topaz from Pakistan*
EVERY SNOWFLAKE
branches feathering more crystal?
The snowflake that’s most exquisite
is the one that’s traveled farthest.
O silent six-pointed star,
what harsh heavens do you know?
Winter breath,
Because the voyage must be made,
no matter how icy the wind,
how dark and heavy the clouds.
~ Oriana
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TELLER OF THE UNEXPECTED: ROALD DAHL
~ In Roald Dahl’s ‘The Great Automatic Grammatizator’ (1952), a couple of jaded men design a computerized writing machine with the aim of cornering the market in magazine short stories. All the ‘author’ has to do is press a button (‘historical, satirical, philosophical, political, romantic, erotic, humorous or straight’) and choose a style (‘classical, whimsical, racy, Hemingway, Faulkner, Joyce, feminine etc’), and the machine will do the rest.
The story says a lot about Dahl. ‘Feminine, etc’ is a nasty touch: for Dahl it appears there were no distinguishable female authors, and ‘Hemingway’ was by a wide margin his own favorite stylistic button to push. The machine also has a foot pedal which is used to boost the most valuable ingredient in fiction, ‘at any rate financially’: passion. Inexperienced users press too hard on that pedal, with queasy-making results.
‘The Great Automatic Grammatizator’ was written after the New Yorker had turned down one of Dahl’s stories. It is, like a lot of his fiction, simultaneously a vengeful satire and a wish-fulfillment fantasy. If you want to make a fortune as a writer all you have to do is push buttons, master the clichés of each genre and feed your audience what they want – but soft-pedal on the passion.
In his early short stories for adults Dahl developed a distinctive set of button-presses out of the experiences of his life. His Norwegian father made a small fortune by importing pit props to Wales. Dahl’s sister died at the age of seven. His father died soon after, leaving enough money for an upper-middle-class lifestyle. Dahl was then only three. He survived the beatings and misery of an English boarding school and got a job with Shell. When war broke out he volunteered as a fighter pilot. He had a bad crash-landing in Libya while flying to join his squadron. That fractured his skull and left him with permanent back trouble, as well as giving rise to various tall stories. These include a tale called ‘Shot Down over Libya’ (though Dahl was not in fact shot down), in which a pilot survives in the desert on his own (though, as he acknowledged in a later story called ‘A Piece of Cake’, he was not in fact alone, since a fellow pilot who had seen him land watched over him all night).
Dahl later said the crash gave him a bang on the head which turned him into a writer. After months recuperating in Alexandria he joined a tiny squadron of pilots tasked with defending Greece against a far greater number of German planes, and was lucky to survive. His earliest stories were about flying, and fuse together blood and battles with visionary experiences. In ‘They Shall Not Grow Old’ (1945), an airman sees row on row of angelic airplanes flying into ‘a bright white light, shining bright and without any color’ in a story that gives a gritty top-dressing of Hemingway to a wartime visionary mode that anticipates Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death by a couple of years.
Dahl’s injuries led to headaches and blackouts which prevented him from flying, so in 1942 he was transferred to Washington as an assistant air attaché. He became a genial, seductive, clubbable but outspoken spy, rumored to have slept with ‘everybody on the East and West Coasts that had more than fifty thousand dollars a year’. He tried to coax informal revelations out of Roosevelt over lunch. He flirted with Ginger Rogers and Elizabeth Arden. He wrote The Gremlins (1943), about a pilot, for Walt Disney, but the film was never made. He slept with starlets – and then, in 1953, he married one. Patricia Neal, co-star with Ronald Reagan in The Hasty Heart and former lover of Gary Cooper, was infinitely glamorous and their marriage was more or less instantly unhappy, since Neal wanted to be a movie star and Dahl wanted to be more than a movie star’s husband. Moreover, he wanted someone to cook him his lunch.
Over these years he met his literary heroes Hemingway, Ian Fleming and C.S. Forester, and tried, with the encouragement of Forester, to kick-start his own automatic grammatizator and sell stories to periodicals. In the short stories from the mid-1950s he got onto the marketable trick of embedding tropes from genre fiction in grimy domestic settings. The notion that a human being could be a brain kept alive in a vat of nutrient juices had been a staple of speculative fiction at least since the 1920s. In ‘William and Mary’ from 1954 (twice rejected by the New Yorker), Dahl embeds that cliché of genre fiction in a dodgy relationship between a bullying academic husband and a resentful wife. The don agrees to have his brain taken out so it can live on after his death. It has a single eye floating above it like ‘a small oval capsule, about the size of a pigeon’s egg’, attached to the brain by the optic nerve. When Mary sees her husband reduced to this state she wants to take it, or ‘him’ as she prefers, home. This is so that she can torment her husband by doing all the things in front of him that she wasn’t allowed to do while he was alive, like puffing smoke into his single eye and forcing him to watch TV.
Dahl could also do domestic violence to detective fiction: in ‘Lamb to the Slaughter’, written shortly before his marriage to Neal, a young wife murders her husband with a frozen leg of lamb, which she then cooks and offers to the detectives when they come looking for the murder weapon. Father Brown would have loved it, though like most of Dahl’s stories it has the emotional boniness of a shaggy dog story: it rests on a sharp punchline, but there is no love for or between the people in it.
The tales from this period generally conclude with a snappy but mechanical twist in which the cheat is cheated, or the person trying to defraud someone else by betting or gambling or undervaluing antique furniture loses, or is killed, or is infected with leprosy, or gets some other kind of grisly narrative comeuppance. Indeed the ‘comeuppance’ button on Dahl’s personal automatic grammatizator was worked almost as hard as the letter ‘e’ on his typewriter. These stories came to be marketed as Tales of the Unexpected (1979), a title borrowed by Dennison for this new biography, though actually after you’ve read a dozen or so of them their twists cease to be at all unexpected. Dennison’s biography has the virtues of clarity and brevity, but despite declaring itself ‘unofficial’, which might suggest it offers shocking new revelations, it adds little to the very good duo of earlier Dahlographies, the first unofficial one by Jeremy Treglown (who busted many of Dahl’s many self-mythologizations) and the huge ‘official’ one by Donald Sturrock, which, while seeking to bring out the best in Dahl, doesn’t conceal his self-aggrandizing side.
Through the mid-1960s Dahl wrote film scripts, variously hacked about and supplemented by other hands, including the screenplay for the Bond movie You Only Live Twice. The marriage to Neal had become more than unhappy, since in the early 1960s it was blasted by a series of catastrophes. In 1960 their baby son Theo was taken out for a walk in New York by his nurse, and the pram was hit by a speeding taxi. Theo suffered serious head injuries. Dahl’s scientism kicked in, as it often did at times of disaster. He spent time and money helping to design a shunt which could relieve the cerebrospinal fluid pressing on Theo’s brain (before it was superseded, the Wade-Dahl-Till valve was used to treat three thousand children). Then in 1962 their daughter Olivia contracted measles and died suddenly of encephalitis at the same age – just seven – at which Dahl’s sister had died. Dahl never talked about his grief for his daughter, though he kept a notebook in his desk drawer headed ‘Olivia’, which wasn’t discovered until after his death. It contained a dispassionately factual account of her illness: ‘Olivia lying quietly. Still unconscious. She has an even chance, doctor said. They had tapped her spine.’ Being dispassionately factual was Dahl’s antidote to despair.
In 1965 catastrophe struck again: Neal suffered a massive cerebral aneurism. She was pregnant at the time, and the stroke rendered her unable to speak or walk. Dahl contacted the best medics and bustled around determined to mend her. He devised an intensive program of therapy to trick her brain back into health, including exercises described by one witness as being like ‘the way one trains a dog’.
Dahl’s fictional people are motivated by primary passions – hunger, greed, revenge, hatred – and it takes a big jolt to redirect their instincts and appetites. In a particularly sick tale from 1960 about a mad vicar who can’t stand women (‘Georgy Porgy’), the narrator turns experimental psychologist and puts an electric fence between male and female rats, watching while the sexually frustrated females (not the males) throw themselves one by one at the fence, only to be electrocuted. Rats generally fare even worse than women in Dahl’s world (though one of them does get to drink a lot of cider in Fantastic Mr Fox). Another is tied down and has its head bitten off as part of a bet in ‘The Ratcatcher’ (1953); its misery and alarm are described with Dahl’s clinical precision, though his squeamish narrator has the grace to look away at the moment of actual decapitation. His fiction thoroughly absorbed mid-20th-century behaviorist beliefs that human beings and animals alike are driven by appetites that can be conditioned by repeated exposure to external stimuli.
The behaviorism of B.F. Skinner was part of the lingua franca of 1950s America that Dahl absorbed. Some version of it underlay his effort to retrain his wife in the art of speech. It also lies beneath his early children’s fiction. Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) is often represented as the great eccentric who cares only for the success of his confectionary inventions. But he is also the master of manipulating appetites. Every child who tours his factory, apart from the saintly Charlie, is subject to a primitive passion which is violently corrected. Mike Teavee is shrunk because of his frenzied love of television, while the fat and greedy Augustus Gloop is squeezed thin when he’s sucked into a pipe meant for melted chocolate.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is rooted in Dahl’s experience of moving from the austerity of England in the 1940s to the glittery self-gratifications of America in the 1950s, which seemed by contrast to be a land flowing with chocolate and honey. The overt moral of the book – that the impoverished English boy who can slowly savor a chocolate bar and keep his appetites under control will win the game of life and inherit the earth, aka the chocolate factory, while the fat greedy kids and the spoiled rich kids will be driven by their appetites towards self-destruction – makes it seem benign, a kind of bastard fusion of Alice in Wonderland and the Sermon on the Mount.
