The Regensburg Lecture, Benedict / Schall, Book

http://www.amazon.com/The-Regensburg-Lecture-James-Schall/dp/1587316951

I first read this book in February of 2013 and read it again in the face of attempts by Muslims, media, Obama and others to claim that "Islamic terrorism is not Islamic" after Paris.

Such claims of course fly directly in the face of history, the Koran, Islamic tradition, and numerous events and discussions, including the response to Pope Benedict's Regensburg lecture covered in this book, which I consider to be extremely important for the trinity of faith, reason, and truth in our time -- both relative to Islam and secular attacks on that holy trinity of meaning.

The proximate reason that the political left and Islam reacted to the speech was Benedict's use of a QUOTE from a 14th century dialogue between Byzantine Christian emperor Manuel II Paleologus and a Persian scholar relative to violence in Islam which reads:

“Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached,”

That was a QUOTE, used to point out that violence being associated with Islam is very old -- as old as Islam actually, and that there are many verses in Islamic texts, especially LATER ones that indicate that use of violence against "infidels" is actually commanded by Islam in a number of cases. The "religion of peace" only becomes operative when the entire world is unified in an Islamic Caliphate under Sharia Law in the most recent Islamic texts .... some of the oldest ones are less violent, because at that time Mohammad was powerless to act militarily.

As is often the case -- as in the Charlie Hebdo killings, the Danish Cartoon killings, etc, ... after the Pope's lecture, churches in the West Bank were attacked, an Italian nun was killed in Somalia and a priest was beheaded in Iraq. "Moderate Muslims" claimed to be terribly offended (with the Pope, not the violence), and many on the left were offended as well -- as Kerry intimated after Paris, even he -- and Obama who declared that "the future does not belong to those who slander the prophet", find such attacks and certainly "outrage" to be as Kerry put it "legitimate".

The alignment of the left and Islam is not accidental from the point of view of the book.

Moreover it is a difficult thing to understand, state, and accept the truth, however much these efforts constitute the real purpose of our minds. We can see both in our revelational and in our philosophic traditions that truth is not always or even often accepted and kept. But truth is never rejected without proposing a counter-theory or proof that would justify this rejection. That is, we can ironically not be "unreasonable" without, at the same time, being reasonable, without giving reasons for our deviation from reason. Such counter theories in the form of ideologies or myths, become themselves aspects of understanding the whole truth about something. To understand truth, it is necessary to understand the plausible errors surrounding it and arguments against it. 

As Benedict pointed out in the lecture, Islam teaches that God is not bound by rationality ... unlike the Christian God, the God of Islam is NOT a "God of order". So Islam, like much modern thought rejects reason in favor of "other means" -- whatever those may be!

“God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.”

This is much the same as modern leftist liberal thought -- "post modern", "deconstructivist" which find the idea of "truth" to be no longer operative -- the truth is VERY relative, and in fact can be pretty much whatever the left decides it to be. Clearly, without truth, there is no reason -- and there is no consistency, and THAT is exactly the kind of universe that the Islamic god rules over -- and strangely, where the modern US left lives in as well!

The lecture points out, what Socrates said to Phaedo on the loss of truth --  "It would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being -- but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and suffer great loss".

The lecture itself is not very long, but it is very deep. The essence of the Catholic Faith the synthesis of the Greek Mind with Christian Revelation, through Augustine and Aquinas.  The assertion is that has been happening since the Enlightenment and Reformation is the "de-Hellenization" of faith -- which Benedict argues is destroying the university and civilization with it. This de-Hellenization  is in danger of converting Protestant Christianity to being "irrational", as the secular and Islamic worlds are forced to be since they lack the "logos" (Christ ... logic, reason).

We are vulnerable to the illogic of Islam because we have lost our spiritual Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Spirit), and our intellectual trinity "Faith (revelation/insight), Reason and Truth".

It is a VERY worthy read -- and re-read a few times. The whole book is only 160 pages, and the lecture itself is only SIXTEEN! They are however "a bit high octane" -- maybe like trading in your glass of beer for a glass of 190 proof Everclear!

Arland , Slaughterhouse Five (Vonnegut)

This post may or may not be the start of my book and my blog becoming one. It's 3:15 AM ... the spirits that wake old men and speak to them in the middle of the night are at best untested.

As over 3K blog entries might tell you, I love to write ... or maybe more precisely, I HAVE to write. I also love to read ... as much as I love to write, I love to read far more. If I just wrote from now on I would never come close to writing as much text as I have read. Which is good I believe.

I don't like to proofread my own work, nor coherently organize disjoint chapters of it nearly as much.

I've read Vonnegut before. I find him cranky,  nihilistic,  disjoint and iconoclastic. I believe I share all of those save the nihilistic -- and that I fight with a passion because I believe that question of meaning or no meaning to be the true ultimate question of "Life, The Universe, and Everything", to quote Douglas Adams.

Vonnegut was captured in the Battle of the Bulge and ended up in a basement slaughterhouse numbered five in Dresden as a POW. Allies firebombed Dresden, killing 130K people ... the highest bombing total in history. More than Tokyo, more than either of the A-bombs, and likely more that both -- supposedly the A-bomb total for Hiroshima and Nagasaki together was 129K. In the book, Vonnegut would now say "and so it goes" ... because he decided to say that over and over after recounting death or deaths.

The slaughterhouse was basically an underground bunker, so the prisoners survived and ended up digging out bodies for days, and when that got too putrid to accomplish, digging holes and using flamethrowers to incinerate the corpses. Such things often have strong effects on people. In my universe, they are a message from God to "be ye not of this world", but to Vonnegut it seems to have explained this world as random, meaningless, and utterly lacking in even free will.

Part of his conception of the universe however weirdly lines up exactly with mine, which is the result of both imagination and actual physics. Vonnegut's main character, "Billy Pilgrim", travels through time and space randomly ... partially he exists as part of Vonnegut's group of prisoners in WWII, partially he is a man living a life in Illium NY at various points from his birth, marriage, life as an optometrist to his murder in Chicago IL after giving a speech. He also was kidnapped by aliens -- "Tralfamadorians" who explain one way that physics (and I) see space and time as "everything that happens has always happened and always will be happening". You can visualize it as your consciousness moving through a 3D movie, where your consciousness moving from moment to are the "frames" and which you see as "time".

Vonnegut stops there, but Hugh Everett, quantum computing, and myself believe that not only "everything" is happening always, but a very great number of options at every "decision point" are now, have always, and will forever be happening. For a programmer, what happens at these decision points is "simple" -- the Universe "forks", like a form of Unix process creation, and "everything is the same ... only different" in each of the now multiple universes ... as in different in that "both", or "N" of the "decisions" have ALL happened and are expressed accordingly in the now multiple universes.

This theory "explains" quantum effects because rather than there being "spooky effects at a distance" (which Einstein loathed) when there is a quantum "entanglement" (superposition) which "collapses", or "resolves", in the Many Worlds view, the apparent instantaneous effects that violate the speed of light limit are not needed ... at the "slight cost" of the creation of another universe where any set of entangled potentials have each happened accordingly!

From a philosophical POV, the single universe theory negates free will -- everything just IS, always has been, and always will be. We are, always have and always will be doing whatever -- it just "is that way", and it could be no other way. We have no "free will".

In my universe(s), our decisions create new universes, including new copies of us.  I believe our consciousness "forks" along with the universe -- and that is a base premise of MY book, and to some degree starts to make me a philosophical anti-Vonnegut.

Anyway, back to Billy Pilgrim ... he keeps popping back and forth in time in his life, including being mated to a porn star also kidnapped by the Tralfamadorian aliens in a "Zoo" on Tralfamadore. The tale is full of gallows humor and dark satire as Vonnegut is wont to be. I find him moderately entertaining ... as a "guilty pleasure" when I was younger, and with a decent amount of pity for his soul now that I am older.

So what woke me up is that the working title of my book is "Arland" ... as in a play on "Our Land" and "Are Land", and also because it is the name of the Township I grew up in, as well as that of tiny town that used to be a church or two, couple bars, store, etc, but is now very close to being a sign on  county trunk "D".

PERHAPS I will have the "courage, gall, stupidity, "testicular capacity" to start dumping snippets of what bangs around in my head with dreams to be a book out here tagged as "Arland" to be "assembled later". Or probably not ... the whole thing seems to be less "stunningly brilliant" than it was an hour ago when the muse told me I was not getting back to sleep until I wrote it down.

I'm tired now.

The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt

http://www.amazon.com/The-Happiness-Hypothesis-Finding-Ancient/dp/0465028020

I blogged on this once before, but since only a couple of people read it at that time I decided to update and post again.  It is one of my favorite books relative to both ancient wisdom and what science is finding about the way our brains are organized.

