While Isabel Wilkerson references several historical events and personal stories throughout the book, one in particular resonates with me. She patronizes a restaurant with a white friend. They suffer poor service while other patrons enjoy lavish care. Like Wilkerson’s white friend, I fly into rages during these experiences with my wife while she tempers it with a veteran calm forged by use. “I wouldn’t survive if I got angry every time this happens. I don’t want to live my life angry.”
I have the privilege of witnessing caste injustice while she and so many others must experience it. And yet I still get angry. So much of it rises from the rotten stench of hypocrisy, the confusing rhetoric of re-evaluating color and race, the frustration in defining the problem.
Yet after reading this book, the anger slowly drains away. I still witness the injustice and hypocrisy but find my rage abated. One realizes that our public discourse engages in the wrong conversation. We strive to combat a phantom, an invented division, a distraction from our true enemy – a system constructed to safe-guard a dominant position of certain people. Those invested in that dominance must define themselves in contrast to others who might threaten that dominance, afraid of losing their wealth and power, insecure in their own ability to pick themselves up by their own bootstraps. Why berate them with illustrations of hypocrisy and injustice? They know. The construct is predicated on those hypocrisies and sustained by stoking an illogical, self-abasing hatred which justifies injustice.
Wilkerson’s presentation identifies America’s singular disease with its innumerable symptoms and encapsulates it within the context of a more universal human story; shattering our sense of exceptionalism, peeling away the propagandic film blurring our true identity.
However, as a nation, we fight this battle while only beginning to acknowledge our true self. America espouses new beginnings, the freedom to unshackle oneself from the past. In a single branding scheme, the dominant caste can blame the lower for their plight while enjoying the fruits of the past themselves. In one breath, we glorify this self-made individual but suppress efforts to rectify old national systems that restrict them. No nation or individual grows without confronting past mistakes, cures a disease without knowing its origin, heals a wound without knowing its cause.
We do not only show mercy and compassion when we own the fault. We ought to help others even when we do not directly cause their pain. So we must do this work. And the opposition will only grow in fearful ferocity with every step closer to the realization of the promised American identity. Yet if we listen with ears of humanity, rather than those of caste, this book can help us know our enemy as a diabolical social-construct and know ourselves as our fellow citizens.
Forget that you revere Dave Grohl. Forget that you can sing “Everlong” word for word. Forget that mental image of a stringy-haired animal behind Nirvana’s drum kit.
You’re walking down the street – perhaps heading home from work, perhaps meeting friends at a restaurant – and you meet this hippy freak with a massive smile wearing understated flannel and black jeans. You say “Hello”. His smile somehow grows with the brightness of his eyes and he reaches out to shake your hand. Charisma compels you to accept and you embrace like long-lost friends.
And he begins to tell you stories.
This memoir of lyrical prose and endearing sentiment, seeping with broken humanity rather than polished iconicism, immediately connects the reader with themes and characteristics shared by all people. It beckons the reader to sit on the rug, cross one’s legs and listen to the day’s storyteller. It does not simply chronical events of a guy idolized and glorified by the media – cheaply thrilling us with the prospect of his own words. It clicks colorful toy building blocks together with every choice episode and the result is a man – not a movie, not only a story, not only a memoir – a person. Honest and endearing with only the faintest line segregating immaturity and maturity, the reader envies Grohl’s courage to embrace himself, never forsaking it for the smart industry move to achieve rock-stardom. He grips the reader not with his accolades and accomplishments but with his passion and soul.
Yes, I love the Foo Fighters. But to me, Grohl represents the type of success story born not from a corporate sensibility to “make it” in the music business; but from a simple conviction and belief in joy, a yearning to grow, and the courage and perseverance to be himself even in the face of adversity.
For Dave Grohl, that courage and perseverance paid off. But that’s not the point. Take away the financial success and that four-eyed, stringy-haired hippy in the flannel shirt you met on the street would still be enthralled with life because of his stories and relationships, grateful for his survival and chance to live his dream. And we can all live our dreams. If we, too, store up stories and relationships born from daring to dream, I bet we would all write one hell of a memoir too.
Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love: –
Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O anything, of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is? –
This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
Having read Romeo and Juliet multiple times, the first in junior high school, then college and also for leisure, I appreciate my own maturing perspective with each read. While the story remains constant and timeless, I myself change, which means it can forever feed my growth.