But it’s primarily an exercise in sugar-painting the infinite gratifications of commercialism. The amiably eccentric Wonka is inventing a TV that can transmit material things. Cool! But he’s doing it so that anyone who watches an advert for his wares can simply reach out and pluck a chocolate bar from the screen. As for his workers, he boasts: ‘I shipped them all over here, every man, woman and child in the Oompa-Loompa tribe’ – and his Oompa-Loompa slaves, originally black-skinned but later edited to be white after complaints about racism, want to be ‘shipped’ to his factory and work for him because they so love chocolate, bless ’em. Well, children, what’s going on there, I wonder?
Some time in the mid-1960s Dahl came to recognize that he was never going to write a good adult novel (he tried twice), and concentrated instead on children’s fiction, at which he became extraordinarily successful. Medical bills, support for his disabled wife and child, his taste for artworks and antiques and fine wine and greyhound racing, not to mention the beastly demands of the taxman, all made writing a financial necessity. He sometimes recycled or revised his earlier adult stories into children’s books. ‘The Champion of the World’ (1959) is a story about a rural chancer called Claud (a central figure in Dahl’s abortive second novel for adults, which was to have been called Fifty Thousand Frogskins – frogskins being greenbacks or money), who poaches pheasants by using raisins laced with sleeping pills. The pheasants unfortunately wake up halfway through the heist. The children’s book Danny, the Champion of the World (1975) turns Claud and his innocent partner into a poacher father and his son, onto whom Dahl sprinkles a thick dusting of Dahlery – stories about the Big Friendly Giant who puffs dreams through children’s windows at night; ruffled but obliging doctors; nasty capitalists in Rolls-Royces – and behold: a yarn about rural rip-off artists suddenly becomes an alluring story about a boy and his lovely dad getting their own back on a rich snob.
Dahl at his best had something. He could be extremely funny: the Big Friendly Giant, who gets confused over words, says Nicholas Nickleby is by ‘Dahl’s Chickens’. He could write a mean vivid short sentence. But his key skill was his ability to repress nastiness while keeping it visible. His children’s books are as packed with threat and as top-dressed with sugary allure as the Child Catcher in his screenplay for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. His style – Hemingway for kids with added wrinkles and twinkles and lashings of chocolate, a splash of Belloc here and a glug of Lewis Carroll there, with the odd word like ‘fizzwangle’ or ‘goonswaggle’ to make the mixture effervesce – often seems to be pushing out of view very nasty things that it doesn’t want fully to acknowledge.
The way his tales for adults can underlie the children’s books is one aspect of this ability to keep the nasty stuff just out of sight. But Dahl himself was just as weird a mixture of plain truths and dark secrets. Every account of his life remarks on his impossible blend of emotional bottled-upness and aggressive disinhibition. He never spoke about the death of his daughter, but that wasn’t because he was a quiet soul. In an episode that Dennison chooses not to relate, he was thrown out of the Curzon House Club in 1979 after holding forth about the number of Jews in the club.
The BFG (Big Friendly Giant) of 1982 is by some distance his best book, because it has a different relationship with the unspeakable. It has oodles of charm and always keeps fear in view. In it the children of England and Europe are being eaten at night by horrible giants ‘as big as bumplehammers’, who in their hairy, toothy awfulness were perfect material for the pen of Quentin Blake. There is one, very Dahlish, nice giant, who is smaller than the rest. Like his original in Danny, the Champion of the World he blows dreams through children’s windows at night. He saves Sophie, the heroine, from being eaten and, with the aid of the queen (Dahl very much wanted a knighthood, and also knew that American audiences would love a scene in which a giant farts in front of British royalty), captures all the nasty giants. Many helicopters are involved, because Dahl thought all children love helicopters.
But beneath the crowd-pleasing surface the myth-making of The BFG comes from areas of Dahl’s experience that he would never have wanted to acknowledge. The BFG himself suffers from a creative dysphasia which biographers including Dennison have connected with Neal’s struggle to recover the ability to speak after her stroke: ‘Please understand that I cannot be helping it if I sometimes is saying things a little squiggly ... Words,’ the BFG says, ‘is oh such a twitch-tickling problem to me all my life.’ Dahl wrote the book the year before Neal agreed to a divorce so that he could marry his long-term mistress, with whom he remained until his death. But the underlying terror of The BFG – children are getting eaten in large numbers, and the giants’ victims really don’t come back – is a bleakly oblique response to the deaths of both his sister and daughter at the age of seven. The improbable ways in which people die in Dahl’s fiction – eaten by rhinoceroses, squashed by giant peaches, turned into mice by witches, shrunk to invisibility by magic potions – doesn’t disguise the fact that they die, and die, and keep on dying, and then stay dead.
After witnessing her younger brother’s life-threatening head injury, Dahl’s daughter Tessa was taken to see Anna Freud, who suggested family therapy. According to Tessa, Dahl refused (and medicated her instead) on the grounds that he had seen too many writers who could never write ‘after they had had all their nooks and crannies flattened like pancakes’. He may have been right not to pry into the nooks and crannies of his own mind, since his remarkable capacity not to acknowledge what his writing was really about must have been part of what enabled him to produce it. In interviews he would act surprised when asked if he (at 6’6”) was the BFG. All these characters – the ingenious Willy Wonka, the delightful poaching dad in Danny, the Champion of the World, the family-loving Fantastic Mr Fox – were idealized self-portraits of Dahl, the unfaithful husband and emotionally distant father who wanted to think of himself as savior of all and master of the mighty wheeze. He knew himself well enough to keep hidden the things that he needed to keep hidden in order to make fiction.
It’s easy to be hard on him for doing this. But through all the bullshit and bravura attending his stories about his time in the RAF, and despite the many anecdotal distortions of his life in his autobiographies, Boy (1984) and Going Solo (1986), he knew what it was to live in the shadow of death, and knew grief that never went away. Talking big and bold around the gut-dissolving fear of crashing out of the air was what pilots did, and wrapping bluff and cheery talk around horror and spinning it into yarns was more or less what Dahl spent his life doing.
That might explain, though it can’t excuse, his most indefensible remark, which appeared in the New Statesman after he had been accused of antisemitism when reviewing a book about the Israeli occupation of Beirut. ‘Even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on [the Jews] for no reason,’ he said. To describe the gassing of millions of innocent people as though a sixth-form ‘stinker’ were picking on undesirables in the lower fifth – ‘pick on’?! – might at best be described as emotionally infantile, but it was of a piece with Dahl’s life and work. The emotional horror that he doesn’t want to confront is covered over by bluster.
Towards the end of Dahl’s last book, The Minpins, posthumously published in 1991, Little Billy takes one of his final rides on a swan’s back – he’s growing up and getting too big to fly anymore. The swan flies him into a ‘huge gaping hole in the ground’, and below him ‘Little Billy could see a vast lake of water, gloriously blue, and on the surface of the lake thousands of swans were swimming slowly about.’
There’s no explanation of what this vision is or means, because ‘sometimes mysteries are more intriguing than explanations.’ But it is a throwback to the wartime story ‘They Shall Not Grow Old’, in which the pilot sees row after row of planes gliding off into the light and ‘saw spread out below me a vast green plain. It was green and smooth and beautiful; it reached to the far edges of the horizon where the blue of the sky came down and merged with the green of the plain.’ A vision of calm and collective death stands in for a pilot’s individual terror. Cheerful visions beneath which you can always see something like horror. ~
Roald DahlOriana:
This is another instance of an inherent dilemma in the arts: we may appreciate the work, but detest the creator's personality, especially when it comes to bigotry. Richard Wagner is a huge example of this, overshadowing all others. But the examples are many. Practically all creative people are "difficult"; most are terrible spouses and parents. Unfortunately, all gods are jealous, and they all demand sacrifice. When creative work becomes a priority in anyone's life, some of the consequences are, alas, negative for the "near and dear."
Thinking about the old statement and repartee: "Artists are such fools" -- "There are so many fools who are not artists," we can form a parallel repartee about the badness of artists as spouses and parents: "There are so many bad parents who are not artists."
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~ They won't listen. Do you know why? Because they have certain fixed notions about the past. Any change would be blasphemy in their eyes, even if it were the truth. They don't want the truth; they want their traditions. ~ Isaac Asimov
DO RUSSIANS NEGLECT THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION? (Dima Vorobiev)
~ There is something puzzling about the 1917 revolution in Russian minds.
Even during Soviet rule, I never heard anyone say “we toppled the Czar” or “we chased away the bourgeoisie and landowners”. Even propagandists and party functionaries never said that. The line was “our people”, or “workers and peasants”, or “the revolutionary masses”. In other words, some friendly but somewhat abstract force did the thing for us.
This kind of respectful estrangement reflected the hard reality. Before the Civil War started in earnest at the end of 1918, few people outside the capital city realized that behind all the chaos, marauding and robbery, some kind of Communist revolution was happening. Someone out there was beating the living daylights out of each other—but no one knew exactly who or why.
