skip to main |
skip to sidebar
“THE REST I WILL TELL TO THE DEAD”
“Indeed,” said the proconsul, closing the book,
“this line is beautiful and very true;
Sophocles wrote it in a deeply philosophic mood.
How much we will tell down there, how many things,
and how very different we will appear to have been.
Whatever we protect here like sleepless watchmen,
those wounds and secrets locked inside us,
day after day with an overbearing anxiety ―
we will tell all, freely and clearly, there.”
“Add this,” said the sophist half-smiling,
“if they speak of such things down there
and if they care about them any more.”
~ Cavafy, tr Keeley and Safidis
Of course we know the answer is No. Assuming they preserve consciousness, the dead are preoccupied with the shocking condition of being dead, not with the secrets others failed to reveal while alive. How dated and boring, how hopelessly self-centered would most of those secrets appear now!
Nor do we need to reach for the difference between the living and the dead. The difference between the young and the old is sufficient. If we live long enough, we learn that the concerns we had while young are no longer our concerns in older age — we simply couldn’t care less at this point. So much depends on the stage of life — our priorities and interests change dramatically. Whatever it was that we agonized over at eighteen — that secret we protected “like sleepless watchmen” — probably won’t even be remembered at eighty.
A minor note: Cavafy’s poem features features a “proconsul”: a governor of a Roman province. Greeks are at that point a conquered people, and now it’s a Roman governor who lectures to them on Sophocles (at least it’s an educated proconsul). So one of the sorrows here, implied but never stated, certainly not by the governor with his limited awareness, is the knowledge that past greatness is now just that — yet another shadow in Hades.
The proconsul, even if he is a true lover of Greek culture (since he was probably a Roman aristocrat educated by Greek tutors, we can safely assume he was), expresses a pious, conventional attitude toward Sophocles: if Sophocles said it, it must be the truth. The sophist, more at home in all things Greeks, dares to question. Free inquiry is ultimately more important than eloquence, there is no absolute truth, and even Sophocles can be wrong.
Still, even without the historical irony and the disquieting subtleties of philosophy, the poem speaks to us because its psychology is timeless. A mother of four may laugh that in her teens she used to weep because of her heavy thighs, thinking that nobody would want to marry her. But some secrets aren’t trivial after all. We have a great desire to be known, to tell all in the end — safely, to those who will understand and accept it all with compassion.
How much we will tell down there, how many things,
and how very different we will appear to have been.
Whatever we protect here like sleepless watchmen,
those wounds and secrets locked inside us,
day after day with an overbearing anxiety ―
we will tell all, freely and clearly, there.”
But the sophist with his clever half smile destroys this fantasy — who will be interested? At some point — whether in this life, or, for the believers, the life to come — we will be ready to tell all our secrets, so precious to us, so carefully guarded — but there will be no takers. Let’s face it: are our secrets so fascinating and unique? And aren’t others preoccupied with their own affairs, and the last thing they want is the burden of our long life and complicated psyche?
One of the most common contemporary complaints it “oversharing.” Cavafy didn’t know the term, but seems to have been ahead of his time.
Hades and Cerberus
Here is the modernized “imitation” of this poem by Leonard Kress:
“AND THE REST I WILL TELL TO THE DEAD”
after Cavafy
The professor picked apart the line from Sophocles,
“These three anapests, you see,” he said, shutting the book,
“words which are both beautiful and true. Sophocles took
a profoundly existential stance.” We will tell all
at last, even those things we’ve locked away, impounded,
confined, caged and shackled, our own witness protected
against divulging. For then guards will be drugged and bribed,
overpowered, restraint dismantled and all captives
shall be released—wound, insult, treachery, heartbreak
in one melismatic swoon of solace and succor.
But one student raised up his hand and smiling asked him:
“What if no one really wants to talk about such things?
What if no one wants to listen? What if no one cares?”
~ Leonard Kress
**
Since I don’t believe in the afterlife, I never deluded myself about “telling all” to the dead. But for a while I did have a recurrent fantasy that at some point in my eighties — perhaps right on the 80th birthday since it’s best not to push one’s luck when it comes to life expectancy — I’d start writing with complete honesty.
At long last: my true thoughts, which I know would offend conservative people and not just those — also the believers in perfect marriage and harmonious family, the believers in a “balanced life,” poets yearning for immortal fame, and various others who tend to “think big” rather than accept reality (including the reality of “think small” as the most effective way to succeed). I’d say all I always wanted to say, but didn’t say in my younger years because I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, not even slightly, and/or make things unpleasant for myself. You know how nasty comments can be if you dare disagree with the prevailing views. But I imagined that at eighty I’d be so emotionally tough I could take anything — and besides, given life expectancy, there wouldn’t even be much time left in which to suffer the consequences. “Tell and die” is how I imagined it.
Because you are always punished for telling the truth. Funny, it’s lying that’s supposed to be a sin, but it’s telling the truth that’s forbidden. In the past, everybody knew that.
That’s why I had to be at least eighty, since at that point I could “afford” to be frank.
I formed this fantasy back at the time when people were indeed more secretive. Most atheists were in the closet, and to say publicly that all gods and religion were made up, a human invention, and Christianity was just another mythology — that wasn’t done “because people would be offended.” No, Jesus is never coming back . . . and neither is Ron Hubbard. Might as well expect to see Elvis Presley riding on the clouds of glory (that's actually more imaginable, given Las Vegas). Then it turned out that millions thought and felt the same, but . . . the time wasn’t ripe for revealing this huge subversive secret that atheism used to be.
But Cavafy’s poem is more about the secrets of one’s personal life. As a gay man, who certainly knew that secrets could be a burden. But we need to universalize “secrets” to mean ordinary, common secrets that people tend to have. Perhaps you married X, but all your life carried the torch for Y. Or perhaps, after decades of being an erotically starved virtuous spouse, you had an affair at last, and changed your attitude about love and marriage, tossing the pious “family values” and regretting all the self-denial. Generally we regret not the things we’ve done, but those we haven’t done.
Then it dawned on me, much as in the ending of the poem, that if I started “confessing” at the age of eighty, it’s likely no one would be interested in what a “little old lady” did or didn’t do, or what she thought on various matters, no matter how controversial those used to be. Culture will have evolved by then, and I’d be a relic, battling against oppressive beliefs that were no longer held by most.
Furthermore, my “radical” thoughts began to be expressed by others! The conservative viewpoint is slowly eroding anyway. Mottoes like “You only live once” are coming to replace Puritan (or Catholic) asceticism. Frugality is seen as pointless hoarding — “You can’t take it with you.” Self-denial is out; self-fulfillment has gone mainstream. So much for the idea that anyone would be shocked by anything I learned the hard way and late in life while the culture evolved by leaps and bounds.
