Let’s begin with the distinction between thought and consciousness.  All life is in possession of thought—thinking is what monitors the biology that sustains it.  Consciousness is an epiphenomenon that arose in homo-sapiens late in Darwin’s evolution. What was once the province of instinct evolved into self-consciousness—the most lauded of the many virtues that separates man from brute and beast: 

What a piece of work is man; how noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, In form and moving how express and admirable, In action how like an Angel, In apprehension how like a god, 

 However, Nietzsche sees this paragon rather as a trickster that has introduced the errors not only of time and space but also the errors of “…enduring things… identical things… that a thing is what it appears to be… that every deed presupposes a doer…  a belief in the subject…”  all of which is “a great stupidity”, before concluding with Hamlet that man delights not me.

Nietzsche is popularly known (or infamously so) for his critique of Christianity and his proclamation of the death of God which appears in several books and is dramatized in Zarathustra.  But these attacks on religion are based on a more profound attack on the foundations of knowledge/epistemology—that man is even the thinker of his own thoughts:

… when I analyze the event expressed in the sentence “I think”, I acquire a series of rash assertions… that I know what thinking is… Why do I believe in cause and effect? What gives me the right to speak of an “I” as a cause of thought.

This robust skepticism had been cogently argued by Hume in the previous century.  Nietzsche’s certainty in the face an argument that questions his own existence is, however, new in its candor:

“It is a falsification of the facts to say that the subject “I” is the condition of the predicate think… this is, to put it mildly,  only an assumption, an assertion,  above all not an immediate certainty.”

Nietzsche argues that man’s psychological experience of “the dream”  divided the world into two pieces.  Nietzsche believes this bifurcation is the basis of metaphysics and religion—the belief in other worlds beyond the one in which live and breathe.

We behold all things through the human head…                                   What of the world  would remain if one had cut it off?
The real world has always been the apparent world.

Anything beyond the apparency of any moment is a conjuring trick of the words recruited to stabilize and define the infinite “flux” of our experience. This has been called Nietzsche’s perspectivism—a precursor to phenomenology.

And the human intellect cannot avoid viewing the world in its perspectival forms and only in them.  We cannot see around our own corner.                      The world has rather, once again, become infinite.                                                                                   

 Life is no argument, among the conditions of life could be error.

The only solution to a world in which one cannot find truth is to live the truth of the world.  This is Nietzsche’s Dionysus—living to love only this world and to dismiss the hope and falsity of any presumed other.

Dionysus sings and dances in the orgy of what is …                            what is separate and individual can be rejected …

   In the totality everything is redeemed and affirmed.

This affirmaton of an infinite apparency was first presented to Europe of the late 18^th century as scholars tackled Sanskrit in early translations of the Upanishads. Nietzsche’s study of Schopenhauer was one of his first exposures to Hindu scripture and its assertion that the god Brahman was the universal mind behind what we mistakenly take to be our personal reflections.  This idea is also prominent in Buddhism where the same totality of Being is identified with the Buddha “All things are Buddha-things—All things are the Buddha”.  Nietzsche found a similar kinship with Spinoza’s Substance and Emerson’s Nature—two philosophers with whom he felt an in intimate kinship.  Indeed, Spinoza’s God was not a deity in a distant heaven but the manifest content of all existence. And Emerson found God among Porters, Chimney Sweeps and in the natural surroundings of a fabled pond to which he allowed Thoreau to set up a rent-free shop. Spinoza was excommunicated from Judaism in 1626 for his “abominable heresies” and Emerson resigned as the minister of Boston’s Unitarian Church in 1832 because their “mode of commemorating Christ is not suitable to me.”

Nietzsche would take hints from the Upanishads, Spinoza’s Pantheism and Emerson’s Essays and transform them into the doctrine of Eternal Return. Will Durant thought Nietzsche’s notion among the dreariest of philosophic constructs.  If every moment is destined to return again and again then Will and Ariel are destined to write the eleven volumes of The Story of Civilization throughout eternity, when once was quite enough, thank you.  Both Bertrand Russell & Will Durant gave less than sympathetic readings to German philosophers after two World Wars.  Nietzsche’s quest is rather that of Goethe’s Faust who desired to find one moment not dissolved by time—one moment that he could bid stay and linger and discover that it was so.  Nietzsche discovered that if each moment is connected to every other moment, then it can be argued that each moment contains all the others for there is only one moment—the eternal moment where everything is redeemed and affirmed in its complete totality. Nietzsche has little good to say of Christianity—the last Christian died on the Cross—but, for the son of a Lutheran minister, he sees the redemption of the church in the figure of Christ himself, where the gulf between God and man is fused into a single entity. 

As Ferguson explains:

“The gospel of Jesus was free of guilt, punishment and resentment.        It was love of the here and now—if thou feels this                              (even when pinioned on a cross)—thou  art in paradise..

“Nietzsche wants to look Being in the face and say “yes” and not just yes to part of it but “yes” to the whole unfathomable, unknowable necessity.”

Nietzsche’s formulation for the Overman is the enrapturement of wanting nothing to be other than it is.  Man must pass over his present consciousness to embrace the eternity attendant to each moment. Not merely to endure that which happens of necessity but also to love it.  Nietzsche has passed over because he understands that All things are chained and entwined together.

Despite its brevity, Ferguson’s evaluation is a seminal work of Nietzschean thought. He found Nietzsche’s deconstruction of European philosophy to fully warrant the philosopher’s claim:

I am not a man, I am dynamite…

Ferguson then concludes his tea and toast with a spread of marmalade:

“In Nietzsche’s vision to say yes to a single moment is to say yes to everything because that one single moment could not and would not have been if everything else had not been because all things are chained and entwined together. To want one moment is to want it all forever and ever…”

The post NIETZSCHE FOR BREAKFAST appeared first on ANOTHERAMERICA.NET.

A Curated Library of Over 25,000 Performances, Paintings, Films, Documentaries,                                                       

The Channels and Video Libraries are easily accessible. Simply go to the YouTube channel on your computer or Smart TV.  At the top of the page is the search engine. Simply type in “Cultural Masterpieces______” or “Gardner Selects__________” (without the air quotes) & you will be presented with thousands of opportunities to hear and see the whole canon of Western Classic Music, Painting, Sculpture, Philosophy and Literature, Films and Film Music…

The Channels also have a secondary manner of assessment. Each of them will appear if the 20 categories are typed in the search engine and succeed by the referenced numbers 1-20: @gardnerselects-1 will summon the Channel dedicated to Opera and Art. @gardnerselects-2 will take you to hundreds of entries for the world’s great sopranos.

1. Opera &Art: @gardnerselects-1
2. Sopranos: @gardnerselects-2

3.  Baritones:  @gardnerselects-3

4.  Bach:  @gardnerselects-4

5.  Mozart: @gardnerselects-5

6.  Beethoven: @gardnerselects-6

7.  Schubert: @gardnerselects-7

8.  Berlioz: @gardnerselects-8

9.  Verdi: @gardnerselects-9

10.  Wagner: @gardnerselects-10

11.  Puccini: @gardnerselects-11

12.  Strauss: @gardnerselects-12

13. Symphonies: @gardnerselects-13

14. Conductors: @gardnerselects-14

15. Pianists: @gardnerselects-15

16.  Film Music: @gardnerselects-16

17. Films: @gardnerselects-17

18. Literature: @gardnerselects-18

19. Sculpture: @gardnerselects-19

20. Religion & Philosophy: @gardnerselects-20

A PARTIAL LIST OF PLAYLIST ARTISTS

Type in “Gardner Selects” with the desired artist in the YouTube search engine:

Painting, Sculpture, Architecture

Gardner Selects Monet

Gardner Selects Van Gogh

Gardner Selects Michelangelo

Gardner Selects Raphael

Gardner Selects Dutch Art

Gardner Selects Leonardo

Gardner Selects Rembrandt

Gardner Selects Botticelli

Gardner Selects Frans Hals

Gardner Selects Michelangelo

Gardner Selects Rembrandt

Gardner Selects Vermeer

Gardner Selects Klimt

Gardner Selects Renoir

Gardner Selects Matisse

Gardner Selects Rubens

Gardner Selects Rothko

Gardner Selects Renoir

Gardner Select Poussin

Gardner Selects Edvard Munch

Gardner Selects Titian

Gardner Selects Camille Corot

Gardner Selects Thomas Hart Benton

Gardner Selects Hockney

Gardner Selects Chagall

Gardner Selects Giovanni Bellini

Gardner Selects George Grosz

Gardner Selects L.A. Museum of Art

Gardner Selects Andy Warhol

Gardner Selects Grant Wood

Gardner Selects George Stubbs

Gardner Selects Giotto

Gardner Selects Diego Rivera

Gardner Selects George Seurat

Gardner Selects William Blake

Gardner Selects Watteau

Gardner Selects Francis Bacon

Gardner Selects Tintoretto

Gardner Selects El Greco

Gardner Selects Mantegna

Gardner Selects Goya

Gardner Selects Cezanne

Gardner Selects Picasso

Gardner Selects Egon Schiele

Gardner Selects Degas

Gardner Selects Gauguin

Gardner Selects Manet

Gardner Selects Arcimboldo

Gardner Selects Gruenwald

Gardner Selects Mondrian

Gardner Selects Hudson River School

Gardner Selects Thomas Cole

Gardner Selects Albert Bierstadt

Gardner Selects Thomas Moran

Gardner Selects John Constable

Gardner Selects Gericault

Gardner Selects George Inness

Gardner Selects James Ensor

Gardner Selects Henri Rousseau

Gardner Selects Winslow Homer

Gardner Selects Turner

Gardner Selects Edward Hopper

Gardner Selects Anthony van Dyck

Gardner Selects Watteau

Gardner Selects El Greco

Gardner Selects Jean Baptiste Chardin

Gardner Selects Gaugin

Gardner Selects Spinoza

Gardner Selects Cezanne

Gardner Selects Edvard Munch

   Gardner Selects Manet

   Gardner Selects Salvador Dali

   Gardner Selects Picasso

   Gardner Selects Kandinsky

   Gardner Selects Magritte

   Gardner Selects the National Gallery

   Gardner Selects the Prado

Gardner Selects the British Museum

Gardner Selects the   Collection

Gardner Selects the Vatican Museum

Gardner Selects the Hermitage

Gardner Selects the Louvre

Gardner Selects Botticelli

Gardner Selects Goya

Gardner Selects Mantegna

   Gardner Selects Velaquez

   Gardner Selects Tintoretto

   Gardner Selects Clyfford Still

   Gardner Selects Francis Bacon

   Gardner Selects Frans Hals

   Gardner Selects William Blake

   Gardner Selects Giotto

   Gardner Selects Georges Seurat

   Gardner Selects Chaim Soutine

   Gardner Selects David Hockney

   Gardner Selects Rothko

   Gardner Selects Camille Corot

   Gardner Selects Rubens

   Gardner Selects Titian

   Gardner Selects Raphael

   Gardner Selects Caravaggio

   Gardner Selects Rembrandt

Sculpture

Gardner Selects Classical Greek Sculpture

Gardner Selects Hellenistic Sculpture

Gardner Selects Roman Sculpture

Gardner Selects Medieval Sculpture

Gardner Selects Renaissance Sculpture

Gardner Selects Michelangelo

Gardner Selects Baroque Sculpture

Gardner Selects Bernini

Gardner Selects Romantic Sculpture

Gardner Selects Rodan

Gardner Selects 20th Century Sculpture

Architecture

Gardner Selects European Cathedrals

Gardner Selects Cities France

Gardner Selects Cities England

Gardner Selects Cities Italy

Gardner Selects the Acropolis

Gardner Selects the Roman Forum

Gardner Selects St. Peters

Gardner Selects Frank Gehry

Gardner Selects Antonio Gaudi

Gardner Selects Frank Lloyd Wright

Opera

 Gardner Selects 100 Operas w/ English Subtitles

Gardner Selects the Tenors

Gardner Selects the Sopranos

Gardner Selects the Baritones

 Gardner Selects Opera Misc.

Gardner Selects Caruso

Gardner Selects Bergonzi

Gardner Selects Jon Vickers

Gardner Selects Pavarotti 

Gardner Selects Carreras

Gardner Selects Kaufmann

Gardner Selects Gedda

Gardner Select Fritz Wunderlich

Gardner Selects George London Discs

Gardner Selects George London

Gardner Selects Domingo

Gardner Selects Maria Callas Discography

Gardner Selects Raimondi

Gardner Selects Nicolai Ghiaurov

Gardner Selects Jussi Bjorling

Gardner Selects Leontyne Price

Gardner Selects Tebaldi

Gardner Selects Flagstad

Gardner Selects Schwarzkopf

Gardner Selects Nilsson

Gardner Selects Sutherland

Gardner Selects Caballe

Gardner Selects Mirella Freni

Gardner Selects Domingo

Gardner Selects Les Troyens

Gardner Selects Benvenuto Cellini

Gardner Selects Beatrice & Benedict

Gardner Selects Gounod’s Faust & Romeo

Gardner Selects Salome

Gardner Selects Electra

Gardner Selects Wozzeck

Gardner Selects Manon Lascaux

Gardner Selects Britten

Gardner Selects Bel Canto

Gardner Selects Verdi’s Falstaff

Gardner Selects Verdi’s Un Ballo Maschera

Gardner Selects Verdi’s La Traviata

Gardner Selects Verdi’s Early Operas

Gardner Selects Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro

Gardner Selects Mozart’s Don Giovanni

Gardner Selects Wagner’s Meistersinger

Gardner Selects Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte

Gardner Selects Das Rheingold

Gardner Selects Die Walkure

Gardner Selects Siegfried

Gardner Selects Gotterdammerung

Gardner Selects Tristan und Isolde

Gardner Selects Der Meistersinger

Gardner Selects Parsifal

Gardner Selects Boris Godunov 

Gardner Selects Operas on CDs

Gardner Selects Operas Recorded Live

Gardner Selects Peter Grimes

Gardner Selects Der Rosenkavalier

Gardner Selects Salome

Gardner Selects Electra

Gardner Selects Arabella

Gardner Selects Die Frau ohne Schatten

Gardner Selects Ariadne Auf Naxos

Gardner Selects Handel Operas

Gardner Selects Franco Corelli Complete Operas

Gardner Selects Franco Corelli Misc.