Nowadays only a thin layer of chattering intellectuals find much fun in locking horns on the Internet about who was right and who was in the wrong when the revolution happened. But even they consider taking sides as a kind of mental and ethical workout—stimulating but not very essential.
This is why the dominant theme of Russian loyalists here on Quora about history matters is typically, “enough bitching about the past”, “no need to topple the Communist monuments and smear Soviet heroes”. The average man in the street feels that the ideological conflicts of the past are just a nuisance—and that enemies of Russia too often use them to hurt us.
Below, a screenshot showing the top Communist in Russia, Gennady Ziuganov, who comes with season’s greetings to his comrades. The text says “Christmas is a celebration that addresses the future”. Even Communists in modern Russia prefer not to dig too deep in the past: it’s too painful, confusing and divisive. ~
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WHY RUSSIA FELL TO COMMUNISM
~ At the time of the 1917 revolution, Imperial Russia fell prey to several low-probability, high-impact factors that worked simultaneously:
Exceptional inability and unwillingness of the monarch—and his closest circle—to govern.
Economic chaos and psychological exhaustion of the nation from the world war.
Aristocratic elite and civil state servants showed total ineptitude and disinterest in national politics.
A critical mass of peasants were given weapons and trained to kill, while their commanders, the officer corps, felt estranged from the interests of Imperial state.
Unique power dynamics in the struggle between the hard right in the military and liberals allowed the Communists to play them against each other with a relatively tiny military force and take power in the capital city.
As a result, during 1917, the State collapsed. The enormous country found itself fragmented into a multitude of small communities, each struggling for survival on their own. The only power factor became armed gangs under different banners in a permanent war of all against all.
Below, a group of soldiers who fought for the "Supreme Leader and Commander-in-Chief of All Russian Land and Sea Forces" Admiral Alexander Kolchak in 1919. By the headcount and amount of resources, his troops were front-runners for the glory of Commie-slayers among the motley crew of anti-Soviet armies. And yet, they turned hopelessly inadequate to the task. Corruption, incompetence, infighting ran supreme.
Looking at the soldiers on the photo, you’ll never guess Admiral Kolchak sat on almost 500 metric tons of gold from the Czar’s vaults. They look like bums whipped together to pose before the camera with a few military props. Half of the men have no firearms, and the one to the right has only a small infantry spade for a weapon.
This is the chronic illness of Russian civilization that keeps infecting the country in the 21st century: the Russian elites feel no responsibility for the nation. The nation reciprocates. Which is why in Russia it sometimes has been amazingly easy to kick the top dogs from their comfy chairs on the top of the food chain. All it takes is determination, muscle and luck. You take the Kremlin, and no one will shed tears for those who sat there before.
In this game, the Communists turned out to be the most resourceful and organized force. ~ Dima Vorobiev, Quora
Admiral Alexander Kolchak, executed in 1920
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LENIN AND STALIN — A COMPARISON
~ Lenin belonged to the generation of revolutionary romantics, while Stalin was a relentless, pragmatic empire builder, hard as nail in his Machiavellian understanding of politics.
Lenin pioneered concentration camps for his own non-combatant compatriots, but they were not a feature of his rule, and were not as deadly as Stalin’s Gulag. He had a liking for hostage taking and summary executions. But Lenin was disarmingly straightforward about it.
Meanwhile, Stalin went to great lengths to make his giant people-mower of state as unobtrusive and undocumented as possible—yet the sheer scale of human death and suffering caused by him makes him very hard to defend even for extreme fans of radical justice.
Stalin turned on his own party comrades, killing them in their thousands. Lenin didn’t do that even to people who he considered traitors to the proletarian cause.
Lenin allowed factions in the party. You could disagree with the man on some fundamental things, and still sit on the Central Committee. (Modern cappuccino Communists, who never seem to agree with each other on anything, greatly appreciate that). With Stalin, doing the same was suicidal.
Lenin’s secret police Cheká was a loose bunch of marauding, sadistic, homicidal predators in revolutionary garbs who were good for terrorizing population and showing everyone who is in charge, but rarely for much else. The Kremlin had very scant control over who they were and what they were doing outside the inner circles of most trusted Bolsheviks. Stalin’s GPU-NKVD-MGB-KGB was a huge, well-oiled, highly trained killing and spying machine kept by Stalin in good shape and on a very short leash—a beast rarely appreciated by revolutionary romantics.
Lenin was a challenger, an underdog, a figure many of us can relate to. Stalin is known to history as a half-god moving around armies and industrial plants from the safety and comfort of the Kremlin. He’s an object of study, hate, admiration, but hardly someone you can imagine enjoying a cup of cappuccino with.
The picture below shows the different images of Lenin and Stalin projected by the official Soviet propaganda, and now perpetuated by admirers of the Soviet Union and Bolshevism. Lenin is an extroverted, enthusiastic, articulate dreamer who carries you along with the power of his vision. Stalin is more of a Putin’s type of leader: introverted, calculating, perceptive wizard. ~ Dima Vorobiev, Quora
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RUSSIAN HISTORY TEXTBOOKS (Misha Firer)
~ Authors of Russian history school textbooks have a job cut out for the mentally ill.
They’re tasked to present Alexander Nevsky as a saint and a national hero, while simultaneously describe how he drowned Russian rebellions in rivers of blood on behalf of the Tatar-Mongol masters.
In the next instance, authors claim that the 220-year Tatar-Mongol Yoke stalled development and historical evolution of Russia and was the single reason why Russia had historically lagged behind West.
Wait, you just said that the man who prolonged Tatar-Mongol Yoke is a true Russian patriot every boy must try to emulate!
Hey, who cares — Russian spirituality is far superior to degenerate Western Civilization, meaning Russians are not inferior to the Westerners in any way. In fact, Russians are better than Europeans who at the time of Tatar-Mongol Yoke developed while Russia didn’t.
Russian history textbooks are full of contradictions like this — scroll down for more examples.
Remember, every child in Russia is subjected to schizophrenic history lessons at school.
There was an institution of serfdom for a number of centuries in Russia.
Serfdom is a deliberately misleading name. In terms of how Russian serfs were treated by their masters — as inanimate objects bought and sold on the market and through newspaper ads, children and spouses separated and sold as individual units to different noblemen, tortured with hot irons, beaten, and killed with no consequences to the owner — it was just as bad as slavery in the New World.
Over 90% of Russians had been White Caucasian slaves same as their African and Indigenous counterparts in the United States or Brazil.
And yet Russian history textbooks want us to believe that when Napoleon army invaded Russia in 1812, for a few months, slaves fell in love with their owners, grabbed pitchforks and fought the invaders in what would be called Patriotic War to defend their owners who spoke the same language, French, as the invaders.
Russian illiterate slaves who had little understanding of the world outside of their master’s estate became patriots of the country ruled by a German tzar.
In order for the kids not feel contradictory, Russian school program teaches them never to think critically and never to question authority of the adults.
“A teacher is always right because he’s an adult.”
Supreme leader is always right because he’s a supreme leader for we are his children.
As a result, outside of the realm of physical science where the author of the textbook can’t bullshit his way to explain gravity in spiritual terms, Russians are like little kids incapable of thinking on their own and for themselves.
They are lied to at school. They are lied to in university. They are lied to on TV. They are lied to on public holidays.
Russians memorize slogans and historical dates (of which they’re extremely proud), but beyond there is a chasm of ignorance filled with lies that pile up with each new supreme leader who has his own agenda increasing the general state of paranoia and schizophrenia.
There is no truth in Russia. The lies are total, and the country is totalitarian.
According to history school textbooks, The Soviet Union was created by the foreign agents, Lenin and Trotsky, whom the West had sent in a sealed train car to make a revolution in Russia.
Nowadays, the state brands as foreign agents journalists and politicians who receive financing from abroad in order to prevent another revolution. They are bad.
Foreign agents of the past destroyed Russian Empire. They were bad.
At the same time, collapse of the Soviet Union is a bad thing. In fact, the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.
If you head is reeling, it’s because you think rationally. Russians are taught at school not to think rationally but to memorize slogans.
Putin is a great leader!
Adolph Hitler was an evil man according to the same books because he killed millions of people.
Stalin killed millions of people, in fact millions of Russians, so why the textbook claims he was good?
Stalin he’s OURS, that’s why.
How come ours, he was a bandit from a village in Georgia and barely spoke Russian? How’s that more Russian than an Austrian artist?
Stalin was the ruler of Russia which makes him good and OURS. And as OURS he can’t do no wrong no matter how many millions of people he killed.
And that’s where lies the key idea that the authors of Russian history and not just history textbooks drill into students.
The student must submit wholeheartedly to whichever scoundrel and piece of shit currently occupies the throne in Russia who hijacks and monopolizes the terms motherland, homeland, patriotism to use for his brand of lies and propaganda.
A Russian associates his identity with the supreme leader. He is not allowed to relate directly to his country, his homeland.
When OUR leader tells you, student, to go die in trenches in a foreign country and for your mother or wife to feel proud about such lofty sacrifice, that’s what you gonna do, because for 11 years school teachers had been telling you that it is patriotic and is what Motherland expects from you, and it’s the Russian Way. And Russia is spiritually superior to the West which makes her always right.