And as for those closely guarded personal secrets, few people’s are unusual enough to be of broader interest. There is always someone else whose life has been more dramatic, more extreme. Besides, as a writer you learn that it’s all in the telling. Anyone’s life could be a novel, but unless written with depth and artistry, it would hardly be worth reading.
And the wisdom that’s supposed to arrive with age? Did I really have anything to say beyond “Nobody’s perfect” and “Nothing is all good or all bad”? Did I have an iota to add to the praise of kindness and tenderness?
So much for the idea of waiting to tell it all — or at least telling it directly. Telling it indirectly, through art — that still remains a worthy task, even if the poems are ephemeral, of the moment. We too are of the moment. Wisdom lies in making the most of that moment, without waiting.
Gustave Moreau: A young Thracian woman carrying the head of Orpheus on his lyre
"Who are the muses but the Maenads, repentant, clothed, and in their right minds.” ~ Jane Ellen Harrison (my thanks to Leonard Kress)
**
THE SAMURAI SECRET: IMAGINING THE WORST, AND LUCKY CHARMS
“What did so many of history's greatest warriors stress as key to success and optimal performance?
"Being calm.”
Nobody really needs to sell us on the value of staying calm.
You know the benefits: You think clearly; you don't make rash decisions; you don't get scared.
But how do you get and stay calm?
Our society is energy drinks, 24 hour news cycle, Starbucks on every corner, and relentless social media feeds. GO GO GO.
And even funnier, much of what we know about relaxing and being calm is dead wrong.
The samurai trained in martial arts a lot and they thought about death a lot.
Really, they thought about death a lot.
One who is supposed to be a warrior considers it his foremost concern to keep death in mind at all times, every day and every night, from the morning of New Year's Day through the night of New Year's Eve. [Code of the Samurai: A Contemporary Translation of the Bushido Shoshins]
Hey, you would too. Death was pretty much in their job description, right?
But research shows training very hard and imagining the worst that could happen are two powerful techniques for promoting calm.
Samurais trained relentlessly. They strongly believed you should always "be prepared" (they were like the deadliest Boy Scouts imaginable.)
Research shows that preparation reduces fear because when things get tense, you don't have to think.
And how about all that thinking about death?
"Negative Visualization" is one of the main tools of ancient Stoicism and science backs it up. Really thinking about just how awful things can be often has the ironic effect of making you realize they're not that bad.
Okay, but you don't want to spend all day training in swordfighting or thinking about death. I get that. Frankly, neither do I.
So what's the key here?
Research shows the most powerful way to combat stress or anxiety — to stay calm — is to have a feeling of control.
Without a feeling of control, when stress gets high we literally can't think straight.
Note I said "feeling of control" — it doesn't even have to be legit control, just feeling like you do can work wonders.
Even a good luck charm can help — because good luck charms really do work.
Good luck charms provide a feeling of control, and that feeling of control actually makes people perform better with them.
… people with a lucky charm performed significantly better than did the people who had none. That's right, having a lucky charm will make you a better golfer, should you care about such things, and improve your cognitive performance on tasks such as memory games.”
http://theweek.com/articles/450892/samurai-secret-always-being-best
Lucien Freud: Self-Portrait, 2002
*
Last night I dreamed about you. What happened in detail I can hardly remember, all I know is that we kept merging into one another. I was you, you were me. Finally you somehow caught fire. ~ Kafka to Milena Yesenska, 1921
Dali, Hand drawing back the Golden Fleece from a Cloud to show Gala the Dawn,
Completely Nude, Very, Very Far Away Behind the Sun, 1977. (It's
actually one of two "stereoscopic" panels that somewhat differ in color,
one being lighter, more golden in tone.) My thanks to Charles for having supplied the title.
HOW PEOPLE LEARN RESILIENCE OR NON-RESILIENCE
“[Martin Seligman], who pioneered much of the field of positive psychology, found that training people to change their explanatory styles from internal to external (“Bad events aren’t my fault”), from global to specific (“This is one narrow thing rather than a massive indication that something is wrong with my life”), and from permanent to impermanent (“I can change the situation, rather than assuming it’s fixed”) made them more psychologically successful and less prone to depression.
The same goes for locus of control: not only is a more internal locus (“I can change this”) tied to perceiving less stress and performing better but changing your locus from external to internal leads to positive changes in both psychological well-being and objective work performance. The cognitive skills that underpin resilience, then, seem like they can indeed be learned over time, creating resilience where there was none.
Unfortunately, the opposite may also be true. “We can become less resilient, or less likely to be resilient,” Bonanno says. “We can create or exaggerate stressors very easily in our own minds. That’s the danger of the human condition.” Human beings are capable of worry and rumination: we can take a minor thing, blow it up in our heads, run through it over and over, and drive ourselves crazy until we feel like that minor thing is the biggest thing that ever happened.
Resilience is, ultimately, a set of skills that can be learned.”
http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/the-secret-formula-for-resilience
“Against the Wind,” snowy owl near Quebec City, Canada; photo: Dominic Roy
Oriana:
“You can practice being strong, or you can practice falling apart.” When I read this statement, I already knew that I can become very good at either of these. The motto became very handy soon afterwards, when I decided not to be depressed.
If you are interested in exploring the subject of resilience, much has been written about it. Going back to this brief write-up, I'm struck by the first statement that a person needs to embrace: “Bad events aren’t my fault.” A person who has had a difficult childhood learns to blame herself even for the weather! Of course it will rain on your parade . . . it always does.
"Free Spirit," Angelica Paez
WAS PETER’S PAPACY INVENTED IN THE FIFTH CENTURY?
In The Invention of Peter, Fordham University theology professor George Demacopoulos argues that Peter never visited the city of Rome, never founded a church there, and was not the first Pope. In fact, the very idea of Peter as the Supreme Pontiff and leader of a worldwide church is a much later idea that took its rise in the ecclesial politics of the fifth century.
The evidence for Peter visiting — much less dying in — Rome is pretty thin on the ground. It simply never comes up in the New Testament: the Acts of the Apostles, our first history of the Jesus movement, never mentions Peter journeying to Rome. And when Paul nervously greets the Christian community there in his Letter to the Romans, he never refers to Peter’s presence in the city. In the two letters attributed to Peter in the New Testament the author is said to be writing “from Babylon.” Babylon could be a euphemism for Rome or it could just be a metaphor for imagined exile.
While papal discourse starts to heat up over the second and third centuries, no one appealed to Peter as the rock of the church or the holder of the keys of heaven until the fourth. There was a bishop of Rome, to be sure, but there was no Supreme Pontiff, and it is difficult to concretely tie the legacy of these bishops back to Peter himself.