With this read, I take special note of analytical contrasts amidst romantic idealism. As a playwright, Shakespeare considers his audience’s reception in equal measure to his story. Two feuding families fueling generational hate (the audience never does find out what sparked the feud) and two “star-crossed lovers” victimized by fortune. Two youths under the elderly care of a nurse and friar who temper their passion with reason. A sad and dreary boy sickened by a happy love that incites him to both tenderness and violence. With these contrasts balanced within the plot and Shakespeare’s language, the audience must choose their empathies with these characters. “Such idiot children to go against their families for something so trivial as a crush.” “Such bravery to follow their hearts despite the surrounding hate.”
I believe Shakespeare considered these possible reactions and therefore added arguments between wisdom’s representatives and the youthful lovers. Friar Lawrence and Juliet’s nurse both argue for temperance and reason against Romeo and Juliet’s wayward passion. Yet, like parents, in the same breath they work to help them. Within their arguments, the audience might hear their own perspective modeled by either youth or wisdom. And yet whichever side the audience chooses, all four – the elderly and the youth – fight together in a losing battle against the only natural outcome of hate. In the end, no scheming can stop the inevitable parade of violence.
Alas, perhaps Shakespeare only intended to illustrate the futility of rebelling against social feuding. Violence and hate will design the same outcome regardless of Love’s attempts to scheme for a different end. Why combat war and hate? Nothing can withstand them. I argue, however, that Shakespeare does not embody this nihilism but rather presents an image of love’s value outside of reason.
Perhaps Shakespeare simply wanted to criticize conflict and warring factions. Stop fighting! No desirable result will happen and all innocence and happiness will wither and die! However, I would argue that Love itself does not wither and die at all. Yes, the feuding brought about a tragic end, but consider an alternate ending.
Romeo and Juliet suffer from the same misinformation – fooled by fortune time after time – but do not end their lives. They suffer other consequences but they live, although unhappily. Would they desire such an outcome to preserve their lives? I do not think so. Therefore, violence and hate get their design but Romeo and Juliet serve love unto the end. Though young and foolish, they find something many reasonable adults lack; service to something more precious than their lives. Is this not the essence of love?
In this way, perhaps Shakespeare did write the best love story ever told – miserable players either in service of love or hate, their fortunes beyond their control. Living and dying will happen regardless of their choices. Yet how would they choose to face each?
And if in other things some errors are made, in the things of war all are made.
Like ancient Greek philosophers, Machiavelli presents a dialogue regarding his theories on a properly created and ordered land army based on learnings from ancient Rome. He presumably positions himself as a fictional character named Fabrizio who lectures and responds to young students, addressing topics such as: the origins of a virtuous soldier, the orders and armaments of an effective army in battle, encamped and during siege. If one wishes to study such concepts, looking for articulated diagrams and a cold dissemination of information, add this book to your collegiate reading list.
If one, however, looks for character and literary engagement, take a different class. I found myself finishing this book simply for the sake of finishing it.
As I limped toward the end, I did note one theme which lends credibility to Machiavelli as a literary force.
During the early Renaissance, Humanism rooted itself within Italian academic and artisan culture; this idea that pagan culture and Christian religion can co-exist in terms of human characteristics. Machiavelli’s thesis for Art of War begins by asserting how ancient Roman military practices can teach the current Italian city state how to wage war with virtue and efficacy. The old can make the new better. Fabrizio, the older scholar, teaches inquisitive students, the younger generation. The virtue of ancient Roman princes such as Caesar should manifest itself in the avaricious princes of the modern Italian city state who hire mercenaries to wage their wars. Knowing nothing other than the current mode of warfare within Italy, the younger students innocently, though ignorantly, question Fabrizio about his ideas and receive his polite but blunt and irritated responses. According to Fabrizio, directly mirroring ancient practices will not necessarily strengthen the modern military but applying their concepts to modern challenges will create a new military theory suited to their times. Ironically, the old perspective more readily abandons legacy thinking than the new, arrogant generation. “…my intention has not been to show you exactly how the ancient military was made, but how in these times one might order a military that would have more virtue than the one that is used [today].”
