Mary Magdalene, St. John's Cathedral in Toruń, Poland,14th century. According to legend, Mary Magdalene became an ascetic who wore no clothes; she was covered only by her long hair. I love the way Mary M and the angels are smiling.Now at the end of her life she is all hair —
A cataract flowing and freezing — and a voice
Breaking loose from the loose red hair,
The secret shroud of her skin:
A voice glittering in the wilderness.
She preaches in the city, she wanders
Late in the evening through shaded squares.
~ Eileen Ni Chuilleanain, St. Mary Magdalene Preaching at Marseille
“A voice glittering in the wilderness” is a beautiful transformation of a “voice crying in the wilderness.” It demonstrates how "poetry is the administration of small surprises."
De profundis clamavi — indeed we spiral around the same classic themes, binding us for millennia.
The music in that first stanza is so enchanting that I didn’t want to diminish it by posting the rest of the poem, which is nowhere as ecstatic.
*
Mary:
And her hair makes a lovely, ruffled dress!
*
HOW GEORGE ELIOT BECAME AN OUTCAST AND WROTE A PROTO-ZIONIST NOVEL
~ “At the height of her fame, while every respectable Victorian household had a copy of The Mill on the Floss in the bookcase, George Eliot became a social outcast.
The novelist, born 200 years ago this weekend, moved into a house near Regent’s Park in 1854 with George Henry Lewes, a married journalist whose wife, Agnes, was living with the founding editor of the Daily Telegraph, Thornton Hunt, and bearing his children. This open marriage was so offensive to public morals that George Eliot, whose real name was Mary Ann Evans, was forced to form her own discreet circle, seeking friends among fringe people—artists, crackpots, penniless intellectuals.
Among those who entered her life at this time was a low-paid curator at the British Museum, a polyglot bachelor from Berlin who had just written the first study in English of the Babylonian Talmud. George Eliot, enraptured by his 60-page monograph, hired Emanuel Oscar Menahem Deutsch to teach her Hebrew once a week. Before long, she fell in love with Deutsch’s lively mind and took to calling him “rabbi”—Hebrew for “my teacher.” He addressed her as ‘Mrs Lewes’.
Between the dusty archivist and the wealthiest self-made woman in England flashed a spark that would change the world and transform the godless Eliot into a Messiah of the Jews. On her bicentenary, it seems to me odd that her political impact should have been almost totally forgotten.
In my new book Genius and Anxiety, I describe Deutsch, on an 1869 trip to the Holy Land, sobbing against the cold remaining stones of King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. On his return he told Eliot, “All my wild yearnings are fulfilled at last.” From this day on he set about convincing his student that the Jews needed to return to the land of their fathers.
They did not have much time left for discussion. Deutsch was suffering from a stomach ache which, under surgery, was found to be caused by a cancerous tumor. Eliot, while writing Middlemarch, visited him at the home of a Marylebone vicar who had taken him in as an act of Christian charity. Eliot begged Deutsch not to end his life prematurely (“like Mary Wollstonecraft”) but to carry on sharing his boundless knowledge of ancient languages and literature as long as possible. Deutsch taught the vicar’s wife beginner’s Arabic, and then set off once more for the Middle East, dying in Alexandria at the age of 43.
George Eliot was devastated. On her way to Paris for a holiday, she informed Lewes that she was germinating a new novel around Deutsch’s ideas. Back home, she pestered his literary executor, Lady Strangford, for his unpublished essays and notes and immersed herself in books about Judaism. She visited synagogue services, impressing the Chief Rabbi with her detailed command of custom and practice.
She called her novel after its Jewish hero, Daniel Deronda. Its heroine, Gwendolyn Harleth, is widely thought to be a self-portrait of George Eliot, secretly in love with an unattainable Jew.
In the novel, when Deronda finally kills off Gwendolyn’s hopes of capturing him, he tells her, “I am going to the East… the idea that I am possessed with is that of restoring a political existence to my people, making them a nation again.” These may be presumed to be the words that George Eliot had heard from her “rabbi” and they quickly set off a firestorm across the Jewish diaspora.
Daniel Deronda, published in 1876, was disparaged by Lewes, who warned that “the Jewish element seems to me likely to satisfy nobody” and by its publisher, John Blackwood, who remarked that “even her magic pen cannot at once make (the Jews) a popular element in a Novel.”
Despite these anxieties, the novel sold in vast quantities and in many languages—German, French, Italian, Dutch, Russian and, significantly, Yiddish, the vernacular of the Jewish Pale of Settlement in Russia. Unauthorized extracts appeared in a Hebrew magazine as early as December 1876.
Five years later, in 1881, a wave of anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia provoked mass emigration to America and the stirrings of a return to the Holy Land, the Daniel Deronda dream.
Leaders of the Zionist movement embraced the novel. Theodor Herzl was seen reading it on the eve of the first Zionist Congress in Basle in 1897. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda reinvented Hebrew as a living language after reading the novel. Chaim Weizmann’s assistant Nahum Sokolow said “Deronda paved the way for Zionism.” Golda Meir had a copy on her shelf. “In terms of its practical effects,” wrote the British historian Paul Johnson, Daniel Deronda “was probably the most influential novel of the 19th century.”
It was to be George Eliot’s final novel. Before her death in 1880, she refused an offer to be buried in Westminster Abbey, whether because of her aversion to organized religion or because of her anger at a society that condemned her for living in sin.
Daniel Deronda is not considered her greatest novel by any means, and some academic critic—notably FR Leavis—suggested cutting out its Jewish theme and republishing it under the title Gwendolyn Harleth. The BBC’s 2002 television adaptation was an Andrew Davies bodice-ripper which centered on the love story and studiously avoided any intimation of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Deronda will always defeat scriptwriters who refuse to acknowledge its Zionism.
George Eliot’s reputation has risen ever higher. She ranks above Dickens and Trollope as the greatest English novelist of her century and is still widely read for pleasure. As for Emanuel Deutsch, he has faded so comprehensively from history that no street or building is named after him in Israel, the nation-state that he envisioned, or in London, the city he lit up with arcane knowledge. Deutsch deserves better—at the very least, a blue plaque in Bloomsbury, on the wall of the British Museum.” ~
https://lithub.com/how-george-eliot-became-a-social-outcast-at-the-height-of-her-fame/?fbclid=IwAR2Vqok30WDUwsWubeuxt2P_wVbnefN0SX3TMmUMXpVMjWUGKC7kBYu9Lvg
“BECAUSE YOU ARE A WOMAN”
It’s not that we really “go” anywhere, but once we are gone, we are gone.
And no, I wasn’t ready.
At home I was taking a special intravenous antibiotic to prevent the return of the deadly bacteria. That’s how I got to work with Home Care workers, including an amazing Filipino nurse, Becky. Though I didn’t tell her about my recurring thoughts about dying, she could see the shape I was in: emaciated to "skin and bones", down to 92 lbs, my feet still swollen, I could barely move. (Just staying in bed for so many days is debilitating; add to this the whole medical trauma.)
I did call Home Care one time (there was a specific reason), and took the opportunity to say, “I have the feeling that I could go any time.” “What makes you say that?” the young woman who answered the phone exclaimed. Sensing no empathy, I dropped the subject and went on to schedule a visit from a shower assistant.
But Becky did have empathy. She seemed to see me in more than medical terms. During her next-to-the-last visit, she leaned close and touched me on the arm. “Don’t worry, Baby,” she said. “You’re gonna make it.” Then she leaned back a bit and said, “And you know why?” She leaned back toward me again: “Because you’re a woman. We are tough.”