Generations of Catholic schoolchildren may have learned that Jesus gave Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven in Matthew 16, but early Christians didn’t give the passage second thought until the fourth century. It was only with Pope Leo the Great in the fifth century that the Bishop of Rome started to cite Matthew 16 as proof of Papal supremacy, and characterize himself as the “heir” of Peter.
from readers’ comments:
Paul's theology was quite different from what became Catholic theology. For instance, Paul had no concept of a Trinity, of Original Sin or as Jesus being identical to Yahweh, among other things).
*
What? The origins of Christianity and of Catholicism are grounded on myth? Is that supposed to be a revelation?
*
Roman Catholics are discouraged from studying the history of their church (and, truth be told, reading the Bible.) I know an ex Jesuit who says that the most liberating thing that any Catholic can do is study church history.
*
Why not believe Peter was in Rome and is buried in the cathedral? Christians believe in the resurrection, miracles, walking on water, in devils and angels and exorcism and more, so why not that Peter was in Rome and was the first Pope and that John Paul II and John XX III are Saints? It is religion, all about believing.
*
Most Christians are oblivious to the political history of their own religion believing instead in the "sacred holiness" of things determined by a bunch of guys sitting around Nicea in 325 AD.
The above is from the Daily Beast; here is a paragraph from the laconic and cool-headed official website for the book:
On the first anniversary of his election to the papacy, Leo the Great stood before the assembly of bishops convening in Rome and forcefully asserted his privileged position as the heir of Peter the Apostle. This declaration marked the beginning of a powerful tradition: the Bishop of Rome would henceforth leverage the cult of St. Peter, and the popular association of St. Peter with the city itself, to his advantage. In The Invention of Peter, George E. Demacopoulos examines this Petrine discourse, revealing how the link between the historic Peter and the Roman Church strengthened, shifted, and evolved during the papacies of two of the most creative and dynamic popes of late antiquity, ultimately shaping medieval Christianity as we now know it.
By emphasizing the ways in which this rhetoric of apostolic privilege was employed, extended, transformed, or resisted between the reigns of Leo the Great and Gregory the Great, Demacopoulos offers an alternate account of papal history that challenges the dominant narrative of an inevitable and unbroken rise in papal power from late antiquity through the Middle Ages. He unpacks escalating claims to ecclesiastical authority, demonstrating how this rhetoric, which almost always invokes a link to St. Peter, does not necessarily represent actual power or prestige but instead reflects moments of papal anxiety and weakness. Through its nuanced examination of an array of episcopal activity—diplomatic, pastoral, political, and administrative—The Invention of Peter offers a new perspective on the emergence of papal authority and illuminates the influence that Petrine discourse exerted on the survival and exceptional status of the Bishop of Rome.
http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15118.html
ADDICTION IS LEARNED; IT’S ALSO SELF-MEDICATION
"Addiction doesn't just happen to people because they come across a particular chemical and begin taking it regularly. It is learned and has a history rooted in their individual, social, and cultural development." [The addicted brain] is not “broken." It has simply undergone a different course of development....addiction is what you might call a wiring difference, not necessarily a destruction of tissue.” ~ Maia Szalavitz, The Unbroken Brain
“Only 10 - 20% of those who try even heroin, crack, and methamphetamine become addicted. That group tends to have a significant history of childhood trauma and/or preexisting mental illness, and usually finds some way of self-medicating, no matter how much we crack down on substance use. Anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, depression, and schizophrenia often precede addiction.” (~ from a reader’s review)
“The facts are: The substantial majority of people who try drugs or potentially addictive activities (such as gambling) do not become addicts. And the bulk of those who do will eventually give up their addictions.
Addiction, Szalavitz notices, is, predominantly, a problem of youth. Most addicts get started when they're still kids. And, remarkably, most addicts give up their addiction by the time they reach their 30s. In effect, they age out of their addiction.
Armed with these facts, Szalavitz makes a novel and even beautiful proposal. Addiction, she hypothesizes, is a developmental disorder. Specifically, it is a learning disorder, by which she means, in the first instance, that people, kids mostly, learn to be addicts. That is, they develop the habits of pleasure, action, reaction, etc., that is what their being addicted consists in.
And, of course, they don't do so in a vacuum. Which brings us to the final piece of the puzzle. The vast majority of addicts have suffered great trauma early on in life. Sexual abuse or other forms of violence, the loss of a parent, divorce are not uncommon antecedents of addiction. The cliche that addiction begins as a form of self-medication is probably right. The future addict learns to use the drug as part of an economy of feeling and action. It's not the drug, or the behavior, that is the source of the addiction. The substance is a tool or a technique for an ultimately inadequate self-mastery and control.
Addiction, as the medicalist would have it, is a disease, not like Alzheimer's or cancer, but like ADHD. It is a learning disorder, that is, one that occurs along a spectrum. And, so, her view also lets us see how the moralist is right, that we "normal ones" ourselves occupy a place on that very same spectrum. And, moreover, the moralist is right that the addict's disorder is a morally significant one. Not because addicts will cheat and lie to get what they need. But because the addict is in the grip of a kind of false consciousness.
Addiction is a learning disorder in a second sense as well. It is not only the case that we learn to be addicts, according to Szalavitz; it is also the case that learning is the key to overcoming addiction.”
http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/04/29/475991514/unbroken-brain-offers-new-insights-on-addiction
Oriana:
This interests me because my life changed when I realized that depression wasn’t a “disease” but a learned behavior (or a set of behaviors). The more I engaged in those behaviors, the more easily I entered depression and the deeper down I could go in less and less time. My brain has obviously learned to be depressed. Later I noticed this with physical pain as well: the brain learns to feel it or not feel it. Or we can used the term CONDITIONING (think Pavlov). Pain represents a special challenge because the physical substrate (e.g. a damaged joint) is so much in the picture that we can easily overlooked the part played by learning. But the more you feel pain, the more readily the brain creates the sensation of pain. Likewise, as you start using various painkillers, the pain may cease before the drug has even been absorbed. Chronic insomnia is another condition where the importance of conditioning is obvious.
Self-destructive behavior, whether taking drugs, compulsive shopping, or brooding about the past, can also be what I call an “instead activity.” Once I began to engage in the right activity —meaningful work — my brain rewired beautifully. All this was preceded by a powerful insight. I tell that story in my blog.
Now that I feel completely secure about depression (no relapse since 2009), and as someone who's lived with chronic pain most of of my adult life, I've shifted my focus to "learned pain."
ending on beauty:
Don’t ask me why
I came down to the water’s edge —
hell, I was young, and I thought
I knew life, I thought I could
hold the darkness the way a man
holds a cup of coffee before
he wakens.
~ Philip Levine, from “Here and Now”
Photo: Amy Chang
Christian Schloe, Metamorphosis
I Have Dreamed Of You So Much
I have dreamed of you so much that you are no longer real.