This book has a very niche market; like a collegiate textbook for your poli-sci class. But I do find it timeless in the way that every generation should build on the old rather than abandon it. Even in military orders, each generation ought not to seek a new genesis according to what makes sense to their novice mind, but humble themselves to first learn and then create.
On the contrary, from what I have seen and heard, it seems to me that our proceedings have been marked by a constant sense of propriety, an unfailing spirit of harmony, and a continual feeling of brotherly and sisterly amity.
Stunning epics, shocking behavior, inspiring relationships, sarcastic roasts and hilarious jokes; all taboo in Guelf and Ghibelline infested Italy and set free during plague-ridden years. When social convention breaks down, moral pillars crumble under the collapsing weight.
Always exploring the raw nature of humanity in contrast to the artificial lives assembling its society, Boccaccio exploits our true nature like a raw nerve laid bare by the Black Plague. Ten young people scamper off to a utopian castle to escape the degradation of their city and enjoy the freedom of self-gratification. Over the span of a fortnight, they each tell ten stories, one each day, to entertain each other and express their criticisms of crazed lovers, hypocritical clergy and munificent socialites.
When reading The Decameron, one immediately notes the literary structure of the work. One hundred stories told by ten individuals over ten days; like building blocks to engineer a new mathematically sound society void of taboo, masked characteristics and unnatural conformity. Each day routinely ends with song and focuses on a set theme. One might imagine a state of anarchy but even these ten could not resist a compulsion to mimic state hierarchy, crowning a different king or queen for each day. One need not abandon order to embrace freedom, honesty and style.
Inspired by a self-ascribed infatuation with women and Love in all its manifestations, Boccaccio criticizes the social braces of medieval Italian society which stifle human nature. As bodies decay, one quickly learns that social constructs mean nothing when faced with a simple and base reality of life and death. Society has its function, but does it have meaning? If one loves another’s wife or husband, why not exercise that love? When society relegates women to property, does this mean they lack wit? When a clergyman proclaims the laws and morality of Christianity, does this mean they no longer behave as deplorably as others? When people dedicate their lives to the accumulation of power and wealth, does this mean that generosity dies?
The book does feel long but Boccaccio addresses this in his epilogue. Understandably, reading the The Decameron in the 21st century, even in times of COVID-19, must differ from reading The Decameron as Boccaccio’s contemporary. And if he truly writes it for women, then he assumes they have considerable leisure time. Even so, the stories explore fascinating themes and each storyteller’s personality and style add great variety. I will say I have an overwhelming compulsion to spend a day with Calandrino, Bruno and Buffalmacco. Though it may risk my well-being.
I will help you like hand helps hand, or foot helps foot.
In these tales, we witness the evolution of Norse culture and, perhaps, the slow decline of the gods. While both tales follow a lineage legendarily descended from Odin, they have drastically different tones despite both dripping with blood, violence and vengeance.
Through the story of Sigurth, who slayed the dragon Fafnir, characters behave under predetermined Fate; arguably orchestrated by incorruptible and inescapable laws of human nature. As we witness with Sigurth, a noble man can suffer an ignoble fate if laws of human nature remain in tact. The law of greed and envy control the fates of Gunnar and Hogni. For Signy, the law of revenge fuels her undiscerning, murderous rampage. For Brynhild, the law of oath breaking drives her irrational pursuit of vengeance. For Guthrun, the laws of sorrow spark her vengeance. For these characters, none embrace their agency and they become simple vessels for acting out their emotions.
The last episode in Volsunga saga tells of Guthrun’s sons’ vengeance for the death of their half-sister, Svanhild, Guthrun’s daughter with Sigurth. Two of these sons kill the third because they misunderstand his cryptic response about his fighting prowess. At their own death, they realize that by killing their third brother, they kill their chance for victory in their endeavors. They remove all limbs from their victim King Jormunrekk but cannot remove his head, the part which their third brother would have removed. Because of this, the king can hear Odin himself advise him on how to kill his attackers and the brothers understand the folly of their mistake. The head, Wisdom, even without muscular limb to clench mystical swords, can bring down the most brutish warrior.