It gave me the hope I needed.
*
Thinking about it afterwards, I realized subjective, non-non-scientific nature of that statement. Women do have certain physiological advantages, but men have advantages of their own, including more muscle, stronger bones, and larger blood vessels. But this was not about scientifically established facts. Recovery from a serious condition depends on many variables. One of them is the patient’s state of mind, which in turns depends to a significant degree on the quality of care the patient receives.
(This brings back a sad memory. An MD who is on my Facebook newsfeed wrote about a doomed young boy: “His kind of cancer is perfectly survivable if the patient receives TLC. But he is going to die because his parents don’t live near the hospital, so they farmed him out to relatives who don’t care.”)
But back to the idea that I was going to live because I am a woman. If you google gender differences in pneumonia, it turns out that women do indeed show greater resistance and better recovery. Except that . . . my pneumonia was what I call “strep lung,” a relatively rare but sometimes lethal infection with a special kind of an aggressive streptococcus strain that kills (necrotizes) lung tissue (it can also attack the brain and the heart). Fortunately in the end a thoracic surgeon was consulted, and he decided that only a surgery could clean out the dead (“necrotic”) cells and completely drain the fluid that was drowning my right lung.
Without surgery, with only the antibiotic treatment, as my dear Mary, a former nurse, explained to me over the phone while I was still waiting to see if the surgery was really going to take place, I would have permanent scarring. “You’ll never be able to breathe normally again,” Mary said. Not only that, but, as another experienced hospital nurse eventually told me, patients placed on “conservative treatment” kept getting readmitted. The staff probably never saw a patient as overjoyed at the prospect of surgery as I was.
The fact that the surgery was scheduled for Friday the Thirteenth didn’t bother me. I was able to turn it into a good omen: that was the day of Goddess. Never mind the irrational character of it all: I was willing to clutch at any straw.
And this brings me back to Becky: “Don’t worry, Baby. You’re gonna make it. And you know why? Because you’re a woman.” She said it with great conviction, and that was enough.
Later I thought more about Becky’s politically incorrect statement. We have a cultural ideal of a “real man” — strong, confident, brave, undaunted by circumstances, unfraid to go into battle, protective, loyal to his friends, honorable, resourceful, and so on. All those great things (reminder: we are speaking of the ideal of manhood, not about real life). Now, what about a “real woman”? The phrase doesn’t even exist. Women have trouble enough fighting the negative stereotypes of being supposedly illogical and overly emotional, naturally fearful (not of rapists, but rather of . . . mice), not fit for top positions, prone to gossip and other allegedly feminine vices.
Yet, whether or not Becky truly meant what she said, I noticed that women tend to assume they are in fact “tough.” If they are tough enough to go through pregnancy and childbirth, they are tough indeed. And then comes the most difficult thing in the world: raising that child. Any office job is nothing next to that. Women may feign weakness as a strategy to get a man’s help, and it’s of course true that they are on average not as physically strong. But if women were truly weak, especially emotionally weak, the human species would have become extinct long ago.
If there has been a "feminine ideal," it was that of a woman behind the man, one completely dedicated to the needs of her husband and children. Yes, she's supposed to be beautiful and sweet, even loving — loving toward others, that is, not toward herself. Nurturing the talents of others, but not her own. Still, it's hard to argue against "loving." But strong? Resilient? Capable? An independent thinker?
Regardless of what men may think of them, a lot of women assume that they are “tough.” They compliment other women by calling them “one tough lady.” It is an ideal to live up to. And that’s what I needed: hope and an inspiring ideal.
To Becky I send this telepathic message: “Baby, I made it. Because I'm a woman.”
Mary: THE POWERLESS LEARN TO BE STRONG
Yes, I believe women are strong...tough and resilient, because they have to be. The powerless must be strong in order to survive. Think of Harriet. Or Frederick Douglass, a man, but an enslaved man. The powerlessness of his position demanded strength as a condition of survival. And a woman needs strength not only to accomplish her own survival, but the survival of her children. Mothers in the animal kingdom may have to protect their young from being slain by adult males, sometimes their own sire, sometimes another who wants to replace that sire and his children with his own progeny. Human mothers must far too often do the same, attempting to shield their children from abuse and exploitation. I have both seen this and experienced it. It has been described many times, perhaps most powerfully in the character of Sethe in Morrison's novel Beloved, who faces the most desperate of all choices — to kill her own child to protect it from living the hell of enslavement.
It may seem a contradiction to say powerlessness demands strength for survival, but the weak don't survive oppression, and the long familiarity of women's oppression has made strength and resilience basic conditions for existence, both theirs and their children's. And just as enslavement incubates the strength to resist and destroy it, so does the long history of patriarchy create the struggle, and the strength of the struggle, to be rid of it.
Of course no wins are guaranteed, and each life's story, each generation's history works through this dynamic, again and again, the whole advancing in small increments. Slavery, injustice, inequality, abuse, hatred don't quietly disappear when for instance, they are declared illegal, or distasteful, or evil. They rise up, strike back, stomp down resistance with a heavy boot. Paradoxically, inevitably, this makes the opposition forces, the slaves or the women, stronger, more resourceful, more clever, more determined. It's either that, or die. Suffering is not a good thing, but learning how to endure, how to survive, how to persist and maybe even flourish despite suffering, is both good and valuable. Women do it very very well, and not with a lot of fanfare — just capably and without unnecessary fuss.
Just saying, Becky was right.
Oriana:
I certainly got the impression that Becky meant women don’t make such fuss over all kinds of suffering — physical pain, discomfort, indignities. Of course generalizations put us on shaky ground, but my experience also tells me that women are tough. We don’t expect a woman to act like a small child when it comes to injections and painful medical procedures. We don’t expect her to make a drama of her sickness (and this may work against women’s getting sufficient medical care). I’ve been in the hospital enough times to be able to say that I’ve witnessed patients cry and call Mommy! Mommy! And the moaning and groaning, sometimes screaming. All of those patients were middle-aged men.
Somehow the ideal of “taking it like a man” was forgotten. Oddly, in my observation, when it comes to physical pain, a woman is more likely to “take it like a man.”
Yet there is no ideal of “taking it like a woman.” This is almost crazy, when you consider that past a certain age, a woman is probably a mother — so she has already been through all kinds of ordeals, and didn’t collapse, didn’t run out into the street screaming that she can’t take it anymore. Mothers have to at least pretend they are strong. They need to hold the family together.
The irony is that no ideal equivalent of “being a real man” has been presented to women. Strength, courage, endurance, not losing it, not giving up in the face of defeat — these are all supposed to be “manly” virtues.
But then, as you say, the powerless learn to be strong. There is simply no other option.
(It continues to haunt me, the fact there is no cultural ideal of female strength, while there is such a powerful ideal of a “real man.” Oddly, though, I’ve heard it used mainly as a put-down: “You’re not a real man!” And a strong woman who doesn’t hide her strength is likely to be called a bitch. One way or another, gender has had its oppressive uses. The conversation with Becky was the only instance in my life when being a woman was presented as something of an ideal — or rather, not so much an ideal as a positive fact from which to draw hope.)
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HOW TO BEAT PROCRASTINATION: YOU NEED A SYSTEM
Willpower Doesn’t Work. Systems Do.
What you really need is a system for doing work. A lot of people shy away from routines, systems and frameworks because they want to have “freedom.”