Is there still time for me to reach your breathing body, to kiss your mouth and make
your dear voice come alive again?
I have dreamed of you so much that my arms, grown used to being crossed on my
chest as I hugged your shadow, would perhaps not bend to the shape of your body.
For faced with the real form of what has haunted me and governed me for so many
days and years, I would surely become a shadow.
O scales of feeling.
I have dreamed of you so much that surely there is no more time for me to wake up.
I sleep on my feet prey to all the forms of life and love, and you, the only one who
counts for me today, I can no more touch your face and lips than touch the lips and
face of some passerby.
I have dreamed of you so much, have walked so much, talked so much, slept so much
with your phantom, that perhaps the only thing left for me is to become a phantom
among phantoms, a shadow a hundred times more shadow than the shadow that
moves and goes on moving, brightly, over the sundial of your life.
~ Robert Desnos
For some years this poem was erroneously labeled “The Last Poem,” allegedly found with Desnos when he died of typhoid in Theresienstadt after the camp had already been liberated (this was not unusual; some prisoners were so sick they never recovered even after they began to receive medical care). It was assumed to be addressed to the poet’s wife, nicknamed “Youki” (Snow; her real name was Lucie).
It’s a wonderful poem even though it was written at a different time and under different circumstances. Many of us can identify with the experience of having fantasized about a loved person so much that the fantasies become more real than the beloved.
There is another poem by Desnos that I love. It begins “Remote from me and starlike,” and ends:
If only you knew how I love you . . . how
joyous I am, how strong and proud of
going out with your image in my head,
stepping out of the world.
How joyous to the point of death.
If only you knew how the world submits to me.
If only you knew.
~ Robert Desnos (“Remote from me and starlike”)
I think all of us would agree that falling in love involves uncertainty and anxiety. But we’d also agree that being in love is also a source of strength. I don’t mean being loved, which certainly is a source of strength, but being in love, your mind filled with the image of the beloved. It’s like having a wonderful secret.
With the image of the one we love, we step into the world filled with a private joy. Yet we also step out of the world — the world of mundane cares, of aches and pains and tax returns. All that petty negativity simply ceases to exist. Death ceases to exist. There is only the beloved whose image we carry with us.
Some would say that this is escapist, and that it’s not good to idealize a “mere human.” But there is no denying that being in love — even without return, as long as we are not being actively rejected — is a source of strength. The world submits to us because we are not as dependent on the externals. We have something within.
Of course Desnos says it much better.
Christian Schloe, Woman/Clouds
DESNOS TELLING FORTUNES IN A DEATH CAMP
I can’t resist sharing one more thing not by Desnos, but about him. The text below is from Wikipedia. Perhaps the story is apocryphal — but what a story!
“One day Desnos and others were taken away from their barracks. The prisoners rode on the back of a flatbed truck; they knew the truck was going to the gas chamber; no one spoke. Soon they arrived and the guards ordered them off the truck. When they began to move toward the gas chamber, suddenly Desnos jumped out of line and grabbed the hand of the woman in front of him. He was animated and he began to read her palm. The forecast was good: a long life, many grandchildren, abundant joy. A person nearby offered his palm to Desnos. Here, too, Desnos foresaw a long life filled with happiness and success. The other prisoners came to life, eagerly thrusting their palms toward Desnos and, in each case, he foresaw long and joyous lives.
The guards became visibly disoriented. Minutes before they were on a routine mission the outcome of which seemed inevitable, but now they became tentative in their movements. Desnos was so effective in creating a new reality that the guards were unable to go through with the executions. They ordered the prisoners back onto the truck and took them back to the barracks. Desnos wasn’t executed. Through the power of imagination, he saved his own life and the lives of others.”
Last photograph of Desnos, 1945
RUSKIN: THE IMPORTANCE OF BEAUTY
Beauty is its own excuse for being. ~ Emerson
Ruskin was one of the first environmentalists, but he interests me primarily because he said that work should be a pleasure. A craftsman is happy and loves his work, in contrast to an assembly-line worker. Ruskin imagined a society of satisfied craftsmen producing things of excellence and beauty.
“John Ruskin (1819-1900) was one of the most ambitious and impassioned English social reformers of the 19th century. He was also – at first sight – a deeply improbable reformer, because he seemed to care mostly about one thing – beauty – which has a reputation for being eminently apolitical and removed from ‘real life’. And yet the more Ruskin thought about beauty – the beauty of things humans make, ranging from buildings to chairs, paintings to clothes – the more he realized that the quest to make a more beautiful world is inseparable from the need to remake it politically, economically and socially.
When Ruskin had begun his career as an art critic, his ambition had been to open his audience’s eyes to the beauty of certain paintings and buildings. But in middle age, a more direct and urgent goal came into view. He realized that the ugliness of most things in Britain (from the factories to the railway stations, the pubs to the workers’ housing) was the clearest indication of the decadence, cruel economic ideology and rotten moral foundations of his society.
Throughout his life, Ruskin contrasted the general beauty of nature with the ugliness of the man-made world. He set up a useful criterion for any man-made thing: was it in any way the equal of something one might find in nature? This was the case with Venice, with Chartres Cathedral, with the chairs of William Morris… but not with most things being turned out by the factories of the modern world.
So Ruskin thought it helpful for us to observe and be inspired by nature (he was a great believer that everyone in the country should learn to draw things in nature). He wrote with astonishing seriousness about the importance of looking at the light in the morning, of taking care to see the different kinds of cloud in the sky and of looking properly at how the branches of a tree intertwine and spread. He took immense delight in the beautiful structures of nests and beavers’ dams. And he loved feathers with a passion.
There was an urgent message here. Nature sets the standard. It provides us with particularly intense examples of beauty and grace. The plumage of a bird, the clouds over the mountains at sunset, the great trees bending in the wind – nature is ordered, beautiful, simple, effective. It is only with us that things seem to go wrong. Why can we not be as it is? There is a humiliating contrast between the natural loveliness of trees by a stream and the bleak, griminess of an average street; between the ever-changing interest of the sky and the monotony and dreariness of so much of our lives. Ruskin felt that this painful comparison was instructive. Because we are part of nature we have the capacity to live up to its standard. We should use the emotion we feel at the beauty of nature to energize us to equal its works. The goal of human society is to honor the dignity and grandeur of the natural world.
