Calcite crystal from Ireland — makes me think of an angel*
PARADISE ANONYMOUS
To me the Archangel came
not with a lily but a branch of flame.
In bed he covered me with wings,
so soft I thought I’d drown.
If I roll over, I said, your wing
could break. He said those wings
were of made of wishing on a star,
an astral amalgam.
Amalgam! My knees go weak
when I wade into liquid syllables.
Gabriel rustled in my sleep:
God makes love all the time,
his only interest is sex,
that’s what comes of being immortal.
We have dying so we can transcend
the body’s umber aftermath.
In memory of me, Gabriel said,
wear a silk slip like an embrace.
What matters in the end, he said,
is delinquent underwear —
the only heaven you will have
is here, unless you make it hell.
Black on black fire like the ocean’s
skin at night, I slip into more slips
than dresses now. I wear heaven
in dreams and awake. O little town
of Paradise, with streets of beaten gold,
how soft we let thee go.
~ Oriana
This poem was inspired by a story I heard on NPR, quoting a woman who claimed to have had biblical knowledge of Archangel Gabriel, and of Raphael as well, though Raphael didn't visit as often.
Titian: AnnunciationThe woman who is the speaker in Paradise Anonymous (not affiliated with 12-step organizations) was probably inspired by Genesis 6, which states: “’the sons of God’ [bene ha-elohim, sons of the gods] saw that the daughters of man were beautiful,” and eventually had offspring with them, who were Giants, or “Nephilim.” Some early theologians believed that those wayward “sons of God” were the fallen angels.
~ And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. ~ Genesis 6:1–4, KJV
But that’s not what Paradise Anonymous is about. It’s rather about the speaker’s coming to understand that the only heaven is right here if only we reach for it: the slippery smoothness of silk, the sheen of the ocean at night, and other pleasures of this world.
Mary:
Delinquent underwear!!!!
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My favorite lines in "Paradise Anonymous" are "not with a lily but a branch of flame" and "God makes love all the time." The first replaces the lily, symbol of innocence and sexual purity, with that branch of flame, the living motion of something temporary consumed by passion and desire, the static image of the lily replaced with the lively beauty of flame. Both lily and branch are temporary, but their consummations are profoundly different: the lily will wither and rot, the branch be transmuted into ash.
The idea of god making love all the time is so different from the usual Western tradition of god as wise old man, father, king, tyrant, that it surprises and delights. A god in love with creation is a very different sort, and demands a very different assessment of this life and this world...not a vale of sorrow, not something to deny and devalue, but a paradise awaiting your recognition, an invitation to a joyous dance, to an affirmation of this life, this flesh, the beauty and pleasures of what is possible now---not postponed to some imaginary place after death.
And the poem also invites us to see ourselves and our world as beautiful and wonderful not despite being temporary, but because they are temporary....the piercing beauty of the blossom all the sweeter because its life is short.
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As a side note, it's interesting that here the days of man are said to be one hundred and twenty years (which does seem to be our maximum lifespan) rather than threescore and ten. But then the religious worldview tends to present the past as better than what followed. I tend to side with Jeremy Sherman, who said, "We didn't fall from grace. We rose from slime."
The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, sculpture by Daniel Chester French*
THE NON-SECRETS OF PHILIP ROTH
~ From the start, critics complained about the ostensible sameness of Roth’s books, their narcissism and narrowness—or, as he himself put it, comparing his own work to his father’s conversation, “Family, family, family, Newark, Newark, Newark, Jew, Jew, Jew.” The critic Irving Howe cracked that the “cruelest thing anyone can do with ‘Portnoy’s Complaint’ is to read it twice.”
Howe had it all wrong. Roth turned self-obsession into art. Over time, he took on vast themes—love, lust, loneliness, marriage, masculinity, ambition, community, solitude, loyalty, betrayal, patriotism, rebellion, piety, disgrace, the body, the imagination, American history, mortality, the relentless mistakes of life—and he did so in a variety of forms: comedy, parody, romance, conventional narrative, postmodernism, autofiction.
In each performance of a self, Roth captured a distinct sound and consciousness. The tonal and stylistic road traveled from Roth’s “Goodbye, Columbus” to his “Sabbath’s Theater” is as long as that from Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” to his “Interstellar Space.” There are books among Roth’s thirty-one that I have no plans to revisit—“Letting Go,” “Deception,” “The Humbling”—but in nearly fifty years of reading him I’ve never been bored.
I got to know Roth in the nineteen-nineties, when I interviewed him for this magazine around the time he published “The Human Stain.” To be in his presence was an exhilarating, though hardly relaxing, experience. He was unnervingly present, a condor on a branch, unblinking, alive to everything: the best detail in your story, the slackest points in your argument. His intelligence was immense, his performances and imitations wildly funny. But, as Bailey’s book makes plain, he could no more outwit life than the rest of us can.
He was often undone—by depression, by his two marriages, by the loneliness and intensity of his commitment to the work. He could be tender and manipulative, generous and insistently selfish. As Roth’s rages, resentments, and cruelties appear through the pages, it’s natural to wonder why he provided Bailey so much access. At the same time, no biographer could surpass the unstinting self-indictments of Roth’s fictional alter egos.
Nobody will tackle an eight-hundred-page biography of a novelist without having read at least some of the novels. And readers will know that Roth did not lead a mythopoetic life. He fought no wars, led no political movements. While two-thirds of European Jewry was being destroyed in the camps, Roth, who was born in 1933, grew up safe, loved, and lucky in Essex County. Still, Bailey’s research is often revealing and vivid. His description of mid-century Jewish Newark echoes with the sounds of the cafeterias and the butcher shops, women playing mah-jongg at picnics in the park, weary fathers heading off to the shvitz on Mercer Street, where they gossiped and drank amid a “concerto of farts.”
“He who is loved by his parents is a conquistador,” Roth used to say, and he was adored by his parents, though both could be daunting to the young Philip. Herman Roth sold insurance; Bess ruled the family’s modest house, on Summit Avenue, in a neighborhood of European Jewish immigrants, their children and grandchildren. There was little money, very few books.
What religious instruction Philip and his brother, Sandy, received had scant meaning to them. “I didn’t know what we were reading or hearing: Abraham, Isaac—what is this stuff?,” Roth, an ardent secularist, recounted to Bailey, in one of their many interviews. “They lived in tents. I couldn’t figure this out; Jews in the Weequahic section, they didn’t live in tents.” The community’s aspirations were conventional. Bailey reports that Weequahic High at the time graduated more doctors, lawyers, dentists, and accountants than practically any other school in the country.
Roth was not an academic prodigy; his teachers sensed his intelligence but they were not overawed by his classroom performance. Yet he had nascent literary interests. Early on, Roth enjoyed Norman Corwin’s “On a Note of Triumph,” Howard Fast’s “Citizen Tom Paine,” and Thomas Wolfe’s “Look Homeward, Angel.” At Bucknell, a liberal-arts college in Pennsylvania, he moved on to Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis, Ring Lardner, and Erskine Caldwell. Roth was always a performer. As a student actor, he played Happy Loman in “Death of a Salesman,” the shepherd in “Oedipus Rex,” and the ragpicker in “The Madwoman of Chaillot.” After reading Thomas Mann’s novella “Mario and the Magician” and getting a chance to lecture in a lit-crit course, Roth decided that he’d become a professor. Maybe he’d write, too.
After Bucknell, he spent a year as a graduate student in English at the University of Chicago, where he was fired up by a course about America’s Lost Generation. Like any novice, Roth learned to write through imitation. His first published story, “The Day It Snowed,” was so thoroughly Truman Capote that, he later remarked, he made “Capote look like a longshoreman.”
In 1955, Roth enlisted in the Army rather than wait for the draft. He was sent to Fort Dix, where life had its downsides—he ruined his back lugging a kettle of potatoes. The upside was that he found time to write and to discover his subject and his voice.
After a medical discharge from the Army, Roth turned down a job as a fact checker at The New Yorker and accepted one as an instructor at the University of Chicago, where, as he later recounted, he “proceeded almost immediately to fuck up my life for the next ten years.” In Chicago, Roth met Margaret (Maggie) Martinson, a divorcée with two children who came from a small Midwestern town and whose tumultuous life (an alcoholic father, a brute of an ex-husband) fascinated him with its “goyish chaos” and provided material for his fiction.
Describing things near at hand with unsparing candor was always the project, but it could arouse parochial furies. In March, 1959, The New Yorker published Roth’s story “Defender of the Faith,” in which a Jewish enlisted man tries to manipulate a Jewish sergeant into giving him special treatment out of ethnic kinship. Various rabbis and Jewish community leaders accused Roth of cultural treason. “What is being done to silence this man?” Emanuel Rackman, the president of the Rabbinical Council of America, wrote. “Medieval Jews would have known what to do with him.”
Later that year, Roth’s first book appeared, the collection “Goodbye, Columbus.” The narrator’s love interest in the title novella, Brenda Patimkin, was based on Maxine Groffsky, a girlfriend of Roth’s from Maplewood, New Jersey, and later a well-known editor and literary agent. The Patimkin family is portrayed as comically assimilated, living a prosperous Short Hills existence of country clubs and rhinoplasty. The Groffsky family was unamused, and grumbled about taking legal action.