The subtitle of the book is "Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom" and the author is Jonathan Haidt. I LOVED the recommendation from the father of the Positive Psychology Movement (Martin Seligman) who stated; "For the reader who seeks to understand happiness, my advice is: Begin with Haidt." ;-) (it actually isn't pronounced "hate", it is pronounced "height" ... but still funny)

I love the metaphor that he uses and the picture on the cover, a shadowy view of a rider on a swimming elephant. Haidt had gone for a trail ride in the mountains as a youth, and has the horse neared a particularly steep cliff, he panicked that he didn't have the horse under control and didn't know what to do. For a brief few seconds he debated jumping off as he realized what he thought was his peril. Of course, the old trail horse had done this trail thousands of times and had no interest in going off the cliff. She calmly negotiated the turn and life went on.

The analogy is to show the the relationship between our consciousness (rider), a fairly recent add to our wetware package (in the evolutionist view), and the vast majority of our mental apparatus honed by millions of years of successful selection. Our chances of controlling "the elephant" (subconscious) by force are zero. Our only hope is to learn how to lovingly train the elephant to operate more as a team with our consciousness. The theme of the book is how this has been relatively understood for millennia and there is much wisdom on how to do this which can now be validated and improved upon by modern science.

Shakespeare said: "There is nothing either good or bad but, but thinking makes it so". Buddha said: "Our life is a creation of the mind". Unfortunately, science shows us that we are biased to think the wrong things. We tend to focus on threats that aren't there and useless worry. Three techniques are proposed for dealing with this problem: Meditation, Cognitive Therapy, and "Prozac" (SSRIs Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitor drugs). All of these work to varying degrees and all can work together. The objective is for the conscious mind and the "elephant" to learn to work as a team rather than fighting -- all three methods help calm a nervous or morose "elephant" (subconscious).

There is a chapter on reciprocity, which is basically "the golden rule". It turns out it really does seem to be written on our souls, and there is no better way to get people to do something for you than to do something for them (or in the case of politics, promise to force OTHER people do something nice for them!). One of the big problems with human society is that of the "free rider" -- someone that doesn't follow reciprocity. Sanctions, gossip, and possibly a lot of our brain size is involved in operating as a cooperative group, but minimizing "free riders" -- at least it WAS that way up until Bernie Sanders! ;-)

I liked the explanation of "naive realism". "Each of us thinks we see the world as it really is. We further believe that the facts as we see them are there for all to see, therefore others should agree with us." We see everyone else as impacted by ideology and self interest -- but WE are unbiased!  As I try to point out, this is INESCAPABLE -- the best we can do is be aware of it and do our best to understand the arguments our "opponents" use. If you are in the dominant ideology position, it is MUCH harder to see the "other side", since it tends to be simply discounted as it is less popular, and in modern times we have been drilled to believe that "the most votes is right! At least until they elect "the wrong guy", like Reagan -- then the masses are "manipulated", "poorly educated", etc. Our founders of course chose to form a REPUBLIC not a "democracy" because they agree -- the mass can be wrong!

Late in the book there is a chapter that discusses how we are "wired for religion". Since Haidt is an atheist,  and a pure evolutionist,  the reason we are that way must be "group selection". It turns out that religion and it's shared rules are an excellent way to make much larger groups of people operate more optimally. Even better when it is backed up by perceived supernatural sanction.

I chuckle a bit here -- sadly, that a brilliant pure evolutionist sees pretty clearly that large groups of people that believe in a supernatural God that has provided them with rules that they all must follow even when nobody's looking, and has eternal significance is BETTER, as in "more adaptive". So the universe "randomly" works out so that the most adaptive course of action happens to be belief in God -- so "smart people" should fight that naturally occurring adaptive concept! Perhaps they ought to give up sex as well? (it is also natural and adaptive)

Twist your head over to environmentalism and the LAST thing that ought to be done is "fighting nature"! If it is "natural", the assumption of the left (and science) is that "going against nature" is EVIL! The only consistency in situational ethics is that it is inconsistent.

While Haidt clearly doesn't say it, that means that that Christianity USED to have an "adaptive advantage", which we managed to kill in the west -- really a double advantage, since kids were a blessing and having large families was a good thing. Now Islam has that advantage -- and hmmm, it is on the rise! Doesn't seem that one would need to be a particularly brilliant evolutionist to explain that one!

In any case, the book is EXCELLENT! It is one of my top recommendations for understanding human nature.

"Killing" Reagan, Patton, Books

Killing O’Reilly’s Reagan | Power Line:

I've read two of the Bill O'Reilly's "Killing" series -- Patton and Reagan. Both are pretty much "National Enquirer" / "People" / made for TV kind of fairly lurid, sensationalized and highly fictionalized works that are extremely light and easy reads. Apparently O'Reilly and his ghost author are highly interested in sexual dalliances -- both works were rife with them, shoestring coincidental connections, rumors, gossip, etc. -- or they merely believe that is what sells, which I guess I would be an example of ( I borrowed one, got the other as a gift).

I DID find them entertaining -- which there is nothing wrong with in its place as long as people don't start believing that what they are reading is in any way "real", just because it purports to be.

Sometimes people that read my blog assume that I watch a lot of Fox News. I don't -- I watch very little of it because in general, it is PRIMARILY concerned with ratings and making money, which I and Steven Hayward believe that Bill O'Reilly is as well. Again, I'm fine with that -- until the Bernie Sanders way completely takes over, private business needs to be concerned with finding a niche and making money. NPR would be concerned about that as well if they didn't feed at the public trough and rely on lots of left wing donors to support their coverage for the left and the far left view of the world.

A lot of the Reagan books assertions we have heard before -- primarily from Kitty Kelly, Nancy and astrology, Alzheimer's while he was in office, affairs for both of them, etc. -- and as Hayward points out, they have all been solidly debunked before from real sources rather than rumors.

If you don't read much history, you may actually learn something from the books, but like pretty much anything (and more in this case), be pretty critical of the most titillating stuff. Kind of like the fishing lure that really achieved it's purpose once you bought it (catching a fish is purely optional!), the book is entertaining and people are buying it. That is what counts in the game that O'Reilly is playing here -- think of them as a male version of a "Romance Novel" and enjoy in moderation.

'via Blog this'

Closing Of The American Mind, Allan Bloom

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Closing_of_the_American_Mind

After a lot of rememberance (some of it false), I re-read the book that along with National Review and Ayn Rand was one of the early works that led me to "open my mind" to the ancients, the classics, philosophy and the radical ideas of thinkers not sanctioned by the modern academy or culture. Call it the inverse of the kind of relativist, collectivist,  politically correct education that Bloom laments in this work. I find the following explains the title and purpose of the work.

"Actually openness results in American conformism -- out there in the rest of the world is drab diversity that teaches only that values are relative, whereas here we can create all the lifestyles we want. Our openness means we do not need others. Thus what is advertised as a great opening is a great closing. No longer is there hope that there are great wise men in other places and times who can reveal the truth about life." 

The book is a survey of the leading thoughts to Western civilization and what has become of them in the American University. The basic answer is that there is no truth, and therefore all points of view are somewhat equivalent, although the most "progressive" is favored, since it is current. Science is king -- but alas, Science has no values or meaning  beyond "it works" and "we have lots of detailed data about stuff", so thought is atomized along with matter. The post Nietzsche world of philosophy is summarized thusly:

"The revelation that philosophy finds nothingness at the end of it's quest informs the new philosopher that mythmaking must be his central concern in order to make a world."

Once God and Religion are gone, there is a vacuum that must be filled by myth, because man does not live by mere fact.

The first time I read this book, I struggled mightily with it -- and was not sure that I got it at all, but it made me aware that in my single minded focus to attain a career through college education, I had completely missed even a rudimentary understanding of the culture that had created the world I was intent to seek my livelihood in with all haste.

When I re-read it ... I assume in the late '90s, I was better equipped and felt that I understood it, this time it was a relative breeze. Education does work -- even autodidacticism.

My false memories were related to how early I thought it was written and that I must have read it sooner -- I thought it was written in the 1960's, it was published in '87. It DOES cover a lot of discussion of the '60s, which is where I must have gotten the idea.

It was more popular than I imagined -- I read it on the Kindle this time which included an afterword by Andrew Ferguson. Bloom died of AIDs in 1992, five years after the book was published. That fact no doubt figures heavily into some of the criticism of the work out in Wikipedia (linked at the top) relative to people claiming that young people coming out for gay rights and "marriage" is "proof of morality". One would hope that anyone who read the book would realize that it is rather proof of "all things being relative" in the now even more closed American mind.

Must all alcoholics be in favor of prohibition or of complete license to consume alcohol? Must all alcoholics hold any specific view relative to alcohol? Why would not the same be true of someone with homosexual tendencies? Will we someday state of alcoholics as a group that "You are born with a genetic disposition to alcoholism. If you do not drink, you are not being true to yourself"?