Ruskin’s approach to politics was to hold resolutely on to a vision of what a really sane, reasonable, decent and good life would look like – and then to ask rigorously just how a society would need to be set up for that to be the average life, for an ordinary person, and not a rare piece of luck only for the very privileged. For this he deserves our, and posterity’s, ongoing interest and gratitude.”
http://thephilosophersmail.com/perspective/the-great-philosophers-13-john-ruskin/
Ruskin, Northwest Porch, St. Mark
RENAN’S TRUE GODS
“The episode [in The Origins of Christianity] we remember best is Paul’s arrival in Athens to preach the Christian gospel and his outcry against the Greek statues. ‘O chaste and lovely images’, Renan cries out in his turn, ‘of the true gods and goddesses! — this ugly little Jew has stigmatized you with the name of idols!” ~ Edmund Wilson
Renan had his own peculiar brand of ant-Semitism, but it’s something else that interests me about this passage. I'm still pondering how best to interpret Renan’s strange statement about the TRUE gods and goddesses. Having left the Catholic church in his early twenties, he allegedly remained a “quasi-Christian,” as one source put it. Wilson considers The Origins of Christianity to be a masterpiece in the study of ideas, showing how ”the Christianity of the Apostles is no longer the Christianity of Jesus, the Christianity of the Scriptures is modified as it is attracted to the Greeks or the Jews; the Christianity of the Rome of Nero is something entirely different from the primitive Christianity of Judea.” But I digress: how are we to understand the outcry against Paul and his condemnation as idols of the lovely images of the TRUE gods and goddesses?
But perhaps my emphasis is wrong; perhaps the critical word is LOVELY. It’s reasonable to think that Renan worshiped beauty. He adored the Greco-Roman civilization — “the glory that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome” — finding it superior to that of the ancient Israel for a variety of reasons, including the legal system and precisely the cult of beauty, including the beauty of the human body. Perhaps the meaning of “true gods” is closer to “true values” — the humanistic values typical of the educated elite in France and other European countries.
Note also that Renan calls the Greek statues “chaste.” This is his reply to those who’d call theme obscene — the enemies of beauty, the enemies of the body with its unsettling sexuality. And yet, because of their beauty, the statues are the opposite of pornography. They draw us to the ideal. Rilke’s response was: “You must change your life.”
To be sure, Christianity is also a call to the ideal. Alas, it’s so warped by its obsession with death and the afterlife, with sin and punishment, that it could hardly be said to serve life. At its worst, it’s anti-life.
It could also be argued that perhaps Renan wasn’t even a quasi-Christian — he just wasn’t daring enough to reject Christianity in a more direct manner. Nevertheless, this passage betrays his real feelings. He loved the classical Antiquity; he did not love Paul’s teachings. To say that Paul’s teachings were false would have ruined Renan’s career. This outcry is perhaps the closest he comes to saying what he really thought.
ORIANA: THE SUBVERSIVE EFFECT OF BEAUTY
In retrospect I think that it wasn't only Greek mythology that deeply affected me — it was also those naked statues that said that human body wasn't evil. And it was also a couple plays that we studied in school, Oedipus and Antigone. It was the literary quality of that writing, so vastly superior to the Catholic propaganda, whether the Catholic Weekly or the Sunday sermons. Here was a culture in which the Catholic drivel and crucifixes simply didn't exist, and what a culture!
So yes, simply being exposed to something wider, to the richness of culture and the world beyond the Catholic prison — and ultimately to novels and movies where religion was merely a footnote, if that — had an effect on my mental development that I wasn't even aware of. I couldn’t help seeing that the church was the domain chiefly of old women, not of any kind of vitality. Good minds were not drawn to it.
There were some attractions — the old time liturgy (ignorance was bliss — I didn’t realize that the mass was derived from the Jerusalem temple ritual of animal sacrifice, and "hostia" meant “victim") — and the music. But it wasn’t enough.
The more I think about it, the more clear it becomes: the culture wars were won by the secular side, starting with the classical Greek culture: they had better sculpture and better literature. I saw that the secular world offered better art in the broad sense, including a lot more beyond sculpture and theater. It offered a vision of moral and philosophical complexity that wasn't obsessed with sin and punishment, that both celebrated and lamented, that raised questions rather than force-fed catechism answers.
Later I discovered that the church had a more advanced, intellectual side as well, but that was for the elite, especially the Jesuits — not for a mere stupid girl (I overheard my parish priest saying: "Girls — they are so stupid"), part of the lay riffraff. In any case, even that more intellectual side did not fare well compared to the best secular writers and intellectuals. Dogma existed (e.g. Marxism), but it had to compete with other schools of thought, or with literature that simply ignored that particular dogma and instead said: Look, this is life.
Bernini, Rape of Proserpina
THE RICH RULE BECAUSE POLITICIANS ARE RICH
"Why do the rich have so much influence in politics?" asks Duke University Prof Nicholas Carnes in a Talking Points Memo piece.
Is it because the poor and working class don't vote? Is it too much outside money pouring into political campaigns and causes?
No, Prof Carnes writes, there's another "big reason" why the wealthy dominate US politics: "Wealthy people are the ones in office themselves."
"If millionaires in the United States formed their own political party, that party would make up just 3% of the country," he says, "but it would have a majority in the House of Representatives, a filibuster-proof super-majority in the Senate, a 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court and a man in the White House."
A working-class party, by contrast, would comprise less than 2% of Congress.
Unfortunately, he argues, the US political system is generally a contest between the rich and the rich.
"By the time most Americans get to the polls, the only options on their ballots are wealthy, white-collar professionals," he writes. "Do you want to vote for a millionaire lawyer or a millionaire business owner?"
He concludes:
Those of us who care about making our government more responsive to middle- and working-class Americans need to keep working to get the money out of our political institutions. But they also need to start asking what we can do to get more working-class people into them.
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27199602
Oriana:
The best paragraph here is "By the time most Americans get to the polls, the only options on their ballots are wealthy, white-collar professionals," he writes. "Do you want to vote for a millionaire lawyer or a millionaire business owner?”
It's the government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich. Some say it's always been that way, and always will be. So maybe just tiny improvements here and there, tiny victories, is what we should celebrate.
No one represents the interests of the non-rich, for all the pious rhetoric about the middle class. Alas, I don’t think any substantial change is doable in the coming decades. The system is indeed rigged, but the rich have such an overwhelming advantage that I don’t see any way out. A grassroots movement? We’re seeing something of this sort now, but it’s already being beaten down by the establishment money machine.
My only hope is a bit of a lasting reform here and there. The labor movement won more decent working conditions. The unions have mostly gotten suppressed, but many of the reforms have proved lasting, and no, we no longer have child labor in the West. We don’t? I hear the skeptics say in a mocking tone. Definitely not the way it used to be. It takes a long, long time, but progress does happen.
Child miners, 1911
*
THE ANTI-AGING PROMISE OF NICOTINAMIDE RIBOSIDE
Scientists at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) gave mice Nicotinamide riboside (NR), which proved to have a positive effect on the functioning of stem cells. Their research is published today in the journal Science.
No negative side effects were observed in the mice given NR, even at high doses. NR, which is a form of vitamin B3, has not been scientifically tested on humans but is already available in certain nutritional supplements found in the U.S.