Twenty-five years later, Roth attended a talk given by the Israeli statesman Abba Eban, who had supported negotiations with the Palestinians. Afterward, Roth ran into Irene Groffsky, Maxine’s sister, who angrily told Roth that he had ruined her family’s life. Roth told her, “Irene, if you can find it in your heart to forgive Yasir Arafat, surely you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”
“Life is very short, and freedom is very precious,” Roth wrote from Fort Dix to a friend. “When I get out I’m going to live right up to the hilt, and make these brief years extravagant as hell. I’m going to go where I want and do what I want to do—if I can ever figure out what that is—and BE, thoroughly BE.” He was already determined to live unfettered by excessive obligations.
His relationship with Martinson, stormy from the start, was formalized by marriage only in 1959, when she told him that she was pregnant, and that if he married her she would agree to an abortion. They were living in New York at the time, and she later confessed that she had gone to Tompkins Square Park, in the East Village, paid a pregnant woman to urinate in a cup, and then taken the sample to a pharmacist. As Roth said in a divorce affidavit, “I was completely stunned on learning of her deception. Our marriage had been three years of constant nagging and irritation, and now I learned that the marriage itself was based on a grotesque lie.”
These marital miseries are duly catalogued in Bailey’s biography. During a trip to Italy, Martinson gets behind the wheel of a Renault and speeds along a mountainside road outside of Siena. Suddenly, like Nicole in “Tender Is the Night,” she declares, “I’m going to kill both of us!” Roth grabs the wheel, and they continue on to the Rhône Valley. Roth started seeing Hans Kleinschmidt, an eccentric name-dropping psychoanalyst, three or four days a week. Asked later how he could justify the expense ($27.50 a session), Roth said, “It kept me from killing my first wife.” He told Kleinschmidt that he fantasized about dropping into the Hoffritz store on Madison Avenue and buying a knife. “Philip, you didn’t like the Army that much,” Kleinschmidt told him. “How will you enjoy prison?”
Bailey also tots up Roth’s extramarital forays. They are numerous. Roth has a fling with Alice Denham, Playboy’s Miss July, 1956, who, as her cheerfully unapologetic memoir “Sleeping with Bad Boys” revealed, also slept with Nelson Algren, James Jones, Joseph Heller, and William Gaddis. “Manhattan was a river of men flowing past my door, and when I was thirsty I drank,” she wrote. So did Roth. Roth and Martinson finally split up in 1963.
Roth’s domestic dramas ran parallel to his early creative achievements and struggles. Bellow greeted “Goodbye, Columbus” with an uncharacteristically rapturous review: “Unlike those of us who came howling into the world, blind and bare, Mr. Roth appears with nails, hair, and teeth, speaking coherently.” Most important, he counselled Roth to ignore pious critics who would have him write the Jewish equivalent of “socialist realism” and “public-relations releases”; instead, he urged Roth “to ignore all objections and to continue on his present course.”
By 1967, Roth started publishing sections of what would become “Portnoy’s Complaint” in Esquire, Partisan Review, and New American Review. Farcical and unbound, Roth seemed revived. As those pieces were appearing, Kleinschmidt published a journal article in which he describes the case of a “successful Southern playwright” with an overbearing mother: “His rebellion was sexualized, leading to compulsive masturbation which provided an outlet for a myriad of hostile fantasies. These same masturbatory fantasies he both acted out and channeled into his writing.”
Roth, who was obviously Kleinschmidt’s “playwright,” saw the article just after finishing the novel. He spent multiple sessions berating Kleinschmidt for this “psychoanalytic cartoon” and yet continued his analysis with him for years. Which isn’t to say that he developed a conventional temperament. When Roth learned, in 1968, that Martinson had been killed in a car crash, his grief was less than crippling. (The damaged, vengeful protagonist of his novel “When She Was Good,” published the previous year, was based on her.) In the taxi on the way to the service at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel, on Madison Avenue, the driver turned to him and said, “Got the good news early, huh?” Roth, Bailey writes, “realized he’d been whistling the entire ride.”
The publication of “Portnoy’s Complaint,” the following year, made him wealthy, celebrated, and notorious. People stopped him in the streets and said, “Hey, Portnoy, leave it alone!” The liver jokes were funny the first five thousand times, he used to say. “Let Nathan see what it is to be lifted from obscurity,” Lonoff had told his wife. “Let him not come hammering at our door to tell us that he wasn’t warned.” Roth could not stand this lurid brand of notoriety. Years later, he told friends that he wished he’d never published “Portnoy’s Complaint.”
He escaped the city and eventually bought an eighteenth-century farmhouse in the town of Warren, Connecticut, named it the Fiction Factory, and, for decades to come, set about his daily labors in a studio he had built overlooking a meadow. His habits were those of a monk: spartan diet and furnishings, regular exercise, crew-neck sweaters, sensible shoes, and strict hours. If he was not in his studio by nine, he would think, “Malamud has already been at it for two hours.”
At his desk, Roth doubled down. Just as he had refused to bend to the rabbis after “Defender of the Faith,” he refused all demands to sanitize his work after “Portnoy.” He told Bellow of his early work, “I kept being virtuous, and virtuous in ways that were destroying me. And when I let the repellent in, I found that I was alive on my own terms.”
If Roth exposed other people’s stories, he also exposed his own. In 1988, he published his first memoir, “The Facts,” about his upbringing in Newark, his disastrous first marriage, and his early years as a writer, when he was being attacked as a self-hating Jew. “Patrimony,” three years later, was an exquisite and unsparing account of his father’s decline. To characterize these books as defensive fortifications, moats dug to keep the biographers at bay, is to trivialize them. And yet it was at about this time that the biographical anxiety began to worm its way into Roth’s concerns.
An early sense of mortality was surely a part of it. Roth spent much of his life in pain. Many spinal surgeries followed his mishap in the Army. Diagnosed with heart disease before he was fifty, Roth lived with an acute sense of imminent catastrophe. In 1989, when he was fifty-six, he was swimming laps in his pool and was overwhelmed by chest pain. The next day, he had quintuple-bypass surgery.
“I would smile to myself in the hospital bed at night,” he wrote, “envisioning my heart as a tiny infant suckling itself on this blood coursing unobstructed now through the newly attached arteries borrowed from my leg.” After the operation, he and Claire Bloom formalized their relationship by getting married, and he embarked on one of the great late-career outbursts of creativity in the history of American literature, announced by “Operation Shylock” (1993) and “Sabbath’s Theater” (1995). The latter is probably the most profane of Roth’s novels; it was also his favorite, the book in which he felt himself to be utterly free and at his best. “Céline is my Proust,” he used to say; “Sabbath’s Theater” combines the transgressive and the elegiac, and both registers have the depth of love.
Roth’s mental health, like his physical health, proved less than stable. There were harrowing periods of depression; a Halcion-induced breakdown; stays at a psychiatric hospital.
Fortunately, Roth was blessed with many loyal friends. For a while, one was Ross Miller, an English professor at the University of Connecticut. Roth had received a letter about his writing from Miller, and was so taken with its intelligence that he sent the scholar a work in progress and invited him to his house to discuss it. They started seeing each other frequently. They talked about literature, women, sports, and politics.
One day, while walking along the street in Chicago, Roth told Miller to go on without him; he was headed to a high-rise on Lake Shore Drive. His brother, Sandy, lived there, and Roth was going to jump off the roof. Miller told Roth that, if he intended to kill himself, he’d have to do it in front of him. The crisis passed. The friendship deepened.
Living alone and on his own terms, Roth took on increasingly political and historical themes. “American Pastoral” (1997) was a book about the way history, in this case, the chaos of the sixties and the Vietnam War, descends without notice on an upstanding citizen of a small New Jersey town. The book launched a series of novels—“I Married a Communist,” “The Human Stain,” “The Plot Against America”—set in specifically imagined twentieth-century American moments, and, taken together, they deepened Roth’s already immense reputation.
(Commercially, he would never come close to equaling the sales of “Portnoy’s Complaint.”)
“Everyman,” published in 2006, is a compact, Chekhovian tour de force on mortality, and Roth, with varying success, stayed in that wintry mode until the end of his career.
[In 2009] Roth retired from writing. He had seen others, including his hero Bellow, go on a book or two too long. And so he walked away from it all, quoting Joe Louis: “I did the best I could with what I had.” Roth learned to take it easy. He listened to music, reread old favorites, visited museums, took afternoon naps, and watched baseball in the evening. He was less competitive now. He publicly praised, among others, Nell Irvin Painter, Sean Wilentz, Louise Erdrich, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Nicole Krauss, Zadie Smith, and Teju Cole. He took victory laps at birthday celebrations and symposiums on his work. He accepted a medal from Barack Obama. In 2014, he was even awarded an honorary degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary. The headline the next day in The Forward read “Philip Roth, Once Outcast, Joins Jewish Fold.” There were, for a while, love affairs with much younger women, even talk of having a child. Then he retired from sex, too.