Gardner Selects Franco Corelli Disks

Gardner Selects Glendula Janowitz

Gardner Selects Anrea Chenier

Gardner Selects Manon Lescaux

Gardner Selects La Boheme

Gardner Selects Tosca

Gardner Selects Madame Butterfly

Gardner Selects  La Fanciulla del West

Gardner Selects Il Tritico

Gardner Selects Turandot

Gardner Selects Cav and Pag

Orchestral & Chamber Music

Gardner Selects Vaughan Willaims

Gardner Selects Sibelius

Gardner Selects Vaughan Williams Symphonies

Gardner Selects Strauss Tone Poems

Gardner Selects Respighi

Gardner Selects Dvorak Symphonies

Gardner Selects Mahler Symphonies

Gardner Selects Bruckner Symphonies

Gardner Selects Vaughan Williams Tone Poems

Gardner Selects Dvorak String Quartets

Gardner Selects Chamber Music

Gardner Selects Great Symphonies

Gardner Selects Verdi Requiem

Gardner Selects Berlioz

Gardner Selects Handel Oratorios

Gardner Selects Bach Oratorios & Cantatas

Gardner Selects Bach Organ Works

Gardner Selects Bach Masses & Passions

Gardner Selects Bach Cello Concertos

Gardner Selects Bach Concertos

Gardner Selects Bach Orchestral

Gardner Selects Bach Passions

Gardner Selects Bach Keyboards

Gardner Selects Mozart Chamber Music

Gardner Selects Mozart Symphonies

Gardner Selects Mozart Piano Concertos

Gardner Selects Brahms Symphonies

Gardner Selects Mozart’s Solo Piano

  Gardner Selects Beethoven Sacred Music

 Gardner Selects Beethoven’s Fidelio

Gardner Selects Beethoven Chamber Music

Gardner Selects Beethoven Solo Piano

Gardner Selects Beethoven Overtures

Gardner Selects Schubert Symphonies

Gardner Selects Schubert Masses

Gardner Selects Schubert Piano Sonatas

Gardner Selects Schubert String Quartets

 Gardner Selects Schubert Chamber Music

Gardner Selects Schubert Song Cycles

Gardner Selects Schubert Lieder

Gardner Selects Mozart’s Solo Piano

Gardner Selects Mozart’s Requiem & Masses

Gardner Selects Beethoven String Quartets

Gardner Selects Schubert’s String Quartets

Gardner Selects Beethoven Symphonies

Gardner Selects Beethoven Piano Concertos

Gardner Selects Beethoven Piano Sonatas

Gardner Selects Beethoven String Quartets

Gardner Selects Strauss Tone Poems

Gardner Selects Symphony Fantastique

Gardner Selects Berlioz Symphonies

Gardner Selects Berlioz Requiem

Gardner Selects Berlioz Oratorios

   Gardner Selects Bach Cantatas

Gardner Selects Vaughan Willaims

Gardner Selects Sibelius

Gardner Selects Vaughan Williams Symphonies

Gardner Selects Strauss Tone Poems

Gardner Selects Missa Solemnis

Gardner Selects Respighi

Gardner Selects Dvorak Symphonies

Gardner Selects Vaughan Williams Tone Poems

Gardner Selects Handel Operas

Gardner Selects Dvorak String Quartets

Gardner Selects Mozart Symphonies

Gardner Selects Mozart Arias

Gardner Selects Mozart Chamber Music

Gardner Selects Chamber Music

Gardner Selects Great Symphonies

Gardner Selects Verdi Requiem

Gardner Selects Berlioz

Gardner Selects Bach Oratorios & Cantatas

Gardner Selects Bach Organ Works

Gardner Selects Bach Cello Concertos

Gardner Selects Bach Concertos

Gardner Selects Bach Orchestral

Gardner Selects Bach Passions

Gardner Selects Bach Keyboards

Gardner Selects Mozart Chamber Music

Gardner Selects Mozart Symphonies

Gardner Selects Mozart Piano Concertos

Gardner Selects Brahms Symphonies

Gardner Selects Mozart’s Solo Piano

Conductors

Gardner Selects Toscanini

Gardner Selects Furtwangler

Gardner Selects Klemperer

Gardner Selects  Karajan

Gardner Selects Bernstein

Gardner Selects Leinsdorf

Gardner Selects Knappertsbusch

Gardner Selects Solti

Gardner Selects Giuliani

Gardner Selects Zubin Mehta

Gardner Selects Abbado

Gardner Selects Colin Davis

Gardner Selects Gardiner

Gardner Selects Seiji Ozawa

Gardner Selects George Szell

 Piano Masters

Gardner Select Rachmaninoff

Gardner Selects Michelangeli

Gardner Selects Josef Lhevinne

Gardner Selects Wilhelm Kempff

Gardner Selects Richter

Gardner Selects Alfred Cortot

Gardner Selects Rubinstein

Gardner Selects Arrau

Gardner Selects Brendel

Gardner Selects Yuja Wang

Gardner Selects Khatia Buniatishvilli

Film Music

Gardner Selects 200 Film Suites

Gardner Selects Max Steiner

Gardner Selects Eric Wolfgang Korngold

Gardner Selects Miklos Roza

Gardner Selects Dimitri Tiomkin

Gardner Selects Alfred Newman

Gardner Selects Franz Waxman

Gardner Selects John Williams

Gardner Selects Alex North

Gardner Selects John Barry

Gardner Selects James Horner

Gardner Selects Rachel Portman

Gardner Selects Howard Shore

Gardner Selects Thomas Newman

Gardner Selects Hans Zimmer

Philosophy

Gardner Selects Heraclitus

Gadner Selects Parmenides

Gardner Selects Pyrrho & Empericus

Gardner Selects Plato

Garder Selects Aristotle

Gardner Selects Marcus Aurelius

Gardner Selects Descartes

Gardner Selects Spinoza

Gardner Selects Hume

Gardner Selects Berkeley

Gardner Selects Kant

Gardner Selects Hegel

Gardner Selects Schopenhauer

Gardner Selects Emerson

Gardner Selects Whitman

Gardner Selects Nietzsche

Gardner Selects Heidegger

Gardner Selects Wittgenstein

Gardner Selects Sartre

Gardner Selects Camus

Gardner Selects Russell

Gardner Selects Alan Watts

Gardner Selects Ram Dass

Gardner Selects Krishnamurti

Gardner Selects Einstein

Literature

Gardner Selects Homer

Gardner Selects Aeschylus

Gardner Selects Sophocles

Gardner Selects Euripides

Gardner Selects Virgil

Gardner Selects Chaucer

Gardner Selects Shakespeare

Gardner Selects Montaigne

Gardner Selects Dostoevsky

Gardner Selects Tolstoy

Gardner Selects Chekov

Gardner Selects Flaubert

Gardner Selects Hugo

Gardner Selects Proust

Gardner Selects Emerson

Gardner Selects Whitman

Gardner Selects Hawthorne

Gardner Selects Melville

Gardner Selects Twain

Gardner Selects Henry Miller

Gardner Selects T.S Eliot

Gardner Selects Jorge Luis Borges

Film Directors & Films:

Gardner Selects Silent Movies

Gardner Selects Shakespeare on Film

Gardner Selects D. W. Griffith

Gardner Selects F. W. Murnau

Gardner Selects Carl Dreyer

Gardner Selects Buster Keaton

Gardner Selects CharlieChaplin

Gardner Selects Harold Lloyd

Gardner Selects Laurel & Hardy

Gardner Selects John Ford

Gardner Selects Alfred Hitchcock

Gardner Selects Michael Curtiz

Gardner Selects John Huston

Gardner Selects Billy Wilder

Gardner Selects Howard Hawks

Gardner Selects Orson Welles

Gardner Selects William Wyler

Gardner Selects George Cukor

Gardner Selects Alain Resnais

Gardner Selects Akira Kurosawa

Gardner Selects Fredrico Fellini

Gardner Selects Yasujiro Ozu

Gardner Selects Sergio Leone

Gardner Selects Charles Laughton

Gardner Selects Luchino Visconti

Gardner Selects David Lean

Gardner Selects Roberto Rossellini

Gardner Selects Ingmar Bergman

Gardner Selects Francois Truffaut

Gardner Selects Jean-Luc Goddard

Gardner Selects John Frankenheimer

Gardner Selects John Sturges

Gardner Selects Sidney Lumet

Gardner Selects Robert Wise

Gardner Selects Andrey Tarkovsky

Gardner Selects Nicolas Roeg

Gardner Selects Francis Ford Coppola

Gardner Selects Robert Altman

Gardner Selects Stephen Spielberg

Gardner Selects Martin Scorsese

Gardner Selects Brian de Palma.

Gardner Selects Coen Brothers

Gardner Selects Sam Mendes

Gardner Selects David Fincher

Gardner Selects Christopher Nolan

The post GARDNER SELECTS “THE LIST” appeared first on ANOTHERAMERICA.NET.

If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibly
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end which is always present.
T.S. Eliot

There is only one experience;
It involves neither time nor space
But subsumes them both and anything that is defined by either.
Any isolate
—any of the things or properties that we abstract from the world—
Can be both affirmed or denied
And remain as idlily speculative as one might otherwise suppose.
If the universe is a singularity
Then anything within it is the same as everything within it,
The content of thought is the source of its own contemplation.
M.C. Gardner

The post A BOWL OF ROSE LEAVES appeared first on ANOTHERAMERICA.NET.

The mainstream belief among scientists is that race is a social construct without biological meaning.

 Megan Gannon, LiveScience on February 5, 2016

Cats are different colors. Dogs are different colors. Butterflies are different colors. Human beings are different colors. It seems that only human beings are stupid enough to make a big deal out of what color they are. Cats are one race (felis catus). Dogs are one race (canis lupus familiaris). Butterflies are one race (lepidoptera). Human beings are one race (homo sapiens) Only human beings are stupid enough to think they are made up of more than one race. Only human beings accuse each other of “racism” and being “racist”. Only human beings separate themselves by color….and “race”. 

Who is responsible for this idiocy? Who started it? Who prolongs it? 

My guess is that historically people used words like “caucasian”, “white”, “negroid”, or “black” in order to dominate each other. My guess is that all systems of “slavery” or “castes” in the world were originally based on this kind of racial separation. This, of course, is barbarism pas excellence. So why, in the year 2023 is anybody on earth still talking about “race”? 

The answer is simple: Because we are a primitive simplistic blockheaded species. Put differently, in some ways we are an inferior “race”. And one thing is certain: As long as we human beings continue to talk about “race”, we will live in an uncivilized barbarous world. 

Look at the last few years, starting with what happened in Ferguson, Missouri. A big strong young so-called “black” man (Michael Brown was his name) stole things from a store and violently pushed the owner away when he tried to stop him. A few minutes later the same big strong young man was walking down the middle of the street. A so-called “white” policeman (Darren Wilson was his name) drove up in his patrol car, and through the window asked the man to walk on the sidewalk.

The man hit the policeman in the face, unsuccessfully tried to steal his gun, and then started walking away. The policeman got out of his car, took out his gun and told the man to stop and come back toward him with his hands up in the air. The man turned, refused to put up his hands, and walked menacingly toward the policeman. The “white”policeman eventually shot the “blackman when he kept coming toward him. Within a day or two, horrendous “race” riots erupted all over the United States. The policeman was accused of “racism”….

I didn’t hear one single politician, including the President of the United States (who interestingly had a so-called “white” mother and a “black” father), say that this incident probably – most surely – had nothing to do with “race” but everything to do with uncivilized behavior on the part of Mr. Brown that is unacceptable in any civilized society.The ensuing riots caused millions and millions of dollars in damage all across the country and many people were injured, even killed.

Then came the death of George Floyd. We all saw what happened to Mr. Floyd. Again, the policeman was referred to as “white” and Mr. Floyd as “black”. There were huge riots again and “white” policemen” in general were being accused of being “racist”.  And again, I didn’t hear any politician say that perhaps this event had nothing to do with “race”. To the contrary, across America it had everything to do with “race”.

Then came Tyre Nichols. He was seen on camera being tragically beaten to death by five policemen after resisting arrest and trying to flee. This time, all five policemen were…“black”. Hmmm. What happens now? Instead of explaining to the world that all three of these three incidents very likely had nothing to do with “race”, Tyre Nichols’s funeral is on national television and the speeches from I heard from Al Sharpton and Kamala Harris were all about “RACE”. Instead of using Nichols’ death to explain that “racism” was absolutely not the cause of Nichols’s death, that racism was perhaps not the cause of George Floyd’s death, and that very likely racism was not the cause of Michael Brown’s death, and instead of trying to get people across America (and the world) to begin thinking about the absurdity of the idea of “race” and pushing humanity to finally go beyond “race” and simplistic thinking…what happened? What did the Reverend and Vice-President do? They exacerbated the great American “racial divide” by blaming America’s woes on…“racism”. They didn’t educate people to the fact that police in America also kill many “white” people (in fact far more than “black” people) and that their deaths are equally tragic. No, they had the same worn-out narrative about “racism” and “black” people being the principal victims.