Such inconsistency -- and in fact, the creation of a mind so closed that it may not dare recognize the inconsistency in the previous paragraph is the core of what "Closing" teaches. The actual open mind is open to the possibility of truth, error and even paradox. It is willing to continue to seek "the good", even transcendent, divine truth rather than be closed to even the potential. It may not find what it seeks, but it does not discount it, and it does not give up the quest because the current times assert it MUST not exist.

I'm glad that I came full circle and re-read this one probably for the last time. It opened my mind, and the mind of America has closed beyond what I suspect even Bloom might have imagined since his death.

Happiness Is A Serious Problem, Dennis Prager

http://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Serious-Problem-Dennis-Prager-ebook/dp/B0014Y09OI

An alternate title for this excellent book would be "Wisdom About Happiness".  I'm not wired to be a particularly happy person, nor am I wired to be a thin person -- so I do the best I can to play the hand I have been dealt. While neither diet books nor happiness books are likely to make me thin or happy, they help me understand my wiring and predilections so that I can possibly be a bit wiser, and compensate where possible.

Nearly anything written by Prager seems to at least border on excellent and this book is no exception. It walks through a lot of the many  misconceptions on happiness. I'll put a few more quotes in than I usually would, since this book is chocked full of short, well-written and to the point statements.

Everything worthwhile in life is attained through hard work. Happiness is not an exception. 

But not working AT happiness -- and especially not at YOUR happiness. As you look back on life, you will almost certainly realize that you were most happy when you were enmeshed in some "cause" or "project". In my case, the big development projects at IBM and raising kids were the largest examples. Hopefully writing will continue to develop into another.

But the purpose of life is not to avoid pain. That is the purpose of an animal’s life.

Many of our problems and even false desires about happiness are due to forgetting that man is not an animal. If we were, the rich, successful, beautiful, etc would actually BE the most happy -- but we see examples all the time in which this is not the case. Animals don't know human happiness -- they know relaxation, satiation, pleasure, etc -- all of which humans feel as well. A simple definition of hell for humans is mistaking the pursuit of animal pleasures with happiness -- addiction, obsession, disaster are terms associated with these, certainly not happiness!

whatever brings the most happiness can also bring the greatest unhappiness.

Ask a parent who has lost a child, or just has a child that has returned the love and care of the parent with disrespect and derision. Ask the loving spouse whose life partner has died. We know this to be true -- one whole chapter, chapter 25 is titled "Everything has a price -- Know what it is!". How much wiser (and happier!) the world would be if just a tiny extra percentage of our fellow man understood this simple truth!

The problem in our time is that maturity is not high on the list of goals we offer the next generation. We stress happiness, success, and intelligence but not maturity. And that is too bad, both for society, which suffers when too many of its members are immature, and for the individual who wants to be happy. For happiness is not available to the immature. And one of the prominent characteristics of immaturity is seeing oneself primarily as a victim.

"Maturity", defined as "wisdom, self control, perspective, having a philosophy of life (or even having a clue what philosophy is!)" When "maturity" is defined to mean some combination of the terms I listed (and I believe that to be his intent), then the quote above is true.

The "sage" can be "happy" in the sense that they have access to and make use of many of the "secrets" of this book, but when they live in a culture that often glorifies sensation, immaturity, mixing ends with means, substitution of animal senses for human wisdom / maturity / development, they are going to feel regret for the rest of humanity.

Yes, there is a “secret to happiness”—and it is gratitude. All happy people are grateful, and ungrateful people cannot be happy. We tend to think that it is being unhappy that leads people to complain, but it is truer to say that it is complaining that leads to people becoming unhappy. Become grateful and you will become a much happier person.

The problem with the "secret" to happiness is expectations. We don't feel happiness when expectations are met, we feel happiness when they are exceeded, and our human nature is to expect A LOT! Our culture, media and education system is all about telling us of our "rights" and how much we ALL "deserve" this and that. We are each so VERY special and deserving!! Our expectations are sky high -- for products, events, teams, friends, spouses -- EVERYTHING!

Grateful? To who or what? The order of the day is entitlement -- and nobody is ever grateful for what they are entitled to! So modern western man is saddled with the greatest unhappiness in world history -- gravely wounded soldiers in terrible wars have been grateful to be alive, modern man is often distraught and grossly unhappy if their Facebook "Friends" fail to put a "like" on their new rainbow profile picture!

There is a lot more in the book -- Prager does a characteristically insightful and compassionate discussion of medications and being wired toward depression.

If we are, in fact, “built” this way, we no longer have to blame ourselves or loved ones for our unhappiness. There is something worse than depression—blaming it on yourself or a loved one.

For those of us with such wiring, this is possibly the most important day to day advice -- because the depressive wiring comes with self-blame as a "feature". How strange that even the modern "progressive" would likely agree with Prager on this relative to depression, but find it TOTALLY WRONG for someone with say a tendency to homosexuality to seek to understand and control that "wiring".  Does the depressive, alcoholic, or even narcissist NOT have some sort of a responsibility to be "true" to themselves and "authentic"? Consistency remains a non-sequitur for the "progressive".

I highly recommend the book even if you are a very happy person. It is an excellent broad-brush skim of some of the more important, but often forgotten today, wisdom for a meaningful human life.

Moby Dick, Melville

I finally finished my lengthy slog through the actual sea soaked tome in hardcover with some fine illustrations. It is a book that one has heard so much of, read in excerpt, heard quotes from, etc that it often seems that we all might have read it. The very symbol of obsession, vengeance and the scapegoat.

All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby-Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.

 In the following scene from "First Contact", my far favorite of the Star Trek movies, Picard with the bearing and voice only a Shakespearean actor could muster embodies the fine line between total dedication to a worthy cause and obsession to the exclusion of reality. It is a bit long, but wait for it ... it is worth it.

That fine and often questionably discernible line might well be the gossamer thread on which hangs the destiny of all humanity. We must have motivation and meaning -- but obsession is too far.  I often feel that "progressivism" is the "Borg" of our time, relentlessly assimilating the individual, the sacred, the human, into a "collective" of bleating sheep controlled by "The Party". Ah, the White Whale!

Moby Dick is a long book, and to some degree it has to be in order to convince both the dogged intellectual and the common man that within it's pages you will understand vengeance, obsession and the scapegoat in one not very tidy package. I'll give you a hint -- you will not, and you will also not really enjoy much of it as an entertaining memorable tale. Like converting "Titanic" to "Boy meets girl on ship, they fall in love, ship sinks, boy dies", Moby Dick can be summarized as "Storyteller goes on ship, meets captain whose leg was  taken by white whale, captain chases whale, whale gets captain and whole ship except storyteller". But isn't a page-turner, it is an epic of sometimes tortured symbolism and metaphor.

Or perhaps one needs to be an obsessive to read it through -- and the white whale is the book itself ... or age, time, wisdom, life, love, God  ... "A Six Blade Knife" ... one of my favorite Dire Straits songs.

The book is rife with maritime and whaling terms as well as whale lore and biology circa mid 1850's. The conjecture about the earth being riddled with sub-sea passages which allow whales to dive in the Atlantic and come up in the Indian Ocean by taking a shortcut through one of these portals is amazingly similar to the modern science fiction conjecture of the "wormhole". While the prose often just seems obtuse and ponderous, there are a fair amount of beautiful and thought provoking allegorical allusions such as the following.

There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seems to speak of some hidden soul beneath; like those fabled undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried Evangelist St. John. And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures, wide-rolling watery prairies and Potters’ Fields of all four continents, the waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams,  somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness.

You know the story of Moby Dick, you no doubt have at least nibbled the edges of obsession, vengeance and entertained a scapegoat or two in your life. My advice, which like all likely good advice is very hard to take, would be to read it while young -- there is a chance that the experience of "bearing with" Melville on this long voyage of a book would impart a level of wisdom beyond the years of say a "twenty-something". Otherwise, if one of your whales is an obsession to write, Moby Dick will certainly help you avoid Dr. Johnson's charge ; "Never trust a man who writes more than he reads"!

I have to leave with the the other quote of Star Trek fame ... this one not credited directly in the movie dialogue.

Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.

There is a very good reason that vengeance is mine saith the Lord ... lest we be consumed! Deuteronomy 32:35

To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.

Hemingway Biography, By Jeffrey Meyers

http://www.amazon.com/Hemingway-A-Biography-Jeffrey-Meyers/dp/0306808900

Finished up the subject Ernest Hemingway biography. Well written book that gives a lot of insight into Hemingway the man, the image and the writer. He is indeed the model for the Dos Equis "World's Most Interesting Man". I found Churchill far more interesting, but Churchill did not have movie star looks and movie star sexual appetites as Hemingway did. 

It IS very interesting though how both Churchill and Hemingway were extremely drawn to war, violence and risk, as well of course a lot of hard drink. Churchill drank a LOT for MUCH longer -- Hemingway being a hard drinker that eventually succumbed to alcoholism in his 40's to 50's ... drinking as much as a large bottle of hard liquor a day or more, and it being a major part of his massive decline in health along with his accidents. 

