You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.
FAULKNER
Love the animals. God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Don't trouble it, don't harass them, don't deprive them of their happiness, don't work against God's intent.
- Dostoyevsky
I wanted to make this thread because I thought it's been a while, only to find out that I just completely missed this one. "You are remembered for the rules you break, not the ones you follow." - Douglas McArthur "The greatest way to find out how you really feel about someone is to say goodbye."
At first I thought you were just being flippantamuffin - but when I thought about it, yes, it's true. Education led to developing nuclear weapons. Education led to modern industry which led to burning greater and greater amounts of fossil fuels which has caused climate change. That quote was from The Outline of History published in 1920 -- before nuclear weapons and before an awareness of climate change -- makes me to suspect that Wells might have meant ethical education. Looking further into Wells writings and quotations, I'm finding some fascinating thoughts.
The prologue to Don Quijote de la Mancha is one of my single favorite pieces of literature. The artistry of the prose, combined with the humor of the whole thing and Cervantes' takedown of the more pretentious habits of his fellow writers combine into an amazing whole. I'd like to translate the whole thing, so won't post it here just yet. Instead, have this blurb from a letter written by Laurence Sterne to Ignatius Sancho, a free black man living in England in the mid-18th century. Sancho had asked Sterne to write in favor of the abolitionist cause, saying Sterne, meanwhile, was in the middle of writing Tristram Shandy, which contains a conversation between two characters bemoaning the poor treatment of a black servant in a shop. Sterne's response is great, and became widely quoted among abolitionists in the UK:That subject, handled in your striking manner, would ease the yoke (perhaps) of many — but if only one — Gracious God! — what a feast to a benevolent heart!
There is a strange coincidence, Sancho, in the little events (as well as in the great ones) of this world: for I had been writing a tender tale of the sorrows of a friendless poor negro-girl, and my eyes had scarce done smarting with it, when your letter of recommendation in behalf of so many of her brethren and sisters, came to me — but why her brethren? — or yours, Sancho! any more than mine? It is by the finest tints, and most insensible gradations, that nature descends from the fairest face about St James’s, to the sootiest complexion in Africa: at which tint of these, is it, that the ties of blood are to cease? and how many shades must we descend lower still in the scale, ere mercy is to vanish with them? — but ’tis no uncommon thing, my good Sancho, for one half of the world to use the other half of it like brutes, & then endeavor to make ’em so.
I'm reading the first volume of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson. He grew up in Texas Hill Country, an area that straddles the imaginary east-west border of adequate rainfall necessary for farming. It's rough living, especially in the 19th and early 20th century. This passage, describing what the long, solitary months felt like to LBJ's mother--left alone while her husband was at the state capital of Austin serving in the legislature--is harrowing. Of all the things it reminds me of, it's that of the depths of a terrible psycheldic trip when you want it to end but it feels like it never will. Loneliness and dread. During the day, there might be a visitor, or at least an occasional passerby on the rutted road. At night, there was no one, no one at all. No matter in what direction Rebekah looked, not a light was visible. The gentle, dreamy, bookish woman would be alone, alone in the dark—sometimes, when clouds covered the moon, in pitch dark—alone in the dark when she went out on the porch to pump water, or out to the barn to feed the horses, alone with the rustlings in the trees and the sudden splashes in the river which could be a fish jumping or a small animal drinking, or someone coming, alone in the storms when the wind howled around the house and tore through its flimsy walls, blowing out the lamps and candles, alone in the night in the horrible nights after a norther, when the freeze came, and ice drove starving rodents from the fields to gnaw at the roofs and walls, and she could hear them chewing there in the dark—alone in bed with no human being to hear you if you should call.When Rebekah walked out the front door of that little house, there was nothing—a roadrunner streaking behind some rocks with something long and wet dangling from his beak, perhaps, or a rabbit disappearing around a bush so fast that all she really saw was the flash of a white tail—but otherwise nothing. There was no movement except for the ripple of the leaves in the scattered trees, no sound except for the constant whisper of the wind, unless, by happy chance, crows were cawing somewhere nearby. If Rebekah climbed, almost in desperation, the hill in back of the house, what she saw from its crest was more hills, an endless vista of hills, hills on which there was visible not a single house—somewhere up there, of course, was the Benner house, and the Weinheimer house and barn, but they were hidden from her by some rise—hills on which nothing moved, empty hills with, above them, empty sky; a hawk circling silently high overhead was an “event. But most of all, there was nothing human, no one to talk to. “If men loved Texas, women, even the Anglo pioneer women, hated it,” Fehrenbach has written. “… In diaries and letters a thousand separate farm wives left a record of fear that this country would drive them mad.” Not only brutally hard work, but loneliness—what Walter Prescott Webb, who grew up on a farm and could barely restrain his bitterness toward historians who glamorize farm life, calls “nauseating loneliness”—was the lot of a Hill Country farm wife.