No one said a word about how, in the case of Tyre Nichols (given that all five of the policemen were “black”), the discussion should be…must be…about why the police of any skin color become violent. And what might be the likely answer to that? Not because they are racist! But because police themselves get constantly disrespected, spit on, insulted, threatened, i.e. generally treated like shit, and hence get to a point where they too “break” and “crack” and become violent. And where of course do police get treated the worst? In the ghettoes of America. And why?  Why is there so much violence in the ghettoes of America? The answer is so obvious it is ridiculous! Every two-bit sociologist or psychologist in the world can tell us! Because since slavery began millions of people have been treated have been treated like shit! Because schools in the ghettoes are horrible! Because unemployment is rampant in the ghettoes! Because single-parent homes are rampant in the ghettoes! And why? For the exact same reason that the police can become brutal…or anyone can become brutal! Because they feel like they have been treated like shit.  Because they feel they are getting screwed. When people get treated like shit, shit happens. So what Al Sharpton and Kamala Harris should have talked about is that police brutality and the violence in the ghettoes are part of the exact same problem, i.e. people getting treated like shit! All over the world people have treated each other like shit. People of different colors, nationalities, religions, and political persuasions have caused tons of shit to happen throughout the glorious history of the world! What I heard politicians saying after the deaths of Michael Brown, George Floyd, and Tyre Nichols did absolutely nothing to help the cause of intelligence and goodness in the world. Talking about “race” and “racism” only perpetuates and prolongs simplistic thinking and simplistic dichotomies. It keeps people divided and creates stereotypes about who is and who isn’t a “victim” in this world. Screaming “racism” creates massive victimhood. And the more people who feel they are victims in a society, the worse the society is.

My plea to the world: World, it is time to move beyond the idea of race. It time to understand that here is no such thing as a “pure” race. We are all the result of millions and millions of copulations going back millions and millions of years. Dividing people by color is patently absurd. Talking about “race” as the cause of police brutality is like talking about “the devil” as the cause a plague in the Middle Ages. As long as human beings believe in things like race and the devil, the world will be a backward place. Tyre Nichols’s death should make people everywhere understand that the “causes” of the police brutality not simple. The causes of all the violence in the ghetto and in the world are not simple. Crying “racism” is not helpful when it comes to making the world a better place. Blaming the devil for the ills of the world is the same.

 There are many wonderful people everywhere on this planet who are kind and trying to solve problems by digging deeply to get at the root causes of the difficulties and horrors of the world. We should listen to them and not to demagogues who throw out simplistic slogans about “race” and good and evil.

The post THE COLOR OF STUPIDITY appeared first on ANOTHERAMERICA.NET.

Wherefore, I say let a man be of good cheer about his soul – who has adorned the soul in her own proper jewels which are temperance, and justice, and courage and nobility and truth – in these arrayed she is ready to go on her journey to the world below when her time has come. ¹

– this by Socrates in the hour of his death.

Before an impending battle a Prince counsels an old Knight: “Thou owest God a death.” The old man contemplates the claim. He replies:

Tis not due yet, I would be loath to pay him before his day. What need I be so forward with him that calls not on me? [1]

– this by Falstaff before the battle of Shrewsbury.

Two thousand years separate these sentiments. In the first scene we have a crucifixion four centuries before the drama of the Cross – an old philosopher expostulates among friends and accepts death in a proffered dram of hemlock. In the second, an old man walks the tail end of his wit with a friend, on the eve of battle – shortly before rejection, banishment and death. ⁽³⁾ In the first the philosopher rejects any plan that might forestall is demise. In the second the old man pleads for his friend’s continued affection:

Banish Peto, Banish Bardolph, Banish Poins… but banish plump Jack and banish all the world.

 Prince Hal, thereafter as King Henry V, the mirror of all Christian Kings,  banished the old sot and by metaphoric extension, crucified – all the world. Henry’s celebrated epithet is among the most perverse in the history of drama. ⁽⁴⁾

To compare Falstaff to Socrates will seem, to some – equally perverse. We are conjecturing an echo in time. An echo Shakespeare may have discerned as he conjured the language to properly bury the fond old Knight. Socrates had been a soldier during the Pelopennesian War. At Delium, in 424 BC he was the last Athenian to retire in retreat. It was reported that he saved himself by glaring at the approaching Spartans.

 At Potidaea, he saved the life of Alcibades and then refused a prize for his valor^.

In exact opposition to those reports Shakespeare gives us the exploits of Sir John. Far from a frightful glare Falstaff feigns death to survive the ferocity of the battle sighted above. He then discovers the body of the Prince’s rival, Hotspur. He loads the dead man on his shoulder and takes credit for the kill. He then proclaims his own fitness for the battle’s prize of valor. And yet, mayhaps these contraries such unity do hold.  What, if not Socratic, is Falstaff’s dialectic on honor:

Can honour set a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honor hath no skill in surgery, then? No. What is honour? A word…Who hath it? He that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. ‘Tis sensible, then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No… Therefore, I’ll none of it. (7)

A mirror is as pointed a metaphor as any in a poet’s arsenal. Shakespeare’s glass not only reflects but, as well, inverts. It is here that we intuit the conjunction of a drunkard, cutpurse, coward, glutton and cheat with the advocate of temperance, justice, courage, nobility and truth. History and drama fuse in nine plays that chronicle four centuries of Shakespeare’s Kings – Comedy and tragedy commingle in the three that report the life and death of England’s most uncommon commoner.

In the scene immediately preceding the report of Falstaff’s death – the King, fresh from his coronation, calls upon God’s witness while pronouncing death to three conspirators. Before the end of his speech he will invoke Deity three additional times ⁽⁸⁾  The final invocation is to advance the imperial disposition for the rapine of France:

Cheerily to sea, the signs of war advance.                                                                                                No King of England if not King of France.

In Mistress Quickly’s account of Falstaff’s death she says she heard him cry out “God, three or four times.” The echo is distinct – the image and morality are inverted. The inversion becomes increasingly evident in each subsequent reading of the plays. It is then that Quickly’s description of Falstaff as a “christom child” stands in stark contrast to the mirror of all Christian Kings, designated by the chorus in Henry V.

When we hear the slow witted Bardolph declare of his lost companion:

Would that I were with him wheresome’er he is, in heaven or in hell –

– the King’s perfidy is thrown into even higher relief. The King’s father, Henry IV, is most famously remembered for the Murder of Richard II and the shadowy guilt that plagues him in his soliloquy on sleep: “Then happy low lie down / uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.” ⁽¹⁰⁾ The King’s insomnia is contrasted with Falstaff’s. Shakespeare avers that the betrayed knight sleeps in Arthur’s bosom. To what bosom Henry V is consigned is left to our conjecture. The idiomatic prose that the poet glories for the death scene suggests the regard in which he holds the broken-hearted old profligate. Shakespeare not only hears an echo from the past but also anticipates a metaphor that will resonate in the apotheosis of his art, shortly after a storm blasts an unprotected heath and cuts a willful King to the brains – The stage direction reads:

Enter Lear, fantastically dressed in wild flowers.

In the raiment of a child he ascends to a loftier throne than any he had occupied in Medieval England:

I pardon that man’s life. What was thy cause? –

None does offend, none I say, none ⁽¹¹⁾

In like manner Mistress Quickly consoles Sir John. He need not think of an imagined judgment. At the hour of death he plays with flowers and smiles upon his finger’s ends, as if a child. Socrates, Falstaff and Lear – not a bad trio they – and, in death and the poetic imagination of Shakespeare, companions all…

From London, circa 1597:

PISTOL: Bardolph, be blithe; Nym, rouse thy vaunting veins; Boy, bristle thy courage up; for Falstaff is dead, and we must yearn therefore:

BARDOLPH: Would that I were with him, wheresome’er he is, either in heaven or hell!

HOSTESS: Nay, sure, he’s not in hell: he’s in Arthur’s bosom, if ever man went to Arthur’s bosom. A’ made a finer end and went away ‘ad it had been any christom child; a’ parted even just between twelve and one, even at the turning o’ the tide: for after I saw him fumble with the sheets and play with flowers and smile upon his fingers’ ends, I knew there was but one way; for his nose was as red as a pen, and a’ babbled of green fields. “How now, Sir John! Quoth I; “what, man! Be o’ good cheer.” So a’ cried out “God, God, God!” three or four times. Now I, to comfort him, bid him a’ should not any such thoughts yet. So a’ bade me lay more clothes on his feet: I put my hand into the bed and felt them, and they were as cold as any stone; then I felt his knees, and they were as cold as any stone, and so upward and upward, and all was cold as any stone.” ⁽¹²⁾

And from Athens, circa 399 BC:

Be of good cheer, then, my dear Crito, and say that you are burying my body only, and do with that as is usual, and as you think best. When he had spoken these words, he arose and went into the bath-chamber with Crtio, who bid us wait; and we waited, talking and thinking… of the greatness of our sorrow; he was like a father of whom we were being bereaved, and we were abut to pass the rest of our lives as orphans… Now the hour of sunset was near… Soon the jailer… entered and stood by him, saying: – To you, Socrates, whom I know to be the gentlest and best of all who ever came to this place, I will not impute the angry feelings of other men, who rage and swear at me, when in obedience to the authorities, I bid them drink the poison – indeed, I am sure that you will not be angry with me; for others, as you aware, and not I, are the guilty cause. And so fare you well, and try to bear lightly what must needs be; you know my errand.

Then bursting into tears he turned away and went out.  Socrates looked at him and said: I return your good wishes, and will do as you bid.  Then turning to us, he said, How charming the man is: since I have been in prison he has always been coming to see me, and at times he would talk to me, and was as good as could be to me, and now see how generously he sorrows for me. But we must do as he says, Crito; let the cup be brought…You my good friend who are experienced in these matters, shall give directions how I am to proceed. The man answered: You have only to walk about until your legs are heavy, and then to lie down, and the poison will act. At the same time he handed the cup to Socrates… then (Socrates) holding the cup to his lips, quite readily and cheerfully… drank off the poison.

And hitherto most of us had been able to control our sorrow; but now when we saw him drinking, and saw too that he had finished the draught, we could no longer forbear, and in spite of myself my own tears were flowing fast … Nor was I the first, for Crito, when he found himself unable to restrain his tears, had got up and moved away, and I followed; and at that moment, Apollodorus, who had been weeping all the time broke out into a loud cry which made cowards of us all.

Socrates alone retained his calmness… Be quiet then and have patience.

When we heard this, we were ashamed, and refrained our tears; and he walked about until… his legs began to fail, and then he lay on his back, according to the directions, and the man who gave the poison now and then looked at his feet and legs; and after awhile he pressed his foot hard, and asked him if he could feel; and he said, No; and then his leg, and so upwards and upwards, and showed us that he was cold and stiff… he said:

When the poison reaches the heart, that will be the end. He was beginning to grow cold about the groin, when he uncovered his face… and said ( they were his last words ) – he said: Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt: The debt shall be paid, said Crito; is there anything else? There was no answer to this question; but in a minute or two a movement was heard, and the attendants uncovered him – his eyes were set, and Crito closed his eyes and mouth. Such was the end Echecrates, of our friend, whom I may truly call the wisest, and the justest, and the best of all the men whom I have ever known. ⁽¹³⁾

 In an imagined echo we might hear a companion ruefully note:

Would that I were with him, wheresome’er he is …

NOTES:

1.  Phaedo, page 268, Works of Plato, Jowett Translation, Tudor Publishing

2,  The First Part of Henry IV Act V Scene 1, W. Shakespeare

3.  The First Part of Henry IV Act II Scene IV, W. Shakespeare

4.  Henry V Act II Chorus, W. Shakespeare. The fact that the chorus announces the epithet makes it immediately suspect. Its war clamor is far from any such sentiment we find in Shakespeare. If there is any doubt look at Scene III of Act III. You will be hard pressed to find any more horrific war-threat than that which proceeds from the mouth of the Mirror of All Christian Kings.

5.  The Life Of Greece, page 365, W. Durant, Simon & Schuster,     NY, 1939

6.  Ibid.

7.  The First Part of Henry IV Act V Scene IV, W. Shakespeare

8. Harold C. Goddard’s The Meaning of Shakespeare. I share with another Harold, Professor Harold Bloom, an affection and debt to Goddard’s insightful reading of the plays. Goddard died in 1950. His book was published in the year of my birth, 1951 and later divided into two volumes.

9.   Henry V Act II Scene II, W. Shakespeare

10.  The Second Part of Henry IV Act III Scene I, W. Shakespeare

11.  King Lear Act IV Scene VI, W. Shakespeare

12.  Henry V Act II Scene III

13. Phaedo, pages 268-271 Works of Plato, Jowett Translation, Tudor Publish

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The mainstream belief among scientists is that race is a social construct without biological meaning.

Megan Gannon, Live Science, February 5, 2016

Cats are different colors. Dogs are different colors. Butterflies are different colors. Human beings are different colors. It seems that only human beings are stupid enough to make a big deal out of what color they are. Cats are one race (felis catus). Dogs are one race (canis lupus familiaris). Butterflies are one race (lepidoptera). Human beings are one race (homo sapiens) Only human beings are stupid enough to think they are made up of more than one race. Only human beings accuse each other of “racism” and being “racist”. Only human beings separate themselves by color….and “race”. 

Who is responsible for this idiocy? Who started it? Who prolongs it? 

My guess is that historically people used words like “caucasian”, “white”, “negroid”, or “black” in order to dominate each other. My guess is that all systems of “slavery” or “castes” in the world were originally based on this kind of racial separation. This, of course, is barbarism pas excellence. So why, in the year 2023 is anybody on earth still talking about “race”? 

The answer is simple: Because we are a primitive simplistic blockheaded species. Put differently, in some ways we are an inferior “race”. And one thing is certain: As long as we human beings continue to talk about “race”, we will live in an uncivilized barbarous world. 