I especially enjoyed reading of his Key West years, having visited Sloppy Joes and his home in Key West. I'd like to spend some more time there -- it is an easy place for the mind to wander to during a MN winter. The book didn't pay enough attention to his cats ... only one good "kitty porn" picture, and gave the author away as definitely NOT being a cat person, referring to Earnest's "dirty cats". A dirty cat is a VERY sick nearly dead cat! If you tour his place in Key West, you will likely meet some of his 6-toed cats. He used the lighthouse next to his home to help him navigate home from Sloppy Joes after "a few drinks". 

Very hard for a Rochester MN resident to ignore this quote: 

"Rochester is a depressing town, where the modern dance of death goes on in expensive hospitals. All visitors are either sick themselves or related to the sick. A grotesque spectacle of illness appears in the corridors and the streets as the modern pilgrims seek salvation in technology rather than in faith." 

At the very end of his life Hemingway received electro shock treatments at Mayo which were not effective, destroyed his memory, and likely contributed heavily to his suicide.

Hemingway's life is full of excitement and interest -- the outdoor life in Michigan as a young man, wounded in WWI, running with the bulls and bullfighting, African Safaris, lots of hunting in the western US (Montana and Idaho), deep sea fishing, a succession of beautiful wives and mistresses, pals with James Joyce, F Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound ... soldiers, adventurers, hunters, fishermen ... and of course drinkers.

None of us knows what makes any of us tick -- including ourselves. We may think we know, sometimes especially about ourselves, and then find out we are surprised. Therefore, I take this epitaph from Norman Mailer with more than a grain of salt -- I suspect that Hemingway would call it shit (that is how he talked).

"It is not likely that Hemingway was a brave man that sought danger for the sake of the sensations it provided him. What is more likely the truth of his own odyssey is that he struggled with his cowardice and against a secret lust to suicide all his life, that his inner landscape was a nightmare, and he spent his nights wrestling with the gods. It may even be that the final judgment on his work may come to the notion that what he failed to do was tragic, but what he accomplished was heroic, for it is possible that he carried a weight of anxiety with him which would have suffocated any man smaller than himself"

I was struck by how often he worried about the "corruption" of wealth and fame -- but yet "Old Man and The Sea" was done after he had a achieved much wealth and fame. I believe he instinctively understood the danger of wealth and fame, yet he was driven to write -- without writing there was no life, and the fact that in his mind, the electro shock had killed his writing muse meant that for him life was over.

He showed the characteristic that I believe all imaginative people show to some degree -- a difficulty in separating the imaginary from the real. What he read, thought and wrote, melded somewhat seamlessly with reality -- so at one level, he was indeed a great liar, as all writers are. However, as in "myth", sometimes the "not factually true" is more true to what some of us believe is a universe more real than that which we can measure. I believe that Hemingway sensed that truth -- but failed to really connect with it. His hints of the "more that what we see" was enough to create some of the greatest art of the 20th century, and his grasping (in the wrong paths I think) created one of the more interesting lives of the 20th century.

The Lessons of History, By Will and Ariel Durant

http://www.amazon.com/The-Lessons-History-Will-Durant/dp/143914995X

The subject and linked book is a bit like "Cliffs notes for history" ... with naturally the slant of the authors, but everything has to have SOME slant!

I found the following quote from comte de Saint-Simeon to the most useful in the book ...

The law of human development… reveals two distinct and alternative states of society: one, the organic, in which all human actions are classed, foreseen, and regulated by a general theory, and the purpose of social activity is clearly defined; the other, the critical, in which all community of thought, all communal action, all coordination have ceased, and the society is only an agglomeration of separate individuals in conflict with one another. Each of these states or conditions has occupied two periods of history. One organic period preceded that Greek era which we call the age of philosophy, but which we shall more justly call the age of criticism. 

Later a new doctrine arose, ran through different phases of elaboration and completion, and finally established its political power over Western civilization. The constitution of the Church began a new organic epoch, which ended in the fifteenth century, when the Reformers sounded the arrival of that age of criticism which has continued to our time…. 

In the organic ages all basic problems [theological, political, economic, moral] have received at least provisional solutions. But soon the progress achieved by the help of these solutions, and under the protection of the institutions realized through them, rendered them inadequate, and evoked novelties. Critical epochs— periods of debate, protest,… and transition, replaced the old mood with doubt, individualism, and indifference to the great problems…. In organic periods men are busy building; in critical periods they are busy destroying. 69 Saint-Simon believed

The highlighted quote is the core ... man needs SOME provisional idea of "what is the good" before masses of people can be expected to FREELY build toward some goal. Absent that agreement, effort is essentially based on "destruction" -- division, protest, debate -- in short, lack of agreement on "the good".

Like all simplifications of something as vast as history, the organic / critical split is far from perfect. The US was "organic" on freedom, growth, advancement and "under God" from 1776 up until sometime in the early 20th century, but we were obviously "critical" on the question of slavery. The issue might really be if there is an  "overarching set of principles" in which MOST of the elements of life are agreed. It doesn't have to be total.

A totalitarian state can use force to attempt to progress to some edicted goal by power, but that is far weaker than a real general consensus of "the good".

The other obvious points brought home by the book are:

So the first biological lesson of history is that life is competition. Competition is not only the life of trade, it is the trade of life— peaceful when food abounds, violent when the mouths outrun the food.

The second biological lesson of history is that life is selection. In the competition for food or mates or power some organisms succeed and some fail. In the struggle for existence some individuals are better equipped than others to meet the tests of survival.

The third biological lesson of history is that life must breed. Nature has no use for organisms, variations, or groups that cannot reproduce abundantly.

Nothing at all newsworthy for regular readers of this blog -- nor one might argue to anyone that observes the world as it is.

The question is of course what to do about all of that -- deny it? Kill or strongly handicap the better selected? Deny that generations not bred or killed in the womb will fail to inherit the earth?

Again, for nearly 200 years the US largely lived according to "natural law". Freedom allowed the most successful competitors to succeed, have large families and to drive the nation forward generation by generation.  Technology in the form of birth control and abortion gave both the means and the illusion that we controlled nature. What we "controlled" was the ability to modify our system to ignore the natural in microcosm, but in the macrocosm, nature still rules -- and for those willing to pay attention, that fact gets more obvious with each year as our system that was once aligned with principles that worked succumbs to those that don't .

A worthy read -- I have of course just scratched the surface of the book here, but it is not a long or hard read. Well worth the trouble -- a high rating on Amazon and deservedly so.

Tom Crean Book, South Pole Pub

Tom Crean: Unsung Hero of the Scott and Shackleton Antarctic Expeditions: Michael Smith: 9780898868708: Amazon.com: Books:

I finished the linked book and enjoyed it very much.

On our trip to the Dingle peninsula in Ireland we visited the South Pole Pub in Annascaul where I had a pint of Crean's Irish Lager and bought the glass.

Crean made three voyages to Antarctica.

1. The Discovery with both Scott and Shackleton. 
2. The Terra Nova voyage with Scott in which Scott lost the race to the South Pole to the Norwegian, Amundsen and then lost his life on the return from the pole along with his team of four. 
3. The Endurance with Shackleton, where the ship was crushed in the ice of the Weddell Sea and through many feats of great risk, skill and luck, all hands returned! 

The book "Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage" is in my opinion the greatest true adventure tale ever told. It is in one of the two greatest "successful failures" in history, the other being Apollo 13. Although on the human endurance front, the length of time, the isolation, and the self-reliance to get out on their own, Endurance stands alone. The ship was named with such foresight it defies belief! 

If you are only going to read one book about the golden age of arctic exploration, read Endurance, but if you are reading two, this one has a lot to suggest it (especially if you have any plans to go to Ireland!). It gives you an overview of that time when people thought of exploring the poles in the same way as we thought of exploring the Moon in the '60s. It gives you an overview of the British being stuck to the "man hauling" technique while the Norwegians used dogs and skis and accomplished much more with much less loss of life. 

The item I enjoyed the most that I think I had heard hinted at somewhere, but I don't recall being covered in "Endurance", relates to the crossing of South Georgia Island by Shackleton, Crean, and Frank Worsley (the greatest navigator in the history of the world). The route that they took was not crossed again until 1955 by a group of explorers with full gear over a week of time. Given the fact that Shackleton, Crean and Worsley had no tents, so were forced to do it before they fell asleep and died of exposure, comparisons are questionable.

The highly interesting aspect of the crossing is that each of the men, interviewed separately in later years with no communication with each other, each said that "there was something odd about the journey ... multiple times I was certain there were four of us". For the believer, an explanation is pretty easy -- it is very hard to imagine everyone surviving the Endurance voyage without divine intervention. But as always, it COULD be explained by "skill, luck, great personal strength and will, ... or possibly space aliens". Those that are certain there is no divine intervention tend to find space aliens more likely.