I’m sorry to disappoint you: Freedom is your enemy.
The fact is that, if you want to get things done, you need rules.
What are some things that research proved to be effective?
Self-imposed deadlines.
Accountability systems (commitment with friends, or a coach).
Working/studying in intervals.
Exercising 30 minutes a day.
A healthy diet.
Eliminating distractions.
And most importantly: Internal motivation.
If you combine the right productivity tactics, you have a productivity system.
The deadlines create urgency, accountability will create responsibility, working in intervals improves your focus, exercising will give you more energy, so does a healthy diet, and eliminating distractions will take away the temptations.
But there’s no system that can help you if you don’t have an inner drive. People overcomplicate that concept, but it’s simple: Why do you do what you do?
If you don’t know, make something up.
If you know why you’re doing something, even the most annoying tasks become bearable. It will become a part of the bigger picture.
So, instead of diving into work, take a step back, think about why you do what you do, and then rely on a system supports that. Not rocket science. Just science.” ~
Oriana:
On his podcast, Foroux goes on to explain that systems beat will power because will power is a limited resource. It takes energy We’re forcing ourselves to do something, usually against tremendous inner resistance. You clench your teeth and go into battle. It’s not on automatic, the way a system gradually becomes a habit, a ritual.
“No matter what you do, put a self-imposed deadline on it.”
Why exercise? It elevates the mood, focus, and energy.
Two things have consistently worked for me: 1) baby steps and 2) “I won’t go to bed until I do X.” Yes, there have been times when I got awfully close to bedtime and quite sleepy; nevertheless, I knew that the only way I could maintain my self-esteem was keeping promises to myself. I have been told more than once that I have terrific will and self-discipline, but what I really have is a system.
Baby steps is much easier. You might even call it self-pampering. Some part of the procrastination-inducing task is definitely easy. I tell myself I’ll do just that part. If it’s writing a check, I’ll just do the date and the signature. Of course, once you start working, chances are that you’ll keep on working. Once the first check is written, you move on to the next one — and soon the bills are paid.
That said, it’s perfectly fine to stop after completing the baby step. After all, you’ve kept your promise to yourself. And it really might be the time to go to bed. Be loving to yourself: do what makes sense, but also, be gentle and loving with yourself. And being loving to yourself just happens to mean keeping promises to yourself — but those promises don’t have to involve the whole huge task. Doing a tiny part will do — so tiny, you can’t possibly fail.
(Possibly a related issue: keeping promises to yourself (not that hard if you make them small and manageable) probably both reflects and reinforces self-respect — a term I prefer to the overused “self-esteem.” Will I respect myself if I fail to do X before I go to bed?” I'm not sure that I ever asked myself that question in an explicit way, but it’s a core idea, hidden or not. Keeping promises to others, that goes without saying, but the practice of keeping promises to myself was a turning point.)
I also like counting backwards from five — imitating a rocket launch. It is terrifically energizing. Just try not doing the task after “take-off”!
I also strongly favor doing certain things, like an effective posture exercise, every day. That’s every single day — no exceptions (OK, not if the house is on fire). Again, it’s interesting how doing something fairly difficult every single day builds self-respect.
(And I love it that Fouroux says "Make something up" when it at a loss for motivation. He understands the power of having a Why; then, as Nietzsche said, you can endure almost any how.")
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HITLER’S BIRTHPLACE TO BE MADE INTO A POLICE STATION
On April 20, 1889 at the Braunau am Inn, in Upper Austria Salzburger located at Vorstadt 15, Alois and Klara Hitler brought a son into the world. They named him Adolph.
Little did they know he would grow up to be one of the greatest forces of evil the world has ever known.
The Hitlers moved out of the Braunau am Inn when Adolph was three, but the three-story butter-colored building still stands. It has been the subject of controversy for seven decades.
The building was a meeting place for Nazi loyalists in the 1930s and '40s. After World War II, the building has become an informal pilgrimage site for neo-Nazis and veterans to glorify the murderous dictator.
The building was a thorn in the side to local government and residents to say the least.
For years it was owned by Gerlinde Pommer, a descendant of the original owners. The Austrian government made numerous attempts to purchase it from her, but to no avail. The building has served many purposes, a school, a library, and a makeshift museum.
In 1989, a stone from the building was inscribed with:
"For Peace, Freedom
and Democracy.
Never Again Fascism.
Millions of Dead Remind [us].”
For three decades it was home to an organization that offered support and integration assistance for disabled people. But in 2011, the organization vacated the property because Pommer refused to bring it up to code.In 2017, the fight between the government and Pommer ended with it seizing the property. Authorities said it would get a "thorough architectural remodeling is necessary to permanently prevent the recognition and the symbolism of the building.”
Now, the government intends to turn it into a police station which will surely deter any neo-Nazis from hanging around the building.
Austria has strict anti-Nazi laws that aim to prohibit any potential Nazi revival. The laws state that anyone who denies, belittles, condones or tries to justify the Nazi genocide or other Nazi crimes against humanity shall be punished with imprisonment for one year up to ten years.
In Austria the anti-Nazi laws are so strict one can go to prison for making the Nazi hand salute or saying "Heil Hitler.”
"The future use of the house by the police should send an unmistakable signal that the role of this building as a memorial to the Nazis has been permanently revoked," Austria's Interior Minister, Wolfgang Peschorn, said in a statement.
The house is set to be redesigned following an international architectural competition.” ~
https://www.good.is/austria-is-so-sick-of-nazis-visiting-hitlers-birthplace-theyre-turning-it-into-a-police-station?utm_source=The+Upworthiest&utm_campaign=ea8e1c3c15-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_07_22_07_15_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_78f827fba6-ea8e1c3c15-237919025
HITLER: A RHAPSODY OF HYSTERIA
Edward shared this information: "Hitler's confidant and Harvard Man, Ernst Franz Sedgwick Hanfstaengl aka Putzi, served as Hitler's chauffeur and liked to sing Harvard University Songs for Hitler's edification. Putzi's mother was cousin of American Civil War Union Army general John Sedgwick.
Returning to Germany in 1922, he was living in his native Bavaria when he first heard Hitler speak in a Munich beer hall. Hanfstaengl was so fascinated by Hitler that he soon became one of his most intimate followers, although he did not formally join the Nazi Party until 1931. "What Hitler was able to do to a crowd in 2½ hours will never be repeated in 10,000 years," Hanfstaengl said. "Because of his miraculous throat construction, he was able to create a rhapsody of hysteria. In time, he became the living unknown soldier of Germany.”
Hanfstaengl with Diana Mitford at a 1934 Nuremberg rally.Edward:
An inventive cheerleader for the Harvard football team, Putzi transferred that position to Hitler's Nazi entourage. Among his many creative contributions to the early Nazi movement was turning the Harvard football song—"Fight Harvard! Fight! Fight! Fight!"—into the model for the chant "Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!" of the Nazi mass meetings....
One of the many early Nazis who were slated to be done away with by Hitler's inner circle in the 1930s, Hanfstaengl escaped assassination by fleeing to Switzerland, then on to London and Washington, where he eventually went to work for the OSS—but only after proving he was not a homosexual by resisting the advances of Somerset Maugham's boyfriend, Gerald Haxton, who was apparently sent in by the Feds to see if Putzi could be seduced. When interviewed in the 1970s, Putzi rolled out all the piano tunes that Hitler had most enjoyed hearing him play—from the Harvard fight song to Wagner overtures—and complained how the Roosevelt administration had refused to take his advice on the invasion of Italy in 1943.