wow, thanks. great passage. i'm from the hill country as well, not real far from the famous ranch. it's still kinda like that, out away from the towns. just hills, vultures, and scrub pines. and cactus. i never felt lonely or afraid, though. it's exhilarating but dusty and bone fucking dry. hawk sightings have qualified as "events" at many a flagamuffin family reunion.
every once in a while my father sends me a picture where he's holding a rattlesnake with one of those plastic things actually yesterday it was him in the foreground and a nine foot alligator in the background, so i don't know where he was. not the hill country.
I came across some writing by philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, including these quotes that I like: "It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious." "There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil."
The maturing thing goes on and on and on until death and maybe even longer. It gets particularly rough when someone you depended on and thought you knew turns out to have been putting out half-truths for 15 years. I think Shakespeare had it right when he had Polonius say, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. Farewell, my blessing season this in thee! of course, the trick is in figuring out what it means to be true to yourself when you are being pulled in all directions and heart rules head. So fuck that.This above all: to thine own self be true,
- Ted Kooser Old moon, he's planning a little vacation, just a few days away, but he's a fusser, that one, likes to take care of his things, so he's covered all his furniture with sheets of light--the trees, the supermarket parking lot, the streets of houses, even the back of a cat on a porch--just to keep the stardust off while he's away.
"The best way to find out if you can trust somebody, is to trust them." -Hemingway
Modern Times (not the movie) is too bulky to take to work, so I started Martin Gardner’s The Annotated Alice again. One of my favorite passages appears in the introduction, after Gardner has reviewed Lewis Carroll’s unsuccessful attempt to write a “book for youngsters that would convey some sort of evangelistic Christian message.”Ironically, it is Carroll’s earlier and pagan nonsense that has, at least for a few modern readers, a more effective religious message than Sylvie and Bruno. For nonsense, as Chesterton liked to tell us, is a way of looking at existence that is akin to religious humility and wonder. The Unicorn thought Alice a fabulous monster. It is part of the philosophic dullness of our time that there are millions of rational monsters walking about on their hind legs, observing the world through pairs of flexible little lenses, periodically supplying themselves with energy by pushing organic substances through holes in their faces, who see nothing fabulous whatever about themselves. Occasionally the noses of these creatures are shaken by momentary paroxysms. Kierkegaard once imagined a philosopher sneezing while recording one of his profound sentences. How could such a man, Kierkegaard wondered, take his metaphysics seriously?
And you are entitled to your opinion as much as everyone is entitled to theirs. That's the beauty of it. You can also argue that we know nothing for a fact, since every idea is relative and a single person can only know so much. Even that which we consider to be the most vital truth may be disproven at some point after we're long dead and forgotten about. Which means, of course, that one should necessarily consider everything they hear if it's of any importance to their matter, because nobody knows for certain. And yet somehow, I would believe it was him without question. He was, after all, a very wise man. Maybe the importance of those words shouldn't be lost on us, even if the author is not who we think it is.Anyway, Ian says that it's not actually a Marcus Aurelius quote.