That was my FAVORITE part -- it is far from the only great part. Crean has a number of exploits including a solo 18 hour 35 mile hike when food had run out and the men could no longer move that saved the lives of Edward Evans and Bill Lashly. Evans went on to become an Admiral in the Royal Navy and never forgot Tom Crean.

The best way to get some perspective on these guys is to think of them as the astronauts of the day. Humans always had heroes for 1000s of years -- real heroes. Soldiers, explorers, musicians, artists, etc.  The polar explorers were major heroes of 100 years ago. Those of us alive in the '60s knew what it was to have special heroes in the astronauts.

Given a lot of the response to "American Sniper" perhaps at least in N America and Europe, the astronauts  might be the last heroes before we "progress" to a world of "equality of result"?

Tom Crean had very few if any equals in polar exploration. I rather enjoy a world of actual diversity -- of gifts, skill, result, thought and a million more aspects. Perhaps I was born too late. 

'via Blog this'

A Conflict of Visions, Thomas Sowell

Link to book on Amazon.

This is at least my second reading of this favorite book, my first review is covered here.

My first review is pretty good I think, so just go read it if you are a conservative, if not, read this first.

The first reviews biggest failing is that I TOTALLY fail to accomplish in the review what Sowell does so very well in the book -- my bias for the constrained vision is obvious. Sowell is not only BRILLIANT (and happens to be black), but how well he is able to avoid showing his (also constrained) bias is a thing of beauty.

The "Visions" are quite simple once one starts looking at them, but remarkably powerful in how they affect how the world is viewed. They are pretty much the same as "worldview", the largely pre-conscious lens through which we see the world.

For those of you that are more video than reading oriented, here is Sowell himself discussing the work. In my view, Dr Sowell is the greatest living mind on understanding and explaining Political and Economic issues.

***Note: While the video is interesting and covers some things from the book, you should NOT get the idea that Sowell in the book is like Sowell on the video relative to which Vision is his !!! In some ways, reading the book after watching the video might give one greater hope in potential ability to rise above our biases that is likely unwarranted in people less brilliant than Sowell ... about 99.9999 % of us!

The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk

Link to book on Amazon

I gave a little preview of this book that I re-started on back in November, and I have now finished my 3rd reading of this heavily tabbed and marked work which I first read in 2005. The book was first published in 1953 -- so it is three years my senior.

I pulled these quotes from page 470, but not in order -- I'm bad with the little [...] and such and I think they hold together pretty well anyway.  

When faith in a transcendent moral order, duty to family, hope of advancement, and satisfaction with one's task have vanished from the routine of life, Big Brother appears to show the donkey the stick instead of the carrot.

There are many in all parties who look forward to time when virtually the whole of the population will be dependent on the State for the whole of the amenities of life.  

But moral systems are not constructed readily by social engineers. The old religious and ethical imperatives demolished, compulsion must take their place if the great wheel of circulation is to be kept turning. When the inner order of the soul is decayed, the outer order of the State must be maintained by merciless severity, extending even to the most private relationships.  

If Democracy cannot be persuaded, then Democracy must be intimidated. 

Or as TS Eliot put it; "If you will not have God (and he is a jealous God) you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin". I would add, Satan.

There is no way to capture the scope of this book -- the highlights of conservative thought from Burke to Eliot (as in TS), but that isn't the half of it. The various authors harken back to Greece, the Bible, Natural Law, British History and much more. The names from history flow like a wide and very deep river of genius -- Acton, Adams, Babbitt, Balfour, Coleridge, Disraeli ... and I'm only selecting a starting few from an already selective bibliography!

Conservatism is rich in history of both fact and thought because conservatives believe in the importance of history. They deny that the last instant is a privileged position to observe what is of ultimate import for man, mankind, families, communities, nations or other associations that are the essence of truly human life -- all often atomized by the oppressive Benthamite Statism we exist under today. Conservatives look for historical, even transcendent perspective, searching for principle and the hope of providence.

They deny that man is the measure of all, but oh, what men of what great measure have we been blessed to have seen rise up to contain the horrors of the French Revolution, Fascism, Communism and the ongoing onslaught of  increasingly godless, centralized,  and intrusive Statist power.

The thought upon which Britain and the US rose to our previous heights was conservative thought. Will our civilization hold out against the destructive envy of the masses, the machinations of the "sophists and calculators", those that would destroy all that transcends day to day existence and thus make our lives no more than those of the "flies of summer"? (Burke)

THAT is the ultimate earthly social question, the eternal one is like unto it -- Will you sell all you own (give up the idea of this is MY LIFE), and follow Christ!

That question is never securely settled, and has Reagan so correctly put it, the potential loss of all is never more than one generation away!

Mourning Winston, Last Lion, Defender of the Realm

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0345548639/ref=rdr_ext_tmb

After now having finished 1800+ pages of Last Lion over the last few weeks (Alone, then Defender of the Realm), last night, with a glass of brandy in hand to honor his memory, I reached Winston's death shortly after his 90th birthday and the end of the defender book. I love to read. Given retirement and the weather over the last couple weeks, it feels a bit like I lost an old friend today.

 His birthday was on Nov 30th and he celebrated 90 as he liked to with family and friends, roast beef, oysters, Pol Roger champagne, brandy and cigars late into the early morning hours. Over a decade prior he had commented to Jock Colville on another January 24th that "today is the 24th of January, that is the day my father died. It is the day that I shall die too."  On the night of the 9th of January he refused to take either brandy or a cigar -- very rare. He had a stroke and went into a coma that night. He passed on the 24th.  I believe the image above is of the crowd outside on his 90th and him giving them the V for victory.

I don't think there is any question that he was the greatest man of the 20th century. Without him, we may well be all speaking German today and being forced to revere Hitler as that man. Next to Winston, FDR, Stalin, Truman and Eisenhower are just "other statesmen".

He was great because he was always Winston. Here he is calling socialism want it was and is:

"I hope you have all mastered the official Socialist jargon which our masters, as they call themselves, wish us to learn," he said in 1950. "You must not use the word 'poor'; they are described as the 'lower income group.' When it comes to a question of freezing a workman's wages the Chancellor of the Exchequer speaks of 'arresting increases in personal income'....Homes are in future to be called 'accommodation units.' I don't know how we are to sing our old song 'Home Sweet Home.' 'Accommodation Unit, Sweet Accommodation Unit, there's no place like our Accommodation Unit.'"

The level of tyranny and millions of subjugated and dead at the hands of Stalin and the USSR could likely have been significantly reduced if not nearly avoided had FDR been willing to listen to Churchill and had not had the idea that "he could talk to Stalin". Here is a little glimpse of comparison between Churchill and FDR:

... Roosevelt "always enjoyed other people's discomfort." Harriman recalled. "It never bothered him much when other people were unhappy."

Churchill did not rise to the bait until Stalin proposed to shoot at least 50K German officers after the surrender in order to ensure Germany's docility well into the future. "I would rather," Churchill replied, "be taken out to the garden here and now and be shot myself rather than sully my own and my countries honor by such infamy." Roosevelt then chimed in with a compromise; he suggested that only 49K officers be shot". 

There are a number of places that one realizes that FDR often gave weasels a bad name -- siding with Stalin and reducing his number by a thousand allows you to understand the REAL FDR vs the "Fireside Chat" fake.

In reading the book, one is shocked by how much FDR and others in his cabinet sidled up to Stalin and the USSR while taking a decidedly anti British Empire stance. For some strange reason, FDR had massive concern for what he saw as "injustice" to people in India, but was completely sanguine about many millions of Poles, Slavs and Germans being butchered, raped starved, and eventually imprisoned or virtually imprisoned as the machine of the Red Army blugeoned it's way west.

Or perhaps FDR just didn't like Britain and what he saw as her "interests". When there was a huge famine in Bengal and the demolished Brits had no ships, but 350K tons of wheat in Australia, FDR dithered for a month when he had the ships, then sent "regrets". At least a million more Bengalis died in the next twelve months. The book makes it very clear that American politics were what FDR cared about -- whatever it took for him to win elections was what he was committed to -- not matter what the cost in lives or the risk of loss to Hitler.

Churchill's life is a drama that exceeds any that could be imagined -- made more dramatic by being real. He heroically fought the monster Hitler, and won without becoming evil himself. And then his people turned him out of leadership because they wanted the "free stuff" promised by socialism less than 2 months after VE day. How is that for gratitude?

But he persevered, the socialists were a disaster as he had predicted, and he returned to the Prime Minister position in '51, laying it down in '55. His last 10 years were spent writing, painting and sailing the world on Aristotle Onassis' yacht.