More from Edward: A BIG LIE
A big lie (German: große Lüge) is a propaganda technique. The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, about the use of a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously."
THE LETTER OF FREDERICK DOUGLAS TO HIS FORMER OWNER
~ “Fredrick Douglass was born into slavery in 1818. At the age of 10 he was given to the Auld family.
As a child, he worked as a house slave and was able to learn to read and write, and he attempted to teach his fellow slaves the same skills.
At the age of 15, he was given to Thomas Auld, a cruel man who beat and starved his slaves and thwarted any opportunity for them to practice their faith or to learn to read or write.
At the age of 20, after five years of working as a field hand, Douglass summed up the courage to run away. Armed with fake papers and a sailor-suit disguise, he escaped to the north with the help of Anne Murray, an emancipated woman who lived in Baltimore.
He settled in New Bedford in 1838 with his new wife Anne and began to share his story at abolitionist meetings and became a regular lecturer on the topic of slavery.
At the urging of abolitionist William Llyod Garrison, Douglass would write his first autobiography "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave," in 1845 and it would go on to become a bestseller in America and Europe.
In 1848, on the tenth anniversary of his escape, he wrote a letter to his former master, Thomas Auld, that was published in his newspaper "The North Star.”
The letter begins with Douglas refusing to write harsh words about his former master, but clearly letting him know how he feels.
~ I will not therefore manifest ill temper, by calling you hard names. I know you to be a man of some intelligence, and can readily determine the precise estimate which I entertain of your character. I may therefore indulge in language which may seem to others indirect and ambiguous, and yet be quite well understood by yourself. ~
He confessed to Auld the fear he felt the morning he ran away.
~ The hopes which I had treasured up for weeks of a safe and successful escape from your grasp, were powerfully confronted at this last hour by dark clouds of doubt and fear, making my person shake and my bosom to heave with the heavy contest between hope and fear. I have no words to describe to you the deep agony of soul which I experienced on that never-to-be-forgotten morning — for I left by daylight. I was making a leap in the dark. ~
Douglass began to question his enslavement at a young age.
The very first mental effort that I now remember on my part, was an attempt to solve the mystery — why am I a slave? and with this question my youthful mind was troubled for many days, pressing upon me more heavily at times than others. When I saw the slave-driver whip a slave-woman, cut the blood out of her neck, and heard her piteous cries, I went away into the corner of the fence, wept and pondered over the mystery. I had, through some medium, I know not what, got some idea of God, the Creator of all mankind, the black and the white, and that he had made the blacks to serve the whites as slaves. How he could do this and be good, I could not tell. I was not satisfied with this theory, which made God responsible for slavery, for it pained me greatly, and I have wept over it long and often.
Then he realized why ...
~ I was puzzled with this question, till one night while sitting in the kitchen, I heard some of the old slaves talking of their parents having been stolen from Africa by white men, and were sold here as slaves. The whole mystery was solved at once. ~
He told Auld that his decision to run away was based on the fact that, as a black man, he was equal to him and needn't be subservient. A revolutionary claim to make in 1855.
~ I am myself; you are yourself; we are two distinct persons, equal persons. What you are, I am. You are a man, and so am I. God created both, and made us separate beings. I am not by nature bond to you, or you to me. In leaving you, I took nothing but what belonged to me, and in no way lessened your means for obtaining an honest living. Your faculties remained yours, and mine became useful to their rightful owner. ~
He shared the joy he felt making his first dollar as a free man.
~ Three out of the ten years since I left you, I spent as a common laborer on the wharves of New Bedford, Massachusetts. It was there I earned my first free dollar. It was mine. I could spend it as I pleased. I could buy hams or herring with it, without asking any odds of anybody. That was a precious dollar to me. You remember when I used to make seven, or eight, or even nine dollars a week in Baltimore, you would take every cent of it from me every Saturday night, saying that I belonged to you, and my earnings also. I never liked this conduct on your part—to say the best, I thought it a little mean. I would not have served you so. ~
Douglas soon began to work for Garrison who encouraged him to speak out about the horrors of slavery, including those inflicted on him by Auld.
~ After remaining in New Bedford for three years, I met with William Lloyd Garrison, a person of whom you have possibly heard, as he is pretty generally known among slaveholders. He put it into my head that I might make myself serviceable to the cause of the slave, by devoting a portion of my time to telling my own sorrows, and those of other slaves, which had come under my observation. This was the commencement of a higher state of existence than any to which I had ever aspired. I was thrown into society the most pure, enlightened, and benevolent, that the country affords. Among these I have never forgotten you, but have invariably made you the topic of conversation — thus giving you all the notoriety I could do. I need not tell you that the opinion formed of you in these circles is far from being favorable. They have little respect for your honesty, and less for your religion. ~
After having his own children, the terror of slavery seemed to intensify in Douglas' eyes.
~ There are no slaveholders here to rend my heart by snatching them from my arms, or blast a mother's dearest hopes by tearing them from her bosom. These dear children are ours — not to work up into rice, sugar, and tobacco, but to watch over, regard, and protect, and to rear them up in the nurture and admonition of the gospel — to train them up in the paths of wisdom and virtue, and, as far as we can, to make them useful to the world and to themselves. Oh! sir, a slaveholder never appears to me so completely an agent of hell, as when I think of and look upon my dear children. It is then that my feelings rise above my control. ~
He then asks Auld if he still owns his three sisters and grandmother.
~ If my grandmother be still alive, she is of no service to you, for by this time she must be nearly eighty years old — too old to be cared for by one to whom she has ceased to be of service; send her to me at Rochester, or bring her to Philadelphia, and it shall be the crowning happiness of my life to take care of her in her old age. Oh! she was to me a mother and a father, so far as hard toil for my comfort could make her such. Send me my grandmother! that I may watch over and take care of her in her old age. ~
In the most provocative part of the latter, Douglass asks Auld what if would be like for him if the tables had been turned.
~ How, let me ask, would you look upon me, were I, some dark night, in company with a band of hardened villains, to enter the precincts of your elegant dwelling, and seize the person of your own lovely daughter, Amanda, and carry her off from your family, friends, and all the loved ones of her youth — make her my slave — compel her to work, and I take her wages — place her name on my ledger as property — disregard her personal rights — fetter the powers of her immortal soul by denying her the right and privilege of learning to read and write—feed her coarsely—clothe her scantily, and whip her on the naked back occasionally; more, and still more horrible, leave her unprotected — a degraded victim to the brutal lust of fiendish overseers, who would pollute, blight, and blast her fair soul—rob her of all dignity — destroy her virtue, and annihilate in her person all the graces that adorn the character of virtuous womanhood? I ask, how would you regard me, if such were my conduct? ~
He concludes the letter by telling Auld he will use his experience as his slave to attack the institution itself.
~ I intend to make use of you as a weapon with which to assail the system of slavery—as a means of concentrating public attention on the system, and deepening the horror of trafficking in the souls and bodies of men. ... In doing this, I entertain no malice toward you personally. There is no roof under which you would be more safe than mine, and there is nothing in my house which you might need for your comfort, which I would not readily grant. Indeed, I should esteem it a privilege to set you an example as to how mankind ought to treat each other.
I am your fellow-man, but not your slave.
Frederick Douglass
Douglass would later learn that when his grandmother was deemed too old to work, she was given to another owner and was eventually "turned out" or sent to live by herself in a hut in the woods.