The EPFL researchers said caution should be observed when it comes to branding NR an elixir of youth, as further studies are required. One avenue of study would be to make sure the vitamin does not also boost the functioning of pathological cells, such as those found in cancerous tissue. According to the scientists’ data, the muscular power of mice taking NR did improve.
“This work could have very important implications in the field of regenerative medicine,” Auwerx says.
“We are not talking about introducing foreign substances into the body, but rather restoring the body’s ability to repair itself with a product that can be taken with food.
http://www.newsweek.com/vitamin-stops-aging-process-organs-study-453526?utm_medium=email&utm_source=California-Voters-Get-Their-Moment-in-2016&utm_campaign=newsweek_email_newsletter
From Science Daily:
“Hongbo Zhang wanted to understand how the regeneration process deteriorated with age. To do so, he teamed up with colleagues from ETH Zurich, the University of Zurich and universities in Canada and Brazil. Through the use of several markers, he was able to identify the molecular chain that regulates how mitochondria -- the "powerhouse" of the cell -- function and how they change with age. The role that mitochondria play in metabolism has already been amply demonstrated, "but we were able to show for the first time that their ability to function properly was important for stem cells," said Auwerx.
Under normal conditions, these stem cells, reacting to signals sent by the body, regenerate damaged organs by producing new specific cells. At least in young bodies. "We demonstrated that fatigue in stem cells was one of the main causes of poor regeneration or even degeneration in certain tissues or organs," said Hongbo Zhang.
This is why the researchers wanted to "revitalize" stem cells in the muscles of elderly mice. And they did so by precisely targeting the molecules that help the mitochondria to function properly. "We gave nicotinamide riboside to 2-year-old mice, which is an advanced age for them," said the researcher. "This substance, which is close to vitamin B3, is a precursor of NAD+, a molecule that plays a key role in mitochondrial activity. And our results are extremely promising: muscular regeneration is much better in mice that received NR, and they lived longer than the mice that didn't get it.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160428152124.htm
But then I remember the great hopes that we used to have for resveratrol. NR, however, is involved in the mitochondrial energy production, so it’s more promising. Note the absence of human trials at this point. Humans are a naturally long-lived species, and some treatments that work in mice have been found ineffective in humans.
Bruegel, Maypole
ending on beauty
Of all the stringed instruments I like the best
the harp stretched from hand to hand,
from blood to blood. From disaster to deliverance,
From error to perfection.
~ Miroslav Holub
A harpist from Ur, that unimaginably old city in Mesopotamia: Sumerian, going back almost 6,000 years. How hard life was then, “short and brutish” for most. Yet music already existed, bringing us the news of peace and beauty. Someone was not a soldier; someone was a musician instead, practicing long hours “from error to perfection.”
Klee, Castle and Sun, 1928
THE BANDAGED SHOULDER
He said that he had hurt himself on a wall or that he had fallen.
But there was probably another reason
for the wounded and bandaged shoulder.
With a somewhat abrupt movement,
to bring down from a shelf some
photographs that he wanted to see closely,
the bandage was untied and a little blood ran.
I bandaged the shoulder again, and while bandaging it
I was somewhat slow; because it did not hurt,
and I liked to look at the blood. That
blood was a part of my love.
When he had left, I found in front of the chair,
a bloody rag, from the bandages,
a rag that looked like it belonged in garbage;
which I brought up to my lips,
and which I held there for a long time —
the blood of love on my lips.
~ Cavafy, (1919), tr Daniel Mendelsohn
This poem is a great favorite of mine, at least among Cavafy's poems. And I think I know why. “Ithaca” is a great poem, a poem of wisdom, but it doesn't speak to the heart — or not much. It’s didactic. This poem is very intimate. It’s a personal narrative, and it skillfully uses the main tool that can make a personal narrative so effective: it uses a “narrow slice.” You take a small incident, just a few details, a gesture, and you fully explore that “narrow slice.” And suddenly that very small incident becomes unforgettable and symbolic.
It’s amazing what can be achieved through specificity. What is being described would not usually be regarded as promising poetic material. Cavafy makes it moving and tender, and seems to be telling us all. In fact a lot is left unsaid, and that works very well too.
The power of specifics is the power of images. A bandage comes loose, a little blood runs, the speaker slowly bandages the arm again — and then the final image, “the blood of my love on my lips.” What Cavafy offers us here is a great image of impoverishment. Judging by his poems — though of course Cavafy tried to be restrained — Cavafy's love life was one of deprivation more so than fulfillment. So that image of him holding he blood-covered rag to his lips carries desperation: he was ready to latch on to anything, any remnant of the presence of the beloved.
A friend reported that a woman she knew told her she put her hands into her lover’s ashes and then “washed” her face in those ashes. Somehow that sounds perfectly natural. Smearing your face with ashes was in fact one of the traditional ways to mourn someone — not necessarily the literal ashes of that person, but the meaning of ashes in general is related to death. I found what my friend described to be very moving.
By the way, Cavafy has been called a poet of “erotic ashes.” But then most love poems are about lost love.
Constantine Cavafy, 1900
Half past twelve. How time has gone by.
Half past twelve. How the years went by.
*
DISGUST PREDICTS CONSERVATISM
Maggots, pus, rotten meat, dirty toilets — would anyone guess that “disgust sensitivity” predicts how politically conservative the person will be? When neuroimaging is used, the accuracy of a strong disgust response predicting conservatism is 95% to 98% (I know this seems hard to believe).
“Researchers showed study participants a number of images designed to provoke a reaction of disgust, such as dirty toilets, as well as a host of more pleasant images of babies and landscapes. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers were able to see how a participant’s brain reacted to the images. Specific neural pathways correlate with feelings of disgust, making it possible for researchers to identify when a participant felt disgusted, even when he or she denied those feelings.
Researchers then administered a political ideology inventory, during which participants answered questions about divisive political issues such as gay marriage. People who had shown pronounced disgust responses were more likely to identify with conservative political positions. The correlation was so strong, in fact, that based solely on fMRI scans, researchers were able to predict with 95% to 98% accuracy how participants would answer various political questions.”
That disgust at images of maggots etc correlates with conservatism has been known since the nineties. Later studies refined the initial findings. But this is the first study that didn’t rely on self-report of disgust, which can be misleading (speaking strictly for myself, I’d be tempted to pretend that nothing disgusts me — I'm a “tough lady”).
Studies have also found that those who are obsessively clean are especially likely to be concerned with “moral purity” — but let’s remember that we are dealing with correlations here, and degrees along a spectrum, not absolutes. And of course there are exceptions.