His son Randolph was a source of disappointment, it was said that he inherited all of his fathers bad characteristics and none of the good.  -- as Winston once said with a tear in his eye "I love my son, but I don't like him".  Randolph died in '68 at the age of 57. His first wife, Pamela bore a son Winston who was a joy to old Winston. Pamela, eventually Pamela Harriman was is a study in herself -- it was once remarked that she was the worlds foremost expert on rich mens bedroom ceilings.

His daughter Sarah had success as an actress, struggled with alcohol her whole life and died at age 67, apparently having relapsed to alcohol.

His wife Clementine remained his love to the end and outlived him by over a decade.

I wish he had been a Christian -- I like to believe that God had a long talk with him from January 9 to the 24th and convinced him that he had one critical error in life. Inside Westminster there is supposed to be a fairly large block on the floor that says "Remember Winston Churchill" -- I certainly will, and I intend to see that marker in about a month!

Churchill Biography, The Last Lion, "Alone"

http://www.amazon.com/William-Manchester-Last-Lion-Churchill/dp/B002NT6OK6/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1423506309&sr=8-2&keywords=last+lion+alone+william+manchester

 A book, a man, a period of history that thrills the soul and fills it with sadness, compassion and  regret. A reading experience that consumed a lot of my life the past week and leaves me with a bit of the same feeling that one has upon returning from a wonderful vacation.  A true joy in reading.

To those that ever utter the thought "What can one man do"? or to those of us that ever get depressed feeling "Woe is me, nobody is on my side and my life is difficult", READ THIS BOOK!

 This volume covers the years that Winston stood alone in his dogged opposition to Hitler and National Socialism (Nazism) in Germany while the official policy of the world (League of Nations), and especially Great Britain was "appeasement". This was carried on vigor by the British prime ministers Stanley Baldwin and Nevill ("Peace in our time")Chamberlin in the '30s. Churchill, once a prominent office holder -- Chancellor of the Exchequer, First Lord of the Admiralty, Minister of Defense, etc, but has now lost face after the disaster in Gallipoli unfairly blamed on him, and his unpopular stand against releasing India from the Empire, as well as the fact that he is pugnacious, bows very few, and has a wit that can be very biting if you are on the receiving side of it.

Churchill is the lone voice crying in the wilderness on the subject of building up the military so Hitler can be stopped, and then when Hitler starts to take countries, as the voice saying that if Britain, France or some other alliance stands up to Hitler, he will be overthrown and the Nazi menace stopped. Nobody listens.

Churchill's finances were terrible at this time due to both is mismanagement and stock reversals in '29 and '38, and he nearly lost Chartwell (his home). He was forced to keep up a difficult writing and speaking schedule to bring in money to keep his family afloat. Old friends deserted him, his son turned against him, one of his daughters entered into a marriage that was doomed to fail and not approved by either Winston or Clementine. Life is not good for Winston.

 If anyone had a cause for depression he did -- and while I know he had some very significant bouts at times in his life, this book did not dwell on any in this period in particular. He took some things hard, but he kept soldiering on. His family motto, "Faithful but Unfortunate" was very appropriate at this time.

While there are a NUMBER of times that Hitler could have EASILY been stopped, this discussion of his invasion of the Rheinland is especially instructive"

Hitler had acted in defiance of their advice [his generals]. The generals knew that the occupation, stripped of the Fuhrer's  thespian eloquence and his hand-picked carefully rehearsed battalions now camped on forbidden soil, was a gigantic scam. By canceling leave and putting every trained poilu [French WWI infantry] into battle dress, France could retake the Rhineland in a matter of hours. Outnumbering the half-trained, inadequately equipped Wehrmacht ten to one, the French infantrymen would be supported by tanks and the finest artillery in the world. Blomberg [German general in Rhineland] had agreed to assume command only after receiving written assurance from the Fuhrer that he could take "any military countermeasures" he felt appropriate. If he so much as glimpsed a single French bayonet, he intended to beat a hasty retreat back across the Rhine.  

And that, in he opinion of the German High Command, would be the end of Adolph Hitler. 

That was not the last opportunity -- Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland each provided their own potentials for ending Hitler's reign,  with very limited diplomatic and military actions well within the capabilities of Britain and France in even their woefully weak military status at the time.

In one of the saddest displays of spinelessness in human history, the appeasers were not convinced and as a result millions died needlessly.

We need to understand the times a bit --  the Oxford Pocked Dictionary, circa the 1950's:  "Jew, noun, a person of Hebrew race; figurative : unscrupulous usurer or bargainer; colloq - Cheat, overreach"

Churchill would not allow Jewish jokes at his table, nor laugh at them with others. He also generally liked Americans, and was 1/2 American himself. He was certainly an upper crust English Gentleman, but he was an original of one.

He was witty -- a wit that was often loved and often got him trouble, but in the end was just what England needed to get them through Hell. An example: "British leadership likes to take their weekends in the country, Hitler likes to take his countries on the weekend." ... it was witty and very true. The Rhineland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland ... all on the weekend, and it made it hard for Britain to take action -- not that the appeasers would have been so inclined.

The book is long but extremely well written, and it's subject and the period makes one see that God has moments where he is a playwright of exceptional timing and skill. We love the story of the person cast away, unsung,  maligned, that returns against great odds and in twists and turns to lead the forces of good to triumph -- King Arthur, Joan of Arc ... right up to "The High Plains Drifter", and versions of nearly every action film. The bad guys always think they have won, but they overlooked that one guy ....

And so it is with Churchill. The very day that the Germans are marching into France is the day that he is finally going to be named Prime Minister -- the government has fallen in debate over the past two days on the issue of Britain's response in Norway. What is now happening in France is a complete surprise.

On the morning of May 10th, 1940, with the news of the Wehrmacht on the move into France, a couple of service ministers enter the office of the First Lord of the Admiralty. Winston is aware at this point that the news of his elevation to Prime Minster will come that day, but he is going about his business as he does on every other day. The ministers note:  " We had little or no sleep, and the news could not be worse, yet there he was, smoking his large cigar and eating fried eggs and bacon, as if he had just returned from an early morning ride" ...he is  reading his morning papers as he did each day.

Manchester seems a little disappointed ... he writes:

"Before the mists of legend envelop him, before he comes to power and assumes leadership of the struggle to crush the monster in central Europe -- while he is still so to speak, Drake bowling when informed that he armada has been sighted -- it is useful to glimpse the entirely mortal Winston. The vision is less than inspiring; unlike some earlier heroes, Winston is engaged in no mundane but memorable act when the news arrives" ...

I disagree. While Winston is a bridge to the earlier ages -- a throwback to the Victorian era, he is also modern. He is more like Dirty Harry, being interrupted in his lunch or dinner and being called to stand alone and take down the bad guys.  But oh, with so much more eloquence!

As he rises in the House for the first time as PM:

I would say to the House,
  as I have said to those who have joined this Government:
       I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat ...

You ask, what is our policy?
     I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air,
         with all our might and with all the strength God can give us ...
            That is our policy

You ask, what is our aim?
     I can answer in one word: It is victory,
        victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror
            victory how ever long and hard the road may be
                 for without victory there is no survival.


The volume in which WWII is fought is on order and should show up this week. I'm anxious!

Saint Augustine, The City of God

The biggest reason that I took on the immense challenge of making it through this work is "perspective".  Rome was sacked by the Visigoths in 410, Augustine began this work 3 years later in 413 and did not complete it until 426.

Rome had BEEN "civilization" for a thousand years prior, and naturally in 410, St Augustine and his peers believed they were living in "modern times", all be it a time of great change and disruption at the ending of a thousand year reign which they had assumed would last forever.

The work is remarkably lengthy and wordy (867 rather small type pages in my copy) and decidedly NOT an "easy read". I must say though that the sheer volume and many asides and references to other scholars of the day give an insight into the intellectual life of the very very elite of that day that "feels" important in a way that is hard to express. Perhaps the difference between walking across the US vs flying over it in a jet?

 I will include this one rather lengthy quote as an example of the style and the fact of "every age believes they are modern" ... and highly superior to those that have gone before. Note the reference to "less educated ages", but interestingly the perspective of "only 600 years"! How much more arrogant we have become in our day -- we are nearing the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017, yet it is hard to imagine someone asserting ONLY 500 years! 