Look at the last few years, starting with what happened in Ferguson, Missouri. A big strong young so-called “black” man (Michael Brown was his name) stole things from a store and violently pushed the owner away when he tried to stop him. A few minutes later the same big strong young man was walking down the middle of the street. A so-called “white” policeman (Darren Wilson was his name) drove up in his patrol car, and through the window asked the man to walk on the sidewalk.

The man hit the policeman in the face, unsuccessfully tried to steal his gun, and then started walking away. The policeman got out of his car, took out his gun and told the man to stop and come back toward him with his hands up in the air. The man turned, refused to put up his hands, and walked menacingly toward the policeman. The “white”policeman eventually shot the “blackman when he kept coming toward him. Within a day or two, horrendous “race” riots erupted all over the United States. The policeman was accused of “racism”….

I didn’t hear one single politician, including the President of the United States (who interestingly had a so-called “white” mother and a “black” father), say that this incident probably – most surely – had nothing to do with “race” but everything to do with uncivilized behavior on the part of Mr. Brown that is unacceptable in any civilized society.The ensuing riots caused millions and millions of dollars in damage all across the country and many people were injured, even killed.

Then came the death of George Floyd. We all saw what happened to Mr. Floyd. Again, the policeman was referred to as “white” and Mr. Floyd as “black”. There were huge riots again and “white” policemen” in general were being accused of being “racist”.  And again, I didn’t hear any politician say that perhaps this event had nothing to do with “race”. To the contrary, across America it had everything to do with “race”.

Then came Tyre Nichols. He was seen on camera being tragically beaten to death by five policemen after resisting arrest and trying to flee. This time, all five policemen were…“black”. Hmmm. What happens now? Instead of explaining to the world that all three of these three incidents very likely had nothing to do with “race”, Tyre Nichols’s funeral is on national television and the speeches from I heard from Al Sharpton and Kamala Harris were all about “RACE”. Instead of using Nichols’ death to explain that “racism” was absolutely not the cause of Nichols’s death, that racism was perhaps not the cause of George Floyd’s death, and that very likely racism was not the cause of Michael Brown’s death, and instead of trying to get people across America (and the world) to begin thinking about the absurdity of the idea of “race” and pushing humanity to finally go beyond “race” and simplistic thinking…what happened? What did the Reverend and Vice-President do? They exacerbated the great American “racial divide” by blaming America’s woes on…“racism”. They didn’t educate people to the fact that police in America also kill many “white” people (in fact far more than “black” people) and that their deaths are equally tragic. No, they had the same worn-out narrative about “racism” and “black” people being the principal victims.

No one said a word about how, in the case of Tyre Nichols (given that all five of the policemen were “black”), the discussion should be…must be…about why the police of any skin color become violent. And what might be the likely answer to that? Not because they are racist! But because police themselves get constantly disrespected, spit on, insulted, threatened, i.e. generally treated like shit, and hence get to a point where they too “break” and “crack” and become violent. And where of course do police get treated the worst? In the ghettoes of America. And why?  Why is there so much violence in the ghettoes of America? The answer is so obvious it is ridiculous! Every two-bit sociologist or psychologist in the world can tell us! Because since slavery began millions of people have been treated have been treated like shit! Because schools in the ghettoes are horrible! Because unemployment is rampant in the ghettoes! Because single-parent homes are rampant in the ghettoes! And why? For the exact same reason that the police can become brutal…or anyone can become brutal! Because they feel like they have been treated like shit.  Because they feel they are getting screwed. When people get treated like shit, shit happens. So what Al Sharpton and Kamala Harris should have talked about is that police brutality and the violence in the ghettoes are part of the exact same problem, i.e. people getting treated like shit! All over the world people have treated each other like shit. People of different colors, nationalities, religions, and political persuasions have caused tons of shit to happen throughout the glorious history of the world! What I heard politicians saying after the deaths of Michael Brown, George Floyd, and Tyre Nichols did absolutely nothing to help the cause of intelligence and goodness in the world. Talking about “race” and “racism” only perpetuates and prolongs simplistic thinking and simplistic dichotomies. It keeps people divided and creates stereotypes about who is and who isn’t a “victim” in this world. Screaming “racism” creates massive victimhood. And the more people who feel they are victims in a society, the worse the society is.

My plea to the world: World, it is time to move beyond the idea of race. It time to understand that here is no such thing as a “pure” race. We are all the result of millions and millions of copulations going back millions and millions of years. Dividing people by color is patently absurd. Talking about “race” as the cause of police brutality is like talking about “the devil” as the cause a plague in the Middle Ages. As long as human beings believe in things like race and the devil, the world will be a backward place. Tyre Nichols’s death should make people everywhere understand that the “causes” of the police brutality not simple. The causes of all the violence in the ghetto and in the world are not simple. Crying “racism” is not helpful when it comes to making the world a better place. Blaming the devil for the ills of the world is the same.

 There are many wonderful people everywhere on this planet who are kind and trying to solve problems by digging deeply to get at the root causes of the difficulties and horrors of the world. We should listen to them and not to demagogues who throw out simplistic slogans about “race” and good and evil.

The Color of Stupidity  

By Jon Ferguson

Cats are different colors. Dogs are different colors. Butterflies are different colors. Human beings are different colors. It seems that only human beings are stupid enough to make a big deal out of what color they are. Cats are one race (felis catus). Dogs are one race (canis lupus familiaris). Butterflies are one race (lepidoptera). Human beings are one race (homo sapiens) Only human beings are stupid enough to think they are made up of more than one race. Only human beings accuse each other of “racism” and being “racist”. Only human beings separate themselves by color….and “race”. 

Who is responsible for this idiocy? Who started it? Who prolongs it? 

My guess is that historically people used words like “caucasian”, “white”, “negroid”, or “black” in order to dominate each other. My guess is that all systems of “slavery” or “castes” in the world were originally based on this kind of racial separation. This, of course, is barbarism pas excellence. So why, in the year 2023 is anybody on earth still talking about “race”? 

The answer is simple: Because we are a primitive simplistic blockheaded species. Put differently, in some ways we are an inferior “race”. And one thing is certain: As long as we human beings continue to talk about “race”, we will live in an uncivilized barbarous world. 

Look at the last few years, starting with what happened in Ferguson, Missouri. A big strong young so-called “black” man (Michael Brown was his name) stole things from a store and violently pushed the owner away when he tried to stop him. A few minutes later the same big strong young man was walking down the middle of the street. A so-called “white” policeman (Darren Wilson was his name) drove up in his patrol car, and through the window asked the man to walk on the sidewalk.

The man hit the policeman in the face, unsuccessfully tried to steal his gun, and then started walking away. The policeman got out of his car, took out his gun and told the man to stop and come back toward him with his hands up in the air. The man turned, refused to put up his hands, and walked menacingly toward the policeman. The “white”policeman eventually shot the “blackman when he kept coming toward him. Within a day or two, horrendous “race” riots erupted all over the United States. The policeman was accused of “racism”….

I didn’t hear one single politician, including the President of the United States (who interestingly had a so-called “white” mother and a “black” father), say that this incident probably – most surely – had nothing to do with “race” but everything to do with uncivilized behavior on the part of Mr. Brown that is unacceptable in any civilized society.The ensuing riots caused millions and millions of dollars in damage all across the country and many people were injured, even killed.

Then came the death of George Floyd. We all saw what happened to Mr. Floyd. Again, the policeman was referred to as “white” and Mr. Floyd as “black”. There were huge riots again and “white” policemen” in general were being accused of being “racist”.  And again, I didn’t hear any politician say that perhaps this event had nothing to do with “race”. To the contrary, across America it had everything to do with “race”.

Then came Tyre Nichols. He was seen on camera being tragically beaten to death by five policemen after resisting arrest and trying to flee. This time, all five policemen were…“black”. Hmmm. What happens now? Instead of explaining to the world that all three of these three incidents very likely had nothing to do with “race”, Tyre Nichols’s funeral is on national television and the speeches from I heard from Al Sharpton and Kamala Harris were all about “RACE”. Instead of using Nichols’ death to explain that “racism” was absolutely not the cause of Nichols’s death, that racism was perhaps not the cause of George Floyd’s death, and that very likely racism was not the cause of Michael Brown’s death, and instead of trying to get people across America (and the world) to begin thinking about the absurdity of the idea of “race” and pushing humanity to finally go beyond “race” and simplistic thinking…what happened? What did the Reverend and Vice-President do? They exacerbated the great American “racial divide” by blaming America’s woes on…“racism”. They didn’t educate people to the fact that police in America also kill many “white” people (in fact far more than “black” people) and that their deaths are equally tragic. No, they had the same worn-out narrative about “racism” and “black” people being the principal victims.

No one said a word about how, in the case of Tyre Nichols (given that all five of the policemen were “black”), the discussion should be…must be…about why the police of any skin color become violent. And what might be the likely answer to that? Not because they are racist! But because police themselves get constantly disrespected, spit on, insulted, threatened, i.e. generally treated like shit, and hence get to a point where they too “break” and “crack” and become violent. And where of course do police get treated the worst? In the ghettoes of America. And why?  Why is there so much violence in the ghettoes of America? The answer is so obvious it is ridiculous! Every two-bit sociologist or psychologist in the world can tell us! Because since slavery began millions of people have been treated have been treated like shit! Because schools in the ghettoes are horrible! Because unemployment is rampant in the ghettoes! Because single-parent homes are rampant in the ghettoes! And why? For the exact same reason that the police can become brutal…or anyone can become brutal! Because they feel like they have been treated like shit.  Because they feel they are getting screwed. When people get treated like shit, shit happens. So what Al Sharpton and Kamala Harris should have talked about is that police brutality and the violence in the ghettoes are part of the exact same problem, i.e. people getting treated like shit! All over the world people have treated each other like shit. People of different colors, nationalities, religions, and political persuasions have caused tons of shit to happen throughout the glorious history of the world! What I heard politicians saying after the deaths of Michael Brown, George Floyd, and Tyre Nichols did absolutely nothing to help the cause of intelligence and goodness in the world. Talking about “race” and “racism” only perpetuates and prolongs simplistic thinking and simplistic dichotomies. It keeps people divided and creates stereotypes about who is and who isn’t a “victim” in this world. Screaming “racism” creates massive victimhood. And the more people who feel they are victims in a society, the worse the society is.

My plea to the world: World, it is time to move beyond the idea of race. It time to understand that here is no such thing as a “pure” race. We are all the result of millions and millions of copulations going back millions and millions of years. Dividing people by color is patently absurd. Talking about “race” as the cause of police brutality is like talking about “the devil” as the cause a plague in the Middle Ages. As long as human beings believe in things like race and the devil, the world will be a backward place. Tyre Nichols’s death should make people everywhere understand that the “causes” of the police brutality not simple. The causes of all the violence in the ghetto and in the world are not simple. Crying “racism” is not helpful when it comes to making the world a better place. Blaming the devil for the ills of the world is the same.

 There are many wonderful people everywhere on this planet who are kind and trying to solve problems by digging deeply to get at the root causes of the difficulties and horrors of the world. We should listen to them and not to demagogues who throw out simplistic slogans about “race” and good and evil.

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REVIEWED BY M.C. GARDNER

Jon Ferguson’s The Anthropologist is splendid  anthropology and a masterful follow up to Farley’s Jewel. In Jewel Ferguson’s Professor Larry Farley was in search of Being.  More prosaically, Ferguson’s Anthropologist, Professor Leonard Fuller is in search of Leonard Fuller:

He wants to go back to the beginning, to the first moment Leonard Fuller remembers being Leonard Fuller… He doesn’t know what it was. Was it a what or was it a when? Do all whens become whats as soon as the moment passes? Are there no whens? Is temporality one of man’s lamer inventions? Is When I was a kid always What I remember about being a kid?

Farley, Fuller, and Ferguson are aging ‘boomers.’ They are each aware of their palpable decline and have the good sense not to morn their losses:

Fuller noticed that eye contact and age were inversely proportional: the older you became the less people looked at you… He knew his body was no longer appetizing…. he was certain, couldn’t stand up to other bodies she could find on the market. He was old meat; the expiation date on his label had expired…

As does the author, Fuller enjoys music:

He has a shelf full of records that he bought during and shortly after his college years and since he has been living alone they are his principal company. As he puts it, “I have a shit load of great friends and they only talk when I want to listen.”

Fuller lost his 2nd wife in traffic accident:

They, wife and minivan, hit a tree – a tree hit them – one night while they were coming home from her aerobics class. A patch of ice was deemed responsible for bringing the three together. So the police said, anyway. Fuller had been devastated at the moment, but later realized that maybe people over fifty are better off living alone.

With his first wife he sired twin daughters. She left him for a psychiatrist with whom she had an affair.

Fuller couldn’t have been happier. His wife had somebody to talk to and the psychiatrist had somebody to screw. Every now and then it was the other way around. So Dolores said anyway.

Leonard Fuller is reminiscent of Joseph Heller’s Bob Slocum. Both regard their lives and the world through an ironic glass, darkly. The Anthropologist is Ferguson’s 2^nd novel in English. Something Happened was Heller’s long awaited follow up to Catch 22. Slocum and Fuller are at times painfully cynical–but never less than acutely honest:

Everything’s already been said, but since nobody listens, it doesn’t hurt to repeat things from time to time…

Fuller’s Anthropology is his minor hope for his students. In the very least he might make one or two question the unquestioned superiority of their own culture:

the only way Americans would stop thinking they were the center of the universe was by showing them from a very small age that their culture and values were but one possibility in a vast multi-colored world.