For Roth, outrage was part of art. He would hold back neither the pure nor the perverse. His decision, just twenty years after the Holocaust, to portray Jews in all their human variety, without sanctimony or hesitation, proved gravely offensive to many. The reaction to “Portnoy’s Complaint,” a decade later, was of another order. “This is the book for which all anti-Semites have been praying,” Gershom Scholem, the eminent scholar of Jewish history and mysticism, wrote. “I daresay that with the next turn of history, which will not be long delayed, this book will make all of us defendants at court.” Such chastisement did not discourage Roth from finding literary sustenance in sin. His work was not about rectitude or virtue. He looked away from nothing, least of all in himself.
In “Sabbath’s Theater,” the protagonist, Mickey Sabbath, is told by his wife, “You’re as sick as your secrets.” It doesn’t sit well with him:
It was not for the first time that he was hearing this pointless, shallow, idiotic maxim. “Wrong,” he told her. . . . “You’re as adventurous as your secrets, as abhorrent as your secrets, as lonely as your secrets, as alluring as your secrets, as courageous as your secrets, as vacuous as your secrets, as lost as your secrets.”
To the end, this was something of a mantra for Roth, even as he arranged, with his sedulous biographer, to have so few secrets left. On Memorial Day, 2018, I watched as Roth was buried in a small graveyard on the campus of Bard College, in upstate New York. Roth, who thought of religion as fairy tales and illusion, left strict instructions: no Kaddish, no God, no speeches. Roth had asked a range of friends to read passages from his novels. The mourners heard only the language of Roth and then shoveled dirt into his grave until it was full. ~
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/29/the-secrets-philip-roth-didnt-keep
Oriana:
We forgive Roth everything because he wrote well. He was a dying animal with a sense of humor and an awareness of life’s inexhaustible complexity. And he refused to idealize his Jewish (or any other) characters. We are all dying animals, admirable and ridiculous in an entertaining variety of ways.
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“…[writing] like Proust, but done on the run…like a Running Proust”—Jack Kerouac
Aerial view of Barcelona
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PUTIN: RUSSIA’S WEAK STRONGMAN
For 21 years, Vladimir Putin has reigned supreme over Russian politics. A skillful manipulator of public opinion, he wields the blunt force of repression against opponents at home and the sharp power of cyber-operations and espionage campaigns against enemies abroad.
Increasingly, Western analysts and officials portray him as all-powerful, a ruthless former KGB man who imposes his will on Russia from behind dark sunglasses. This narrative, which the Kremlin goes out of its way to reinforce, is tempting to believe. Putin has jailed the closest thing he has to a political rival—the opposition leader Alexei Navalny—and crushed a wave of protests by Navalny’s supporters. Putin’s intelligence agencies brazenly hacked the U.S. government, and his troops are gradually eroding U.S. influence everywhere from Libya to Syria to Ukraine.
Putin was buoyed by an oil-fueled economic boom that sharply raised living standards in his first decade in office and a wave of nationalist sentiment following the annexation of Crimea in his second. As the sheen on these achievements has begun to wear off, however, Putin in his third decade in office has increasingly come to rely on repression to neutralize opponents both big and small. This trend will likely intensify as Russia’s problems mount, accelerating a cycle of political violence and economic malaise that could stymie Putin’s great-power ambitions and test his political skill.
The Perils of Putinology
The narrative of Putin as all-powerful is sustained in part by analysts who believe that to understand autocracy, one must understand the autocrat. Putinologists scour the Russian leader’s background, his career path, and even his reading choices for clues to his policies. Their analysis makes for a compelling story of Putin’s Russia, but it does not explain all that much. After all, Putin was just as much an ex-KGB man in the early years of this century, when he favored liberal economic policies and better relations with the West, as he is today, with his strident anti-Western stance. More important, Russian politics follow patterns common to a subset of authoritarian regimes that political scientists call “personalist autocracies.”
Personalist autocracies are, as the name suggests, run by lone individuals. They frequently have political parties, legislatures, and influential militaries, but power over important personnel or policy decisions always resides with one person at the top. Contemporary examples of this kind of regime include Viktor Orban’s in Hungary, Rodrigo Duterte’s in the Philippines, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s in Turkey, and Nicolás Maduro’s in Venezuela. The former Soviet space has proved especially hospitable to personalist autocrats: such leaders currently rule Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Globally, personalist autocracies are now the most common type of autocracy, outnumbering both one-party regimes, such as those in Singapore and Vietnam, and military regimes, such as Myanmar’s.
Personalist autocracies exhibit a host of pathologies that are familiar to Russia watchers. They have higher levels of corruption than one-party or military autocracies and slower economic growth, greater repression, and less stable policies. Rulers in personalist autocracies also have a common toolkit: they stoke anti-Western sentiment to rally their base, distort the economy to benefit cronies, target political opponents using the legal system, and expand executive power at the expense of other institutions. Often, they rely on an informal inner circle of decision-makers that narrows over time and appoint loyalists or family members to critical positions in government. They create new security organizations that report directly to them and appeal to popular support rather than free and fair elections to legitimate their authority.
These tendencies are readily explicable when one considers what personalist autocrats stand to lose if they leave office. The leaders of military dictatorships can retreat to the barracks, and the heads of one-party dictatorships can retire to plum posts in the party, but personalist dictators enjoy their wealth and influence only as long as they stay in power. And once they relinquish it, they are at the mercy of their successors, who rarely want once formidable rivals waiting in the wings. Over the last 70 years, personalist autocrats who lost power have tended to end up in exile, in jail, or dead.
By undercutting the kinds of political institutions that constrain executive power, Putin has reduced certainty about policy and increased the vulnerability of elites. As a result, investors prefer to park their capital in safe havens outside Russia, and many young Russians have taken their significant human capital abroad. Even superrich Russians feel vulnerable: they hold far more of their wealth in cash and have more volatile incomes than do their peers in other countries, and they have resisted the Kremlin’s calls to bring their capital home.
Without strong formal institutions to legitimate his rule, Putin relies on great personal popularity to deter challenges from elites and keep protesters off the street. Over the last 20 years, Putin’s approval ratings have averaged a remarkable 74 percent, and there is little reason to believe that Russians are lying to pollsters in large numbers. But these high approval ratings were largely driven by the economic boom that doubled the size of Russia’s economy between 1998 and 2008 and the unique foreign policy success of annexing Crimea in 2014.
Since 2018, Putin’s popularity has wavered. His approval ratings remain in the mid-60s, but Russians express far less trust in him than they have in the past. In a November 2017 poll, when asked to name five politicians they trusted, 59 percent of respondents named Putin; in February 2021, just 32 percent did so. During the same interval, support for a fifth Putin term fell from 70 percent to 48 percent, with 41 percent of Russians surveyed now saying that they would prefer he step down.
The Impotence of Omnipotence
Putin is constrained not just by his need for high approval ratings but also by the challenges of governing a modern society with an unwieldy bureaucracy. In Khrushchev: The Man and His Era, the political scientist William Taubman recounts how Nikita Khrushchev, who led the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and controlled a Communist Party and a bureaucratic apparatus with far greater influence over society than Putin has, complained to the Cuban leader Fidel Castro about the limits of his power:
‘You’d think I could change anything in this country. Like hell I can. No matter what changes I propose and carry out, everything stays the same. Russia is like a tub full of dough, you put your hand down in it, down to the bottom, and think you’re master of the situation. When you first pull out your hand, a little hole remains, but then, before your very eyes, the dough expands into a spongy, puffy mass. That’s what Russia is like.’
Russia’s enormous size and bureaucratic complexity mean that Putin inevitably must delegate some decision-making authority to lower-level officials, all of whom have their own interests. And because Russia’s state institutions are weak, Putin must also work with powerful businesspeople who are more keen to make money than to serve the state. As Putin’s authority is channeled down through this chain of bureaucrats, businesspeople, and spies who may or may not share his preferences, slippage inevitably occurs, and policies do not always get implemented the way he would have preferred.
The problem gets worse when the Kremlin seeks to maintain plausible deniability. To covertly supply rebels in eastern Ukraine, for instance, Putin partnered with Konstantin Malofeev, a Russian oligarch who allegedly funded a band of private mercenaries that maintained indirect ties to the Russian military. In July 2014, however, these rebels appear to have inadvertently shot down a Malaysian commercial airliner, killing almost 300 passengers and crew members.
In order to camouflage its cyberattacks, the Kremlin similarly relies on hackers who work for private-sector front companies but who answer to the Russian security services. In 2016, it was the sloppiness of these hackers that allowed the United States to identify Russia as the source of the Democratic National Committee hack. The Russia analyst Mark Galeotti has dubbed the Kremlin’s outsourcing of dirty work to groups with murky ties to the state “adhocracy.” This method of statecraft hides Moscow’s hand, but it also loosens its grip on policy.