Reunion of former slaves, 1917 In 1877, 14 years after the emancipation proclamation, Douglass met with an aging Auld and they could't hold back the tears. After the meeting, the two parted as friends.
"Frederick," said Auld, "I always knew you were too smart to be a slave, and had I been in your place, I should have done as you did."
"I did not run away from you," Douglass replied. "I ran away from slavery.” ~
https://www.good.is/frederick-douglas-let-former-master?utm_source=The+Upworthiest&utm_campaign=ea8e1c3c15-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_07_22_07_15_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_78f827fba6-ea8e1c3c15-237919025
HARRIET (THE MOVIE): FAITH, EPILEPSY, COURAGE
~ “A common failure of movies, especially historical ones, is that they don’t open their drama to intellectual context or to the inner lives of their characters. Kasi Lemmons’s “Harriet” is a bold and accomplished exception: this bio-pic of Harriet Tubman develops her actions as a freer of enslaved people with ardent and detailed attention to the prophetic visions that impel her, and the intellectual and political currents, the widespread collective activity and the ideas that they embody, on which her anti-slavery activities inescapably depend. Yet the effect of this wide-ranging and deep-delving approach to an apparently straightforward and conventional narrative is gloriously paradoxical: far from dispersing the movie’s dramatic arc and energies, it focusses them. Far from diminishing its heroine’s ardent efforts, it magnifies them. In the process, the movie relates Tubman’s story, and the story of her times, with the exalted power of secular scripture.
It’s also, remarkably, a geographical drama, which does more than inscribe its action in distinctive landscapes and cityscapes: “Harriet” renders particular environments with dramatic characteristics, revealing some to be haunted and awaiting an exorcism, others to be sanctified and awaiting a consecration. With such mighty forces looming around and emanating from its protagonist, “Harriet” breaks out of the confines of its chronological span and its dramatic action to advance into the present day. Without dramatic anachronism or frame-breaking, the movie—written by Lemmons and Gregory Allen Howard—addresses more than the monstrous institution of slavery, which was officially ended in 1863. It also addresses the underlying presumption of white supremacy and its ongoing influence in American politics and culture.
“Harriet,” with cinematography by John Toll, begins with an incongruity and an atrocity: a pan shot over a lush and misty green landscape that features brown-gray wooden structures, unnaturally bare and brazenly unadorned—slave quarters, made by white overlords with conspicuous indifference to the barracks-like housing meant merely to warehouse those people they presume to own. There a woman lies, seemingly sleeping, on the bare earth: Araminta (Minty) Ross (Cynthia Erivo), an enslaved black woman who is in something like a trance, or having something like a seizure, in the course of which she has a vision, a memory of her sister being sold and dragged away from the quarters where they lived.
The setting is Bucktown, Maryland, in 1849. Minty has been given permission to marry the free black man John Tubman (Zackary Momoh). Now, after a Sunday service on the porch of the farm that’s led by a black preacher named Reverend Samuel Green (Vondie Curtis-Hall), Minty approaches her enslaver, Edward Brodess (Michael Marunde), with a claim: her mother had been promised freedom by his grandfather, and Minty saw a lawyer to enforce judgment in favor of her own freedom. He responds with rage, declaring that “a favorite slave is like a favorite pig,” says that he’ll never set her free, and threatens to sell her (which would separate her from her husband). Minty owes her relatively favored place in the Brodess farm to her religious fervor—her devoted and answered prayer for the recovery of the family’s scion, Gideon (Joe Alwyn), when he was gravely ill—but the horrific scars on her back and shoulder attest to the atrocities inflicted on her nonetheless.
Guided by her prophetic visions, Minty declares her intent in code, singing by night a song of farewell, with reference to a journey to the Promised Land and an escape from Pharaoh’s yoke, that holds a magnificent symbolic place in the movie; it’s a vision of cultural resistance and its elusive complexities. With its Biblical references, Minty’s song can “pass” in white society as abstractly beautiful and politically neutral, but for those who share her experience it’s a personal declaration, a collective affirmation, an act of revolt.
In the presence of the Brodesses, Rev. Green preached, to the enslaved black people held on that farm, a sermon of obedience and fervent service to their presumptive masters. He is, however, secretly a part of the Underground Railroad, and hides escapees in his church, offers counsel for their northward escape, and recommends them to trusted associates along the way. There’s a wonderful scene in which Minty visits her father (Clarke Peters), also a freeman, by night, to tell him of her plan to escape; he refuses to look at her (it’s not the last time that this will happen) so that, if interrogated by whites, he can truthfully deny that he had seen her. He also confers Minty to the counsel of the preacher, whose public exhortations to meek servility mask his daring activities.
Minty’s escape is harrowingly dramatic. Though it proved successful, the grievous dangers and high risks that she confronts shadow her successes with the menace of tragedy and reveal her efforts as a blend of purpose and chance—of a desperate fatalism that’s redeemed only by a confidence that’s bolstered both by an absolute sense of the justice of her effort as well as by her invocation of her own prophetic power. She uses that power openly, as a sort of deadly weapon against Brodess, as he and his posse pursue her. Once she gets out of Maryland and into Delaware, her flight involves the help of white sympathizers, ones who work with the Underground Railroad and even ones who don’t. Among the activists, one helps her get across the border to Pennsylvania (a Northern state, where slavery was barred) and advises her to head to Philadelphia and contact William Still (Leslie Odom, Jr.), of the Anti-Slavery Society.
. . . Harriet’s freedom, of course, is only the beginning. She intends to return to Maryland and help John and her other family members escape, and she does so in defiance of Still, who fears both for her safety and for the Railroad’s network, which would be jeopardized if she were to be captured. Crucially, the owner of the rooming house where she lives, Marie Buchanon (Janelle Monáe), prepares her for the journey—and for the series of journeys that she’ll undertake to help free others—by giving her a gun. In the course of her return trips to Bucktown, and despite her efforts to bring members of her family to freedom in the North, she endures agonizing separations. Yet her trips, which she undertakes disguised as a man, are crowned with success, and she becomes—anonymously—a subject of local myth and obsession among the white population, who hope to catch and punish “Moses the slave stealer,” the unknown person who has been depleting their properties’ population of slaves.
In “Harriet,” Lemmons examines the practice of slavery—including the financial and social interests of white enslavers. She dramatizes the role of paid black trackers (played by Omar J. Dorsey and Henry Hunter Hall) in slave owners’ efforts to capture escapees. She depicts, in a series of interactions of an appalling violence, the vast price paid by black people for the slightest display of independent action; her vision of a society of unchallenged and unquestioned white supremacy is terrifyingly totalitarian—including in the compromises for mere survival that it imposes on those who are its victims. A crucial turn in the drama is the passage, in 1850, of the Fugitive Slave Act, meant to placate the South, that unleashed a virtual army of bounty hunters in Northern cities and forced Tubman, Still, and other Railroad activists to leave Philadelphia and head farther North. Harriet moves to Canada, then joins Still at a meeting in Auburn, New York, with one of the state’s senators, William Seward, where, in a passionate speech, she rousingly reminds the gathered dignitaries of the physical and moral horrors of slavery and declares her intention of continuing her missions regardless of the dangers they entail.
At that gathering, Still far-sightedly notes that, ultimately, only a civil war would abolish slavery. Likened by many Maryland whites to Moses, Harriet is also compared, by the Brodess matriarch, Eliza (Jennifer Nettles), to Joan of Arc, and the martial metaphor is proved in action. Harriet doesn’t shrink from using the gun that Marie has provided.