Beyond this he knows that teaching is a fool’s errand. He is happy to award an A+ to any student who has the temerity to simply complete his assignments. Teaching is not the challenge it once was. Looking for engagement of any type he discovers something between his sheets that ought not to be there…

He smelled nothing unusual but he did find a strange foot-long reddish-brown hair near the pillow on the side of the bed he didn’t sleep on…. He hadn’t had anybody in that bed for months. And the last person, Sarah Fletcher, a student from years before who was now a divorced graduate assistant, had short blond locks.

The anthropologist Leonard Fuller now becomes Detective Leonard Fuller. His secretary, Sharon Juppit becomes his Dr. Watson or perhaps, “his girl Friday.” The mystery of the mysterious red head and her adventures in Fuller’s bed provides the first of two narrative threads that wind their way through the maze of the Anthropologist’s many musings.

Sharon is the most likable character in the book and grounds the ethereal Fuller to the terra firm of the campus quad.

She was sixty-four years old, weighed way more than a tenth of a ton, looked to be descended from every shade of chimpanzee (as Fuller once said to her when she asked him what to put down on an application form under RACE, “Look Sharon, figure it this way: your mother and father each had two parents who each had two parents who each had two parents…and we’re only back to 1850. Try going back about ninety million years – and that’s a low number. Good luck on trying to figure out what race you are…. After Sharon had worked in the the Anthropology Department for a few years, Fuller asked:

“So Sharon, who’s the finest professor on campus?”

“You are.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because you’re the only one who knows how full of shit he is.”)

That knowledge frees Fuller to occasionally celebrate the heroes of his chosen discipline:

Mircea Eliade was a wonderful man… I had the pleasure of taking a class from him in Chicago before he retired… He says we all have things that are sacred to us and other things that are profane, that is, that are not sacred. What is sacred for one person can be profane for another and vice versa. What is sacred for one culture is profane for another… For some of you, it might be the label on your jeans. The ‘Tommy Whatever-his-name-is” brand might be the only one you’ll wear. Or maybe it’s Calvin Klein or Reebok or Nike. In any case, those jeans have special meaning to you. Not only the jeans, but how you wear them – low, below your underpants. Maybe your underpants are sacred too. You know something is sacred for you if you wonder where you’d be without it. Without your jeans would your self-image suffer? Would you feel you were a lost sheep? Would you feel less than whole…

So what does all this mean… to be human is to have a sacred side. Eliade found it everywhere he looked. To understand this is to begin to understand other cultures and other civilizations. Look at what is sacred. Respect it. Don’t think only your culture is special….

People will give their lives when what is sacred to them is being threatened. Just look at the Middle East today. Look at all religious conflicts. Maybe if politicians understood what Eliade was saying, they would approach conflicts differently. Maybe they’d get to the real reason people tie dynamite around their waists…

Then as a grace note to the futility of his efforts he adds:

I suggest you all read Eliade’s book. It’s on your semester reading list. It’s short. And like I said, he didn’t complicate things. Next week we’ll have a look at Edmund Leach. Any questions?”

No questions.

His instruction to his daughters was delivered with as much dispassion:

They had no religious upbringing other than Fuller’s stories about what people believe all over the world. They got tastes of Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Shinto, Navajo, shamanism, Unitarianism, Darwinism, Marxism, Nietzschism, Capitalism, Walt Disneyism, and a few glimpses at local African and Polynesian metaphysical inklings. Fuller laid a few samples out on the table and neither girl wanted the whole meal.

The 2nd narrative strand concerns one of his secretary’s sons. Fuller confesses his egoism for never asking after him and then asks after him:

“Not bad. The kid that was in jail is out now on good behavior.

He’s back in Albuquerque with his girlfriend.”

                    “Which one was that?”

                    “Rufus, the oldest.”

                    “How could one of your kids end up in jail?”

                    “You’re the anthropologist…”

                    “As long as he’s not robbing liquor stores…”

“The problem is, the rap stars don’t need to rob the liquor stores, but kids like my son do so they can wear the white hats and fur coats, drive the shiny cars, catch the fast women… make that shiny women and fast cars. I don’t hear any politicians talking about that.”

The red hair and delinquent son are two pegs on which Ferguson hangs his plot. But the plot is not the point. Early in the novel he contemplates the use of memory. His girl friend had suggested that fish have a four second memory. A fish bowl is less boring for a fish if after four seconds it always appears new.

We all only remember what we remember. No matter who we are we don’t remember what we have forgotten.

In Farley’s Jewel, Ferguson had linguistically experimented with consciousness by invoking his mother’s Alzheimer’s. In The Anthropologist he plays with the instinctual similarities between man and fish:

But fish are born knowing how to swim. They have a memory that goes back to…back to…back to…just like we do…an instinctual memory…how to suck…how to chew…how to swallow…how to defecate…and then the cultural memory…the symbol…the flag…the word…the Tommy Hilfucker jeans…the star…the cross…the stop sign…the bowed head…blood…the Super Bowl…the Rose Bowl…the fish bowl…values…birth rituals…baptismals…school…mating rituals…death rituals…the collective memory that says this is sacred and that is profane.

And then, as if to belie the relativity of  Eliade’s dichotomy, Ferguson gives us a hint of his own feeling of the sacred in two beautiful meditations:

Is the four second memory a guarantee against suicide? If you forget everything after four seconds is there never enough time to decide that life is no longer worth living? Does a goldfish ever knowingly, willingly, leap out of its bowl…her bowl…his bowl…to put an end to this swimming, eating, defecating party? For it is a party to which no one is invited but everyone comes. Everyone we know of, that is. Leaving the party is another story. Hemingway wasn’t invited but he knew when to leave. With a four second memory he no doubt would have kept swimming up and down the cool rippled stream. But he remembered what it was like when he had whatever he knew he would never have again. Or maybe he didn’t want it anymore. Maybe he no longer wanted what he remembered having and could think of nothing new worth having. Maybe he had pain. Maybe the only new thing was pain and the memory of painlessness was such that pain had to go and the only way of kissing it goodbye was blowing the brains around the riverbank in Ketchem.

This first meditation on the author of For Whom the Bell Tolls is the precursor of a second  which I believe to be the heart of The Anthropologist. The Hemingway title is taken, of course, from Donne’s famous poem. We all know for whom the bell tolls. It is at the bell’s behest that we discover the common ground of our humanity At this juncture in the book Ferguson introduces us to a campus gardener, Juan José Carlos Rodriguez. Fuller often speaks to him on his way to and from class.

“I had intended to talk to you today about Edmund Leach, the famous English anthropologist… But as I was walking to campus this morning, I decided to talk about somebody else who, contrary to Leach, is never discussed in academic circles. His name is Juan José Carlos Rodriguez. He is a gardener here on campus. Yesterday he was planting pansies along the walkway outside the building you’re sitting in. I decided to talk about him instead of Sir Edmund Leach because he has been more of an influence on my thinking than Leach has. I don’t say this to diminish the importance of Leach, but to amplify the life of Juan José Carlos Rodriguez.

This is the beginning of the ‘Rodriquez Mediation.’ It appears at the beginning of chapter eight approximately midway through the book. Fuller will employ Rodriguez in the denouement of the mystery of the red hair in the book’s final pages. That denouement is a delightfully absurdist conclusion to a fine novel. I will leave it to the reader to discover it and the second half of the book on his own. It is as abundantly rich as the first and concerns itself with second narrative strand to which I earlier alluded. The ‘Rodriquez Mediation’ takes up the whole of chapter eight and is among the finest half dozen pages that the author has penned. Initially it is simply one man’s story. But no matter how simple the man no man’s story is simple. Rodriguez’s story is one of tragedy and strength–it is a tale of the earth by a tender of the soil. Fuller narrates it as it was narrated to him some twenty years before.  Its force and loveliness is one not diminished by time. In these xenophobic days it is always useful to remember that the enemy at our gate is also our neighbor. I can think of no finer encomium than concluding with Ferguson’s own prose at the conclusion to this pivotal chapter of a most remarkable novel.

The first reason I tell you about Juan José is to get you to respect the campus gardeners, most of whom have similar stories. When I was your age, a gardener was an invisible man. He was ‘a gardener’ and nothing more. He had no life attached to his gardening. I saw him outside of time like one sees the desk one is sitting at or the hamburger one eats at McDonald’s. One does not see or feel the tree that was chopped and the logger that chopped it and the factory workers that cut the wood or the designer who designed the desk and so on. One does not see the cow that was slaughtered to make the meat patty or the tomatoes that were harvested for the ketchup or the wheat that waved in the field to make the flour for the burger bun or the workers who picked the tomatoes or swept the floor in the bun factory. Every person you see and each thing you touch has a history, an infinitely complicated and unfathomable history. No one asked to be born in Juarez, Mexico into dirt poverty. No one asks to be born who they are and where they are born and into the circumstances they are born into. Nobody, not queens, not presidents, not ditch diggers, not priests, not prostitutes, not pretzel makers, not professors. Every creature on the face of the earth has their own story to tell. I ask you to respect that story. You don’t have to agree with it or like it, but at least respect it and understand its complexity.

The second reason I have told you about Juan José Carlos Rodriguez is so that when you study social sciences you should never forget that you are dealing with real people. Every statistic is made up of real people. Every cultural tradition is practiced by real people. Every belief is believed by real people. Every god that is talked about and every moral notion that is plastered on the planet comes out of the mouth of a human being. Every pair of shoes that are made, every meal that is cooked, every house that is built, every war that is fought, every kiss, every murder, every smile, every fart, every book that is written, every film that is made, every song that is sung, all this comes from people.

And now, what are people? What is a person? Anthropology is supposed to be the study of man, but what is a man? I ask you to respect man. I ask you to remember that the social sciences are about real human beings. But what are real human beings? Do I know? Do you know? Does a doctor know? Does a physicist know? Does an astronomer know? Does a biologist know? Does a chemist know? Does a priest know? Does the Pope know? Does a policeman know? Does a judge know? Does a psychiatrist know? A university president? A mother? A father? A senator? A terrorist? A drug dealer? A rap singer? An opera singer? Bob Dylan? Jennifer Lopez? Prince? Madonna? Michael Jackson? Michael Jordan? Bill Clinton? Dan Rather? Jay Leno? God? The Devil? The anthropologist? Edmund Leach? Juan José Carlos Rodriguez? Does anybody know what a human being really is?

My best guess is no. No, nobody really knows what a human being is.

Why do I guess no? Because if I can teach you one thing, if I can get you to think about one thing, it is to step back and try to get a perspective on everything you believe, every moral value you espouse (including the label on your jeans), everything you consider important and true, every goal you give to yourself and the world. Ask yourself where your ideas come from. Ask yourself why you believe what you believe. Look around you and what do you see? If you open your eyes you will see a lot of sheep with a lot of different colored fur. You will see American sheep. You will see French sheep. You will see Catholic sheep. You will see Jewish sheep. You will see leftist sheep, right wing sheep, Christian sheep, Islamic sheep, Buddhist sheep, atheistic sheep. You will see herbal healing sheep, sports sheep, cinematographic sheep. You will see journalistic sheep, literary sheep, television sheep, fashion sheep…and bhhaaa, bhhaaa, bhaaaa.

So what does this tell you? What does it tell you about human beings? What does it tell you about ANTHRO-pology? What answers does it give you? Does man have a soul as most religions would have us believe? Is man a materialistic machine as most scientists would have us believe? Is the truth somewhere in between as many compromisers would have us believe? Or is the truth somewhere way, way, outside? Has this dichotomy got it all wrong? Maybe there is neither soul nor matter. Maybe man is something very other.

And did man evolve? But evolution implies evolution toward something. Who can prove that man or the world or the universe is evolving toward something? And why is man the measure? Why does man judge everything from HIS point of view?

Do you know why? Because what the hell else can he do? So when he judges his own knowledge and intelligence it is always he who sets the rules. Maybe this is why he needs gods. To tell him if he is right or wrong. But if they are his gods he is right back where he started from, looking at himself in the mirror and babbling about men being this and men being that.

So when you walk out the door today look for a gardener. When you find one, you will see a man, a deep man, deeper than you or I will ever know.

Then look for the sheep, the colorful various sheep. Which color are you? Or are you a horse? Or a wild animal?

Thank you for attention. See you next week.”

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GREG STANFORD

I waited on the tarmac. It was Spring, 1972 in Memphis, Tennessee and I  was awaiting  the arrival of my girlfriend at the airport She was coming in from New York City; I had driven from the St. Louis area and we were to meet for an enjoyable weekend of performances by the Metropolitan Opera on its then-annual Spring Tour. This was during my Hippy days, and I looked the part. As I waited, I was surprised to see a man emerge, a man not yet nationally famous, but instantly recognizable to me. As our eyes met, I said in Italian, “Mr. Pavarotti, welcome to Memphis.”

The tenor descended laughing, then said “You are my welcoming committee?” We chatted amiably for a few minutes. Suddenly, a large group of people approached Pavarotti, apologizing for being late to welcome him. He summoned enough English to say “Here is my welcoming committee”, or words to that effect, indicating me. It should be noted that in later years his English improved considerably. The well-dressed opera patrons eyed the disgraceful Hippy with amazement, then swept their star away. My girlfriend came out and everything began to proceed according to plan. Such was my first meeting with the man who would become one of the three most famous opera singers of the 20th Century, along with Enrico Caruso and Maria Callas, both of whom lacked the mass media advantages that Pavarotti enjoyed. Future meetings proved equally unexpected.