The Kremlin struggles with more mundane tasks, as well. In 2012, Putin issued a detailed set of targets to increase economic growth, improve bureaucratic efficiency, and support social programs. That these decrees were poorly formulated was one indication of the bureaucracy’s weakness (among other flaws, they optimistically assumed an annual growth rate of seven percent). But even more telling was the lack of follow-through. On the five-year anniversary of these decrees, Sergei Mironov, then the head of the Kremlin-friendly party A Just Russia, reported that the bureaucracy had implemented just 35 of the 179 decrees monitored by his committee in parliament. Autocrats have long struggled to elicit honest information from their subordinates and make sure their policies have taken hold, and Putin is no exception.
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DUAL THREATS
According to the political scientists, between 1945 and 2012, leaders of non-democracies were more than twice as likely to be replaced by an elite coup as by a popular revolt.
Autocrats also face threats from below in the form of protests. The “color revolutions” toppled rulers in Georgia in 2003, Ukraine in 2004, and Kyrgyzstan in 2005. Few worries animate the Kremlin more than the possibility of a popular uprising, and many analysts argue that it was the large protests against corruption and electoral fraud in 2011 and 2012 that prompted the Kremlin to sharply increase the penalties for attending and organizing protests.
These dual threats put Putin in a bind, because steps that might reduce the risk of a coup by elites can increase the risk of a popular revolt, and vice versa. Investment in the security services that buys the loyalty of elites may necessitate cuts to social services that stoke popular anger and risk igniting protests. Conversely, generous social programs that placate the public and forestall a revolt may require cuts to state spending that anger regime insiders and make a palace coup more likely. In general, Putin must walk a narrow line between allowing his cronies to engage in enough corruption and self-dealing to keep them loyal and promoting sufficiently broad-based economic growth to keep the public from protesting.
In his first decade in office, high energy prices and sound macroeconomic policy obscured this tradeoff, allowing Putin to reward both elites and the masses with spectacular increases in income. But the days of $100-a-barrel oil and surging living standards are behind him, and Putin must now choose between rewarding his cronies and reforming the economy.
Infighting among elites, although always hard to measure, appears to be on the rise as the regime’s economic largess falls. The last four years have seen a sitting minister of economics jailed for bribery, a senator arrested on the floor of the Federal Assembly for murder, and a prominent American businessman detained for almost two years. Arrests for economic crimes, which are often a rough proxy for violent corporate raids, increased by a third in 2019. And spats among Russia’s security services surged in 2018 and 2019, until the coronavirus pandemic hit.
The public, too, is restless. Real household income fell every year between 2013 and 2019. Pension reforms shaved 15 percentage points off of Putin’s approval rating over the course of 2018, and Russians routinely cite economic difficulties as their most pressing problem. The protests in January in support of Navalny, which occurred in more than 100 cities, were rooted as much in economic dissatisfaction as in opposition to Putin.
The Kremlin’s more confrontational foreign policy toward the West has brought Moscow back as a global force and secured Putin’s place in Russian history, but it has also impeded much-needed economic reforms that would strengthen the country’s position abroad over the longer term and satisfy Russian citizens, most of whom, according to opinion polls, care more about their own living standards than their country’s great-power status.
Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and intervention in eastern Ukraine led to U.S. and European sanctions that have further slowed the economy. These measures have scared off foreign investors and reduced Russian access to foreign technology and financing. That Kremlin elites frequently call for these sanctions to be removed is evidence of the considerable, if intermittent, pain they have caused some oligarchs in particular.
Putin continues to challenge the West, and the United States in particular, to boost his popularity among nationalist voters. But as with all of Putin’s strategies for managing threats to his rule, stoking patriotic sentiments comes at a cost—in this case, broad-based economic growth.
Risks of Repression
Like all personalist autocrats, Putin has relatively blunt tools for managing the tradeoffs inherent to his position. He has succeeded in exerting control over the media, but he is no master manipulator. If he were, public opinion would more closely mirror the Kremlin’s line on foreign policy. Putin’s annexation of Crimea was wildly popular, but support for using Russian troops in eastern Ukraine and Syria has always been quite modest. Despite the Kremlin’s harsh anti-Kyiv rhetoric, most Russians have a positive view of Ukraine, and just 15 percent support unification with the country.
The Kremlin has also conducted a noisy anti-American campaign in recent years, but Russians are about as likely to hold a positive view of the United States as they are to hold a negative view. According to a January 2020 opinion poll, two-thirds of Russians believe their government should view the West as a partner rather than a rival or an enemy. Attempts by the Kremlin to shift blame for Russia’s economic malaise to foreign countries have largely fallen flat, and few Russians believe that their government is capable of improving their economic situation. In what Russians call “the battle between the television and the refrigerator,” the latter is winning.
Putin’s increased reliance on repression is a sign that his other tools are failing. The danger for the Kremlin is that repression takes on a self-reinforcing momentum. As the political scientist Christian Davenport has argued, authoritarian regimes that resort to repression typically come to rely on it more and more because of its tendency to perpetuate the problems that generate opposition in the first place. Crackdowns on protests rooted in declining living standards only heighten popular grievances among the economically disadvantaged and further entrench those who benefit from the status quo. Repression also increases a ruler’s dependence on the security services and crowds out other means of dealing with the opposition.
Looking further down the road, the expectation that Putin will stay on as president past 2024 will only reinforce Russia’s economic stagnation and heighten popular frustration over the Kremlin’s inability to raise living standards or improve governance. The result will most likely be a steady increase in pressure on the regime and in repression against its opponents.
Great But Diminished
Russia remains a great power, albeit a diminished one. Although Leonid Brezhnev, who led the Soviet Union at the height of its global power, would be appalled by the country’s current military capabilities and geopolitical status, Boris Yeltsin, who inherited a country in collapse, would view them with envy. Russia’s nuclear might, geography, and seat on the UN Security Council ensure that it ranks among the great powers—as do its educational, scientific, and energy prowess. The country has more college graduates as a proportion of its population than almost any member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. It produced an effective COVID-19 vaccine in less than a year, and it will provide Europe with low-cost energy for years to come and remain a major player in global energy markets. Those who dismiss Russia as a regional power are mistaken.
Putin faces no immediate threat to his rule. He is a deft tactician with considerable financial resources facing a disorganized opposition. Yet no amount of shrewdness can overcome the agonizing trade-offs of running Russia the way he does. Cheat enough in elections so that you don’t risk losing, but not so much that it signals weakness. Rile up the base with anti-Western moves, but not to the extent that it provokes an actual conflict with the West. Reward cronies through corruption, but not so much that the economy collapses. Manipulate the news, but not to the point where people distrust the media. Repress political opponents, but not enough to spark a popular backlash. Strengthen the security services, but not so much that they can turn on you.
How the Kremlin balances these tradeoffs will determine Russia’s immediate future. But the trend toward greater repression over the last four years, and its likely continuation, does not bode well for Russia or its leader.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2021-04-01/vladimir-putin-russias-weak-strongman
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HOW JUNG CONQUERED HIS FAINTING FITS
~ [In his early teens, Jung began having fainting fits.] He knew that his fainting fits were related to his fear of and distaste for school. He embarked on a radical course of action. Resolving not to “give in” any longer to the paralyzing attacks, he grabbed the nearest textbook — and promptly suffered “the finest of fainting fits.” But he grimly resumed his reading as soon as he came to, and persisted in his purpose in the face of two further attacks. After an hour or two of this, he felt that his baffling illness — which he later diagnosed as a neurosis — had been defeated, and in fact, from then on, the spells abated and gradually disappeared.
~ Paul J. Stern, C.G. Jung, The Haunted Prophet
Stern states that this early experience had a profound influence on Jung, one that Stern deplores. Not only that, but Jung returned to school and got top grades “by dint of hard work.” Imagine, so old-fashioned . . . smacking of “will-power,” or, in any case, of the effectiveness of conscious intent, at least in some circumstances.
Jung’s fainting spells were of course a severe symptom and I'm very impressed that he persisted. Today he’d have been put on anti-depressants and other drugs, needing higher and higher doses over time. I'm not on an anti-drug crusade, but I confess that I love to hear the stories of those (a few of whom I’ve known in person) who recovered because they decided to recover. The decision itself did most of the work.
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“IF ONE OF US SHOULD DIE, I SHALL MOVE TO PARIS” ~ Sigmund Freud in a letter to his wife
First, I never tire of this anecdote about Freud and the Gestapo:
When Freud left Nazi-occupied Austria to spend the last year of his life in Britain, he knew that the destruction that lay ahead could not by then be prevented. But fate could still be mocked, and so defied. When leaving Austria, Freud was required to sign a document testifying that he had been well and fairly treated. He did so, adding in his own hand: “I can most highly recommend the Gestapo to everyone.”
and also this:
Freud [in a letter to his wife:] "If one of us should die, I shall move to Paris.”
earlier — Freud [also in a letter to his wife:] "Do you know what Breuer said to me one evening? ... He said that he had found out that there was concealed in me under the shroud of shyness an immeasurably bold and fearless human being. I have always believed this myself and never dared to tell anybody. ... But I could not give expression to my ardent passions ... so I have always suppressed myself, and that, I think, must show. Such stupid confession I make to you, sweet treasure, really for no good reason, unless it is the cocaine that makes me talk.”