(There’s a notable moment when Harriet fords a river and holds the weapon high above her head to keep the powder dry.) What’s more, she envisions the Civil War and warns Gideon of the ruin and death that he will endure in the name of the “vice and vicious idea,” for “the sin of slavery”—and when her vision of war is realized, she’s at its forefront, training a regiment of black soldiers in the Union Army and leading them in a raid at the Combahee River, in South Carolina, that frees seven hundred and fifty people from slavery. It’s a raid that Harriet heralds, to those who would soon be freed, by raising her voice in song.
The wide-ranging and far-reaching vision of “Harriet” endows history with personal passions, deeply rooted in memory and in collective identity and experience, that fuse into an energizing and amplifying power. It’s a drama of a hero whose heroism depends crucially on that of others, of a prophet whose efforts would be empty without others of the faith, a warrior whose battles are part of a war fought by many. It’s one of the rare movies that joins the radical subjectivity of a visionary to the manifold and complex forces of the times, that fuses its story with the story of the writing of history itself, that unites the concepts of political and cultural freedom, that acknowledges the historical centrality of armed self-defense as a practical necessity and a moral right. It emphasizes the unredeemable atrocities and crimes that are minimized or even celebrated by today’s white supremacist, Confederacy nostalgists, and their political allies of convenience or ignorance. The taut dramatic arc of “Harriet” is built from the substance of complex and daring ideas.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/the-stunning-achievement-of-kasi-lemmonss-harriet
Oriana:
A well-written review that isn't superficial and predictable as so many others. What the movie attempts seems almost impossible: a grand historical panorama compressed into a standard (rather than extra-long) feature. It wisely focuses not just on Harriet's singularity, but on the collective action it took to help runaway slaves and fight the institution.
In a while we’ll probably have another Harriet movie, a more drastic one — this one feels relatively subdued, concerned with “good taste” and keeping the scenes suitable for the whole family. But here we approach T.S. Eliot’s question about just how much reality we can bear.
By “subdued” I mean only in terms of the reality of slavery. There are degrees of cruelty that perhaps it’s wise not to show on the screen. But it’s a fast-moving action movie that ideally would take more than one viewing so that we can absorb all that happens.
I hesitate to write my own review for that very reason. There's a complexity here — especially in Harriet's relationship to the main villain, and the sexual overtones I couldn't help but pick up — that, if this happened to be a book, would require a re-reading to make sure you're not misreading.
Let me warn you that the villain is very handsome, and that may have influenced me. But I think I'm correct in saying that reviews neglect the sexual aspect — the underlying sexual tension between a female slave and her male master present in every scene when these two are together. The movie paints a shudder-inducing portrait man *owning* a woman — and the term “own,” like “possess,” can be sexual as well as economic. There’s an emotional tension and ambiguity whenever Harriet and Gideon interact; there’s even physical closeness and heavy breathing. There are charged moments of silence that feel like a gun about to go off. Above all, why doesn’t she kill him when she has both the chance and every reason to do it — not just revenge (she’s presumably too religious for that), but self-defense?
She does go as far as force him, at gunpoint, to get off his gorgeous white horse (symbolism, anyone?) and kneel on the ground. Even on his knees, he keeps on insinuating, “You liked me” and “You will always belong to me” — as if expecting her to agree that he was the love of her life. Her amazing response is to get on his horse and slowly ride away.
Gideon, blond, beautiful, ruthless, determined to show who is the master, could be dismissed as simply a super-villain willing to use any trick to save his life when cornered. But too many earlier scenes signal something much more complicated. For a particularly challenging historical example of something not exactly like it and yet not totally unlike it, think of Sally Hemming and Thomas Jefferson. Such a relationship may not have been entirely unwanted by the “owned” woman, but it was certainly “sinful” and illicit by the social standards — the kind of sex where the woman is perceived as being used rather than loved, and, unlike a prostitute, doesn't even get paid for it.
(And if the abused woman does feel the pull of attraction to her abuser, that’s all the more sinister and pathological. But we must understand that it is a psychological phenomenon that evolved to serve survival, though in the end it can go terribly wrong.)
Regardless of the emotional complexities, for women slavery carried the additional degradation of being forced into unwanted sex (“young girls raped even before their first blood,” as Harriet put it in her speech to the affluent Abolitionists, unaware of what it’s like to be slave). To use a comparison from the movie itself, such a woman is like a “favorite pig.” I can’t think of a more brutal depiction of the subhuman status of slaves.
*
As if we already didn’t get enough strangeness and confusion, according to one reviewer, (also confirmed by the New York Times), the character of Gideon is fictional.
~ “This is not to say that writer-director Lemmons adheres to facts alone in telling her story. As with virtually every other historical depiction ever made for the big screen, Lemmons invents characters, adds dramatic tension and changes real events for emphasis.
While Eliza Ann Brodess, the wife of her owner played in the movie by Jennifer Nettles, was real — her son Gideon (played by Joe Alwyn) was not. Another invented character is the free Philadelphia woman, Marie Buchanan played by Janelle Monaé, who befriends Tubman.” ~
https://www.spokane7.com/blog/2019/nov/08/harriet-dramatized-vision-real-life-hero/
Aside from Harriet herself, Gideon and Marie are the striking characters in the movie! Marie, too, is very beautiful and as feminine as Gideon is masculine. It’s Marie who teaches Harriet how to say, “How do you do?” — a wonderful, startling scene.
And, alas, the name change to “Harriet Tubman” did not actually happen the way the movie tries to present it — as a celebration of the new life of freedom. Minty (the young Harriet) assumed that name at the time of her marriage to John Tubman (a rather unsatisfying character, much weaker her Harriet’s father, for instance, or the black pastor, or just about anyone else in the movie. But I supposed someone had to be the coward.).
Harriet's religious visions play a significant part in the movie. Like Joan of Arc (the parallel is mentioned in the movie), Harriet was indeed guided by her trance visions (epilepsy caused by her childhood head injury?) and heard what she took to be the voice of god. That is barely mentioned by some reviewers, but that may be due to the overwhelming nature of this movie, with so many important motifs.
And we should admit that in our secular times we feel some discomfort with the idea of hearing voices, having visions, and receiving divine guidance. It’s easy to imagine a longer documentary movie with a more religious angle. But “Harriet” doesn’t claim to be a documentary — nor does it need to be. It teaches us about the history of slavery through the means of art.
Also, when Harriet says, "I go to prepare a place for you," we are free to interpret it in modern terms. She was teaching those born unfree how to be free. She was preparing them for a world of freedom, and preparing the world to become such a place. When leaders such as Hariet, Douglass, and MLK are done with their work, their words and accomplishments remain irreversible. Setbacks in the fight for universal human rights cannot erase them. Theirs are the immortal souls that do not leave us, but continue to guide us through the dark.
However, I'm aware of engaging in mental gymnastics here: the religious angle is central to understanding Harriet’s superhuman courage. The movie could easily have achieved greater focus by going more deeply into the religious (and epileptic?) character of Harriet’s “guidance” — but that, let us face it, would have been politically incorrect.
*
I am grateful to Charles for pointing out something else that also gets left out of the reviews: as more and more slaves escape, aided by Abolitionists, the white masters come to feel they are actually victims. They are being robbed of their property! With every escaped slave — and now the emboldened slaves escape in groups, so one morning half the farm’s labor force may be gone — the owners’ net worth diminishes, their income is down, and they are threatened with financial ruin. Marx would love this turning to economics, to the supposedly sacred right to make a profit, to provide a justification of an atrocity. By the way, Marx identified the cause of the Union with the struggle of the working class.