The second one was several years later at the Kennedy Center. By then the Hippy appearance had been discarded and I was working my way up the ladder there; I was in the Box Office for the Opera House. Pavarotti’s name had by become a household  word and he was to appear in four performances at the Opera House during the Met’s still-active tour. One day, during a very slow part of the day, those of us at the windows were astonished to see Pavarotti approaching us with a big, friendly smile. As if it were necessary, he introduced himself. He then told us he was singing the four performances and encouraged us to come to see him. He proceeded to go all around the entrance level of the building and did the same with the people at the souvenir stands, the ushers, with anyone he saw who worked there. In all my years at Kennedy Center, he was the only star to do such a thing and it made quite an impression. Several employees who had never seen an opera went to see him as a result of his efforts as goodwill ambassador. I of course needed no encouragement, having previously gotten tickets for his Un Ballo In Maschera and L’Elisir D’Amore performances. It  was becoming clear that I was never to have what might be described as a normal meeting with this man. Little did I know how odd the next, and last one would be.

The vocal pinnacle of Pavarotti’s voice was from the late ’60’s  through the mid-70’s. Nearing the end of the ’70’s, the easy lyrical brilliance of his tone had begun to harden slightly as he entered his ’40’s and took on heavier roles. In any case, Pavarotti’s voice type is often at its best in a tenor’s younger years. While the tenor continued to sing very well, those of us who had heard him at his absolute best noticed the difference. I was somewhat alarmed to hear that Pavarotti had decided to take on the role of Manrico in Il Trovatore, hardly a role he was born to sing. However, when he began to perform Manrico at the Met, I went to hear the result, not without trepidation. As far as Pavarotti was concerned, I got what I expected: a still fine tenor voice singing music not really appropriate to it. The rest of the experience could hardly have been predicted.

I found myself next to an elderly gentleman who, from the sound of his “Bravo!”, was Italian. During the first intermission, I spoke to him in Italian, asking him if he were from Italy. He responded as predicted and then asked me what I thought of the tenor. When I simply responded that Pavarotti was one of the best tenors in the world, he said “One of the best? He’s the best.” Such was the passion of his response that I felt it best to simply agree with him. I learned that he was from Modena, a town I had once spent a considerable amount of time in and we discussed that. He revealed that he had come from Modena particularly to hear his son’s Manrico and was staying for several performances. In those days, the Met had 3 intermissions for a 4-act opera and we spent each one in conversation. By chance I was on the list for admittance backstage after the performance, as was, of course, the elder Pavarotti.

At the end of the performance, we duly went backstage to the area near the star dressing rooms. The tenor saluted his father affectionately and Pavarotti, Sr. introduced me as “Gregorio”. I told Pavarotti of our first meeting and he told me he recalled it, though I was doubtful. I excused myself and said hello to a couple  of singers and staff members I knew, then bade farewell to both Pavarotti’s, as it seemed  best not to intrude. As I walked away, I reflected on the unusual nature of all three meetings with Pavarotti. Though I was to hear him sing many more times, our paths did not cross again. Through those years, I often thought of Caruso and Callas, wondering what level of fame they would have achieved in the media age. Had they been contemporaries, would Pavarotti’s fame have matched or even exceeded theirs? For his 21^st Century fans, Pavarotti’s preeminence will likely remain undisputed. 

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When one finally realizes that one is heading down the drain, should it be a day of celebration or gnashing of teeth? I would tend to say the former. Confronting truth might be the most difficult thing to do in this world. Hence, admitting once and for all that one will really go down the drain of life is certainly a moment that should be duly celebrated. Figuring out what truth is is hard enough. Facing it head on makes one a veritable champion in this world. 

But what is truth? Who can really say they have it? No one that I know of, that’s for sure. 

For decades I have said that no one really knows what “life” is. If such is the case, surely we are also equally ignorant about death. It seems highly possible that life and death are no more opposites that up and down are, if one looks at the totality of the cosmos. Stars are not above or below. Only our silly minds think such things. There is no up or down in the universe. The truth might be that there are no opposites in our universe, e.g. there is no such thing as big or small or hot or cold; there are only continuums of size and temperature. Words like “up” and “down” are purely relative terms depending on the observer and where the observer might be. They have no meaning otherwise.   

So are life and death really opposites? My guess is that they probably are not….But regardless of “life and death” and the problem of opposites, we still go down the drain. We still get old and wrinkled. Our muscles wither and our organs lose their punch. We eventually all stop breathing and our hearts stop beating. Some people, of course, think our “souls” continue and that we are all as old as the universe itself, which in fact is not “young” or “old” because those terms too are relative and finally meaningless. 

Let us ask this. If all Being is eternal, i.e. neither young nor old, and if Being was never “created”, then what are we to think about our going down the drain? This is the question I asked myself as I finally realized that I am slowly, but surely, turning into pixie dust.  

The truth is, I don’t believe anyone on earth knows what happens when one “dies”. I do believe is that everything we learn on this earth is – in the end – a bunch of hogwash. None of us really knows what he or she is talking about. This is not a bad thing; it is actually a liberating one. This realization came to me at the same time I became cognizant of the facticity of my bodily (and to some extent “mental”) decay. I knew I was heading down the drain, and at the same moment I also sensed that everybody on earth is pretty much full of baloney. This concomitant moment of enlightenment made the certainty of my decline much easier to take. Suddenly realizing that everything one has ever been taught about existence is probably wrong (or at best partial and skewed) can be a kind of epiphany. And I’m not being hyperbolic. As I was walking through town yesterday, I suddenly looked around at everybody and thought, “O what a circus it is! Nobody really knows anything about anything. We all think we do because we have all been to school and learned a language or two and know how to count to a hundred and multiply and divide and know what the capital of Hungary is (“Budapest” for the real morons, but the word itself tells us nothing about anything) and how to tie a shoe and how to bake a cake… But the fact is that no one really knows anything about the nature of Being itself. I repeat…no one. Just like all other creatures, we human types all know how to do certain things in this world, but we are all blind with regard to the truth about existence…” 

Yes, in October I will be seventy-two-calendar-years old – just another old man for people to ignore (women especially), take care of (I have often said I will do away with myself before anybody has to take care of me), and look at like I used to look at my grandma and grandpa, i.e. like they were somehow always old. I am no longer an attractive human being. I am no longer solicited to do much. Were I an American Indian I still might have some clout. But in today’s Western world, other than the Joe Bidens and Nancy Pelosis of the world, most members of the over-seventy crowd don’t get a whole lot of cookies or status. But hey, they too will be going down the drain before they – or we – know it. Because when water does down the drain it spins faster. At least it seems that way. 

                                                               Morges, August 21, 2021 

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“He had never lingered among the pleasures of memory. Impressions, momentary and vivid, would wash over him: a potters vermilion glaze; the sky-vault filled with stars that were also gods; the moon from which a lion had fallen; the smoothness of marble under his sensitive, slow fingertips, the taste of wild boar meat, which he liked to tear at with brusque, white bites; a Phoenician word; the black shadow cast by a spear on the yellow sand; the nearness of the sea or a woman; heavy wine, its harsh edge tempered by honey — these things could flood the entire circuit of his soul.

Gradually, the splendid universe began drawing away from him; a stubborn fog blurred the lines of his hand; the night lost its peopling stars, the earth became uncertain under his feet. Everything grew distant, and indistinct. When he learned he was going blind, he cried out… Days and nights passed over this despair of his flesh, but one morning he awoke, looked (with calm now) at the blurred things that lay about him, and felt, inexplicably, the way one might feel upon recognizing a melody or a voice, that all this had happened to him before and that he had faced it with fear but also joy and hopefulness and curiosity. Then he descended into his memory, which seemed to him endless, and managed to draw up from that vertigo the lost remembrance that gleamed like a coin in the rain — perhaps because he had never really looked at it except (perhaps) in a dream.

With grave wonder, he understood. In this night of his mortal eyes into which he was descending, love and adventure were also awaiting him. Ares and Aphrodite — because now he began to sense (because now he began to be surrounded by) a rumor of glory and hexameters, a rumor of men who defend a temple that the gods will not save, a rumor of black ships that set sail in search of a beloved isle, the rumor of the Odysseys and Illiads that it was his fate to sing and to leave echoing in the cupped hands of human memory.”

The poet of whom Borges mused was, of course, Homer. Within a pair of centuries that, further to the east, the scribe, J was recording the court history of David and Solomon – the Greek poet was shaping the remembered songs and stories of Greek heroes who fought and died on the plains of Ilium, during the century that Moses walked on the bottom of a sea and climbed a fabled mountain. The writer or writers of the Torah transformed their history into religion – binding Jews, Christians and Muslims to their respective faiths. Homer transformed the collective memory of his people and Western Civilization was bound to the startling visions of a blind man who had forged his epics into art. The literature of the Occident begins at this juncture. Near three thousand years have come and gone — during which traversal his work has been approached but not surpassed. His children are many. A short list would include Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Virgil, Lucretius, Seneca Boetius, Dante, Chaucer, Cellini, Raphael, Michaelangelo, Titian, El Greco, Shakespeare, Milton, Rembrandt, Rubens, Poussin, Watteau, David, Shelly, Bryon, Keats, Joyce, Becket, Pound, Eliot and Kazanzachis.

He has equally influenced Classic and Romantic sentiments. He was the unifying structure in which the 5^th century Greece came to flower. At the height of the Augustan Empire we find him resolutely in Virgil’s Aenied and perhaps Dante and Virgil found him in the outer rings of the Inferno because they had borrowed so much from him. Chaucer and Shakespeare recast his characters and plots in their respective Trollius and Cressidas. Milton follows his lead and his loss of sight while composing Paradise Lost. Painters of the Renaissance, the Baroque and the Romantic eras have never tired of peopling their canvases with his characters and tableaus. Berlioz, was of course, named for the hero Hector. He culminated his career by composing an opera so gigantic that Les Troyens’ first performance had to await the passage of a hundred years before it was heard and proclaimed among the three or four operatic masterpieces of the 19^th century.

And finally, the seminal novel of the 20^th Century finds within the 24 books of Homer’s Odyssey the inspiration for the 24 hours of a June day in Dublin. Homer’s ubiquity is as certain as his art.

He, along with perhaps Shakepeare, Mozart, and Rembrandt, has peered most deeply into the human heart and the gods who are its richest projection. The dichotomy between the human and the divine is one of his great themes. In the Iliad we find gods who are wholly human and we find, as well, humans who aspire to the stature of their immortal counterparts. When Hector or Achilles take the field of battle it is as if the Titans once again shake the earth as they walk upon it. Achilles bears a spear that few could heft and none other could throw. Hector’s mighty sword cuts a frenzied swathe through any Greek garrison that opposes him – and yet at times, he chooses not to slay. From Shakespeare’s play the Greek Nestor comments on a humanity exceeding that of the gods:

I have, thou gallant Trojan, seen thee oft ..

When thou hast hung thy advanced sword in the air,

Not letting it decline on the declin’d,

That I have said to some my standers by

“Lo, Jupiter is yonder, dealing — life.”

Few battle sequences, up to and including those that have visited the monster multi-plexes, come close to rivaling those that inhabit the dactylic hexameters of Homer’s verse. Hear him as he describes the Trojan throngs encamped by firelight outside the walls of Troy:

As in dark forests, measureless along / the crests of hills, a conflagration soars, / and the bright bed of fire glows for miles, / now fiery lights from this great host in bronze / played on the earth and flashed high into heaven.

And hear, as well, Homer’s first description of the mighty clash of arms:

This great army, Ares urged on; the other, grey-eyed Athena, / Terror and Rout and Hate, insatiable sister-in-arms of man destroying Ares / Athena frail at first, but growing till she reared head through heaven as she walks the earth. / Once more she sowed ferocity, traversing the ranks of men, redoubling groans and cries. / When the long lines met at the point of contact, / there was a shock of bull’s hide, battering pikes, / and weight of men in bronze. / A great din rose, / in one same air elation and agony / of men destroying and destroyed and earth astream with blood.

The Iliad and the Odyssey are glorious national epics and taken together two of the most subversive anti-war tracts ever written. As Greeks and Trojans fall under “the black waves of war” there is a melee over the armour of the dead. Homer imagines “wolves whirling on each other, man to man.” On the death of Trojan soldier he suggests:

“To his dear parents he never made return for all their care, but had his life cut short when Ajax’s shaft unmanned him.”

The Greeks spend ten years trying to burn the citadel of Troy to redeem a woman who believes herself a harlot. “In low tones enticing Helen murmured to Hector:

Brother dear — / dear to a whore, a nightmare of a woman! / That day my mother gave me to the world / I wish a hurricane blast had torn me away to wild mountains and tumbling sea. / to be washed under by a breaking wave, / before these evil days could come. / You are the one afflicted most by harlotry in me and by his madness.

And again in an reverie worthy of Prospero, she muses

Agamemnon is brother to the husband of a wanton or was that life a dream.

Odysseus spends ten years trying to return to his island home of Ithaca to a wife who remains faithful through two decades of a nightmare separation. Only in Shakespeare are such ironic symmetries achieved. In the Iliad thousands are slaughtered so that the victors will gain the fame and immortality known only by the gods. In the Odyssey the goddess Calypso offers to make Ulysses a god — he prefers instead the freedom to return home simply as a man of whom only a dying dog might takes notice.

Some might remember a fanciful film called The Highlander. The story concerned a group of immortals that would seek each other out to battle for what was cryptically called “The Prize.” Only the last surviving immortal could qualify to claim its glory. By story’s end The Prize is discovered to be simple mortality. Odysseus returns home so he can love his wife and child and grow old and die.

In the Iliad, Andromache pleads with Hector to forgo a coming battle:

Andromache rested against him and shook away a tear. No pity for our child, poor little one, or me in my sad lot — soon to be derived of you! Soon, soon Akhaians as one man will set upon you and cut you down! Better for me, without you, to take cold earth for mantle. No more comfort, no other warmth, after you meet your doom, but heartbreak only.