BOWLING ALONE by Robert Putnam
~ The title refers to the fact that more Americans bowl than in the past. Yet, there are fewer bowling leagues than ever before. Meaning: more and more, people are spending time alone.
It’s not just bowling leagues that are disappearing. Churches, parent-teacher associations, political activists, neighborhood watches, bridge clubs, veterans organizations. You name a community, and it’s likely disappearing.
When the apocalypse comes, it will look like this: People dying alone in their homes, without anyone knowing.
“Community has warred incessantly with individualism for preeminence in our political hagiology… The dominant theme is simple: For the first two-thirds of the twentieth century a powerful tide bore Americans into ever deeper engagement in the life of their communities, but a few decades ago— silently, without warning— that tide reversed and we were overtaken by a treacherous rip current. Without at first noticing, we have been pulled apart from one another and from our communities over the last third of the century.” ~
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/5-books-that-explain-why-it-seems-the-world-is-so-messed-up?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Oriana:
People dying alone in their homes? Unless civilization breaks down truly drastically, people will continue to die in hospitals and hospices — mostly alone because hospitals have become so dehumanized that the staff deal with the computers and not the patients.
Mary: WE WILL FIND NEW WAYS OF BEING SOCIAL
Bowling Alone remarks on what I think is a very real trend, people moving away from groups, communities, associations, into more singular and individual spaces. The pandemic has of course exaggerated this, with lockdowns and social distancing, to a degree that has been painful for many, while others find it comfortable and pleasant. But the tendency predates the pandemic, and some things won't go back to the old normal.
We have gone from isolated cubicles in work spaces, that allow us to be alone together....single cubicles in a large group, to many people working from home, interacting with colleagues on virtual platforms. Home schooling and virtual learning remove the small communities of classroom and school, to the detriment, many would argue, of children's social development.
All sorts of entertainment has moved into digital space, in some ways broadening our connections, in others increasing our solitude, and often doing both at once. People seem drawn to virtual worlds, where they can reinvent themselves in their avatars, and live virtual lives interacting with the avatars of others. This is truly social distancing!! And it seems to place higher value on fantasy wish fulfillment rather than engaging with real people in the real world.
At the same time the pandemic has taught us how painful it is to live without close physical connections, without being able to touch and hug and enjoy each other without barriers. How these things will end up we don't know, perhaps we'll find a new balance between the self and the community, perhaps we'll find broader and newer ways to be social.
Humans can't survive without some form of community. We have evolved as social beings, with only occasional and rare examples of persons who eschew connection with any social group. What is changing may be the form of community, not its essential nature.
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FIVE MYTHS ABOUT WORLD WAR II
1. Adolf Hitler was elected chancellor by a majority
Well, this isn’t totally wrong. In the presidential election of 1932, Hitler lost to the incumbent, Paul von Hindenburg. In the Reichstag election, the picture was more complicated.
Like Israel today, the Weimar Republic was undergoing a serious political crisis, which led to three elections in one year. The chancellor from 1930 to 1932 bypassed parliament and governed via emergency decrees.
In 1932, Hindenburg appointed a new chancellor, Franz von Papen, who was more conservative and right-wing than his predecessor. Von Papen had very little support in the Reichstag. He called an election, hoping to improve his position, granting benefits to the Nazis so they would support his coalition. In July 1932, the Nazis won 37 percent of the vote and became the largest party in the Reichstag.
Von Papen was amazed to find that Hitler wasn’t the kind of guy to keep his promises, and was insisting on being appointed chancellor. Hindenburg was in favor of a right-wing government that included the Nazis but refused to let Hitler lead it.
Talks led nowhere and another election was held in November. No right-wing candidate other than Hitler managed to form a coalition, and in January 1933, Hindenburg agreed to appoint him chancellor. Leaders of the moderate right were convinced they would be able to control the Nazis. As Julia Roberts said in “Pretty Woman”: big mistake.
Hitler dissolved the Reichstag. A week before the following election, a fire broke out there and the Nazis claimed it was a Communist pl
ot. They demanded that the president declare emergency decrees.
Civil rights were suspended; thousands of left-wing activists were arrested and only the Nazis and their partners were allowed to use the media for election campaigning. In March 1933 the Nazis won 44 percent of the vote, not very impressive considering the means at their disposal. Hitler passed the Enabling Act that allowed the government to bypass parliament. In the next election, the Nazi party was the only legitimate one.
The bottom line is that the Nazis didn’t have a majority, and Hitler attained power with the help of shady deals and antidemocratic measures. We can’t compare, but we can learn two relevant lessons. First, it’s a bad idea to let a government bypass parliament. Second, only an idiot would believe that it’s possible to restrain right-wing extremists after taking them into the cabinet.
2. The Nazis made soap from Jewish corpses
There is no factual basis to this claim, but many people are still convinced that it’s true, maybe because stories of evil have some special mythical power. The origins of this myth lie in rumors from World War I, when it was said the Germans used soldiers’ corpses to make fat and soap. British intelligence apparently contributed to this rumor as a propaganda ploy to show the enemy’s cruelty.
During World War II, this awful claim surfaced again. Yad Vashem officials note that these rumors were disseminated by the Germans themselves at the concentration camps as a way to further torment the inmates. The letters RIF, which appeared on soap in those days, were taken as proof of the story’s veracity. It was said that these letters meant rein jüdisches Fett (pure Jewish fat), but actually they meant Reichstelle für Industrielle Fetttversorgung – the Reich agency for supplying industrial fat.
One of the only places that still promotes this myth is the Chamber of the Holocaust, an ultra-Orthodox museum in Jerusalem. The museum displays RIF soap, saying it has secret proof that it was made from humans. The official Yad Vashem memorial and museum, however, sent similar soap to be tested at a lab, and no human residue was found. We’ll have to wait for World War III to see whether this story crops up again.
3. The king of Denmark wore a yellow Star of David, and Danes risked their lives to save Jews
People love tales of heroism no less than horror stories. According to one obstinate Holocaust myth, when the Nazis instructed Denmark’s Jews to wear a yellow star, King Christian X of Denmark did so as well as a token of his identification with his Jewish citizens. The main problem is that Denmark’s Jews were never required to wear a yellow star.
In fact, at the beginning of the war, the Danes weren’t a symbol of courageous resistance but of shameful capitulation. The Nazis invaded Denmark in April 1940, and unlike many other nations, they surrendered immediately. Their cooperation, which included the supply of iron, cement and arms, helped Germany occupy most of the Continent.
But no blemish can’t be removed by cynical PR. Various Israeli and Scandinavian researchers have found the source of this myth: a Danish-American association in the United States that strove in those years to rehabilitate Denmark’s image.
The king did have reservations about the persecution of Jews, and the Danes were less antisemitic than others, but they were far from heroes. In a 2015 study, historian Orna Keren-Carmel argues that the Nazis preferred that Denmark’s Jews be smuggled to Sweden instead of deported; this way the submissive Danes wouldn’t be stirred. So the Nazis leaked the time of the planned deportation.
During the smuggling operation, all German vessels in the area returned to their bases, supposedly for repairs. The Danish boats crossing over to Sweden were in no danger whatsoever. Keren-Carmel notes that fishermen taking part in the operation demanded enormous sums to transport the Jews, nearly $100 million at today’s rates.
It seems the decision to give the title of Righteous Among the Nations to the entire Danish nation was overdone. If you’re looking for worthy Scandinavians, go for the Norwegians. They resisted the Nazi occupation with resolve and, unlike the Danes, they didn’t give the world film director Lars von Trier.
4. The Japanese surrendered because of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Behind this myth lies a loaded issue: If the atomic bomb got Japan to surrender, then in many people’s eyes there was justification for using this terrible weapon. In reality, Japan was ready to surrender immediately after the Germans did in May 1945. The only demand the Japanese made was to leave Emperor Hirohito as head of state, out of respect for tradition. The Americans were aware of this position but ignored it and insisted on “unconditional surrender.” They planned to leave the emperor on the throne anyway.
The decisive factor, even in Japan’s decision to surrender and the U.S. decision to use nuclear weapons, was fear of the Soviet Union. The Soviets declared war on Japan on August 8, after Hiroshima and before Nagasaki. The opening of the Russian front influenced the Japanese decision to surrender much more than the atomic bombs.
From the American side, the unnecessary use of nuclear weapons was mainly intended as a threat to the Kremlin. The United States believed that only a dramatic show of force would prevent a Soviet takeover of Asia. Ironically, it was the United States’ ignoring of Japan’s surrender terms three months earlier that led Russia to enter the arena.
In the ensuing years, amid the criticism, the U.S. political and military establishment needed a narrative to justify its actions: The atomic bombs were essential for getting the Japanese to surrender; they ended the war and spared many more lives. Not only left-wing academics challenged that lie, but people who led the fighting.
For example, Admiral William Leahy, the top military officer during World War II, wrote in 1950 that the atomic bombs did not significantly help the war against Japan, and that the Japanese were already willing to surrender because of the maritime blockade and conventional bombings. Leahy added that by becoming the first nation to use such weapons, the United States adopted a moral standard akin to the barbarians of the Middle Ages.