My tone was dismissive; I apologize. I recently began a history book that opens with Einstein and immediately links to moral relativism, and the author doesn't especially discourage the reader from concluding that the “anything goes, all opinions are valid” philosophy led fairly directly to the destruction of Europe. Mistakenly but perhaps inevitably, relativity became confused with relativism. No one was more distressed than Einstein by this public misapprehension. He was bewildered by the relentless publicity and error which his work seemed to promote. He wrote to his colleague Max Born on 9 September 1920: ‘Like the man in the fairy-tale who turned everything he touched into gold, so with me everything turns into a fuss in the newspapers.’ Einstein was not a practicing Jew, but he acknowledged a God. He believed passionately in absolute standards of right and wrong. He lived to see moral relativism, to him a disease, become a social pandemic, just as he lived to see his fatal equation bring into existence nuclear warfare. There were times, he said at the end of his life, when he wished he had been a simple watchmaker. I do think it is important that we recognize that certain statements like “Marcus said this” are either true or false, and if people disagree about it we might not be certain who is right but we can be certain that only one of them is right.The modern world began on 29 May 1919 when photographs of a solar eclipse, taken on the island of Principe off West Africa and at Sobral in Brazil, confirmed the truth of a new theory of the universe....
I think we see this issue from different perspective that don't touch in terms of Venn diagram, which might cause an unnecessary conflict between us. Let me elaborate on how I see it. I didn't mean to say that it doesn't matter whether Marcus Aurelius did indeed say what is quoted. I think truth does matter above many things in life, and my orderly nature dictates I follow through to seeing correct information prevail. I didn't mean to dismiss the importance of authorship of quotes, either, though it may have sounded like I did. While I can't confirm the source (oy vey), I heard someone talk about quotes. At one point, they said some quite profound general truth about life... and attributed it to Adolph Hitler. They quickly "corrected" themselves by saying "He didn't, actually, but for a split second you thought about it and went 'Oh, he did? Well damn'...", implying that the source of the quote is no less important than the quote itself. A lot of profound (or seemingly profound) quotes have been misattributed to great people of history. Apparently, people are attracted to the great names and tend to assign to them what "ordinary" people (read: less known to the general public), it seems, couldn't have possibly said. One such example is a quote by Marianne Williamson, which starts: ...and goes on for a bit. It was misattributed to Nelson Mandela, who has used it during a speech. To know who said a message that seems profound is important, because it unveils the motives behind the saying, thus giving the listener more perspective on the meaning behind it. Hitler saying about the strength of spirit is terrifying. Mandela, Gandhi or MLK saying about the strength of spirit is inspirational. I think the idea expressed in the quote is important enough to follow whether or not it was actually said by the Roman emperor. It matters if it wasn't, but to me, only to a limit, since I can see its profoundness in my own experience. For others... I'm torn on whether to attribute it. My point of view is this: it's a profound idea that people could use to learn, and attributing it to a great mind increases its chances of exposure significantly; declaring that we can't attribute it to a great mind, however, will most likely let it become dust in the wind, with people missing on a helpful idea that could improve their life. I don't mean to say that those in control of the information should lie to people, but the current state of affairs seems to be mostly beneficial. On the quote itself and its meaning: By saying "everyone's entitled to their opinion" I don't mean to say that all opinions have the same weight or are worth listening to. Although a medical doctor may not know all there is to know about medicine and physiology, I will trust them with figuring out what's wrong with my body and how to fix it considerably more likely than to a person without a medical degree. It's not about whom to listen to. What I mean to say is this: people tend to say crazy shit they have no idea about in the daily grind. We all see only a part of the world - that which we've been to, physically or mentally. Each of us only has so much experience when dealing with things. I believe that it's everyone's right to have an opinion based on their experience. It doesn't mean that people are allowed or somehow encouraged to not learn more about the world due to this proposition: we've all seen the idiocy to which such