In Ragnars saga lothbrokar, the story transforms in tone as Wisdom becomes the prominent element driving the fates and actions of men. Odin does not appear as much as he had in Volsunga saga. Ragnar shares many similarities with Sigurth, even in his victory over a dragon, but he does not seek the treasure. He marries Aslaug out of desire rather than matching from social hierarchy. His son Ivar, the boneless, crippled and lacking in the physical prowess boasted of by heroes in Volsunga saga, proves the greatest Norseman of all the heroes because of his wisdom alongside his valor as a warrior. While still violent and honorable in the Norse tradition, Wisdom now thrives rather than beastial barbarism. The name of Ragnarsson ties a string of brotherhood around men down through the ages. In the far reaching corners of the globe stand mighty, speaking statues committed to standing in honor of those men until the end of the world. Odin is gone. His wisdom now lives within men rather than outside of them. Like Odin, men can now embrace their wisdom and break the shackles of law to create their own Fate; or die in the attempt.
Buried beneath the earth / are horrible sorrows, / the desperate things / that make the elves weep. / Early in the morning, / everything that has caused / someone unhappiness / will be remembered anew.” (Hamthismal, Stanza 1)
Jackson Crawford translates and edits the The Poetic Edda, a Norse collection of mythical and heroic poems dating back to before the 14th century AD. I found a beautiful challenge in these stories; not only in the poetry itself but in the context of an early morality system different from what we might define during modern times. One will quickly identify transactional honor, repayment in kind for deeds done to them, the importance of hospitality, wisdom, vengeance, oaths and fate. One might surmise that these codes derive from a natural survival instinct within a culture scraping to survive in a harsh northern wilderness of scarce resources and a growing population. And yet more than a thousand years later we glean universal elements of human nature and might even see a bit of ourselves staring back at us from the pages.
The Poetic Edda splits between stories of the Norse gods and specific human heroes; the ferocity and imagery of genesis and Ragnarok; the practicality of the Havamal, the humor and entertainment of the god’s lives and the sorrow and tragedy of these ancient heroes.
Within all the poems, one senses a unifying thread of nature and fate. From a modern perspective, one might look for themes like justice within their eye-for-an-eye approach, or just desert for deeds done, or wisdom transcending everyday life into what we might call a spiritual plain. However, though it might take time – like building a muscle, one can only understand this culture after abandoning the rudimentary foundation of morality engrained within our own modern global culture.
Consider the idea of Fate. Odin spends much of his time working to prevent his fate which inadvertently twists it tighter around his neck and brings about the reality of Ragnarok. One quickly understands that despite the greatest strength and wisdom, one cannot escape their fate. Sigurth, despite knowing his fate through the prophecies of Gripir, faces it without the slightest effort to divert it. Because of this, audiences likely love Sigurth’s honor and courage and revere him as a great hero. Then we hear from the perspective of women, like Guthrun, who endure their fated suffering because of the deeds of men over which they have little control due to social constructs.
I imagine this idea of Fate as a universal truth; not in the literal sense of three Norns at the roots of Yggsdrasil carving destinies, but as a natural reality not even the gods can change. One imagines an inescapable cycle of cause and effect which denounces ideas of justice, mercy, love or forgiveness. Someone as commendable as Sigurth suffers an undeserved fate. Modern readers would feel a sense of tragedy and injustice. They might call to the heavens and ask God why He let this happen. But in a world governed by natural laws of human nature, a great man like Sigurth can understandably suffer an undeserved fate simply because of covetous men envying his treasure. This does not pervert an ancient Norse sense of morality. In fact, it might even seem natural. Even for the gods, Fate does not alter relative to a man’s character or deeds. It will function according to the laws of human nature regardless of the kind of hero or trickster upon which it executes itself.
Audiences can only live their best within these laws in an effort to survive as long as they can, even to the point of seeking renown, fame and sons to carry their name into immortality. The glory and honor, the suffering and sorrow; these things do not change natural law. In fact, themes like justice (in a fated sense), mercy, forgiveness…these words might sound similar to “green snow” for those living during ancient times. These themes invert natural law. Transcending such a concept would not ensure their survival nor inherently prove how they can deviate from their fate.