[Stuart Wilder contests this section
~ The idea that the Japanese were ready to "surrender" before the bomb was dropped is plain false. The Japanese wanted an armistice, allowing them not only to keep the emperor, but many of their occupied territories, including those in Indochina and Korea. They also did not want to subject themselves to occupation or war crimes trials. Basically, they wanted to keep things in place and continue to subjugate foreign countries and peoples not yet liberated, and avoid punishment for their horrific treatment of occupied nations. The Allies quite properly rejected this. Many books have documented this, including Robert Bix's "Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan" and Marc Callicchio's “Unconditional."]
5. Carrots improve night vision
This is also linked to World War II. Yes, carrots help your eyes; they have beta carotin, which is essential to vision. But carrots can’t improve your ability to see in the dark, which is a myth spread for wartime propaganda.
During the Blitz, the British government ordered blackouts to make it harder for the German bombers to see their targets. The British suffered food shortages during the war, but carrots were available in abundance. So, to encourage people to eat them, the Agriculture Ministry launched the slogan “Carrots keep you healthy and help you to see in the blackout.”
The British government had another reason to propagate that falsehood. The air raids occurred at night and the British, aided by their new radar technology, searched the skies for the Luftwaffe. So, to camouflage the secret technology, the government told the media that the British pilots were spotting enemy planes thanks to their diet rich in carrots that improved night vision.
It’s not clear whether the Germans actually fell into that trap, but it worked on the Americans. In January 1942, The New York Times reported that the Brits were growing lots of carrots, thus preventing their people from crashing their cars into lampposts.
https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/holocaust-remembrance-day/.premium.MAGAZINE-soap-made-from-jews-and-how-hitler-took-power-the-truth-behind-holocaust-myths-1.9693735?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=content&utm_campaign=haaretz-news&utm_content=caf6392293
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DRAW INSPIRATION FROM THE PEOPLE YOU MEET
Bill Janz traveled the world as a journalist, and wrote a column for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about ordinary people who’d shown remarkable courage. But when asked about the person who’d impacted him the most, Janz spoke of someone closer to home. “A boy named Eddy helped me see a little bit about what life is all about,” says Janz. Eddy was a 10-year-old he’d written about whose leg was amputated due to cancer. “No matter what happened to him, he never gave up,” he recalls. “I called Eddy once at home, and the phone rang and rang and rang. Finally, he picked up the phone. I said, ‘Eddy. I was just about to hang up. Where were you?’ And he said, ‘Bill, I was in another room. My crutches weren’t near, so I crawled to the phone.’”
Janz often finds himself thinking about that conversation. “He was only a young man, but he was teaching an old man to never give up,” Janz said. “I sometimes tend to give up and go do something else, and [he helps me] remember not to do that.”
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/5-pieces-of-essential-life-advice-from-seniors?utm_source=pocket-newtab
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THE MYSTERY OF CAVE DRAWINGS
~ A study published by Yafit Kedar and Ran Barkai of Tel Aviv University with independent researcher Gil Kedar in Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture posits that the Paleolithic artisans were motivated by the transformative nature of the subterranean, oxygen-depleted space; there they could communicate with nonhuman entities inhabiting the underworld. They were making the drawings not for the tribe to see, but for keeping and maintaining their relationships with the cosmos.
Moreover, they were doing so in a state of euphoria. To see in the dark, they lit torches, which diminished the oxygen in the deep reaches of the cave, putting them into altered states of consciousness due to hypoxia.
Who doesn’t love an altered state of consciousness? Leaving drunken elephants and inebriated bats out of it, among humans, hallucinogens have been cited for the ecstatic visions they may induce, and many a modern artist has recoiled from rehab for fear of starving the muse.
It has been postulated that Stone Age artists were stoned to the nines, but no smoking bong was ever discovered (with the exception of hallucinogen use strongly indicated in prehistoric California – the artists drew datura plants and archaeologists identified chewed datura plugs at the site. Anyway, while visiting rock-art sites in Europe, Yafit Kedar was struck by the enigma. “I wondered why they went into the dark, into such seclusion – why go to the end a kilometer inside? These caves are scary, with narrow passages, and I kept banging my head,” she told Haaretz.
Curiosity might lead one to do that; just ask any spelunker. But then why paint beautiful pictures there? And then Kedar had her eureka moment: the insight that torch fire deep inside a poorly ventilated cave system would induce hypoxia, which in turn could produce hallucinations and other perceptual distortions without need to resort to drugs. That in turn was reminiscent of ritual intoxication practices among modern hunter-gatherers.
Kedar also surmises that once the Paleolithic artists became aware of this effect, they entered the caves and induced the intoxication deliberately.
Obviously, not all cave art was done in pitch-black depths; some was done at cave entrances, rock shelters and so on. But some was done in places where the artists would have been blind as bats without artificial illumination; this includes some of the most magnificent prehistoric paintings ever done.
It’s true that Kedar and her colleagues couldn’t simulate the emergence of hypoxic ecstasy in smoke-filled poorly ventilated chambers on test subjects, because it isn’t safe. They based that aspect on reports from research on the effects of high altitudes on pilots and trekkers.
But they could simulate the ventilation and atmosphere inside narrow Paleolithic caves using software created for architecture and engineering; for instance, to plan ventilation in underground parking lots, and what to do there when fire breaks out, Kedar says.
Cave painting in the Grotte de Rouffignac
And so, simulating caves with narrow mouths and based on separate research verifying the simulations, the team demonstrated that when fire is used deep inside a narrow-mouthed cave or narrow cave corridor, the concentration of oxygen drops fast. The people inside become oxygen deprived, and this hypoxia induces an alternative state of consciousness.
Hypoxia symptoms can range from hallucinations to out-of-body experiences, Kedar and Barkai write. Don’t try this at home.
Given that even stoned to the gills, one doesn’t necessarily start drawing mammoths, and given the frequency (if not ubiquity) of inexplicable deep-cave art, once the process had been learned, you can become accustomed to it, the researchers posit.
This could explain part of the mystery of why prehistoric people painted pictures where nobody could see them naturally. No human, that is.
Into the dark
Once these humans had experienced the process, entering these gloomy environments with torches was a conscious choice, the researchers contend. The choice was driven by perceiving the underground, oxygen-depleted space as a place to transit between states of being. It was an ontological arena “allowing early humans to maintain their connectedness with the cosmos,” the authors write.
Which means what exactly? That the prehistoric group entering the cave with torches thought, in their hypoxic ecstasy, that they were communicating with some other being – spirits, ancestors, who knows. Such things are known from history, the Oracle of Delphi being one of the most famed examples. The Pythoness, as she was called, is thought to have whiffed naturally-occurring ether emanating from cracks in the Earth, experiencing obscure visions and passing them on.
“The idea is they went in [to the bowels of caves] because they believed something was there, that there were entities beyond the wall,” Kedar says. And that’s why they went as far as the end of the cave. Drawings can be found more than 500 meters inside, she adds.
“The rock face itself, within the cave or the rockshelter, was conceived as a membrane, a tissue connecting the here-and-now world and the underground world beyond,” the authors wrote in a separate article. Underworld not as in hell but “a world of prosperity, plenty, and growth.”
The paper provides examples of modern societies that see caves as a portal to the cosmos, to another world. They note the Mesopotamian myth of Ishtar’s Descent and Resurrection: The soul departs the body upon death and descends to the Netherworld, located at the deepest level of the cosmos, through cracks in the ground.
At the other end of the planet, the Cherokees also perceived caves and crevices as portals to another world. At one cave, researchers found Cherokee “mirror writing” as if for someone on the other side of the wall. Yafit Kedar speculates that, as postulated for the Cherokees, the prehistoric artists of Europe’s decorated caves were drawing for the entities in the underworld.
“A number of archaeologists (myself included) have argued that this art most likely resulted from shamanistic practices involving trance and hallucinations. One argument against our interpretation was that there was no evidence for hallucinogenic plants/substances in western Europe at that time,” he told Haaretz in an email. “This paper demonstrates conclusively that entry into many of these caves with a torch or lamp would have guaranteed a visionary experience.”
Whitley notes that cave sites were visited by people other than the artists, as attested by the occasional preservation of footprints, including of children. The implication is that they too would have experienced an altered state of consciousness, a kind of group trance. “This is a novel and important implication of this research,” Whitley says.
But note, as Whitley does, that association between altered states of consciousness and/or visions and rock art isn’t universal. Some hunter-gatherers practiced shamanistic religions involving direct interaction with the supernatural, but not all. “Much Australian aboriginal rock art has no relationship to trance, for example,” Whitley says. “Religion among Australian aborigines emphasizes world renewal rituals rather than shamanism.”
Artistic asphyxia
Figurative cave art is the fief of Homo sapiens, going by present evidence (there is no evidence of figurative Neanderthal art). The earliest-known painting is of a warty pig; it was found just this year in a very inaccessible cavesite in Indonesia and is about 45,500 years old.