Berlioz perfectly captures that heartbreak after the death that the wife foresaw. Achilles has slain Hector. And in an outrage to honor, drags the mangled corpse behind his chariot before the walls of Troy. The following day at a Temple in Troy, the widow, in silent bereavement has her child place flowers at a sacred altar. The people make way while whispering sentiments of sympathy. Andromache is overcome. Cassandra reflects that she should save her tears for disasters yet to be. Andromache takes her child’s hand and leads him slowly from the stage. A Trojan chorus mummers a collective sigh.

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While conductor/composer Leonard Bernstein was not generally thought of as an opera conductor, he did achieve great distinction as just that from time to time. Many treasure memories of Bernstein’s work at the Met, (Falstaff, Cavalleria Rusticana, Carmen), as well as his recordings of works he conducted in Europe (Der Rosenkavalier, Falstaff again, the Verdi Requiem, etc.). My own memories of Bernstein and opera tell quite a different story without contradicting Bernstein’s undeniable musical brilliance. 

The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center For The Performing Arts in Wash., D.C. opened in 1971 with the world premiere of Bernstein’s Mass. For the rest of that decade and well into the next, Bernstein was a frequent visitor there. My first personal contact with him came on the night of the first annual Kennedy Center Honors in 1978. I spent most of the first part of the program in the Press/V.I.P. Lounge of the Opera House, relaxing and waiting to play host during the intermission. Most of that time was spent having a drink and chatting with Gregory Peck, who arrived a few minutes after the program had begun. At intermission time, a large and very illustrious crowd began to pour in. As usual, we had background music coming through speakers in the ceiling and I was unconsciously swaying to the rhythm when I caught Leonard Bernstein’s eye. Bernstein was also gently swaying, and he danced across to me, took my hand and began to twirl me around. Our dance was quite brief and lighthearted and he was soon circulating to greet friends and acquaintances, but the Maestro certainly made a vivid first impression. I had long admired his work and had had many opportunities by that time to appreciate it, but that hardly prepared me for the personal impression this most uninhibited of personalities could make.

The following year, the Vienna State Opera made their only Kennedy Center Opera House visit, offering two weeks of opera conducted by the likes of Bernstein and Karl Bohm, combined with Vienna Philharmonic concerts in the Concert Hall. This late 1979 visit marked the end of the Kennedy Center’s  greatest decade,  a period during which impresario Martin Feinstein had managed to arrange visits by the Paris Opera, Deutsch Oper, Berlin, the Bolshoi Opera, La Scala and finally, the Vienna State Opera. Such ballet companies as The Bolshoi, Stuttgart, and London’s Royal Ballet also graced the Opera House stage during  those years, as well as the still-annual visits by the New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theater. The Vienna stay opened with Beethoven’s Fidelio, conducted by Bernstein.

Bernstein and Vienna delivered superb Beethoven, but during the Leonore Overture #3, played as an Interlude before the final scene,  Bernstein’s terpsichorean talents burst forth,  leaving our little dance of the previous year in the dust. I was sitting quite near the pit and just prior to the piece’s magnificent finale  was startled to see Bernstein suddenly crouch down low and jump straight up in the air, nearly clearing the top of the pit! He seemed to have been shot from a cannon, or at least to be using a trampoline to magnify the drama of his downbeat.

Cutting a Rug With Leonard Bernstein

When he was not conducting, Bernstein was always smoking. It didn’t seem to matter to him where he was, as he normally seemed oblivious to his surroundings anyway. A couple of years after the trampoline exhibition, my friend M. C. Gardner and I attended a showing of a film of Wagner’s Parsifal in a film theater in New York City during one of my frequent opera visits there. Before the Prelude was finished, we were being disturbed by constant talking behind us, accompanied by the smell of tobacco smoke. The voice sounded familiar. True, the talking was only about Parsifal and was deeply knowledgeable, but that hardly seemed the time for a 4 1/2 hour dissertation. Turning around, I immediately found my suspicions confirmed, for there was Bernstein, surrounded by the young people in his retinue, who constantly hung onto every word the Maestro uttered. Clearly, the Maestro was oblivious to the fact that he might be disturbing others who might prefer their Wagner with neither commentary nor tobacco and the management was not about to attempt to deal with this man who went about running his own universe with little or no sense of a larger world around him.

We took the coward’s way out and moved to a different part of the theater, free from both the commentary and the smoke. Hours later, sitting in a box overlooking the main floor, we were amused to see a large empty circle all around Bernstein and company, the theater otherwise almost full. Bernstein’s  versatility with tobacco was, however, hardly exhausted by that smoky Parsifal.

In the 1950’s, Bernstein wrote the one-act opera Trouble in Tahiti for television, which was very successful. Years later, in the 80’s, he wrote a sequel to the work, A Quiet Place, which was not well received. Bernstein proceeded to revise the new work into a full-length opera, with Trouble In Tahiti included as a flashback. It was this version which was chosen to reopen the Opera House after it had been closed for major renovation. The Maestro himself was there to supervise the rehearsals. As usual, a large “desk” had been placed on top of some rows of seat in the center of the orchestra section for the director to observe, make notes and communicate to the stage. What was not usual was that, among other major improvements, the carpeting was all new and still unseen by the public.

There sat Bernstein day after day, again chain smoking, and nonchalantly putting out his cigarettes on the new carpet! When the preparations were over and the opening rapidly approaching, a staff member had to carefully cut out a large section of carpet with a carpenter’s knife, take it to the carpet manufacturer for an exact match in size and color and glue it back in place. If one knew where the area was and was looking for it, it was quite easy to see, but as it was in the center, audience members never seemed to notice it in a crowded theater and with no particular reason to look down. For those of us who were aware of it, it served as a constant reminder of the man who was easily the most eccentric genius ever to grace us with his presence.

Of course, hearing Bernstein’s many records, including his relatively few operatic recordings, as well as his wonderful 1970Met Cavalleria with Corelli in inspired form, one easily forgets the oddities of this man whose life was devoted to music and whose art we are still able to share through his rich recorded legacy. But when the music stops playing, a smile always comes to my lips as I remember some very strange nights at the opera. =

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8 

Betty and Farmer both still taught English. She worked for the city and taught the language to adult immigrants and foreigners.  She enjoyed dealing with adults who were learning because they wanted to learn. She had never wanted to teach at the university. She and Farmer met at the University of San Diego where both were doing graduate work. Each had migrated south for a change in the weather. He was from Eugene and she was from Pocatello, Idaho. That morning, when he went to buy fertilizer to plant some new spring flowers, he was asking himself how much longer he could go on teaching the English language. He was like an atheist in a theology department. He was in his fifth year at Lewis & Clark and he had lost his faith. As a kid he had loved Jesus, but lost his faith in God. Now, he still loved Whitman, but had lost his faith in language…Like a dead god, language could no longer explain the world. It was a game that could make one feel good. Yes, poetry could warm the soul, but it no longer had any connection with truth. That morning he remembered a sentence he had read years prior in a poem in the New Yorker, “Where there are no more words there are no more illusions.” That was where he was today…that day. The meaning of that line had finally sunk in. Words really did always come up short. They never revealed “truth”. Not real truth. They worked fine for buying fertilizer, but they had lost their luster when it came to describing the reality of a cat…or love…or history…or a mind…or even fertilizer for that matter.   

As he was pushing his shopping cart to the parking lot, his mind unwittingly came up with this… 

Look! he said when he looked at that 

That is a cat and not a rat! 

Words! words! words! was all he could think 

Written for years with pen and ink 

Making our souls foolish and fat 

He couldn’t help himself: the little rhymes came when they wanted to come, not when he wanted them around. He wondered if he had not been a slave his whole life long… 

I’m a slave to my brain my whole life long 

Ah! that could be a number one hit song 

I’m a bigger slave to the words I use 

That cement my brain and only confuse  

Yes, Farmer thought, the trip to Seattle had been a Derrida moment…a kind of life changer.  But life had gone on. It usually does. He had talked to Betty about it…  

Why don’t you start thinking about doing something else? 

What? What else? 

Well, start thinking. 

Okay………. Brain, I command you…Start thinking! 

Well? 

Nothing is happening so far…Wait! It just suggested I become a tour guide in Copenhagen…And now it’s suggesting that we move back to Thailand and become Buddhist monks. 

Can a woman be a monk? 

I don’t remember seeing any. 

There you go again…A male dominated world of macho monks! 

I’d say the opposite was true in this case. If the monks had all been women, everybody today would be saying men had forced them into monasteries where they couldn’t make love and had to sit on a hard floor and meditate all day! But because they’re men, everybody thinks meditating all day and not making love is cool… You can turn everything in every direction.  Who’s to say what’s good or bad. When I was a kid I always thought my mother had the “best” life. My father was stressing out at the office all day. He was a damn lawyer. Why is being a lawyer better than putting diapers on kids and sweeping floors? I’d rather be a street sweeper than a lawyer. 

No you wouldn’t. 

Yes, I would…That’s what is so fucked up with our world. We absolutely need street sweepers as much as lawyers. Maybe even more. And yet lawyers have all this fucking social status. Most of them are thieves. They rob they’re clients blind… 

There are some honest ones… 

I said “most” of them… 

Okay…I get your point. 

Well…I say as long as we live in a world that values lawyers over street sweepers, the world will be a fucked up place. 

But you always say it’s an amazing place…a wonderful place… 

You’re right, I do…Okay, it’s a fucked up wonderful place. 

Now I know why I married you. You can be both fucked up and wonderful at the same time. 

That’s why I married you…Because you’re the only woman who understands me! 

Haha. 

They never got to seriously discussing a new job for Farmer. But as far as jobs go, his was a good one. He only taught nine hours a week. He didn’t have to publish that much. A few poems in poetry magazines kept him looking productive to his superiors. He had a lot of free time now that the kids were all out of the house. He was, however, beginning to feel that students were becoming more and more closed-minded. One would have thought technology would have opened their minds and thought patterns. But it seemed the opposite was the case. The left-wingers were way left, the right-wingers way right, and the feminists were making enemies of males. It was almost as if students “arrived” at the university thinking they already knew everything…as if they were already programmed politically, philosophically, and morally before they took a single class. It was getting more and more difficult to have a real “discussion” about anything. Students’ minds rarely seemed to change; they would simply build higher and higher walls to protect their ideas from the other side. And this, even with twenty-year-old students at a “liberal arts” school! It had begun to feel like they were coming to the university to reinforce the beliefs they already held, not to open their minds to new ways of looking at the world. This saddened Farmer. But it also confirmed his and Betty’s idea that their daughter hadn’t made a bad choice when she herself dropped out of Seattle Pacific.  

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The “last word” here would be a perfect example of what he was talking about, i.e. how soul mates were so hard to come by.  

The old man had often said that “nothing can be other than what it is”. He had rarely explained what this idea meant for him and for his vision of the world. That explanation would be his last word: 

Nothing in the universe can be other that what it is… 

The thought is extremely difficult to fathom. It really is a “last word” because when you feel to the bone that nothing  – absolutely nothing – can be other that what it is, your old vision of life will disappear forever. Every “thing” you see in existence will cease to exist. There will be no things. All concreteness will vanish. There will be no more “Trump” to criticize, no “Biden” to make fun of, no “eagle”, no “mouse”, no “atom” or “electron” or “quark” to identify, and there will be no “today”, “tomorrow”, or “yesterday”. All Being will be tied together and all will be in constant flux. Nothing will be fixed and hence nothing can be “talked about”. It will all be gone as soon as it comes to be. All will be ethereal, and hence impossible to make sense of.  

Most human beings cannot grasp this idea because it goes against everything they think and do. Their whole lives they have been taught to break existence into pieces and to make sense of it (and to think they have made sense of it…and for themselves, they have…). They separate everything, give names to everything, think they see causal relationships happening between all the “things” they have identified, believe in beginnings and ends, believe their fixed identifiable things are “real” things, and once they have “their view of the world”, they tend to stick with it for life. A tree is a tree. A dog is a dog. A Trump is a Trump. A country is a country. An atom is an atom. You are you. I am I. And “that’s the way things are!” 

But none of these things are fixed things. They are constantly changing. All parts of existence are constantly changing. The whole of existence is constantly changing.  Existence is a great swirl. It has no beginning and no end.   

This is the last word. Given that there are no fixed things, all judgments about “things” are wrong. All judgments about things are purely human constructions that have nothing to do with reality. Reality can never be identified because it is always in flux. Man can never know reality. He is part of the great swirl. His reality is not reality. It never has been and it never will be. He is simply that creature who decided he could “know” things. But he doesn’t know things because there are no things to know. And every bit of being is what it is at any given moment and can be nothing other than what it is. Absolutely nothing in the entire universe can be other than what it is forever and ever and ever. Here, we are not knocking on heaven’s door, but on infinity’s door, and infinity is deeper – much much deeper – than most human minds can grasp, or even hope to entertain.  We groveling humans are to the universe what crabs crawling on the bottom of the ocean are to the earth. We have no clue as to what Being really is.  

Mankind and all his cares are but a tiny muffled heartbeat in the infinite cosmic swirl. Nothing is free. Nothing is determined. Everything simply is what it is at every given instant and every instant is gone as soon as it happens. 

When one feels this kind of thing, one finds very few other people with whom to share the world. It would be the old man’s last word. 

                                                                                  Sept. 16, 2020  

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When the old man put on Haydn’s Symphony No. 103 (“Drum Roll”), the world – according to all news outlets he had read or watched lately – was in a state of great turmoil. The coronavirus was making a comeback, protesters were tearing down statues of old American heroes, Stuttgart had been torn with street violence and looting the night before, Trump and Biden were being made to be absolute fools depending which side of the press you were looking at. Yes, according to the news, the world was falling apart.  

Hence, when the old man got in the car, he didn’t turn on the radio. Instead he reached behind him and with a long arm grabbed a CD on the floor of the back seat. It just happened to be Haydn’s 103^rd. He popped it in the slot. Within seconds life felt good again. What sound! What beauty! What harmony! All the people and instruments coming together to create glorious…music!  