Russia is a nation of masters and servants. Always has been. Always will be. ~ Quora
Mary:
I think serfdom was the essential problem for Russia in the same way slavery was for the United States. A kind of “Original Sin” that if not recognized and “solved” will be a constant ongoing threat to any progress, whether in a democratic or socialist state. And apparently serfs were very much like chattel slaves if they were property that could be bought and sold, moved and transferred at the landowners will, and the children of serfs were serfs, just as the children of slaves were slaves.
And Russia’s city/rural divide is even starker and more terrible than ours, where the countryside is not years, but centuries behind living standards in the principal cities. That tremendous gap is certainly the source of the destructive rage we see in the Russian soldiers smashing and trashing all the “luxuries” they find ordinary Ukranians enjoyed.
Oriana:
Yes, and most Russian soldiers are from the poorest rural provinces, mainly in Siberia – so there's a racist element here as well.
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Elena Gold:
Russians had already experienced it when Gorbachev brought Glasnost (1987). I studied philosophy (Marxism mostly) at a university and suddenly all I knew was announced to be a lie – by the same professors who taught us Marxism!
I dropped out due to loss of ideals.
Came back 7 years later to learn the opposite things that had been taught before; it was in 1990s, after the USSR collapsed; that was the only decade when Russia had a chance at democracy and freedom that the West takes for granted.
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MEN YANKED OFF THE STREETS TO BE FORCEFULLY CONSCRIPTED
~ The Ukrainian Military General Staff and western analysts have noticed in recent weeks a substantial increase in conscripted migrant laborers appearing on the front lines of Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine. In particular, migrant laborers from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have begun to appear more and more frequently among battlefield KIAs and POWs taken into custody by the Ukrainian military.
Ukrainian Brigadier General Oleksiy Gromov said in his view this serves to illustrate the growing desperation of Russia's military for frontline troops. The General also stated a new wave of forced mobilization is underway in the temporarily occupied territory of the Luhansk region with local Russian National Guard yanking young and middle-aged males off the streets in the settlement of Rovenki for conscription into the 2nd Army Corps of the Russian occupation forces.
Opinion: So basically Uzbekistan and Tajikistan nationals signed up for migrant work as laborers in Russia and the next thing they knew were serving as cannon fodder for the Russian military. Beyond the illegality of conscripting foreign nationals temporarily working in their country, does the Russian military command truly believe these poor devils will stand and fight for a country and cause they haven't the slightest incentive to die for?
*
DON’T PAY THE SOLDIERS UNTIL THE WAR IS OVER (Misha Firer)
~ Self-employed cargo van driver Andrey from Moscow is a patriot. A St. George ribbon, symbol of victory in WW2 and invasion of Ukraine, proudly tied around gearstick of his VW van.
Below is Andrei’s story as he told it to my friend who hired him to transport private belongings from the storage place.
Andrei was hired to carry a cargo of humanitarian aid to Donetsk [Ukrainian city under Russian occupation] in August. There was an armed escort riding shotgun with him.
Andrey is a patriot. Earlier he’d gone to the conscription office and asked to become a volunteer in the Special Military Operation. He was not mobilized because of his age. Andrei was greatly upset.
He did not get to Donetsk in the end, although he really wanted to go there, on the verge of bursting into tears. He almost tore his shirt off in frustration. He was turned around because his VW van was too expensive.
They told him that roads are badly damaged and destroyed in parts. He will not reach the destination and won’t get paid.
Andrei next to his expensive VW van
Andrei had to look for housing in Belgorod, north of the border with Ukraine, and got disappointed in everything that he saw there.
All hotels and rented apartments were occupied by soldiers and officers, who according to Andrei, were given huge salaries, which they had not seen before.
They were volunteers [it was before the partial mobilization] — young and reckless. They ran away from their units, got drunk and blew the money. Some ran away for good, not just for the weekend. The locals also told him about complete breakdown of order in the military units and what chaos there was going on there, and the huge number of soldiers that got wasted daily.
Andrei was shocked. As a patriot, this is not what he expected to see.
He believes that everything had gone well in the Russian army in this war. The only roadblock was to give a lot of money to soldiers and officers.
He says that in Belgorod they turned off the ATMs and card payments throughout the city so that soldiers and officers could not buy booze.
After what he saw in Belgorod, he no longer had any desire to volunteer, and was disappointed to tears.
But now, after the general mobilization, he is encouraged again.
Now the mobilized will all be brought to order, so that they don’t drink and run away. And most importantly, do not pay them money right away. This is really the main thing. A recipe for success. Don't pay them at all. Until the war is over. And when it ends, they can be paid off all their accumulated salaries.
Russia has to go all the way. Finish off Kyiv. Otherwise NATO will defeat us. The war will continue for a long time, a year for sure.
Ukrainian terrorists will arrange bombings in Moscow — “this is certain 100%”.
When asked if he gets the summons will he go to war, Andrei answered dejectedly, “Well, what should I do if the summons comes? I’ll go. I’m no longer of the age to run away to Georgia [where young people hide from the draft]. I will, of course. This is my Rodina [homeland]. Love for the Motherland should be mutual.”
Andrei has been divorced for a year and has an adult daughter. He was depressed after the divorce and had suicidal thoughts. As a teenager his daughter got into drugs and became an addict, but she’s all right now and works as a journalist in Crimea.
Andrei dreams of living in the country in his old age. He has a country house where he has chickens. But he has to live in Moscow to earn money.
He recently bought two one-bedroom apartments as investment. He has a new, young wife. She says if he goes to war, she will be devastated, but he won’t let her stop him because he's a patriot. ~ Quora
Elena Gold:
I just watched an hour of Putin’s speeches to his top commanders and generals on 21 December. They are just as enthusiastic and inspired as Andrey about the war and all their winning.
Military commanders listening to Putin
Henk Schoute:
Their enthusiasm radiates from them ... Or they have been told that there is no buffet with drinks ready this time.
Robert Neal:
His young wife inherits his apartments and his VW 😂
John Stauffer:
And with a new apartment and a nice VW van, she can easily get a newer and, perhaps, a better husband!
Brian Gonzalez:
Putin will arrange bombings in Moscow, like he did before, 100%.
*
Oriana:
There is no mystery as to why there was a shortage of consumer goods in the Soviet Union. Resources were plowed into heavy industry and the military. Things such as toothpaste and pantyhose were simply not important next to the goal of making the country a superpower.
*
Ukrainian soldiers' Christmas Eve Supper *
MISHA IOSSEL’S CHRISTMAS MEDITATION
~ I am sitting in a quiet room in an empty house on. the outskirts of Nairobi, thinking and remembering.
I am thinking of the friends still living and those I will never see again, even hypothetically speaking. Those two respective numbers are almost equal at this point, I think. Because life is long, but not for everyone. I am thinking of how long life is, or can be, and I am thinking of the people I love.
Hope for a better tomorrow springs eternal. This has been a terrible year. The country of my birth and my youth has become the first openly fascist state in Europe since the Nazi Germany. People just like the ones I used to know back in Leningrad and Moscow, as well as those I came across and spoke with during my travels across Russia in my twenties, are now killing people in Ukraine, destroying Ukrainian cities, men fighting for their native land, murdering Ukrainian women and children and the elderly, for no humanly understandable reason at all.
Russia's war in Ukraine is in essence one against any hope for goodness and kindness in the world. It is a war borne out of extreme self-hate, self-loathing, self-abasement on Russia's part. Along with Russia's present and foreseeable future, it — this unspeakably evil war — has also erased all the (admittedly, infrequent) goodness to be found in Russia's past, obliterated the justification for anyone's individual Russia-bound nostalgia. Everything, every “Russian” memory has been tainted, befouled by it.
And I'm thinking — and I'm thinking that this certainly must have been what the German intellectuals were wondering in dismay back in the 1930s and beyond — about the very cultural, aesthetic and psychological atmosphere in which my generation of ex-Soviet people came into being (the great Russian literature! the great Russian composers! the great Russian chess school! the great Russian science! the great Russian ballet tradition! the great Russian theater, film directors! the great Russian... whatever else): what might have been so wrong with it that somehow, over time, it has led to Russia's cancerous transformation into the preeminent unmitigated, soulless, heartless monster of the modern world, the very embodiment of utmost human ugliness? And I'm thinking, too, that someone — maybe even me, because I certainly am one of that multitude of potential someones — should write about it.
But now the terrible year 2022 is drawing to a close. And I'm thinking of the year ahead. I'm looking to the light shadow of its growing proximity with hope. Because hope does springs eternal, that's what it does, at any age and under any circumstances. I believe — because I want to believe, granted; but not only because of that — that this coming year will be one of Russia's ultimate and unequivocal defeat in Ukraine, and one of Putin regime's ignominious demise. I do believe this will come to pass. Ukraine has shown itself to be a determined nation of everyday heroes, and the favor of history is always on the side of nations like this. Ukraine will be rebuilt, and it will prosper as a free and democratic European state. Russia, on the other hand, will have to start its long and arduous road to humanity's (and history's) forgiveness with the same process underwent by every German citizen almost eighty years ago, in the wake of Nazi army's defeat in WWII: the forcibly mandatory process of denazification, detoxification, and gradually coming to its senses and becoming horrified by what it has wrought in the world.
I'm thinking that there are reasons to feel hopeful closer to home, too — in America, in particular. Trump has been greatly diminished, both as a political figure and the presumptive leader of the Republican Party. His brand is plummeting — and on the whole, the hateful insanity of MAGA-istic vitriol is meeting with less and less patience in the larger American society. People don't want to exercise their worst, angriest selves. Not anymore. People crave normalcy, decency, an essential measure of kindness. The noxious fog of the last six years finally seems to be rising and dissipating.