Western rock art is better known, thanks to the likes of the exquisite images in the caves of Chauvet and Lascaux in France. So far about 400 decorated caves have been found in Western Europe, mostly in Spain and France, between 14,000 and 40,000 years old give or take, some painted where people could see, some in dark chambers.
Use of torchlight has been proved. Separate studies have identified hearths, charcoal, torch marks and soot on the walls. (There is evidence of some domestic activity in the depths, though most things were done where people could see: open-air sites, rock shelters, and cave entrances.)
With the help of software and Kedar’s insight, the Tel Aviv team set out to calculate air-circulation patterns in narrow-mouthed caves or passages, and how the torches would affect oxygen levels.
Note that the study isn’t pertinent to well-ventilated caves with large mouths, where fire creates distinct upper and lower layers of air. Heated air rises, so toward the ceiling we find fire-exhaust gases; the lower layer consists of normal air from outside. But if the cave mouth is narrow or a narrow corridor, when torches are used for illumination, both the upper and lower levels of air become hypoxic. Oxygen quickly falls from open-air levels of 21 percent to below 18 percent, which can cause hypoxia.
Since hypoxia can’t be induced in the lab, it has been studied in the context of high-altitude pilots and mountaineers, not wrecked artists. Still, the results are illuminating. Hypoxia makes us hyperventilate; our hearts race and so do our minds. It affects the frontal cortex and the right hemisphere of the brain, areas that may be associated with emotion-driven creativity.
Hypoxia may also be accompanied by euphoria and a propensity to misjudgment, the team points out.
It also ramps up dopamine secretion in the brain, which can cause dreams and hallucinations, sometimes associated with reported out-of-body experiences and sensations of flying or floating, not to mention near-death experiences (that bright-light phenomenon, for instance). Evidently the effect is highly personal.
Anyway, some of the greatest cave art, including the soaring, sweeping images of Chauvet and Trois-Frères, were created in the dark.
The eye of the buzzed beholder
Arguing in favor of cosmic connectivity, à la Whitley: why would anybody create art in places that are very difficult to see and dangerous to enter, if the goal is purely aesthetic or decorative?
One feature in spectacular, deep-cave western European art is superposition and repetition. One famous example is the horse-heads panel at Chauvet Cave. Interpretation of Paleolithic symbolic systems has to remain speculative.
Even so, he believes the European Paleolithic paintings are our first evidence of true artistic genius. Indeed, tens of thousands of years after the event, the pictures seem alive. But the bottom line is there can’t be one reason behind rock art, which is found – it turns out – everywhere sapiens set its feet.
“In western North America alone, for example, rock art was exclusively made by shamans among some tribes. But in others it might also be made by puberty initiates – boys and/or girls – and in others include adults experiencing life crises too (e.g., the death of a spouse),” Whitley says. But throughout North America, it seems artistic creation was associated with visionary experiences and the perceived receipt of supernatural power.
Prof. Barkai and his team believe that early humans lived in harmony with nature, or at least strove to, as seen in their attempts to fully exploit the carcasses of their prey. In separate work with Miki Ben-Dor, it’s argued that the homo line became super-predators from the time of Homo erectus. But when we started importuning Others – ancestors, gods, spirits, the river nymph, whoever – for help in catching prey or whatever, well, it can’t be known.
Couldn’t we be imposing our values when imputing spiritual motivation behind acts by peoples who passed onto the great void tens of thousands of years ago? Surely we changed in that time. Why draw such parallels?
Whitley says: “The conceptual and practical division between the supernatural/sacred/religious world and the mundane realm is a largely modern and western conceit that has become especially prominent since the Protestant Reformation. Many traditional peoples saw/see no separation between daily versus religious life; many don’t even recognize that they have a ‘religion’ per se. I then concur with the notion that many prehistoric peoples felt a strong connection to the supernatural and the cosmos.”
He adds that the ethnographic record shows that with rare exceptions, rock art is indeed associated with ritual and beliefs. “The concept of ‘art for art’s sake’ is a relatively recent western attitude,” he says – and if anything, the propensity for drawing in the dark seems to support that assumption.
https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium-israeli-archaeologists-crack-mystery-of-cave-paintings-done-in-the-dark-1.9686181?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=traffic&utm_campaign=post&utm_content=learn_more&fbclid=IwAR2I15i5eFmrfealVwubtP7PSK5O-PbaCO8mQxHXheQgjZ2JSZN1hFumVUo
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PASSOVER EGGS AND EASTER EGGS
Every Passover, Jews place a hard-boiled egg on the Passover ceremonial plate, and the celebrants also eat hard-boiled eggs dipped in salt water as part of the ceremony.
The Christian egg-related custom is different: ahead of Easter, the yolk and white are extracted and the emptied shells are decorated. [me: it was quite different in our household; more below the article]
But might these egg-related customs have a common source? This turns out to be a difficult question to answer, as we are not sure of the origin of either custom. A good place to start, then, would be the earliest-known references to them.
Mourning the lost sacrifice?
Several sources say the earliest reference to actually eating eggs at the seder is in commentary written by Rabbi Moses Isserles (1520-1572) on the code of Jewish law called "Shulchan Aruch": “In some places it is the custom to eat as part of the meal, eggs.”
Isserles didn't know how the custom arose, but gave his readers two theories. Either the eggs symbolize mourning for the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Or, it is a symbolic representation of the paschal sacrifice, which was discontinued with the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E.
The fact that Rabbi Isserles was discussing ingestion of the egg at all attests that the custom of eating them on Passover existed in central Europe in the 16th century, and likely spread from there.
Possibly Rabbi Isserles was correct and maybe the custom arose from one of those two reasons. However, the egg existed on the Passover table centuries before Isserles. It just served a different purpose.
One topic of intense rabbinic debate concerned how much matza and bitter herb one must eat on Passover. The standard answer is “kaza’it” - the amount equivalent to an olive.
This seems to be quite a precise and final answer, but for whatever reason, the rabbis debated this matter for centuries. They came up with a bunch of different answers – but usually used the volume of an egg as a standard measure.
Maimonides (1135-1204) said the amount of mandatory matza and bitter herb was just over a third of an egg. Rabbi Shlomo ben Aderet (1235-1210) said the amount should be a quarter of an egg's volume. Rabbi Joseph Karo (1488-1575) advocated for half an egg.
Perhaps, originally, eggs on the Passover table were there as a reference measure for volume, and later were given vague symbolic meaning.
Now let us see when the Easter egg is first mentioned.
Indirect signs of an ancient custom
The earliest written reference to the giving of Easter eggs seems to be in German (ostereyer) and was written in 1407.
This custom is widely believed to have arrived in Germany from the Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe, although there is no written, pictorial or other evidence to the existence of this custom among the Slavs.
Still, a Slavic origin seems quite likely because: (a) There is little written evidence of anything in these parts during the Middle Ages. So that lack of evidence is no surprise. (b) The custom of coloring eggs on Easter is very prevalent throughout the Slavic lands, which seems to indicate that it is a time-honored tradition, not a recent borrowing from Germany. (c) The custom is common among members of the Syriac Orthodox Church, Syriac Maronite Church and the Armenian Apostolic Church, which severed ties with the Eastern Orthodox Church in the fifth and sixth centuries. That in itself implies that the custom was extant before.
Following this evidence to early Orthodox Christianity, the custom seems likely to have originated in Mesopotamia, from the tradition of decorating eggs and placing them on the table on Nowruz. That is the Zoroastrian new year celebration that takes place in spring, around the time of Easter. Zoroastrianism was the major religion of Mesopotamia at the time when Christianity took hold.
There is another, less likely, possibility, suggested by Jacob Grimm in his “Deutsche Mythologie.” According to him, eggs were part of the spring celebration for the goddess Ostre, who gave Easter her name. The tradition proliferated when the Germanic tribes converted to Christianity.
One snag with this theory is that the only reference connecting Ostre to eggs is a single reference written by the English monk Bede the Venerable (who lived from 673 to 735). The truth is, we know little about the religion and custom of the ancient Germans.
Another more prosaic and likely origin of the tradition is the Christian tradition of abstaining from eggs during Lent, the 40 days before Easter. Since hens still lay eggs during Lent and they weren’t supposed to eat them, some people may have thought that decorating them is a good idea – and presto – the Easter egg was born.
So did the tradition of eating hard-boiled eggs on Passover come from Christian or earlier pagan traditions of decorating eggs? Probably not. The custom likely arose independently within Judaism: since they were there on the table anyway as a measure of volume, centuries before Isserles' first mention of their ingestion, they came to be eaten too.
It does bear adding that the Zoroastrian new year, Nowruz, did influence the seder, especially the plate of symbolic foods set in the middle of the table, which includes eggs, greenery and other symbolic foods. So we cannot totally reject the possibility that the Passover egg originated with Nowruz, though it is unlikely.
By the way, there is zero evidence for the theory making the rounds on internet, that the Easter egg started with the goddess Ishtar in Mesopotamia. None at all. Fake news. ~
The existence of decorated eggs used to baffle me. They existed in photos and as wooden models, to be displayed as folk art. But in my household Easter eggs were boiled in onion skins to emerge in lovely, uneven shades brown. On Great Saturday I took an Easter basket to church to be sprinkled with the holy water. The basket always included at least one egg boiled in onion skins.