The old man thought about world civilization and all the incredible things great minds had come up with. In a few short thousands of years, humanity had gone from living in mud and grass huts and beating tom-toms to Vienna, Paris, Venice, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. And then came the 19^th, 20^th, and 21^st centuries and the great industrial revolution.  

And here we are today. Many people say we are at a “turning point”. What kind of turning point? the old man wondered. Where will the cries of liberty and justice for all take us this time? Will power fall into fresh hands? If so, how will they use it? After we pull down statues of Teddy Roosevelt and George Washington, who will be put up in their place? 

If the old man knew one thing it was that power decides what is “right”. If power doesn’t like termites, it gets rid of them. If power thinks people should stay inside when the coronavirus strikes, people stay inside. If power says people can go outside, they go outside. 

He also knew that passion decides what is beautiful. Haydn’s 103^rd was beautiful. He knew it. 

But he knew too that not everybody’s passions were the same. He hoped power and passion would let Haydn live a little longer – at least while his grandkids were bustling about. 

Before he got home he thought about something else. Music has a big advantage over literature: You don’t have to speak German to listen to Haydn. He never needs to be translated…  

And the drums rolled again. 

                                                                   June 23, 2020 

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JON FERGUSON

April 9, 2020

Saving Lives

I wonder about our civilization and the cries I hear about saving the planet. On the one hand, many people are talking about over-population and how it is a factor in the destruction of our beautiful human homeland, the earth. On the other hand we are very angry at the coronavirus; we think it is an absolute horror; we are doing everything possible to save as many lives as we can. All of this is understandable, but does it make sense? If I understand correctly, people who want to save the planet want to keep everyone who is already on it alive for as long as possible, but they don’t want the creation of new people. They want old human life to be prolonged and new human life not to appear.  Is this fair to new human life? Is it fair to all the sperms and eggs that will be wasted?…To lovers who want to create life together?

It takes us back to the question of what “life” is worth living? worth having? worth saving? worth creating? It seems these questions are rarely thought about deeply….

So now, here in this diary, let us go to a place where very few men ever go. And why do I say “men”? This time men – “man” – is not referring to “mankind” as it often does, but actually to a few “men”…males…in the history of thinking. This has nothing to do with sexism or political correctness or uncorrectness, or elevating men and putting women down. (I wrote somewhere on “Women’s Day” that I have always seen myself as a slave to “women”, i.e. women I have loved…but that is another story…) I am simply saying that as far as I know the only human minds that have gone to where we are going in this passage have belonged to men, not women. Similarly, I have never seen a woman in a firing squad or a woman who drops the guillotine. It is possible that women are too good do such things and to have such thoughts…too caring, too loving, too human. I do believe that “men” and “women” are different, just like I believe ducks and elephants are different, or baseballs and moons, or one man is different from another man, or the fact that some men can run faster and jump higher than other men, or some men can think more “deeply” than other men. This does not mean women cannot be great thinkers. They can be, of course. Marie Curie was one of the greatest chemists and physicists of all time, but I don’t think she thought the thoughts we are going to talk about now. At least she is not known for having such thoughts. The only human beings I know who have had these thoughts are Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Mann (I think), Goethe, Walt Whitman, M.C. Gardner, and maybe Heraclitus and Spinoza. Schopenhauer is also a possibility, but he seemingly left out “the joyful” part of the equation. And there is a joyful part. Otherwise I know very few, if any, people who share this way of thinking about the world….(Actually in fairness to my son Jackson who studied physics at the university and eventually moved on to a very “Buddhist” feeling for life, it is very possible that many “Buddhists” share the vision we are going to talk about. That will be for my son and his friends to tell me.)

So what are we talking about? First, we must go “beyond” all standard ways of thinking about existence and the world. This is dangerous. It can cause one to lose a lot of friends. I know. I have lost some. Why? Because if you dig deeply where we are going to dig, you cannot end up hating Donald Trump, you cannot think Putin is an evil man, you will not think the planet needs to be saved, you will not believe in “race”, you will not think it is “racist” to say that people of African descent (the sons and daughters of people who were taken into bondage to build America) can, on the whole, “jump higher” and “run faster” than those of us of European descent, you will think that prisons are a disgrace to humanity (for reasons too complicated to explain here), you will not believe in “free will”, you will believe there are no such things as “equality” or “justice”, you will not believe there was a beginning, i.e.  a “creation” or a “Big Bang”, you will see no God behind existence (imagine it took more that 6,000 years of civilization for Nietzsche to finally declare “God is dead”), you will not believe that man is capable of knowing “truth”,  you will not believe in “history” because you see all existence to be tied together and you think it is impossible to separate existence into knowable understandable parts. I could go on and on…. In fact, I have written about all these subjects in two books, “Beyond the Rabble” and “Feeding the 5,000,000”, that I will probably have to publish myself because no editor or agent will even answer a query letter.

Let us now relate these thoughts to the subject at hand, the Covid-19 virus. Interestingly, it is very possible that three weeks of confinement – and long solitary walks every day – have led me to write this passage. Though I have thought these thoughts for more than forty years, it seems it took this “moment” in life to get me to finally write it down as clearly and precisely as possible. I know many of you will not “agree” with me for a second. You will dismiss me as a madman. I understand. You are simply proof of what I believe…that nothing – absolutely nothing in the universe – can be other than what it is. Including you and me and the 50,000,000,000,000 cells in our bodies.

“A Corona Diary” has finally brought this thought to the surface. If you believe in God, morality, heaven and hell, sin, a creator who lays out laws etc. stop reading now. But, if like many “modern” thinkers, you don’t believe in such things, then let us proceed…

I believe existence has no built-in meaning. There is nothing “guiding” it, nothing “behind it”. There is no table of “value” written into the fabric of existence. Existence simply exists. Things simply exist…all things.But in reality there are no things because, as the greatest physicists today will tell you, everything is in flux. Being – existence – is a great swirl. There is no such thing as a you or a me or a Trump because we are all changing at every second. This is very hard to fathom, but it must be understood. Everything is in constant flux. During our whole lives we have been taught the opposite, i.e. that there are things. But if all being is in constant flux, then there are no things.

Not only is everything constantly changing, but the human vision of what reality is very limited and piecemeal. Yes, we think we know some things. At least, our world makes sense for us. We have cut it up into pieces and made it livable. But so have cats, dogs, chimpanzees, elephants, chickens, ants, and eagles. They too have a vision of reality that works for them. Where is it written that ours human view of reality is “correct”? Nowhere that I know of.

We are not gods. There is no omniscience. Our vision of reality is not that of a god. We are human. We are part of nature. God is dead, but we did not replace him. We are not all-knowing. There is no such thing in the universe. We are one creature among many others that grovels to survive. We are what we are, just like the lion and the mouse are what they are. We all struggle in our own ways, to survive…to live…to be.  And eventually we all die.

So what is our “situation”? We are on a large ball flying at 67,000 miles per hour in an orbit around the sun. It is also spinning at about 1,000 miles per hour (almost 500 meters per second…but of course we don’t feel it!). We human beings are all part of this incredible flight in infinite space. We are but tiny specks of existence…of nature. Everything that exists, exists naturally. We are not an exception. All existence does what it does. The sun shines, the earth turns, birds migrate south in winter, LeBron James plays basketball, my cat Tilou kills a mouse almost every night, Columbus and friends brought diseases to the Americas and decimated the Aztec, Inca, Maya, and Cherokee worlds, slaves were forced into boats, “America” became a promised land for many hungry Europeans, the motor car was invented, the Spanish plague killed 30,000,000 or more, nations rose, wars came, peace came, major league sports came, TV came, Internet came, we found a vaccine for polio, fast food came, and on and on. All parts of the world were being what they are. Just like the rest of the universe. It is simply Being being what it is! It is not free. It is not good or evil. It is existence being existence…

What have we on the earth ? A slaughterhouse? A theater for the struggle for power? A kingdom of enlightenment? A kingdom of that invents gods and explanations for existence? A place where earthquakes and tsunamis and famines kill and kill, and men kill and kill in spite of pretending that liberty and justice reign? A circus wherein people try to get rich and possess lots of shit and fame? A place where many people try to help each other and be nice to each other? A hell-hole where all creatures must kill to eat?…Of course it is a little of all these things. But it is all nature. It is all nature being nature, including mankind and everything we do.

And what does man do? He kills termites, rats, mosquitos, snakes, spiders, cows, chickens, pigs, flies, turkeys, ducks, rabbits, bacteria, viruses, etc., i.e. everything he needs to kill in order to live and get what he want and “needs”. Sometimes he kills some of his own kind. He has been king of the jungle for quite a while here on this earth. And it is a jungle, not a Garden of Eden. Life has never been fair and never will be fair. It can be beautiful and lovely, as we all know. But it is never fair and nice to all creatures. Some creatures always get the short end of the sick. Billions and billions die every day. And this has been going on and on for a hell of a long time…in human time that is.

But the universe doesn’t care about human time. The universe doesn’t care if man kills termites or if viruses kill man. Only men care and termites care. We care about our own skin and maybe some other skins like cats, dogs, and elephants. But even they are killed sometimes for various reasons. We don’t care about everything, that’s for sure. We can’t. It is impossible. There is too much to care about.

And what if all creatures on earth were not killing each other? What would happen on the earth then?  Imagine if everything kept living and reproducing with no killing. There would be a total overcrowding of the planet in no time…Things have to kill each other. It is the nature of nature. It is built into our earth…or world…our existence.

For the last few millennia – the ones that we “know” about – man has had explanations for existence that have always given him a “justification” and “reason” for everything he does. He has Bibles, Korans, Declarations of Independence, Ten Commandments, and charters for national rights, human rights, women’s rights, animal rights, children’s rights, etc. But no matter what man and animals do, the world will always be a slaughterhouse. Some things will always have power over other things, and everything will do what it does and will eventually die.

But wait…I can see you now! But life is getting better! We have democracies! Many countries are prosperous! Fewer people are going hungry! etc… Yes, you are right. But you are right about “your world”. You think your world is “the” world. You think you understand the world…like Greta. You think there are solutions for the world. You think the world is a puzzle that can be “solved”…But no! What you don’t know is that the world can be nothing other than what it is. This is what your eyes and minds cannot see.  Everything that is is. There is no free will in nature.  Nothing asked to be what it is. Nothing. Even if a God existed, could God be other than what It is?. Being is being. Man will never understand being. It has no “reason” or “logic” behind it”. We all grovel to survive. We all are born into a “world” and we try to get by as best we can in that world.  But nothing…absolutely nothing in the entire universe, in all existence, in all “nature”…can be other than what it is. This is the thought that only a few “men” can have, feel, and dare I say…understand. When we look at the world, we see innocence – absolute innocence – everywhere…in the stars, in the sun, in a tree, a flower, a crocodile, an ant, and a human being…yes, even in a human being…every last one of us. None of us can be other than what we are. We are all innocent.

And we who see this vision of Being also see innocence in a virus, even a coronavirus.  It is, of course, doing what it does. It goes inside humans and lives in their lungs. It multiplies and sometimes kills, just like men do. The coronavirus is part of nature. We are part of nature. Of course we don’t like the coronavirus. Just like we don’t like earthquakes and tsunamis, or a Hitler. They too are all part of nature. Cows and chickens that go to slaughter probably don’t like us, though their ways of liking and disliking might be a little different from ours.

 The coronavirus is as innocent as everything else on earth. We humans will naturally try to destroy it. That is the way we are. All over the world things destroy other things. That is the way they are.

Now let us think for a moment. If we put ourselves in the “shoes” of Nature, perhaps the coronavirus is just one of nature’s ways of keeping the human population of the earth at a reasonable number. Imagine if no virus or war or heart problems killed any human being. There would be way too many of us very very quickly. We would very quickly have to get rid of some of ourselves. And imagine if we killed no cows or chickens or termites or rats, etc. In no time there would be far far too many of all of those creatures. 

No, the world is not a nice place. The Garden of Eden was a myth of man that gave him a false vision of existence. Nature knows nothing about morality. Only man invents visions of goodness and truth. But they are not real. They are not the way nature works. The coronavirus is not “evil”. It is part of nature. We will try to avoid it and eliminate it and “cure” ourselves because that is the way we are. That is what we do. And it will come back another day in another form because that is the way it is.

And CNN and Fox News and BBC and the New York Times will continue to do what they do, i.e. bombard us with horror stories about the coronavirus, because that’s the way they are. And Trump will continue to be Trump and Biden Biden and Putin Putin and Maureen O’Dowd Maureen O’Dowd and the woman at the post office the woman at the post office. Because that’s the way they are. And you will continue to be you and I will continue to be me, because that’s the way weare.

Nothing can be other than what it is. And “nothing” is fixed. Everything is in flux. There was no first cause. There is no god. There is no free will. Man is part of nature like the grasshopper and the whale. It all constantly changes. It has no reason to be. For our human eyes it can be beautiful and it can be ugly. Of that there is no doubt. But is makes no sense to think it can or should be other than what it is. And we who see it this way have no choice but to accept it. All of it – its greatest joys and its greatest agonies.

Existence is a deep mystery, deeper than any of us can see. But some see deeper than others. No, man is not the measure of all things. He is the measure of his things. He is no more divine or meritorious of life than any other creature. He is part of nature, a strange and mysterious part like all the rest.

When one sees this and accepts it, is it a day for gnashing of teeth or a day for great celebration?

We know. Do you?

Almost every night Tilou kills a mouse and brings it through his window into the house. Every morning I cringe when I pick up the bloody remains of the tiny creature and flush them into eternity, yet always knowing that somehow the whole scene reeks of necessity. I know the same when sunlight appears and reveals the lovely tulips in the garden.

Amor fati…

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