to be darkness/pain/evil/death/a hell/people going to hell in order to give richer meaning to the opposite: light/good health/goodness/life/heaven/the Elect. I thought of that as I read this quote.
What do you think about this guy's idea of heaven? Do you tend to agree with him? What is your ideal heaven and what are your beliefs about it (or an afterlife)?
"It is certainly too monotonous for an Eternity...to make a new life desirable it must give us something to do, something worth striving for, and a career by which we may improve in virtue ... If we are to increase in virtue we need occasion for self-denial, self-control, and self-sacrifice. But these cannot exist where there is no want, no offence, no pain. Want and pain, toil and trial, cannot be wholly banished out of my Heaven." ~ Francis Newman
From The Call to Seriousness: The Evangelical Impact on the Victorians by Ian Bradley
What do you think about this guy's idea of heaven? Do you tend to agree with him? What is your ideal heaven and what are your beliefs about it (or an afterlife)?
"It is certainly too monotonous for an Eternity...to make a new life desirable it must give us something to do, something worth striving for, and a career by which we may improve in virtue ... If we are to increase in virtue we need occasion for self-denial, self-control, and self-sacrifice. But these cannot exist where there is no want, no offence, no pain. Want and pain, toil and trial, cannot be wholly banished out of my Heaven." ~ Francis Newman
From The Call to Seriousness: The Evangelical Impact on the Victorians by Ian Bradley
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