It is most worthy of remark in Romulus, that other men who are said to have become gods lived in less educated ages, when there was a greater propensity to the fabulous, and when the uninstructed were easily persuaded to believe anything. But the age of Romulus was barely six hundred years ago, and already literature and science had dispelled the beliefs that attach to an uncultured age. And a little after he says of the same Romulus words to this effect: From this we may perceive that Homer had flourished long before Romulus, and that there was now so much learning in individuals, and so generally diffused an enlightenment, that scarcely any room was left for fable. For antiquity admitted fables, and sometimes even very clumsy ones; but this age [of Romulus] was sufficiently enlightened to reject whatever had not the air of truth. Thus one of the most learned men, and certainly the most eloquent, M. Tullius Cicero, says that it is surprising that the divinity of Romulus was believed in, because the times were already so enlightened that they would not accept a fabulous fiction. But who believed that Romulus was a god except Rome, which was itself small and in its infancy

The work starts with a lengthy defense of Christianity against the charge made by many in that day that failure to pray to the "gods" of Rome due to the conversion to Christianity was the cause of the city being sacked. It then discusses the "City of God" -- the Church, vs "The City of Man" -- earthly government ... lots on angels, demons, prophecy, sin, heaven, hell -- all in MUCH detail, with references to Plato and other Greek thought which start The Church on a path of melding Greek Philosophy (especially Plato) and reason into Christian theology. This "Hellenization" of Christianity is the major historical effect of this work.

At it's simplest, it is the story of the City of man -- selfish, mistaking means with ends, worshiping the temporal, attempting to glorify the profane physical human. The story of war, death, destruction and eventually eternal pain.

And of the City of God -- selfless and caring, realizing that the end is pre-ordained and guaranteed by the blood of Christ (the 2nd Adam) to be perfect. Glorifying only God. The story of Grace, Peace, Faith, Love slowly traveling in a path known only to God to perfect union, Love and bliss for all Eternity.

It is not a book that I would necessarily recommend for most  -- it is CERTAINLY not "efficient", and one would be well served by skimming and focusing on key chapters -- say "books" 14, 19 and 22.If you desire a worthy challenge however, and want to be rather humbled by perspective, I do believe that you will find yourself rewarded!

Drinking With Churchill

http://www.amazon.com/Last-Lion-Winston-Churchill-1932-1940/dp/0316545120/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=

I have at last embarked on a long anticipated reading of the three volumes of the Manchester Churchill Biography, starting with "Alone", 1932-1940.

I've read much about Churchill, but knew these would be special and I can already tell I am in for a real treat. A mere 100 pages into the book I am again reminded of the greatness of the man and the obstinacy of the man and the times he lived in -- his warranted, the position of everyone else, not.

EVERYONE knew that Hitler was "a man of peace". As Walter Lippman -- advisor to Woodrow Wilson, founding editor of the New Republic wrote in '33 after talking to Hitler:

"We have heard once more, through the fog and the din, the hysteria and the animal passions of a great revolution, the authentic voice of a genuinely civilized people."

BTW, Lippman coined the term "stereotype" and wrote a great deal -- he was NOT stupid! Just "always certain, frequently wrong", which is the essence of "the expert".

What modern "certainty" would we most like to imagine? "We are out of oil", "Climate Change is settled science", "The USSR will be around as long or longer than the US?" ... the list is endless. Even a short perusal of history lets us know that the hubris and certainly of much of the elite is a constant -- as is their hatred of an honest prophet like Churchill.

What I really found entertaining though -- as opposed to enlightening, was this.

…the leg­end that he is a heavy drinker is quite untrue. Churchill is a sen­si­ble if unortho­dox drinker. There is always some alco­hol in his blood­stream and it reaches its peak in the evening after he has had two or three scotches, sev­eral glasses of cham­pagne, at least two brandies, and highball.

The "always" started right after breakfast with a "light Scotch and water" and that was his companion all day and until he retired at 3 or 4 AM. His "work day" was from 11PM until he retired. So now we know what a "heavy drinker" ISN'T!

A quote from him that I had heard before, but is worth a repeat -- "I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me". Which is true of both he and the human race -- killing germs mainly, but certainly a lot of enjoyment to balance the heartache it can also cause.

From times before Biblical times, alcohol was the main weapon  against microorganisms in water -- beer, wine, spirits mixed with water, all were ever present. A low level of alcohol in the system was a constant factor of life for those able to avail themselves of it until sanitation and chemicals could provide generally safe water.

Churchill was a throwback to the 19th century, and this was just one more aspect of that. Our founding fathers were the same -- whiskey in water was a common favorite.

Winston also managed to go through 10 or so cigars on a typical day. Just the description of his typical day at Chartwell (his home) is absolutely fascinating -- what a unique and interesting man!

I may be "going to ground" for a few days here. Ah, the joys of retirement!

Man's Search For Meaning, Viktor Frankl

link to book

Personal events of the past week have yet again brought this book off my shelf and I realized that I have never directly reviewed it in the blog.

Dr Victor Frankl, trained as a psychiatrist before suffering years of life in the brutal concentration camps of Nazi Germany where he lost his young wife, parents and of course millions of others (including many more of his friends and associates), has a level of authority that is hard to ignore.

Beyond his experience in the horror of the camps, he founded a school of psychotherapy called "Logotherapy", derived from the Greek "logos" or "meaning". It is considered the 3rd school of Viennese psychotherapy, contrasted with Freud's "will to pleasure", and the Adler/Nietzsche "will to power", it talks of a "will to meaning" in the existential manner similar to Kierkegaard.

Logotherapy speaks of "existential frustration", where the term "existential" has 3 related meanings:

1. Existence itself in the way that humans experience it.
2. The MEANING of existence
3. The PERSONAL SEARCH for that meaning

Where Freud, and largely the American Founders thought that "happiness" or "pleasure" is what is to be pursued, Frankl believes that life provides each of us a task that is specific and unique for each person. Every human has value because each has a unique task that will likely fall under one or more of three headings:

1). The completing of a "work" -- art, innovation, a family, ideas, business, etc ...

2). Experiencing or encountering someone or some thing -- the love of your life, care for the poor, the elderly, the sick ... or maybe just "baseball", or "riding motorcycle"

3). Suffering -- facing inevitable suffering and turning it to triumph. Very much looked down on today where we tend to make people "ashamed for being unhappy". Note if the suffering CAN be removed, then that is what should be done, but if it is a terminal painful condition, or someone close to you is lost -- or if you are in a concentration camp, then human suffering CAN have dignity.

A well known quote from Nietzsche comes up a couple times in the book "He who has a why can bear with almost any how." The message of the book is that it is meaning that is primary (the why). Happiness is a RESULT not the immediate objective, and in fact, the pursuit of happiness as a primary goal is often destructive as it fails to realize that RESPONSIBILITY ... inescapable responsibility to answer the question that life asks us, is the natural human state and it REQUIRES tension ... effort, risk, loss, pain.

The idea that happiness is a worthy "pursuit" and some would even say "a right" is a sham, because of what Frankl calls "the tragic triad" that is part of each of our lives:

Pain, Guilt, and Death. 

Part of each of our "question" is how do we say yes to life in the face of Pain, Guilt, and Death. His basic answer is "A human being is not one in pursuit of happiness, but rather in search of a reason to become happy".

I'm going to include his "imperative", even though it is one that does not speak to me as well as much of the book does:

 "Live life as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now". 

To try to give readers a chance to follow this better than possibly I do, I will quote a bit more:

" In fact, the opportunities to act properly, the potentialities to fulfill a meaning, are affected by the irreversibility of our lives. But also the potentialities alone are so affected. For as soon as we have used an opportunity and have actualized a potential meaning, we have done so once and for all. We have rescued it into the past wherein it as been safely delivered and deposited. In the past, nothing is irretrievably lost, but rather, on the contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured. To be sure, people tend to see only the stubble fields of transitoriness, but overlook and forget the full granaries of the past which they have brought into the harvest of their lives: the deeds done, the loves loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity." 

My belief is that the reason this does not speak to me to the same extent is that I did not suffer in a concentration camp, nor lose a young wife that I loved, all my family and most of my friends to the Holocaust. To Frankl, his life prior to, and even the experience of the horror of the camps is so much a part of his soul that he has had to integrate that as "treasure", somewhat in order to live, but possibly more so in order to honor and keep alive the memories of those he knew and loved that were lost so early in his life.

The book is not directly a "religious book", although to believe that "life" asks each a meaningful question, there is only a short step from "life" to "God". If one has Christian Faith, much in the book is quite easily to translate to that context.

Needless to say, I highly recommend the book, ESPECIALLY for those suffering ... and in human life, eventually, that includes all of us.

"A New Science of Politics": Eric Voegelin

http://www.amazon.com/New-Science-Politics-Introduction-Foundation/dp/0226861147/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420587063&sr=1-1&keywords=new+science+of+politics

A very important work that I'm not going to claim to understand -- a great book for developing some personal intellectual humility.

Although not particularly long, the scope of the book is vast -- describing the problem of developing and discussing a theory of politics, "Political Science" if you will, as part of history. The idea that through the use of political symbols and texts, man tries to create a meaning for his political systems / cultures / etc in history as some sort of representation of a transcendent truth.

The attempt is to make political science a study of the context of how humans exist and develop politically in various epochs of history in which the symbols and thus the order are relatively stable.