Other traits strongly predicting conservatism are the need for cognitive closure and the urge to impose distinctions between the in-group and the out-group.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/284768.php
Klimt, The Swamp, 1900
Oriana:
Women tend have a stronger disgust response than men, and yet are typically more liberal, so the researchers found it important to separate out gender as a variable in these studies. Perhaps the type of image is also important: women are probably less disgusted with blood, being used to it, or with dirty toilets or laundry, being accustomed to cleaning toilets and doing the laundry, changing diapers etc — but they might be more disgusted with maggots (I'm only guessing).
Also, the response is probably affected by age, as so many things are. Having, like so many women, become more radical with age and less patient with “incremental change” (the principle of “jam tomorrow, but never jam today”), I asked myself if my disgust response to certain physical images is weaker or stronger now than it was in youth. Years of cleaning, fishing out dead animals, and most recently gardening, have weakened my disgust response, which used to be pretty strong. If I'm correct, this would argue for a heavy involvement of experience rather than being wired from birth with a weak or strong response.
I am not sure if we can ever disentangle those nature/nurture complexities. Even studies which found brain differences between conservatives and liberals can’t provide the answer if these are genetic or rather acquired through experience. Identical twin studies lean to the genetic answer — but political leanings seem to be less genetically determined than traits such as extraversion.
As for small dead animals, I don’t bury them. I leave them on the grass for the local owl. He can be relied on. Listening to the hooting is one of the great pleasures of my life.
NATION’S SINGLE MEN ANNOUNCE PLAN TO CHANGE BEDSHEETS BY 2019
*
ISIS FILES OF 4000 FIGHTERS REVEAL MOST DON’T WANT TO BE MARTYRS
Each candidate was asked if he wanted to be a regular fighter or a suicide bomber or suicide fighter, but only 12 percent ticked the box for martyrdom.
That ratio stands in stark contrast to another set of foreign fighters, those who joined Al Qaeda in Iraq in 2006 and 2007, more than half of whom volunteered to blow themselves up, according to West Point. And analysts say the disparity reflects how ISIS marketed itself to the world and the kind of future it envisioned.
"They're selling this narrative of victory and sustaining... Many of these individuals it would seem are buying into that message and are going into there to live — not die."
Nearly two-thirds of the enlistees were in the 21-30 age group, but the other ends of the spectrum were also well-represented. Some 40 recruits were under age 15 and about 400 were under 21. Almost a quarter fell between ages 31 and 40. About 4 percent were between 41 and 50 and there were even 42 men over the age of 50.
The oldest person in the database was nearly 70, a married father of five from Kyrgystan who wanted to be a fighter and not a suicide volunteer.
Many have families
While six out of 10 fighters were single, 30 percent reported being married — and they had more 2,000 children between them. The notes on some of the applications show that some showed up with hopes of bringing their families along later if they could get the money needed for travel.
Nearly two-thirds of the enlistees were in the 21-30 age group, but the other ends of the spectrum were also well-represented. Some 40 recruits were under age 15 and about 400 were under 21. Almost a quarter fell between ages 31 and 40. About 4 percent were between 41 and 50 and there were even 42 men over the age of 50.
The oldest person in the database was nearly 70, a married father of five from Kyrgystan who wanted to be a fighter and not a suicide volunteer.
While six out of 10 fighters were single, 30 percent reported being married — and they had more 2,000 children between them. The notes on some of the applications show that some showed up with hopes of bringing their families along later if they could get the money needed for travel.
The biggest recruitment period was July 2014, following some of ISIS' most significant territorial seizures and the announcement that it was establishing a caliphate with dominion over the world's Muslims.
BETTER EDUCATED THAN EXPECTED, BUT LOW-SKILLED EMPLOYMENT
A third went to high school and a quarter had a college education; only 17 percent said they stopped their schooling after elementary or middle school. That level of education was higher than the average for many of the countries the men called home.
While the stats might suggest that the fighters had prospects in their homeland, the West Point experts noted that many of them had more menial jobs than their education might suggest — a possible source of frustration that could have played into their decision to join up.
The group was less educated on Islam than might be predicted. Seventy percent said they had only a basic understanding of sharia. And in an unexpected turn, those with a deeper understanding of Islamic law were actually less likely to choose to be suicide bombers or fighters, despite the religious justification for suicide attacks.
Only 104 had high-skilled or white-collar positions. There were 700 laborers, roughly 10 times the number of teachers, IT employees, or those in the military or police. But the vast majority were employed before they joined: Only 255 said they were jobless. Another big group had yet to enter the labor force: 656 students.
The three biggest feeder countries were Saudia Arabia (797 fighters), Tunisia (640) and Morocco (260), although Tunisia has the highest per capita rate. But they came from all corners of the world — from China (167) to Iceland (1) and Australia (13) to Trinidad and Tobago (2).
About 10 percent hailed from Western nations, including the United Kingdom (57) and the United States (14). In Europe, France (128) and Germany (80) had the highest numbers.
Dodwell said that while much of the material confirmed the center's understanding of who joins ISIS and why, the "massive amount of diversity" was the biggest eye-opener and poses a challenge for those researching how to counter radical extremism at the root level.
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/isis-files-what-leaked-documents-reveal-about-terror-recruits-n557411
Oriana:
No surprise about Saudi Arabia being the biggest “feeder country.” All that oil wealth made it easy to export the most cruel and archaic form of Islam.
MAJESTIC?
We need to consider all angles before babbling about “majestic.” On the other hand, you could say this is the ultimate MODERN view of "majestic". But even we idealize and romanticize lots of things, because humans seem to have that need. As TS Eliot observed (he did say a few wise things, if not many), humankind can endure only so much reality. This said, I think as technology and other advances lower the stress of everyday living (on the whole; let's not get into that), we can psychologically afford to take in more reality. The lower the stress, the greater the tolerance for looking at things like falling in love and motherhood in a more sober light.
IS THE NEW TESTAMENT AN IMPROVEMENT?
“I remember how much it bothered me back when I was a Christian and nonbelievers would cite the brutality of the Old Testament people, throwing their barbarism in our faces, as if doing so invalidated our own, more refined theological system. Didn’t they ever hear of progressive revelation? Don’t they realize God was saving the good stuff for later, when we could handle it?
This practice of romanticizing the problems of the Old Testament placated me when I was younger and more impressionable. But further reflection made me realize two major problems with this explanation:
In the Old Testament, when it says for example that the people of Israel were told to run swords through all the women and children (and yes, even the unborn) of Canaan, it says that God told them to do it. Which means that either it is somehow okay to commit genocide under the right circumstances (tell me again how my atheist morality is the one that’s relativistic?), or else it was wrong and the Bible got it wrong when it said that God told them to do it.”
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/godlessindixie/2016/04/15/but-that-was-just-the-old-testament-right/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Atheist%2004%2020%2016%20%281%29&utm_content=&spMailingID=51198288&spUserID=MTEwMzMwODA5NzI1S0&spJobID=902581998&spReportId=OTAyNTgxOTk4S0
Oriana:
One of Carter's ("Godless in Dixie") best. I've kept the excerpt deliberately short, hoping to attract people to read the whole article.