These are my thoughts — some of them, at any rate — here on the outskirts of Nairobi. It's sunny outside. The sky is blue. Birds are chirping. A compact flock of vervet monkeys, always on the lookout for a chance to wreak some minor havoc somewhere, just galloped across the thunderous, echoing roof of a neighboring house.
Merry Christmas to all who celebrate. Wishes for the peaceful, hopeful days ahead for everyone.
Alena Jirasek:
A sigh for all those Russians, yes, who will need to go through a journey of atonement at some point in the far/near future, a period of potential flourishing & innovation utterly wasted. And how the depleted generations after WW1 must have also felt. What a setback for humanity if ultimately not perhaps for the planet... Paraphrasing past Uruguayan President Mujica now: unlike other creatures of the animal kingdom, only humans will keep stubbing their toe over the same obstacle — as if lessons from Napoleon & beyond weren't already crystal clear.
*
SENECA ON HAPPINESS: READ AND WALK EACH DAY
~ “All men, brother Gallio, wish to live happily,” wrote the Roman philosopher and statesman Lucius Annaeus Seneca to his brother around A.D. 58, “but are dull at perceiving exactly what it is that makes life happy.” Seneca may very well have based that assessment on himself. He was a happiness expert, writing throughout his life about the ancient concept of eudaemonia, which roughly means “living in agreement with nature,” or perhaps, in today’s language, “inner peace.” Yet his life was anything but peaceful.
After experiencing years of severe health issues, Seneca was exiled from Rome under Emperor Claudius, then returned to tutor and later advise Emperor Nero, by whom he was first beloved and then accused (probably falsely) of conspiracy—and thus compelled to take his own life. As the creator of the website Daily Stoic, Ryan Holiday, remarked to me, “That he could even get out of bed in the morning, let alone smile, was a feat of sheer human endurance.”
No doubt all of this is more harrowing than what you endure in daily life—you thought you had a bad boss?—but perhaps you can relate nonetheless. You want to be happy and well, but your messy circumstances bite and gnaw at you relentlessly, distracting you from the habits of thought and action that could help you find enjoyment and remember the meaning in your life.
Every paragraph is a gem, and the whole thing is worth your time. But luckily for us, he also helpfully lists 11 of the most important lessons he believed one must follow to achieve peace. They are as pertinent today as they were two millennia ago.
Lesson 1: I will look upon death or upon a comedy with the same expression of countenance.
Seneca is not suggesting that you laugh at funerals or cry at comedies, nor is he saying that sadness and laughter are bad. He is simply exhorting you to manage your emotional extremes so they don’t manage you. And it’s great advice: In 2020, French researchers studied the relationship between an even state of mind and various measures of feeling and behavior. They found that equanimity predicted lower negative states such as rumination, catastrophizing, and neuroticism.
Lesson 2: I will submit to labors, however great they may be, supporting the strength of my body by that of my mind.
One of the great lessons from modern research is that physical and intellectual fitness are central to a happy life. Two of the lifelong habits of older people who are both happy and well are continuous learning and healthy exercise. As an easy rule of thumb, read and walk each day—two activities that are as revolutionary today as they were in Seneca’s time. Or, if you are feeling really efficient, walk while listening to a book!
Lesson 3: I will despise riches when I have them as much as when I have them not; if they be elsewhere I will not be more gloomy; if they sparkle around me I will not be more lively than I should otherwise be: Whether Fortune comes or goes I will take no notice of her.
This lesson is much deeper than “Money doesn’t buy happiness.” Seneca’s assertion is that an attachment to riches will bring misery, and the research couldn’t support him more clearly. For example, writing in the journal Personality and Individual Differences in 2017, researchers showed that materialism can lower well-being and raise depression.
Lesson 4: I will view all lands as though they belong to me, and my own as though they belonged to all mankind.
This lesson expands on Lesson 3 to assert that misery comes not only from grasping for things but also from holding what one has too tightly. This idea is present in many religious and philosophical traditions. For example, it is akin to what Catholics call “solidarity”: the idea that we are all sisters and brothers, so (for example) my ownership of property is fundamentally one of stewardship for the greater good of all.
Lesson 5: I will so live as to remember that I was born for others, and will thank Nature on this account: for in what fashion could she have done better for me? She has given me to all, and all to me.
In other words, charity is a gift to the giver. Service to others is one of the easiest ways to get happier. Volumes of research attest to the fact that giving to charity and volunteering, spending money on others, and more radical acts such as donating blood and organs all raise well-being.
Lesson 6: Whatever I may possess, I will neither hoard it greedily nor squander it recklessly.
This lesson is a version of the old saying “All things in moderation,” but it goes beyond the claim that moderation is morally superior: In Seneca’s view, it also leads to inner peace. Once again, research seems to support the claim. It is easy to see this in cases such as drinking and eating, but moderation even in virtues is warranted, such that, for example, hard work does not become workaholism.
Lesson 7: I will think that I have no possessions so real as those which I have given away to deserving people: I will not reckon benefits by their magnitude or number, or by anything except the value set upon them by the receiver.
The idea here is that the true value of what I do is not how much it costs me, but how much it benefits you. For example, the true value of your work is not your salary but rather how much it helps others. Altruism won’t pay the rent, but if you take this lesson to heart, it can change your priorities, and maybe even lead you to a better job.
Lesson 8: I will do nothing because of public opinion, but everything because of conscience: Whenever I do anything alone by myself I will believe that the eyes of the Roman people are upon me while I do it.
This lesson is a twofer: first, to resist social comparison; second, to act in private the same as in public. The first lesson is a staple in the psychology literature, and probably explains in no small part why social media—in which we compare ourselves with strangers and friends constantly—is difficult for so many people’s well-being. The second lesson asserts that integrity and consistency lead to happiness—and that hypocrisy leads to unhappiness. Researchers have shown that the “self-perception of disingenousness” harms our human need to see ourselves as authentic, consistent, and coherent.
Lesson 9: I will be agreeable with my friends, gentle and mild to my foes: I will grant pardon before I am asked for it, and will meet the wishes of honorable men halfway.
This ancient teaching—“Love your enemies,” in the biblical formation—lies behind many of the philosophies that seek to disrupt the tendency to hate our foes. “Love has within it a redemptive power,” Martin Luther King Jr. said in a 1957 sermon. “And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals.” In my own research, I have shown that loving across differences is not only practical; it can also be a source of immense joy.
Lesson 10: I will bear in mind that the world is my native city, that its governors are the gods, and that they stand above and around me, criticizing whatever I do or say.
This advice takes part two of Lesson 8 up a notch: I should act not just as if others are watching; I should act like God is watching. One study showed that priming believers and nonbelievers alike to think about God or associated concepts before engaging in an experiment in which they could voluntarily give money to a stranger or keep it for themselves induced more than twice as much generosity as when religious concepts were not introduced. When secular moral institutions such as “civic” and “jury” are primed, the effect is almost as great. And remember what we learned from Lesson 5: Such induced generosity will benefit not only the people you give to but you as well.
Lesson 11: Whenever either Nature demands my breath again, or reason bids me dismiss it, I will quit this life, calling all to witness that I have loved a good conscience, and good pursuits; that no one’s freedom, my own least of all, has been impaired through me.
This lesson exhorts us to consider the good of others as the way to accept our own death peacefully. And indeed, a 2014 study of dying cancer patients found that peaceful patients were “other-person centered. They saw in their illness opportunities to give to others, whether it was by encouraging friends, teaching grandchildren about life, or participating in clinical trials in order to help future patients.” Seneca himself is recorded to have died with complete equanimity, forced to take his own life but doing so calmly and while speaking of courage in life and death. Peter Paul Rubens’s famous painting The Death of Seneca shows the philosopher dying standing up, signifying the Roman ideal of virtus: valor, bravery, and character.
Wise as they sound, Seneca’s lessons can be difficult to implement. They contravene many of our natural impulses: to behave egotistically, to compare ourselves with others, to acquire as much as possible, to stay alive at any cost.
Seneca understood this tension full well and, alongside his rules, helpfully offered a secret formula for getting the benefits of these goals even if embodying them perfectly is impossible: try. “It is the act of a generous spirit to proportion its efforts not to its own strength but to that of human nature,” he wrote, “to entertain lofty aims, and to conceive plans which are too vast to be carried into execution even by those who are endowed with gigantic intellects.” These goals are not an exercise in futility but rather in effort and progress. The only way to achieve true peace of mind is by trying a little each day. ~
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/09/ancient-greek-philosophy-seneca-modern-problems/671433/?utm_source=pocket_collection_story
Oriana:
The part about wanting to survive at any price reminded me of a statement by Solzhenitsyn, to the effect that if you want to preserve your human dignity in an inhumane situation like a Siberian camp, you must think of yourself as already dead. Don’t try to protect your life — you are already dead, so act according to your sense of right and wrong.
Mary:
Seneca’s advice seems to be for equanimity, for the regulation of emotions away from the extremes, an ideal that doesn’t feel familiar, in a world where one is encouraged to find and fulfill your passion. Our world runs on high, we are encouraged to react strongly, to see things in terms of sharp and discrete positives and negatives, to be “sold” on big dreams and big desires. Equanimity doesn’t work well for a consumer society, where you are encouraged to follow and be faithful to Brands and Influencers. Seneca’s teaching would have you see none of those matter much, none can make you happy or content, that it is better not to go grasping at such straws, because once you have them they are no more than dead grass and ashes.