The most important Easter meal was the festive Easter breakfast, during which the eggs were eaten. They did seem to be especially delicious. But first, the "consecrated" egg was divided into slices so that each person around the table could have a bit of it, with salt and pepper.
Willow catkins and some greenery were part of the decoration of the plate with the eggs.
As for the symbolism, I had no trouble with that thanks to my mother's explanation: Easter is a springtime holiday, and eggs are a fertility symbol.
UP FROM “INFANTILE HELPLESSNESS”
A while back I watched a marvelous PBS video on Freud and C.S. Lewis. The mention of “Civilization and Its Discontents” made me reach for that slender volume. And there it was, the famous statement in Chapter One: “The origin of the religious attitude can be traced in clear outline as far back as the feeling of infantile helplessness.” What I didn’t remember from my first reading was the ending of that chapter: a quotation from Schiller’s “The Diver”:
Let him rejoice
who breathes in radiant light.
From infantile helplessness to enough adult security to be able to take joy in the world. “Just to be here is magnificent” ~ Rilke.
The less helpless we feel, the less the need for an all-powerful parent in the sky whom we try to please and appease with constant praise. What thrills me is that it was possible to embrace this life and this world long before antibiotics and vaccines gave us an extra layer of security. Life was praised as the highest good already in antiquity. The Middle Ages with their horrors and cruelty make it unimaginable that someone would suddenly say, “But isn’t life magnificent!” The medieval mind saw real life as beginning only after death, and it was perfectly acceptable to try to hasten death through the “mortification of the flesh.”
What a journey, from that to modern return to the joy of the body, the joy of love, and more (even democracy — what a long detour it’s been, through absolute dictators exercising the “divine right of kings”).
The main emphasis of the church was on sin and punishment, and making us afraid, very afraid. But can you really love someone who can sentence you to being tortured for eternity? Only people and animals showed me what love is — tenderness, affection, mutual nurturing — never the church, which was about power built on fear.
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ADVANCED GLYCATION PRODUCTS (AGEs) AND AGING
~ Advanced glycation end products (AGEs) are harmful compounds that are formed when protein or fat combine with sugar in the bloodstream. This process is called glycation.
AGEs can also form in foods. Foods that have been exposed to high temperatures, such as during grilling, frying, or toasting, tend to be very high in these compounds.
In fact, diet is the biggest contributor of AGEs.
Fortunately, your body has mechanisms to eliminate these harmful compounds, including those involving antioxidant and enzymatic activity.
Yet, when you consume too many AGEs — or too many form spontaneously — your body can’t keep up with eliminating them. Thus, they accumulate.
While low levels are generally nothing to worry about, high levels have been shown to cause oxidative stress and inflammation. In fact, high levels have been linked to the development of many diseases, including diabetes, heart disease, kidney failure, and Alzheimer’s, as well as premature aging.
Furthermore, people who have high blood sugar levels, such as those with [non-controlled] diabetes, are at a higher risk of producing too many AGEs, which can then build up in the body. [Me: Metformin is wonderful at lowering blood sugar; berberine may be just as good.)
Therefore, many health professionals are calling for AGE levels to become a marker of overall health.
Some modern foods contain relatively high amounts of AGEs. This is mostly due to popular methods of cooking that expose food to dry heat.
These include barbecuing, grilling, roasting, baking, frying, sautéing, broiling, searing, and toasting.
These cooking methods may make food taste, smell, and look good, but they may raise your intake of AGEs to potentially harmful levels.
In fact, dry heat may increase the amount of AGEs by 10–100 times the levels of uncooked foods.
Certain foods, such as animal foods that are high in fat and protein, are more susceptible to AGE formation during cooking.
Foods highest in AGEs include meat (especially red meat), certain cheeses, fried eggs, butter, cream cheese, margarine, mayonnaise, oils, and nuts. Fried foods and highly processed products also contain high levels.
Thus, even if your diet appears to be reasonably healthy, you may consume an unhealthy amount of harmful AGEs just because of the way your food is cooked.
In summary: AGEs can form inside your body or the foods you eat. Certain cooking methods can cause their levels in food to skyrocket.
LOW-AGE DIET MAY REDUCE THE RISK OF DISEASE
Animal and human studies suggest that limiting dietary AGEs helps protect against many diseases and premature aging.
Several animal studies have shown that eating a low-AGE diet results in a lower risk of heart and kidney disease, increased insulin sensitivity, and lower levels of AGEs in blood and tissues by up to 53% .
Similar results were observed in human studies. Restricting dietary AGEs in both healthy people and those with diabetes or kidney disease reduced markers of oxidative stress and inflammation.
A 1-year study investigated the effects of a low-AGE diet in 138 people with obesity. It noted increased insulin sensitivity, a modest decrease in body weight, and lower levels of AGE, oxidative stress, and inflammation.
Meanwhile, those in the control group followed a diet high in AGEs, consuming more than 12,000 AGE kilounits per day. AGE kilounits per liter (kU/l) are the units used to measure AGE levels.
By the end of the study, they had higher AGE levels and markers of insulin resistance, oxidative stress, and inflammation.
Although a reduction in dietary AGEs has been shown to offer health benefits, currently there are no guidelines regarding safe and optimal intake.
To get a rough idea of whether you’re consuming too many AGEs, consider your diet. If you regularly eat grilled or roasted meats, solid fats, full-fat dairy, and highly processed foods, you’re probably consuming fairly high levels of AGEs.
On the other hand, if you eat a diet rich in plant foods, such as fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains, and consume low-fat dairy and less meat, your AGE levels will likely be lower.
If you regularly prepare meals with moist heat, such as soups and stews, you’ll also be consuming lower levels of AGEs.
To put this in perspective, here are some examples of AGE amounts in common foods, expressed as kilounits per liter:
1 fried egg: 1,240 kU/l
1 scrambled egg: 75 kU/l
2 ounces (57 grams) of toasted bagel: 100 kU/l
2 ounces of fresh bagel: 60 kU/l
1 tablespoon of cream: 325 kU/l
¼ cup (59 ml) of whole milk: 3 kU/l
3 ounces of grilled chicken: 5,200 kU/l
3 ounces of poached chicken: 1,000 kU/l
3 ounces of French fries: 690 kU/l
3 ounces of baked potato: 70 kU/l
3 ounces (85 grams) of broiled steak: 6,600 kU/l
3 ounces of braised beef: 2,200 kU/l
The most effective way to reduce your intake of AGEs is to choose healthier cooking methods.
Rather than using dry, high heat for cooking, try stewing, poaching, boiling, and steaming.
Cooking with moist heat, at lower temperatures, and for shorter periods, all help keep AGE formation low.
In addition, cooking meat with acidic ingredients, such as vinegar, tomato juice, or lemon juice, can reduce AGE production by up to 50%.
Cooking over ceramic surfaces — rather than directly on metal — can also reduce AGE production. Slow cookers are thought to be one of the healthiest ways to cook food.
Limit foods high in AGEs
Fried and highly processed foods contain higher levels of AGEs.
Certain foods, such as animal foods, also tend to be higher in AGEs. These include meat (especially red meat), certain cheeses, fried eggs, butter, cream cheese, margarine, mayonnaise, oils, and nuts.
Try to eliminate or limit these foods and instead choose fresh, whole foods, which are lower in AGEs.
For example, foods such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grains have lower levels, even after cooking.
Eat a diet full of antioxidant-rich foods
In laboratory studies, natural antioxidants, such as vitamin C and quercetin, have been shown to hinder AGE formation.
Moreover, several animal studies have shown that some natural plant phenols can reduce the negative health effects of AGEs.
One of these is the compound curcumin, which is found in turmeric. Resveratrol, which can be found in the skins of dark fruits like grapes, blueberries, and raspberries may likewise help (31Trusted Source, 32Trusted Source).
Therefore, a diet full of colorful fruits, vegetables, herbs, and spices may help protect against the damaging effects of AGEs.
Get moving
Aside from diet, an inactive lifestyle can cause AGE levels to skyrocket.
In contrast, regular exercise and an active lifestyle have been shown to reduce the amount of AGEs in the body.
One study in 17 middle-aged women found that those who increased the number of steps they took per day experienced a reduction in AGE levels.
SUMMARY:
Modern diets are contributing to higher levels of harmful AGEs in the body.
This is concerning, as high AGE levels are linked to the majority of chronic diseases. The good news is that you can lower your levels with a few simple strategies.
Choose whole foods, healthier cooking methods, and an active lifestyle to protect your health.
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/advanced-glycation-end-products#low--age-diets
Grill burn marks are a bad sign. Oriana:
Perhaps you’re thinking: yet another thing to worry about when it comes to food . . . What, are we to limit ourselves to spinach and kale?
But reducing AGEs is relatively easy: don’t eat anything grilled or broiled. Remember that it’s high, dry heat that is harmful. Consider moist heat: steaming or stewing, or even just plain boiling.
ending on beauty:
The moon—
unlike anything
they compare it to.”
~Basho
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