behavior leads. I believe that everyone speaks their mind based only on things they've experienced. It may sound like some of the most common sense common sense phrases, but it carries a deeper meaning, one that I think lil understands already, hence her agreeing with me on that in the first place. Some opinions weigh more or less depending on what you're inclined to (for example, you'd listen to a doctor with more care and interest if you're inclined to get healed, and you'd listen to a medium or a foreteller if you're inclined to feel submitted to external forces); you might listen to an Internet stranger more if they show that they possess very close perspective to yours and have managed to overcome what you're currently struggling with, even if your close friend tells you something different because from what they get to see of your struggle, what they give you is your best way out. Most of the time, though, people say nonsensical things about stuff they have no idea about because they want to look cool. Therefore, if you let a stranger affect your vision of things without first checking whether this new perspective aligns with your current goals - say, by claiming their opinion of a film you haven't seen as your own - you're in for a whole tsunami of crushing waves from all around the area telling you that opposites A and B are both true, that white is black, that up is down... This will quickly turn into a mess - a mess that wasn't yours to begin with, one you can't feel comfortable with even a slightest bit because it's from another person's heap. In short... One can say whatever they want. As I recognize that what one says isn't an answer but merely a perspective, I gain the power and the responsibility to sieve through what I hear and separate worthy perspectives from unworthy ones. No one knows everything, and even most-educated specialists can fail when they meet something new and unexplained, for one reason or another. It's important to keep an open mind, whomever you listen to. It doesn't exclude listening to people: the quote advises one to consider what they're listening to (see this wonderful piece of audio art by thenewgreen). Did that clear up some things?Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure...
I am inclined to say that I agree completely, especially with your idea that "people say nonsensical things about stuff they have no idea about." Confident speculation is completely typical, and might not be a big deal were it not for peoples' inclination to trust authority figures. I have gotten into the habit of fact-checking all the time, simply because it is a good way to learn. We know lil is a fan of science. Though I bristle at the apparently absolute claim that "Everything we hear is ... not a fact," we are not privileged to handle true and false facts, we deal only with evidence and beliefs. We do so in our flawed ways, and all make mistakes. So maybe it's fair to say that most everything we hear from others is an expression of belief, and not cold, hard facts. I try to remind myself of this by using language like "in my view" and "it seems" whenever I make factual statements, and also citing my evidence and making clear, verifiable claims, as in the "What are your predictions?" discussion. It's easy for mk to say the legislature is full of "spineless pond scum" but it is not so easy to test this claim. Thanks for expanding on your thoughts!
I'm currently reading a book called "At The Mercy of the Mountains" about misadventure in Adirondack Park. It's morbid reading about people dying on trails I've hiked (or worse, plan to hike), but I think it can be good to learn from the mistakes of others as I plan to not die (ever, if possible). Each chapter starts with a quote relevant to the story. One I like was: -Charles Dudley Warner, "Lost in the Woods"Nature is so pitiless, so unresponsive, to a person in trouble! I had read of the soothing companionship of the forest, the pleasure of the pathless woods. But I thought, as I stumbled along in the dismal actuality that, if I ever got out of it, I would write a letter to the newspapers exposing the whole thing. There is an impassive, stolid brutality about the woods that has never been enough insisted on. I tried to keep my mind fixed upon the fact of man's superiority to nature; his ability to dominate and outwit her. My situation was an amusing satire on this theory.
I can't believe this was missed by so many 23 days ago. Are we all still reading, or numbly waiting for January 20. Maybe it was the mid-holiday timing. Also a shout-out to all other quotespornographers might help. From the #quotesporn tag history: demure, steve, c_hawkthorne, galen and others who have already shared.
Cory Doctorow, Homeland"Everything is different" turned out to be a demand and not a description. It pretended to describe what the new reality was, but instead it demanded that everyone accept the new reality, one where we could be spied on and arrested and even tortured.