Oriana:
I am fortunate to have lived long enough to get to enjoy the kind of quiet life that Seneca recommends: read and walk every day. Epicurus saw happiness in a similar light, with more emphasis on friendship as the greatest pleasure.
But back in my “years of perdition,” when I mainly struggled to survive, equanimity was difficult to achieve. Still, every day I managed to read and write, half an hour stolen here, an hour there. And walking was totally necessary, just to look at palm trees and oleanders — Long Beach (California) was my oleander city, as well as my city of love and heartbreak, not only in the romantic sense, but almost across the board.
Seneca is for the financially secure. Same goes for Marcus Aurelius (and for "brands and influencers" too!) Under acute stress, all breaks down.
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HOW CHRISTMAS BECAME AN AMERICAN TRADITION
~ Each season, the celebration of Christmas has religious leaders and conservatives publicly complaining about the commercialization of the holiday and the growing lack of Christian sentiment. Many people seem to believe that there was once a way to celebrate the birth of Christ in a more spiritual way.
Such perceptions about Christmas celebrations have, however, little basis in history. As a scholar of transnational and global history, I have studied the emergence of Christmas celebrations in German towns around 1800 and the global spread of this holiday ritual.
While Europeans participated in church services and religious ceremonies to celebrate the birth of Jesus for centuries, they did not commemorate it as we do today. Christmas trees and gift-giving on Dec. 24 in Germany did not spread to other European Christian cultures until the end of the 18th century and did not come to North America until the 1830s.
Charles Haswell, an engineer and chronicler of everyday life in New York City, wrote in his “Reminiscences of an Octoganarian” that in the 1830s German families living in Brooklyn dressed up Christmas trees with lights and ornaments. Haswell was so curious about this novel custom that he went to Brooklyn in a very stormy and wet night just to see these Christmas trees through the windows of private homes.
THE FIRST CHRISTMAS TREES IN GERMANY
Only in the late 1790s did the new custom of putting up a Christmas tree decorated with wax candles and ornaments and exchanging gifts emerge in Germany. This new holiday practice was completely outside and independent of Christian religious practices.
The idea of putting wax candles on an evergreen was inspired by the pagan tradition of celebrating the winter solstice with bonfires on Dec. 21. These bonfires on the darkest day of the year were intended to recall the sun and show her the way home. The lit Christmas tree was essentially a domesticated version of these bonfires.
The English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge gave the very first description of a decorated Christmas tree in a German household when he reported in 1799 about having seen such a tree in a private home in Ratzeburg in northwestern Germany. In 1816 German poet E.T.A. Hoffmann published his famous story “Nutcracker and Mouse King.” This story contains the very first literary record of a Christmas tree decorated with apples, sweets and lights.
From the onset, all family members, including children, were expected to participate in the gift-giving. Gifts were not brought by a mystical figure, but openly exchanged among family members – symbolizing the new middle-class culture of egalitarianism.
FROM GERMAN ROOTS TO AMERICAN SOIL
American visitors to Germany in the first half of the 19th century realized the potential of this celebration for nation building. In 1835 Harvard professor George Ticknor was the first American to observe and participate in this type of Christmas celebration and to praise its usefulness for creating a national culture. That year, Ticknor and his 12-year-old daughter Anna joined the family of Count von Ungern-Sternberg in Dresden for a memorable Christmas celebration.
Other American visitors to Germany – such as Charles Loring Brace, who witnessed a Christmas celebration in Berlin nearly 20 years later – considered it a specific German festival with the potential to pull people together.
For both Ticknor and Brace, this holiday tradition provided the emotional glue that could bring families and members of a nation together. In 1843 Ticknor invited several prominent friends to join him in a Christmas celebration with a Christmas tree and gift-giving in his Boston home.
Ticknor’s holiday party was not the first Christmas celebration in the United States that featured a Christmas tree. German-American families had brought the custom with them and put up Christmas trees before. However, it was Ticknor’s social influence that secured the spread and social acceptance of the alien custom to put up a Christmas tree and to exchange gifts in American society.
THE INTRODUCTION OF SANTA CLAUS
For most of the 19th century, the celebration of Christmas with Christmas trees and gift-giving remained a marginal phenomenon in American society. Most Americans remained skeptical about this new custom. Some felt that they had to choose between older English customs such as hanging stockings for presents on the fireplace and the Christmas tree as proper space for the placing of gifts. It was also hard to find the necessary ingredients for this German custom. Christmas tree farms had first to be created. And ornaments needed to be produced.
The most significant steps toward integrating Christmas into popular American culture came in the context of the American Civil War. In January 1863 Harper’s Weekly published on its front page the image of Santa Claus visiting the Union Army in 1862. This image, which was produced by the German-American cartoonist Thomas Nast, represents the very first image of Santa Claus.
In the following years, Nast developed the image of Santa Claus into the jolly old man with a big belly and long white beard as we know it today. In 1866 Nast produced “Santa Claus and His Works,” an elaborate drawing of Santa Claus’ tasks, from making gifts to recording children’s behavior. This sketch also introduced the idea that Santa Claus traveled by a sledge drawn by reindeer.
Declaring Christmas a federal holiday and putting up the first Christmas tree in the White House marked the final steps in making Christmas an American holiday. On June 28, 1870, Congress passed the law that turned Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, Independence Day, and Thanksgiving Day into holidays for federal employees.
And in December 1889 President Benjamin Harrison began the tradition of setting up a Christmas tree at the White House.
Christmas had finally become an American holiday tradition. ~
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-christmas-became-an-american-holiday-tradition-with-a-santa-claus-gifts-and-a-tree?utm_source=pocket-newtab
from another source:
~ Christmas in early America was a mixed bag. Many with Puritan beliefs banned Christmas because of its pagan origins and the raucous nature of the celebrations. Other immigrants arriving from Europe continued with the customs of their homelands. The Dutch brought Sinter Klaas with them to New York in the 1600’s. The Germans brought their tree traditions in the 1700’s. Each celebrated their own way within their own communities.
It wasn’t until the early 1800’s that the American Christmas began to take shape. Washington Irving wrote a series of stories of a wealthy English landowner who invites his workers to have dinner with him. Irving liked the idea of people of all backgrounds and social status coming together for a festive holiday. So, he told a tale that reminisced about old Christmas traditions that had been lost but were restored by this wealthy landowner. Through Irving’s story, the idea began to take hold in the hearts of the American public.
In 1822, Clement Clark Moore wrote An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas for his daughters. It’s now famously known as The Night Before Christmas. In it, the modern idea of Santa Claus as a jolly man flying through the sky on a sleigh took hold. Later, in 1881, the artist Thomas Nast was hired to draw a depiction of Santa for a Coke-a-Cola advertisement. He created a rotund Santa with a wife named Mrs. Claus, surrounded by worker elves. After this, the image of Santa as a cheerful, fat, white-bearded man in a red suit became embedded in American culture.
A NATIONAL HOLIDAY
After the civil war, the country was looking for ways to look past difference and become united as a country. In 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant declared it a federal holiday. And while Christmas traditions have adapted with time, I think Washington Irving’s desire for unity in celebration lives on. It’s become a time of year where we wish others well, donate to our favorite charities, and give presents with a joyful spirit. ~
https://voiceandvisioninc.org/blog/entry/a-brief-history-of-christmas/
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A GREAT ‘CULTURAL CHRISTIAN’
~ One who ranks exceedingly high is the German Lutheran minister, political dissident and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
There has been an ensuing debate about just what Bonhoeffer meant by “religionless Christianity.” It is conceivable that, partly as a result of his enormous erudition, he rejected the supernatural claims of Christianity, though embracing fully and unreservedly Christianity's ethical values. But then, perhaps not.
As the evangelical biographer Eric Metaxas has stressed, Bonhoeffer during his his tenure at Union Theological Seminary, was appalled by the intellectual arrogance of American mainline Protestantism, while apparently drawn in a spiritual sense to the fundamentalist but progressive Christianity of the African-American Baptist Church, even carefully completing recordings of so-called Negro Spiritual singing to take back to Germany.
Even so, if he was a non-believing Christian, he arguably represented the most remarkable cultural Christian of the 20th century, if not of the entire history of the faith, by ultimately sacrificing his life to oppose one as well as an ideology that he regarded as evil incarnate: Hitler and Nazism.
Indeed, if he can be regarded only as a cultural Christian, his life and witness reflects a truly singular achievement, implying a superhuman selflessness while underscoring the very essence and enduring value of religion, especially as it is embodied in Christianity: that the highest values, the most enduring values of humanity have been expressed and affirmed by the shedding of blood — the forfeiture of life. ~ Jim Langcuaster, Quora
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AMERICA AS A RETRO-PROGRESSIVE NATION
We’re a paradoxically retro-progressive nation, on the pragmatic cutting edge but founded by uptight reactionary Puritans, nostalgic for less pragmatic religious dogmas (a recipe for lie buying). It's like if Silicon Valley had been founded by Druids. ~ Jeremy Sherman
WHY HUMANS LIVE LONGER THAN MOST ANIMALS
~ We don’t yet know, for sure, why humans live, on average, longer than most animals. This is an overview of some theories why:
Studies that evaluated the life spans of animals depending on their overall size revealed that larger animals live longer on average. Humans are not small; surprisingly, we exceed the definition of megafauna-size animals that start from around 46 kg/100 lbs.