For me the clarity about how I felt about Christianity wasn't complete until I worked over the specifics long after my "mythology" epiphany, which turned out to be only the first step of a long journey — though a life-changing step. I did have to think about issues such as, is the god of the OT different from the god in the NT (as Gnostics and many other "heretics" claimed)?
It’s now embarrassing to remember that as a Catholic child I felt deeply sorry for the Jews, “stuck” with the Old Testament and its cruelties, its rigid rules and regulations (presented to us as Jesus’ various encounters with the despised Pharisees). Only later reading and thinking made me see that indeed the Gospels were written so as to seem to be the completion, fulfillment, and vindication of the Old Testament — and definitely not its contradiction.
Abraham honored for willingness to kill his son is a foundational story for Christianity because it’s a model for Yahweh’s willingness to have his son killed as “bloody ransom” to himself (or is the ransom to be paid to Satan? any closer look only gets us mired in barbarous confusion).
Don't be seduced by the lofty poetry of the Gospel according to John. If god REALLY loved man, he would have forgiven sins without requiring a blood sacrifice. And if god really loved Israel, he wouldn't have allowed Christianity to come into being.
Giotto: Jesus as Seraph Giving the Stigmata to St. Francis, 1295-1300
HAPPINESS AND ITS DISCONTENTS
“One of the most remarkable findings in this area of psychology is just how many poor people say they are satisfied with their lives — very often a majority of them, even in harsh environments like the slums of Calcutta. In a recent study of poor Egyptians, researchers asked them to explain why they were satisfied, and their responses often took something like this form: “One day is good and the other one is bad; whoever accepts the least lives.” This sounds like resignation, not happiness. Yet these Egyptians were, in terms of life satisfaction, happy.
There is a long history of philosophical thought, with roots stretching back at least to Plato and Aristotle in Greece, and the Vedas in India, that conceives of human flourishing in terms of the fulfillment of the self. Human well-being, on this sort of view, means living in accordance with your nature, with who you are. On this way of thinking, we might regard happiness as a central part of self-fulfillment.”
That’s because our brain constructs happiness regardless of circumstances — barring extreme conditions, of course. That’s why “money can’t buy happiness.” Oh well, to some extent it can. In the West at least, the rich report more happiness than the poor. Money helps, no question. Money can buy less stress and interesting experiences (like travel and educational workshops) that can prove fulfilling. Wealth provides security; it provides more options.
So, all right, money can buy happiness — up to a point. But mostly, we still insist, and with a reason, contentment comes from within. “As long as I have my health,” people say, or, “I'm just glad to be alive.” There's much to said for low expectations and minimal ambition.
The title and these two paragraphs are much better than the article, so I’ll skip the link to save up on access to New York Times articles (I'm too cheap to subscribe — doesn’t seem a sufficient value).
As for the title — Ah, Sigmund, what did you start? Perhaps Viktor Frankl is the right response to this — “Man’s Search for Meaning.” But a child is happy or unhappy without any search for meaning, so I still say that looking out the window and loving the world, wanting to embrace the trees and kiss the flowers — that’s happiness enough, without having to win the Nobel Prize. The longer I live, the lower my requirements for what can make me happy.
Just seeing a hummingbird is enough.
Postscript: I still think that the wisest thing Freud ever said was his answer to what was most important in life. He replied, “Love and work.” Perhaps as the ability to work ebbs as we grow older — though the happiest people seem to be the ones who stay the most active — we shift more toward love.
I don’t mean romantic love, but rather love as tenderness, affection, delight. Delight in the things of this world — by which I don’t mean fame and fortune, but rather trees and animals — can loom larger and larger. The simple act of watering houseplants becomes vastly satisfying. We can see that as a diminishment, but there is a more insightful interpretation of this phenomenon: an enlargement of the capacity to love.
I have something to say to the religionist who feels atheists never say anything positive: You are an intelligent human being. Your life is valuable for its own sake. You are not second-class in the universe, deriving meaning and purpose from some other mind. You are not inherently evil — you are inherently human, possessing the positive rational potential to help make this a world of morality, peace and joy. Trust yourself. ~ Dan Barker
But this minuteness of our earth and of humanity shouldn't be any cause of emotional distress. From the new humility about “our place in the universe” can be born a stronger humanism: a focus on human cooperation and fuller appreciation of the only paradise we’ll ever have. We can be gentle, we can be kind; we can protect nature rather than destroy it (no “dominionism,” please). Though the universe wasn’t created for us, we can still use our intelligence to make this life (there is no other) as good as possible — for all, including animals.
DAIRY FAT MAY HELP PROTECT AGAINST DIABETES, OBESITY
A new study finds the dairy fats found in milk, yogurt and cheese may help protect against Type 2 diabetes.
The research, published in the journal Circulation, included 3,333 adults. Beginning in the late 1980s, researchers took blood samples from the participants and measured circulating levels of bio-markers of dairy fat in their blood. Then, over the next two decades, the researchers tracked who among the participants developed diabetes.
"People who had the most dairy fat in their diet had about a 50 percent lower risk of diabetes" compared with people who consumed the least dairy fat, says Dariush Mozaffarian, dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, who is also an author of the study.
The study does not prove a cause and effect, but it builds on a body of evidence suggesting that dairy fat may have protective effects, both in cutting the risk of diabetes and helping people control body weight.
"It appears that children who have a higher intake of whole milk or 2 percent milk gain less weight over time" compared with kids who consume skim or nonfat dairy products, explains DeBoer.
And there's some evidence that dairy fat may help adults manage weight as well. As we've reported, researchers in Sweden found that middle-aged men who consumed high-fat milk, butter and cream were significantly less likely to become obese over a period of 12 years compared with men who never or rarely ate high-fat dairy.
So, in other words, the butter and whole-milk eaters did better at keeping the pounds off. In addition, a meta-analysis -- which included data from 16 observational studies — also found evidence that high-fat dairy was associated with a lower risk of obesity.
With all the new evidence that challenges the low-fat-is-best orthodoxy, Mozaffarian says it may be time to reconsider the National School Lunch Program rules, which allow only skim and low-fat milk.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/04/18/474403311/the-full-fat-paradox-dairy-fat-linked-to-lower-diabetes-risk
ending on beauty:
In some old plays, when the traveler turns
his sleeve inside out it means
he is still lost on some interminable journey.
Under the moon, the white moths are breathing;
we take off our shoes and socks
just to step on the grass.
~ Luisa A. Igloria
Hades and Cerberus
Gustave Moreau: A young Thracian woman carrying the head of Orpheus on his lyre
