Fair and balanced
“We’re keeping our word to the Iraqi people by helping them to make their country an example of democracy and prosperity throughout the region,” he said.
I expect that in every year across the ages, men and women have looked around, read the news (and what passes for news), heard the gossip, then slumped a little deeper in their seats, and sighed: this is the beginning of the end.
Suddenly overwhelmed by all the brutality and cynicism of humankind, and particularly of those that lead us, bitter about vicious deeds and machinations carried out in our name, and struck by random tales of just how strange we can be. Saddened too by the lack of critical thought, by the pettiness, by how gullible and obtuse we’re willing to be (one always hopes or presumes that individuals will mature more quickly than societies).
There are times when those things you generally turn to for reassurance – books, music, gardens and laughter… – feel like cold comfort. You don’t feel suicidal, you’re just plain exhausted.
(I wonder sometimes whether this end of the world gloom and doom isn’t merely the panicked awareness of our own mortality, so wanting to take the world with us.)
We seem to want things to fit into neat bundles, for it all to work out in the end. But they don’t and, if we play our cards right, this is only the beginning. Just as our sleep follows through from our waking, we are only products of all that has come before; are we mindful of the nightmares we’re knitting?
So, lately, what’s happened is that I’ve been stunned into silence by the fervour on all sides (there are more than two) of current debates over expansionism, human rights and belief systems, slipshod economics, celibates and born-agains dictating sexuality, the ease with which entire communities of fellows are dismissed, and particularly by the multifarious interpretations of what is our collective history (hence present).
I’ve been flummoxed by the manner in which our past is continually diluted and twisted beyond all recognition – although remembering that, like with any event you’ve witnessed, your viewpoint will differ from that of all others who witnessed it: you will see and understand things that they don’t, and vice versa. But still. I’m forever trying to determine the scope of reality beyond perception.
So I’ve begun re-reading history from as many standpoints as possible, endeavouring not to dismiss any claim merely because I don’t agree or because it doesn’t suit my perspective. (Suggested reading is welcome.)
Thus far, as always seems to be the case, the more I read, the less I know and the more I feel like I’m becoming my own little Switzerland (minus the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical business).
There are as many perspectives as there are human souls and once again I’m learning that no easy conclusions can be drawn, and that what was called History in school was worse than watered-down fairy tales. My, how ill they equipped us. They told us nothing of death or of our true nature. And we were so awed by how grown-up adults appeared.
I suppose that as much as a need to feel more grounded in my perspective, what I’m trying to find out is: where do we turn for comfort?
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Comment
- Suggested reading in history:
Charles Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. A very fine and sane book.
Henry Adam’s Mont St Michel & Chartres. More than history, more also than travel book and architectural treatise—although both those things—: a meditation on the mediaeval imagination. Should be required reading as a corrective to the draft EU constitution’s pretense that Europe was formed by classical civilisation and the ‘Enlightenment’.
Thomas Boyle’s Black Swine in the Sewers of Hampstead. A study of Victorian sensationalism. Mainly recommended on account of having what may be the greatest title of any book ever.
— John Hudson Aug 15, 7:45am # - More suggested reading in history:
1. Any fiction.
2. Julia Kristeva’s “The Sense and Non-Sense of Revolt: The Powers and Limits of Psychoanalysis Volume I”. Most history is about rebellion. Now with the death of history we ‘rebel yell’ against rebellion. From mythic Greek icons to the fantastically droll figures of modern thought, Kristeva struggles with what we mean to be seeking power. (Also, her “Desire in Language” kicks some major butt.)
— Ross McKie Aug 15, 2:31pm # - i’m always impressed by the eloquence of your posts, but today really takes the cake. i’ve been rolling the same questions around in my head, but i’ve been totally unable to voice them. thank you.
— ally Aug 15, 2:54pm # - I’m not sure this fits into the genre of questions you’ve stated, but this is as good a start as I’ve found in my reading of history:
“Ecological Imperialism: the Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900” by Alfred W. Crosby
— roggey Aug 15, 3:12pm # - PS: It’s not as dry as it sounds in the title.
— roggey Aug 15, 3:13pm # - Everything I know about history I learned from Henry Adams (letters, “Jefferson and Madison”, and “The Education” much more than “Mont St Michel”), but the only comforts he proposes are cold acceptance or hysterical laughter.
— Ray Aug 15, 3:44pm # - I second ally’s post, and thank everyone for the suggested reading, as well. Well said.
— chasmyn Aug 15, 5:43pm # - We’re all writing tomorrow’s history now. Try to be good and try to make your kids good. Then maybe the next chapter won’t be so scary, and, if it is scary, you won’t be to blame.