But never mind Marx. While both the money angle and the sexual angle are left out of the reviews of Harriet, it’s the master-slave psychology that remains fascinating to this day. Any decent human being can condemn the selling of people at auction and their use as unpaid labor — with the whip of the overseer being a constant. So yes, the slaves were being treated as cattle, except worse. Worse? Yes, because the very act of making eye contact with another human is no small thing. There is an emotional exchange, and how much humanity you grant to another has a certain power over you. If you brutalize another, you yourself become brutalized.
Perhaps because we all start as tiny and helpless, we can’t help but understand abuse. We understand coercion and cruelty. We may seek escape in denial, but at a frightfully deep level where it might as well be us, we know. Words may not be adequate to deal with this, but a visual presentation is proverbially worth a thousand words. That’s why “Harriet” leaves the viewer stunned.
Harriet Tubman/ Actress Cynthia ErivoVOTING IS EMOTIONAL NOT RATIONAL; IDEOLOGY EXPRESSES PERSONALITY (redux)
~ “One of my father's vivid memories of growing up as a Jewish child in Nazi Germany concerned the horrifying visit of his uncle Walter one evening in 1933. Pale as a ghost and shivering with fear, his uncle entered the house crying, “I’ve been bewitched!” When he calmed down he recounted that on his way home from the train station he came across a Nazi rally. At first he feared the mob but when he gained some confidence that his Aryan appearance would disguise his Jewish identity a strange feeling slowly took hold of him.
When the rally sang the Nazi Party anthem, Walter joined in, mumbling the words to the song. Not long after that he suddenly noticed that he was actually getting swept up in the ecstatic crowd’s powerful emotions. Along with everyone around him, he was shouting “Sieg Heil.” Walter's emotional attraction to the fascist ideology of togetherness overshadowed rationality to the extent that he completely forgot that the ideology he so much wanted to be part of regarded him as one of its most hated enemies.
When we talk about politics, we tend to pretend that voting is ultimately a rational choice. The works of the great rationalists Thomas Hobbes and Immanuel Kant are set texts in political science departments. On the doorstep, most campaigners still win over voters by logical argument, or at least try to, weighing up candidates’ pros and cons on different policies. James Carville’s famous phrase from Bill Clinton’s early 90s campaign, “It’s the economy, stupid!”, reflects a conventional wisdom that voting is primarily about spending money wisely.
In recent years, however, a growing body of evidence has shown that our political behavior is governed more by emotions and less by rationality. The decision to go out and vote, for a start, is in itself an irrational decision. Political scientists refer to it as the “voting paradox”. Voting involves considerable effort, which needs to be offset by a considerable benefit if the decision is to be rational. But each of us separately has virtually zero influence on the election outcome. Through the entire history of democracy there has been no national election anywhere in the world that was determined by a single vote.
Why do we vote nonetheless? The reason is that voting is an emotional and, to some extent, recreational activity. If voting was about influencing the election’s outcome, you would have agreed with your next-door neighbor, who supports the rival party, that you both stay at home. But no. You want to be there to cast your vote, because voting is more about expression than about consequences.
In a research paper that Esteban Klor and I published a few years ago, using data from U.S. state elections, we showed that patterns of state election turnouts are similar to patterns of football match turnouts. You will be more attracted to travel to the stadium and pay for a ticket if the two teams are close competitors and your team has a slightly higher chance of winning. After all, we expect to enjoy the game more when our team wins rather than loses.
Logic and reasoning are universal. We all use the same logic (though some use it more than others), but moral sentiments and emotions are idiosyncratic. They are derived from our personality, which is what makes each of us different. People whose personality tends toward conformity and privacy are more likely to vote Conservative, while those who are drawn toward solidarity and empathy are likely to find Labor to be a more attractive party, and people who reject authority and favor freedom are likely to align themselves with Liberal causes. [note: for the US, translate “Labor” as Democrats and Liberal as Libertarian]
The fact that we continue to debate issues endlessly, and yet never seem to agree, suggests that there is something in ideologies way beyond rationality. This other thing is none other than subjective taste, which, to a large extent, is shaped by our emotional being. "De gustibus non est disputandum," as the Latin idiom goes ("In matters of taste, there can be no disputes"), and, indeed, disputes never help bridge opposing ideologies. In circumstances where reason is at odds with subjective taste, it is the latter that carries the day.
In most cases we tend to pay attention selectively to the evidence that confirms our political orientation while pretending that the conflict between reason and taste does not exist. How many of our friends who regard themselves as right wing will admit that while they are disgusted by the idea of signing an agreement with fanatic ayatollahs, they logically realize that the West would be better off with the Iran agreement? How many of our left-wing friends will concede that while they are emotionally averse to any form of American intervention, the sanctions against Iran [did] seem to work and removing them [is] a dangerous move?
Ideology can distance us from common sense. Trofim Lysenko, Stalin’s chief agronomist, fused “new biology” and socialism in a futile effort to raise crop yields. But his theories only caused famine. Our craving for ideology also means that we like our politicians to be ideologists. Vittorio Caprara and his associates showed that voters seek to vote for politicians who are similar to them in personality. Ideology is often the means by which politicians convey their personality to us. Politicians who downplay ideology are wrongly tagged by us as opportunists who are into politics for themselves and not for the public.
But our desire for ideologists comes with a price, because it creates the wrong incentives for our policy makers. Politicians are much more rational than voters. They are governed primarily by their instinct for political survival. Our need for them to follow an ideology means that they will obey it to appease us. They even believe in their ideology to convince us that they will do so. But this is precisely against our interest as a public.
Born at the end of the nineteenth century with great promises for a better society, ideology at the end of the twentieth century has nothing to show for itself but hundreds of millions of dead, murdered by the three greatest ideologists of all time: Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. By understanding our craving for ideology there is a chance that one day we'll be able to dispense with it. When that happens we shall all be better off.” ~ Eyal Winter
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/feeling-smart/201505/emotional-ideologies
Oriana:
So there it is — “what oft was thought, but never so well expressed” — voting is emotional, not rational — just like religion and the stock market, and probably most things. But we need some rational window-dressing so we don’t feel we’re just slaves of passion.
“Voters seek to vote for politicians who are similar to them in personality. Ideology is often the means by which politicians convey their personality to us” — this statement both astonishes me and evokes a deep and humble “yes.” Yes, of course intellectuals can’t help but be drawn to the multilingual Mayor Pete. And yet . . . they realize that most voters are not multilingual intellectuals, and since the goal is to oust the incumbent, they have just enough rationality not to waste their vote on a candidate who doesn't have a broad appeal.
For me, there is only one issue which would be a deal breaker: I would never vote for an anti-choice candidate. But then almost all Democratic candidates are pro-choice, so I never had to face the potential dilemma of liking an anti-choice candidate. I tend to loathe them as persons — along several dimensions, not just their willingness to force a woman to bear an unwanted child.
Come to think of it, preaching trickle-down economics would be another deal breaker. If I examined more issues, I might find more personal deal breakers. Flag waving and bible thumping? No. Insulting democratic leaders while fawning on murderous
That makes it sound as if issues were at the center after all. And yet . . . could my stand on various issues be basically an expression of my personality? My compassion, my love of animals and the beauty of nature, the pleasure I take in doing something nurturing — and my hatred of bullies, of little Hitlers, not to mention the big ones . . .