Evolution should only promote our life span until the age of reproduction and caring for children. Still, in our species and a few others, like orcas, natural selection extended the lives of grandmothers and grandfathers to help with children, as adolescence in our species is very long. This is also related to our higher mental abilities, which are impossible without extended learning from parents and grandparents. In our history, children that were raised with older generations around had a bit better survival rate.
Men are fertile until they die, and the slight chance of them fathering children late in life might have contributed to the increase in the life span of our species.
There is a theory that we live longer than other animals because we burn only about 50% as many calories per unit of time and adjusted for the body weight. This translates into slower aging and growth and extends our life span.
In the past, childhood mortality was very high. The genes and adaptations that led to their survival after being born simultaneously might have made their life longer later.
In some long-lived animals with a very effective defense mechanism, like shells of turtles or venomous bites of snakes, natural selection favors longevity. These animals are less likely to be preyed upon and die this way. It might be a contributing factor in humans, too, because we also have such an effective defense mechanism, our technology. We rarely die from attacks from other animals.
Our technology, better nutrition, access to running water, vaccinations, and modern health care and hygiene contribute to our longer lives.
All or most of these factors might play at least a small role in why we live longer than other animals, which is vital in why we could develop technological civilization. Octopuses are also very smart, but they live only, at most, a few years. Their parents die before their young hatch from eggs. They cannot teach them skills upon which subsequent generations could build a technological civilization. They are also aquatic, which doesn’t help, but it’s a story for another answer. ~ T. Barczuk, Quora
Another interesting hypothesis is that humans and other great apes lost the ability to break down uric acid in the blood. Despite its reputation, uric acid is actually a good antioxidant, which may be the reason why humans and apes live longer than other mammals.
David Flemmons:
I would argue one of the main reasons for human longevity is the invention of speech. This allows for the accumulation and transmission of knowledge over time. “The wisdom of the elders.”
Rea:
“Larger animals live longer on average. Humans are not small; surprisingly, we exceed the definition of megafauna-size animals that start from around 46 kg/100 lbs.”
But it's the opposite with dogs. Smaller breeds live longer than larger ones, why?
T. Barczuk:
Lager individuals within species, even humans, have a higher chance of getting cancer. Within dogs as a whole species, there is the same issue. The larger ones get cancer more frequently because they have more cells in the same body, increasing the chance of cancer with cell division.
Oriana:
It’s more complicated than that. Growth hormone itself, acting through the insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I ) may play a harmful role, stimulating the growth of cancer cells. “The potential role of the GH-IGF axis in cancer development has also been confirmed in different animal models. The animals with reduced production/action of GH and IGF-I are resistant to carcinogenesis. (…) Likewise, patients with either primary or secondary IGF-I deficiency seem to be protected from developing malignancies.
Overall these data indicate an association, not a causal relationship. Genetic predisposition as well as common nutritional and environmental factors may in fact account for these associations.” ~ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6603614/
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SUGAR, INSULIN RESISTANCE, AND CANCER: WHAT’S THE LINK?
~ The metabolic processes that help your body use food for energy and nourishment are extremely complex. The hormone insulin is a key player.
When you eat, sugars from the food enter your bloodstream, which triggers your pancreas to release insulin. That insulin helps the sugar get into your cells to be used for energy. The insulin then ushers any extra sugar to your liver to be stored for later. Insulin also helps your body break down and use lipids, or fats.
The amount of insulin in your body goes up and down according to how much sugar is in your bloodstream. But several factors can make your cells resistant to insulin. As a result, your blood sugar and insulin levels will be chronically elevated.
To explain why this can happen, why it matters and what you can do about it, we talked to Beverly Rodgers, a senior clinical dietitian at MD Anderson League City.
What causes insulin resistance?
Research shows that if you are overweight or obese, especially if you carry your weight around your midsection, you’re more at risk for insulin resistance. That’s why we measure waist circumference.
But even if you are not overweight or obese, a diet high in fat and refined sugar increases your risk.
Our bodies are always trying to be in balance. Obesity, lack of exercise and too much dietary sugar and fat make that harder to achieve. When you are insulin resistant, sugar, lipids and insulin levels cannot achieve the proper ratios.
Over time, too much blood sugar and elevated insulin levels increase your risk for a host of health problems, including Type 2 diabetes, kidney failure, fatty liver disease, vascular disease and cancer.
How does insulin resistance affect cancer risk?
It has to do with fat, especially the fat around your waist and organs. If you are insulin resistant, you are more likely to create fat cells and not be able to break down fat cells. The resulting weight gain, inflammation and hormone disruptions raise your risk for up to 13 types of cancer.
Independent of weight, insulin increases cell production and reduces cell death. That means there is more opportunity for something to go wrong and cancer to develop. Long-term increased insulin raises your risk for breast, prostate and colorectal cancers.
There are really good studies that show that changing your lifestyle habits, including eating well, staying active and maintaining a healthy weight, really decreases that risk for those three cancers.
What can you do to prevent insulin resistance and related cancers?
You can prevent and even reverse insulin resistance through weight management, exercise and healthy food choices. These steps will help you stabilize your insulin and blood sugar and reduce inflammation.
Reduce body fat. Losing just 10% of your body weight directly correlates with improved health. That includes insulin resistance, diabetes and hypertension. If you lose 10% of your body weight, you’ll see major improvement with all of those chronic conditions.
Get and stay physically active. Aim for at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise each week, and practice strength training at least twice a week. Even if you don’t lose any weight, physical activity will help you stabilize your blood sugar and insulin.
Eat a plant-based diet that is low in added sugar and saturated fat. Your diet really matters when it comes to trying to fight inflammation and manage your blood sugar and insulin. You want your body in the state where it’s not like a match, burning everything up. You want it to be in a state where it’s happy. It likes that water. It likes those veggies.
Once patients have completed cancer treatment, they’re at increased risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes. From a survivorship aspect, it’s important to make sure that you’re eating a plant-based diet, exercising and decreasing your risk of recurrence.
These are proactive steps cancer survivors can take to protect their health and take control. ~
https://www.mdanderson.org/cancerwise/sugar--insulin-resistance-and-cancer--what-is-the-link.h00-159461634.html
Oriana:
Avoidance of sugar and grains (except perhaps for sourdough bread, a fermented product) is essential. Sugar in particular should be classified as a metabolic poison.
Vegetarians and vegans do have a lower cancer risk, but the difference isn’t impressive — the risk reduction is on the order of 8-10%. Protection seems to come not so much from not eating meat (with the exception of carcinogenic processed meats) as from consuming vegetables rich in anti-cancer compounds, such as the cruciferous family (cabbage, broccoli, bok choy), mushrooms, and certain nuts.
Not consuming seed oils rich in omega-6 fatty acids (e.g. corn oil, soybean oil) is perhaps as important as not consuming sugar. Demonizing saturated fats and never mentioning omega-6 seed oils is typical of outdated health advice.
There are of course a myriad other factors, such as mother’s diet during pregnancy, diet in childhood, exposure to carcinogens, and stress levels. The most important factor, however, is probably genetics. Cancer seems to run in some families, just as others may be riddled with heart disease and stroke. The luckiest individuals are those who have centenarian genes, which offer a strong protection against cancer and other diseases of aging. Centenarian genes also run in families. It is unnerving to read about how centenarians may be smokers, for instance, but thanks to their great detoxifying genes they don’t pay as much price for it. Diet seems irrelevant, though centenarians tend to be lean (blood sugar in the low range is an excellent predictor of longevity).
It’s also been found that centenarians are better at handling stress. Gerontologist refer to them as “stress shedders.” 
photo: Diane Arbus
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TO LIVE LONG, REDUCE OR ELIMINATE ANIMALS PROTEIN
~ With the exception of one rhesus monkey study conducted at the National Institute on Aging
(NIA), calorie restriction has been shown to extend life span in all animals (including a
University of Wisconsin study of rhesus monkeys). While calorie restricted monkeys had a better health span than did their conventionally fed companions, monkeys in both groups died at the same age only in the NIA study. The University of Wisconsin, using the same breed, reached the opposite conclusion, that indeed calorie restriction increased life span.
Who was right? When Wisconsin researchers looked at the data of the NIA study, they found and reported that all of the NIA animals were calorie-restricted, and the proteins used in the two studies might be the real explanation of differences, since the University of Wisconsin monkeys ate less protein and more carbs (this mimics the habits of the people in blue zones [areas with exceptional percentage of centenarians]).
Researchers at St. Louis University, who have followed members of Calorie Restriction Society International for years — these folks restrict their calories, eating about 20 to 30 percent fewer calories than normal — decided to put the animal protein hypothesis to yet another test.
Despite eating a lot fewer calories, the CR folks had IGF-1 [insulin-like growth factor 1] levels that were about the same as those of people eating a normal diet. No wonder those rhesus monkeys of the NIA study didn’t live longer than their more rotund study mates. The researchers then recruited vegans and measured their IGF-1 levels, only to find them much lower than those of the calorie-restricted group.