Three are identified:

1. The Hellenic Crisis -- Plato and Aristotle. 
2. The Crisis of Rome -- St Augustine and Christianity
3. Hegel's philosophy of Law and History

The assertion is that man will demand SOMETHING that extrapolates his very limited existence into some whole that transcends his life -- religion, politics, society, culture, etc. There are 3 ways that man has historically defined this -- in some ways each is the same, we just like to think the current is more "advanced". These are Rite, Myth and Theory. Depending on context of course, a person will think one or more of them vastly superior due to "tradition", "emotional content", "science" (really "scientism"), "sacredness", or some other value system, which will include emotional attachment. 

My biggest learning from the book (outside of looking up a bunch of long words, latin words, etc) relates to the the vast changes caused by Christianity and it's bastard child Gnosticism (the worship or divinization of "special knowledge").

Prior to Christianity, the entire world and everything in it was "divine" and cyclical. There were "gods" everywhere which explained everything, and history nor even existence had much "direction" other than cycles -- seasons, life, etc. However the "meaning" of everything was "divine". 

Then came Christ with a a separation of past and "known" future in that it had an end, a way for man to be completely unique and eternal, OUTSIDE of "nature", and even more, with an ending -- the eschaton (end of the world, heaven on earth), and the idea of eschatology -- the study of how things would (if you were a believer) end, or OUGHT to end, if you were not a believer. (much of this is also in Judaism, but it wasn't universal -- it was just for the Jews). 

Christianity "de-divinized" the world. God/Christ/Holy Spirit were divine -- and the idea of the Trinity itself as a symbol was applied to many things. Including many cases of "three epochs" "ancient, medieval, modern", Hegel's dialectic, the three phases freedom, Marxism with primitive communism, class struggle and final communism, and of course one of the most "successful" applications of gnosticism, "The Third Reich". 

One of the connections made very clear is the application of "divinity" / "teleology from some unknown source" in the case of Marxism -- history is supposed to "inevitably" be going the communist direction, because "that's the way it is". Much like "science", or really "scientism", it is an application of gnosticism -- attempting to make the secular somehow "divinely" (and therefore uniquely correct) "known". 

All of the supposed "modern" isms -- communism, socialism, etc are about "immanentizing the eschaton" -- using gnostic magic to create "heaven on earth". The last greatest attempt was Germany, but the attempts go on, including Obama's "Hope and Change" here early in the 21st century. 

This book was published in '52, I'll close with his quote on the German attempt to create heaven on earth -- you can see if you see any similarity with attempts today: 

"The German Revolution, finally, in an environment without strong institutional traditions, brought for the first time into full play economic materialism, racist biology, corrupt psychology, scientism and technological ruthlessness -- in brief, modernity without restraint."

Reason and Analysis, Brand Blanshard

http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&index=aps&linkCode=ur2&tag=gm050-20&keywords=reason%20and%20analysis%20blanshard

After having this rather expensive "real practicing philosopher" book on my shelf for a long time partially read, I have finally finished the rather herculean task of completing it, although it is doubtful I will ever reach the ennobled state of claiming significant understanding of it in this mortal coil. The complexity, arcane technicalities of lexical analysis and obscurantism of thought that philosophy is drawn to never ceases to amaze me.

Let me TRY to make this somewhat simple.

The purpose of the book is to cover the various "assaults on reason" from the start of philosophy up to the present.  One can validly call that "assaults on transcendence", which in it's easiest to understand form is "God" ... and especially the particularly rational form of God introduced in the canon of Western Christianity.

To give the form of the problem, I think Mannheim does a good job:

"one must make one's choice between two views: on the one hand that there is a reason working in and through men's minds which can lay hold of a timeless structure of things: on the other, that thinking is a series of temporal events determined, like all other events, non-rationally" 

In other words, reason vs positivism. Reason (in it's most productive historical use) says roughly  "there is a grand plan, and it is discoverable because our minds happen to be made to relate to that grand plan". Positivism says there is no plan, only a pile of "events" with no "privileged frame of reference", certainly including our concepts of "reason", "meaning", etc.

Naturally, Mannheim liked the non-transcendent view, but wanted to make it privileged  ... which of course is immediately self-refuting as is all relativism, since there IS NO PRIVILEGED (eg "right", "better", etc) POINT OF VIEW ... if there aren't any universals, absolutes, etc, there can't be.

Or to put it another way in roughly the terms of Heidegger:

"As the existentialist contemplated this world, his feeling was one of nausea. Was there anything in this nightmare that he could tie to? One thing only - his own existence. Certain of nothing else, he could be certain at least that he existed, and that he was somehow fashioning his own fate. And in doing so, his safety lay in the depth of his disillusionment. He was weak; he was a pilgrim and stranger in a world not of his making; he would be defeated shortly by death; there were no principles that he could adhere to; his life therefore was to be one of anxiety and care. But for Heidegger, "deliverance from illusion is to be achieved by the man, who, opening himself to anguish, resolutely faces nothingness in anticipation of his own extinction"". 

Hard to beat that as an upbeat recruitment paragraph for  "Life without God, The Nietzschean way".

As is pointed out in the rest of the book in number of places, most philosophers in attacking reason, causality, universals, etc and attempting to replace them with mathematics, logical atomism, category differences, and a host of other chimeras, are actually unable to practice what they preach in order to even make the attempt. They are forced to use reason, causality, universals, etc in order to even get a running start at their attack.

"I attack the principle of solid ground while standing here on .... er, never mind". Only they fail to realize their predicament.

Needless to say, it gets quite hard to keep an open mind about the usefulness of all this after the first 10 or so attempts that always must be arrogantly and loudly launched -- after all, if one is to rush as Quixote to the windmill of all of human thought for thousands of years, as well as the day to day existence experienced by ones own self and all those of one's shared existence to date, one must have a quite high opinion of their own logic -- er "series of temporal brain events".

And so it goes. The vast vast majority of even all somewhat deep thinkers either fail to, or more likely refuse to, consider the difficulty factor of doing away with little basics like a rational repeatable universe that is understandable to themselves and others in the same manner taken as a "universal a priori fact". What they see as a "problem" is of course that such a universal a priori fact is hard to accept without some cause beyond "shit happens", and is perilously close to "God".

Much as in Mannheim's choice "You have to face the fact that there is a God, or there isn't", many like to jump to "there isn't" in hopes of being freed from moral stricture and eventual judgement, but like Mannheim, completely ignore the existential consequence of the no god, no order, no universals, no reason for there to be reason, meaning, etc. The abyss of despair.

The previous paragraph is the reason that I think having some understanding of how philosophy, or at least epistemology works is important and a major area of lack in modern western education.

Ideas do indeed have consequences.

Conscience of a Conservative (Goldwater)

http://www.amazon.com/Conscience-Conservative-Barry-Goldwater/dp/1481978292/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418238472&sr=8-1&keywords=conscience+of+a+conservative

For a good long time I have been guilty of failing to read this work which many conservatives consider to be a cornerstone of conservative thought. I plead that some of the later utterances of Goldwater in his waning years led me to question his veracity as a conservative, but relative to this work, the proponents were right, it is first class.

It concisely covers the basics of conservative thought including how conservatism considers man as more than flesh and blood, having an eternal soul. "The root difference between Conservatives and the Liberals of today is that Conservatives take account of the whole man, while the Liberals tend to look at only the material side of man's nature".

Various pleas for limited government and clear delineation of the powers of the federal government and what are reserved for the states are included. "Throughout history, government has proved to be the chief instrument for thwarting man's liberty."

His two chapter discussion of States Rights is an excellent defense of against the idea that they are obsolete since the fight against Jim Crow in the South. "States Rights mean that the States have a right to act or not to act, as they see fit in the areas reserved to them." Worth a read in the age of BOcare.

He covers the attack of "progressive" taxation on Equal Protection and Property Rights under the Constitution as well as giving us an accurate preview of the what the unfettered expansion of the Federal Government has come to mean from the perspective of 1960.

My biggest surprise in reading the book was how accurately he predicted and largely provided the architecture for Reagan's victory over the USSR.

"Our enemies have understood the nature of the conflict and we have not. They are determined to win the conflict, we are not".

The closing paragraph of the book makes one glad yet again that we were privileged to have Ronald Reagan as President"

The future as I see it, will unfold along one of two paths. Either the Communists will retain the offensive, will lay down one challenge after another will invite us local crisis after local crises to choose between all out war and limited retreat; and will force us ultimately to surrender or accept war under the most disadvantageous of circumstances. Or we will summon the will and the means for taking the initiative, and wage a war of attrition against them---and hope, thereby to bring about the internal disintegration of the communist empire. One course runs the risk of war, and leads in any case, to probably defeat. The other runs the risk of war, and holds forth the promise of victory. For Americans who cherish their lives, but their freedom more, the choice cannot be difficult. 

Goldwater had the right architecture, Reagan implemented it, and the wall came tumbling down.

A quite short and well written summary of the basics of conservative thought. I ought to have read it sooner.