But wait — those who are at the opposite end of the political spectrum also claim to be compassionate, kind, fair-minded, respectful of women and minorities, and so on. It’s all terribly complex, and sometimes it drives me to a desperate hope that we don’t kill one another over what divides us while missing what unites us. The chilling view that one third of the population would gladly kill another third of the population, while the remaining third would merely watch wouldn’t make us shudder if we felt this were impossible.
You may say that surely it IS impossible. But note that the South still hasn’t fully conceded its defeat in the Civil War. The “noble cause”? The alleged kindness of slave owners? Those absurd arguments are still as endless as the debates over the real versus merely symbolic presence of Christ in the wafer. And why are there still Nazis, in Germany too, flying the confederate flag as a code for white supremacy? Why is there always significant popular support for murderous dictators, posing with little children in their lap (some tricks seem eternal)? Why is it so easy for psychopaths to appeal to the masses? Note the past and present popularity of mafia movies — is the worship of unrestrained power a natural consequence of being imprinted on fictional heroes who solve all problems by using violence? Is it the “toxic masculinity”? Is it the authoritarian, exclusionary religions? Seeing a multitude of articles and whole books devoted to such riddles has been one of the greatest surprises of our times.
Is rejecting someone’s values the same as disliking their whole personality? Exceptions can be quoted: this or that long-term couple with opposite political views. We know that people can make the effort to recognize the good aspects of a person who believes differently. Who doesn’t agree with the saying, “Nobody’s perfect”? If a relationship (or family) is sacred, people can “agree to disagree” and decide never to discuss politics rather than risk destroying the many years of the work of love they put into building that which unites them. Likewise, sometimes we keep silent about our opposing views because it may be more important just to get along for a brief duration. Do not annoy the plumber even if he’s ranting against immigrants while fixing a leak.
So yes, we have the ability to restrain ourselves and be rational when it comes to discussing or not discussing politics. Voting? That’s more sensitive, involving our self-expression, which has something to do with how we experience the very essence of our being. “I vote therefore I am”? Apparently no economist believes that voting is rational, so we might as well seriously consider the proposition that voting is self-expressive.
A friend once said, “People come in different flavors.” It’s something we have to live with. It feels good (sometimes even euphoric) to be around people who agree with you, but — with only one team, there’d be no game. If we all agreed on everything, we might be blind to some part of reality that escapes our current viewpoint. But in fact, the discussions of issues never end — but then all our truths are only partial truths.
Believing or not believing in god, being a compliant patient rather than the sort who researches health topics and trusts her own body, our reactions to peer and sales pressure, the choices we make while dating — we want to believe we are rational, but deep down it may be mostly a matter of personality. Or call it the unconscious. Or call it emotions.
We love, we hate, we want our side to win. But while some want to win at any price, others are more restrained. And call it just my personality, but I believe that that restraint does make a difference, and humanity has, in the main, moved forward in its recognition of the right to be different without getting killed because of it.
Or so I think, while making no pretense to being rational rather than emotional. At best I am both, but I realize that in cases of conflict, emotions have a greater chance — they'll change our thinking to conform with our feelings. Descartes was wrong when he said, “I think therefore I am.” Our sense of continuous existence comes from our body. Can we even separate thinking from feeling? The simple — but not simplistic — answer is No.
British fascists in London, 1937“If, despite everything, I would not wish to live in the nineteenth century, because then I would not have the consciousness which I still find difficult to name, but which embraces humanity as a whole, as a unit, as predestination, then let’s put an end to this pessimistic chatter about regression or the circle of eternal return.” ~ Czeslaw Milosz
Earthrise, Apollo 11
We cannot cure existential anxiety, but we can show that there is no necessity to have big ideas worth dying for in order to find small pleasures worth living for. Some days, or late nights, I think we do this a bit better than we once did. Other days I think that the endless cycle of anxiety, of needless panic and false promises, will win. It is, perhaps, my chief remaining worry.” ~ Adam Gopnik, “Four Types of Anxiety and How to Cure Them”
Oriana:
In my youth, up to my late twenties, I longed to live for a great idea. Even later, reading a biography of Lenin, I felt a twinge of envy: he lived for a great idea. It’s been quite a journey to discover how flawed great ideas are, how the good in them can’t be separated from the bad and the true from the false (I don’t want to go here into how even good ideas can turn murderous — volumes have been devoted to showing how a revolution eats its own children). This may sound ant-climactic, but maturity made me doubt “great ideas” and instead brought gratitude for small pleasures.
My teenage self would be appalled reading this “confession.” What? Instead of serving some great ideal I am praising small pleasures? To that young self I’d reply that simply enjoying life IS a great ideal. Happiness is a great ideal, rather than suffering (but try telling that to an ex-Catholic, imprinted on the idea that suffering is good for you and makes you stronger; Nietzsche too has much to answer for).
Before I discovered poetry as my vocation, living for a great social idea or ideal was my kind of paradise. Sure, I knew history and therefore had more than an inkling that those were all false promises, unworkable utopias. Still, the promise, the hope — the sunlit morning of the future.
But dying, and especially killing, for an abstraction — those were rather appalling from the start, particularly the readiness to kill. But again the full force of that atrocity hit me only as maturity deepened, and with it the ability to process more paradox and complexity of reality. And yet I was haunted by my knowledge that so many fine idealists were willing to die for Communism, like saints ready to become martyrs for their faith. Even disillusioned former Communists (e.g. Aleksander Wat, a Polish poet and writer, a friend of Milosz) would admit that they never met such dedicated, brave people as their party colleagues during the twenties and thirties.
The Communist party had charisma, just as early Christianity had charisma. The similarities between the two movements have been pointed out many times.
Pushed to the extreme, idealism kills. And yet youthful hunger for idealism is not only understandable; it is unstoppable. It’s hard to swallow the diminished, selfish-sounding notion that happiness is enough. When I heard an older friend say, “I just want to enjoy life,” I thought I’d throw up.
And yet in fact happiness is also an ideal. It can take a conversion; your whole worldview changes (as when I decided not to be depressed anymore). It takes humility: think small. It takes a certain amount of practice: do less.
There is no universal “secret to happiness.” Happiness is personal, non-rational, eccentric, idiosyncratic. Sometimes it comes from hard work; at other times it comes from relaxing into the senses as completely as possible. It can come from rendering a small kindness to a neighbor — from being useful in the most humble way.
Let me repeat: happiness too is an ideal. It’s worth living for. Hearing a bird chirp in the backyard. Watching the shift in the shadows of trees and houses. Simple, ordinary, daily happiness — who knew?
And being happy helps you make others happy — which was the “great idea” to start with.
The Nasir Al Mulk Mosque in Shiraz, Iran. The Shia Muslims wait for the Hidden Imam, the Mahdi, who will come at the end of time. 15% of the world's Muslims are Shia.*
“Ideologies are substitutes for true knowledge, and ideologues are always dangerous when they come to power, because a simple-minded I-know-it-all approach is no match for the complexity of existence.” ~ Jordan B. Peterson
Oriana:
I’m not a fan of Jordan Peterson, but he started out as a student of ideologies, and he got that right: all ideologies are simplistic and “no match for the complexity of existence.”
Lenin, 1919, making a gramophone recordingending on beauty:
I have come into this world to see this:
the sword drop from men's hands even at the height
of their arc of rage
because we have finally realized there is just one flesh
we can wound
and it is our
Beloved’s.
~ Hafiz
(image: the tomb of Hafiz in Shiraz, Iran)
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