— Eeksy-Peeksy Aug 16, 7:41am # - So, earlier I suggested “mythic Greek icons” as content in a Kristeva book and am now pondering (I have time for this?) if iconography is inherently mythic by design. Was I (being) redundant? Only time (read: the history of these “comments”) will tell… .
— Ross McKie Aug 16, 2:01pm # - You’re right that iconography is inherently mythic/religious, and the word invariably brings to mind the red and gold of Russian paintings on crude slabs of wood.
Although if you asked a 15-year old what an icon is, you’d no doubt get a very different answer.
But thank goodness we have time to think of these things, and it reminded me that I’d always found it curious (cf. silly) that current religions are perceived as being more sophisticated, true and valid than mythologies, as though monotheism somehow makes more sense than pantheism or animism.
Although I’ll admit that even if we have the Greeks to thank for the Oedipal complex, we’ve certainly turned guilt into a more elaborate art form.
Oh, and thanks for all the suggested reading thus far. (My local amazon thanks you too.)
— gail Aug 17, 5:10am # - I’ll suggest Herodotus and Thucydides. Very different writers (H. the jovial uncle with the great stories, T. the stern but eloquent retired general), they each saw pretty much everything human nature has to offer and told us about it in a way that’s endlessly relevant. You might check out the Thucydides quotes I put in the comments section of this Jonathon Delacour post (which is well worth reading in its own right):
http://weblog.delacour.net/archives/2003/08/a_quotation_for_all_seasons.php
— language hat Aug 17, 12:27pm # - There are a couple of argument-provoking essays in Mark Lilla’s “The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics” that you might find useful in the context of your approach to the issues in your post. As for mythologies, there is Roberto Calasso’s “The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony,” which tries to clear the Greek field of its Freudian overgrowth.
There is also Elias Canetti’s “Crowds and Power” for a perspective on paranoia in politics.
Of course, for laying it out as it was—and still is—you can’t beat language hat’s suggestions: Herodotus & Thucydides.
— maria Aug 17, 8:42pm # - ‘The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ by Edward Gibbon.
— nardo Aug 18, 5:13am # - why not a sip of eric hobsbawm? or a cup of carlo ginzburg (also comes occasionally spiced with thucydides)? hugh trevor-roper’s “hermit of peking” suddenly comes to my mind, just because as far as consolation is concerned, history has hardly anything better to offer than great stories.
— katatonik Aug 18, 2:15pm # - I’d recommend Jose Saramago’s Blindness.
And it may be your thing, but I’d stay away from Kristeva and the Tel Quel group. They always make me lose hope…
— August Aug 18, 4:35pm # - If you need a break from reading, rent and watch “The Fall of the Roman Empire” (yes, the one that got bastardized into “Gladiator”), with Alec Guinness as Marcus Aurelius and Christopher Plummer as Commodus. The parallels with our current, er, “situation” are striking (eg. what is said during the debates in the Roman Senate).
— Erwin Aug 19, 2:09am # - Have you read Olaf Stapledon? He wrote philosophical fiction back in the ‘30’s. His Last and First Men is a ‘history’ of the next 2 billion years.
Sirius is the story of a romance between a young woman and a super-intelligent dog (the creation of the woman’s scientist father).
Star Maker starts out, “One night when I had tasted bitterness I went out on to the hill.” He sets out from that hill on a journey through the cosmos that ends with an encounter with the Maker.
Not sure if any of this will help you feel ‘more grounded,’ though.
— eric Aug 19, 12:12pm # - Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West (German original entitled Der Untergang des Abendlandes).
— Jamie Norrish Aug 20, 7:33am # - Language Hat, or anyone:
Which translation of Thucydides and Herodotus would you recommend?
— Susan Aug 20, 1:01pm # - The rest of your journey lies forward, so look not overmuch into the rearview mirror, lest you miss a turn best taken. Shrewd observation of approaching obstacles and opportunities can gain you greatest comfort.
— Jack Lobaugh Aug 23, 12:24am # - Hey warm August: “Blindness” and all its anti-hope(fullness) is a wonderful companion piece to Kristeva (sans Tel Quel), especially her thin volume “Psychoanalysis and Faith”, a sort of love poem to belief.
— Ross McKie Aug 26, 1:42am # - I’ve been jealously reading Eduardo Galeano’s Memory of Fire trilogy over my girlfriend’s shoulder lately… It’s a sweeping, poetic retelling of the history (-ies) of the Americas (and, thank goodness, it doesn’t seem to strive for objectivity at all).
— cobra libre Aug 26, 1:17pm #
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