For ultimate test, several CR members were asked to cut their animal protein consumption without changing their total calorie intake. Their IGF-1 levels went down to parallel those of the vegans. This means that if you want to be in the game — meaning the game of life — for the long haul, cut down on animal protein or cut it out entirely. I recommend no more than 2 ounces a day.
WANT TO LIVE TO BE 100?
For years I have routinely measured my patients’ levels of IGF-1, and easily measured marker for aging. Both animal and human studies show that the lower your IGF-1, the longer you live, and the less chance for developing cancer.
Two factors in animal and human studies, including my own studies, that correlate to low lowered IGF-1 are consuming less sugar and consuming less animal protein — specifically, certain amino acids. These amino acids, particularly methionine, leucine, and isoleucine, which are far more prevalent in animal protein than plant-based proteins, activate the cellular sensor of energy availability, mTOR, or just TOR, for “target of rapamycin.”
Rapamycin is a transplant drug that was being tested during my early days at Loma Linda University. Any transplant drug has to undergo ears of animal testing for both safety and long-term side effects. Imagine the researchers’ surprise when animals treated with rapamycin had an extended, not a shorter life span, since most transplant drugs shorten life span. The search for the cause of this phenomenon revealed that the main driver of longevity is a receptor for energy availability on all cells. Researchers called the receptor the “mammalian target of rapamycin” or mTOR. We now know that the equivalent sensor exists in all living things, even worms, so it is simply called TOR.
TOR sense energy availability. If it senses lots of energy — think food and summer — it is time to grow and TOR stimulates cellular growth by activating IGF-1. If TOR senses little energy — think winter, drought, or starvation — it is time to batten down the hatches, cut back all nonessential functions, and kick any cell not pulling its own weight off the island. In that process, IGF-1 is lowered.
While TOR cannot be measured — it’s a receptor or sensor — its downstream messenger, IGF-1, tells cells to either grow or go into hibernation and wait for better times. By measuring IGF-1 and lowering it with our food choices, such as less animal protein, we can manage our rate of aging. My ninety- and hundred-year-olds all have very low IGF-1, and so should you.
HOW LOW CAN YOU GO?
Where’s the bottom in terms of protein consumption? My former colleague Dr. Gary Fraser at Loma Linda University probably had the answer. In his studies of long-lived Seventh-Day Adventists and a meta-analysis of six other studies, he has clearly shown than vegan Adventists live the longest, followed by vegetarian Adventists, followed by vegetarian Adventists who admit dairy fats. Vegetarian Adventists who do consume dairy come next, and the Adventists who occasionally eat chicken or fish bring up the rear in terms of longevity.
What does this mean for you? It means that eating animal protein is not necessary for good health, and that completely avoiding animal protein produced the greatest longevity among an already extremely long-lived people. If you think you can’t do without lots of burgers, chops, and steaks, consider this: The risk of developing Alzheimer’s correlates directly with the amount of meat consumed.
As impressive as those studies are, they must be balanced against the other masters of longevity in the blue zones, for whom small amounts of animal protein, particularly seafood, are an integral part of their diet. Dan Buettner, the author of The Blue Zones, hadn’t heard of the very old residents of the mainland Italian town of Acciaroli, located south of Naples. This village has the largest percentage of centenarians recorded — 30 percent of the town’s residents are more than one hundred years old — who attribute their remarkable health to eating anchovies with rosemary every day, and washing it down with generous amount of wine. Having said that, my own studies confirm the connection between the intake of animal protein and sugar (even fruit sugar) and IGF-1 levels. My advice is to embrace appropriate plants as your preferred protein source, maybe thrown in some small fish and rosemary, and look forward to a long and healthy life. ~ Dr. Steven Gundry, The Plant Paradox, p.241-245.
Oriana:
Dr. Gundry goes on to explain why most keto dieters never achieve ketosis. They don’t understand the fact that excess protein gets converted into glucose, provoking an insulin response. And insulin blocks weight loss.
As for the centenarians in the blue zones, I doubt that their owe their longevity strictly to their diet. They live in traditional cultures where elders are respected and even catered to. They enjoy a relatively stress-free life, surrounded by family warmth.
Of course a healthy diet helps. As for "fruit sugar," or fructose, it's more harmful than glucose to blood vessels and various organs of the body. It's also more fattening than glucose. That's why animals that hibernate first fatten themselves up on fruit. 
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THE PUZZLING RISE OF COLON CANCER IN PEOPLE UNDER FIFTY
~ More than a decade ago, scientists noticed an odd quirk in the data: While overall rates of colorectal cancer have been falling dramatically since the mid-1980s, there's been a steady uptick of this disease among people younger than 50.
The numbers are small. Cancer incidence is creeping up by 1 or 2 cases per 100,000 people under 50. By way of comparison, the disease rate among older Americans has plummeted by more than 100 cases per 100,000 people.
And the vast majority of colorectal cancer cases are among people over 50: These older Americans are 16 times more likely to get colon cancer, compared with adults who are younger. That's why a small trend in younger adults is far outweighed by the dramatic decrease of disease among people over 50.
Still, the under-50s will eventually grow older. What will happen to their risk then?
Will the trends that started in their 20s and 30s continue? If that's the case, overall colorectal cancer rates might ultimately end their steady decline, and could start to rise.
Another possibility is that, once people turn 50, they will follow the current medical guidance and get colonoscopies or other recommended screening tests, which can actually prevent colorectal cancer by finding and removing precancerous polyps. And their risk profile could end up looking much like it does today.
Epidemiologist Rebecca Siegel and her colleagues at the American Cancer Society have published their take in the JNCI. In their study, they break down the population into generational cohorts, focusing on millennials and members of Generation X.
By breaking down the cases by age group, Siegel says, it's easier to disentangle generational changes such as differences in diet from trends in medical diagnosis and treatment, which vary less by age. Still, she and her colleagues can only say so much.
"[T]he results do not provide any direct evidence about the role of specific exposures or interventions," they note in the study. Even so, the researchers say, because trends in the young “could be a bellwether of the future disease burden, our results are sobering.”
Siegel tells Shots, "It appears that under the surface, the underlying risk for this disease is actually increasing in the population.”
What's driving that is hard to say. Obesity is more common among younger than it used to be, so perhaps it's partly to blame.
Or it may not be obesity itself; it could be that poor diet and lack of exercise, which contribute to obesity, are also influencing colon cancer rates.
One study found that people from Africa who were suddenly switched to an American diet had signs of inflammation in their colons within just two weeks, Siegel notes, "so this change can happen fairly rapidly."
But that's far from a complete explanation. A large British study published a few years ago suggested that only 11 percent of colon cancer cases could be tied to trends in obesity.
There's also a scenario in which this seemingly glum cancer trend is in fact good news.
Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, a professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice, says what look like additional cancers in people under 50 may simply be cases that are being diagnosed earlier than they would have been. Some people are getting colonoscopies for reasons other than cancer screening these days, and doctors are surely coming upon early cases of colon cancer they might not have turned up so soon.
There's some evidence to back that claim: While the rate of new cases of colorectal cancer has been climbing in under-50 Americans since the mid-1990s, the death rate among that group has remained remarkably flat. And death rates may be the more telling statistic.
Something similar happened with breast cancer in the 1980s — there was a temporary spike in the number of breast cancers diagnosed, as large numbers of women went in for mammography screening for the first time. But death rates didn't rise, and incidence rates of breast cancers fell again after that uptick.
Welch notes that we're seeing that again with the rates of thyroid cancer, which are skyrocketing due to intensive screening and diagnosis; but, again, there's been no increase in mortality from thyroid tumors.
Welch offers yet another possibility: Maybe the apparent rise in colon cancer among young people is real, but it won't affect them as they age. "The biology of the disease may be different between the young and the old," he says.
Welch himself has explored the much larger trend of declining colorectal cancer rates. Some of it is no doubt caused by vastly increased screening for colorectal cancer, though he notes that the decline was well under way before colonoscopies became routine.
There's no question that diet and other factors can also have a profound effect on cancer rates. "One of the most dramatic cases of that is stomach cancer, which used to be a very common cause of cancer and has now virtually disappeared, at least in the United States," Welch tells Shots.
On one point there is broad agreement among doctors and researchers treating and studying this disease: The increased screening for colorectal cancer, which can involve removing polyps before they become cancer, has been a significant factor in reducing the burden of this illness.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/02/28/517563769/why-are-more-young-americans-getting-colon-cancer
Oriana:
Stomach cancer became virtually non-existent in the US only after the introduction of refrigeration, which cut down on food-based bacterial infections, especially in regard to H. pylori. Much is yet to be explored when it comes to the link between various diseases of aging and bacterial and viral infections. As my old zoology prof warned, the greatest danger to humans, capable of causing extinction, isn't nuclear warfare, but our most ancient enemies — viruses and bacteria.
Is there anything you can do to prevent colon cancer? It's one of the cancers that run in families, so if you have any close relatives with colon cancer, colonoscopies, alas, are a must. Otherwise you can reduce your risk by never touching processed meat (sausages etc) and sticking mostly to plant protein. Yes, this means beans. Eschew bologna and embrace beans.
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Medical humor: "2001: A Space Colonoscopy." The latest of Kubrick's intestinal adventures.
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ending on beauty:
And God said to me: Write.
Leave the cruelty to kings.
Without that angel barring the way to love,
there would be no bridge for me
into time.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Giovanni da Paolo: Creation and Expulsion from Paradise
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