The Poetic Edda offers so much more: the characters of the gods when compared to the modern concept of deity, how they relate to people, and how humanity struggles between itself and the life into which it is thrust into leading. In fact, historically, as these Norse cultures expanded into lands more abundant in resources, one can imagine how their understanding of human nature may change leading to the death of the gods and a rebirth into a new world governed by a different nature. Perhaps this was fated, regardless of Odin’s efforts to postpone Ragnarok.
I love this book. With a master’s stroke, Gaiman retells tales from the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda in wildly entertaining and simplistic fashion. I imagine he focused as much on the editing process as he did on the writing process. Rather than retelling every story from the source material, he focuses on the “famous” Norse gods and their stories; Odin, Thor and Loki. Of course, popular culture has much more familiarity with these characters thanks to Marvel and their stories exhibit the soul of Norse Mythology accomplishing Gaiman’s goal. Why not introduce people to that soul with faces from Avengers movies?
In Biblical fashion, Gaiman begins the book with an account of the Norse creation story and ends it with the glorious catastrophe of Ragnarok. For these, and all stories in between, I found myself naturally striving to find commonalities and contrasts within the Judeo-Christian tradition. Assuredly, scholars dedicated to this study may provide better insights but I specifically noted a distinct lack of “good” and “evil”. The gods of Norse Mythology share commonality with God only in name. In character, they embody more humanity than deity, notwithstanding their supernatural capabilities. Seemingly governed only by a moral system of honor in oaths and balanced vengeance, they strive for wisdom, consider any means to accomplish an end and dedicate their existence to stopping their own end which, ironically, one can argue is of their own making.
And yet their end only spawns a new beginning derived from powers beyond their ken. They may create the control systems familiar to humans, but laws of balanced extremes and fate came before which they cannot control. Unlike the Judeo-Christian God, Odin suffers the same human confines of fate and mortality and does not exist before the beginning or after the end.
These myths do not seek to explain scientific phenomenon or describe a “backwards” people. Any indications of this only serve to engage audiences and differentiate the supernatural characteristics of these gods. Rather, these myths explain the nature of people, the struggles they encounter and the questions with which they wrestle. Any argument to the contrary results from an indefensible and partial reading of the stories. In all, an entertaining book rich with academic value appropriate for any age.
So savage! Very few Shakespeare plays drop my jaw so ruthlessly. Whatever unspoken rule I imagined for 16th century English playwrights disappeared or ran for the hills. Nothing implied, everything exposed. If England ever adopted a rating system for plays back in the renaissance period, this may have birthed it.
The audience struggles to find a moral anchor in this play. They might find their hero in Titus but then remember his role in the melting pot of horror. They might find themselves despising Tamora but then remember how she entered the fray. This play lacks cleanliness; not only with its gore but in its lack of a definitive principle or character. Audiences can only accept the messy realism of the uncleanliness and wonder how they might respond if thrust into the role of these characters.
Amidst topical themes of patriotism, politics, and even racism, Shakespeare explores justice and the size of the fire resulting from those fighting each other with it. Early in the play, each offending episode sprouts from pain caused by someone else. Each character festers in their unjust experience. Shakespeare not only explores those causes and effects but each character’s reaction to them; even how their self-victimization propels them to ungodly deeds.
I expect that many find their hero in Titus. As the grand Roman general, sacrificing his own livelihood in service to the Roman Empire, to an ideal, his soul and meaning in life, perhaps irresponsibly, lives and dies with the glory of that ideal. If that ideal, or the expression of that ideal, transforms into something viscous and threatening, one can understand how that mind begins to drift and focus on revenge. He not only suffers similar losses as other characters, but the loss of his soul. To believe in something so deeply, to mortgage his very being on it, can only create a violent vacuum in its horrible absence. However, this does not preclude his innocence, or even a pure unjust victimization, but audiences may sympathize more with him. But it is not a comfortable sympathy – blemished with a hope that a hero might have done things differently.
As Lucius address the Roman public during the conclusion, assuredly facing the audience directly and calling them Roman only in name, each person must decide how they feel about his sentencing of each character. Even at the end, after the bloody climactic tumult, when the audience relishes their chance to impulsively cheer for a character without considering their reasons for doing so, they return to their discomfort and the gray mire backdropped behind Lucius judgements.
Induction Scene II from the Painting in the Boydell Gallery, by R. Smirke, R.A.
This is a way to kill a wife with kindness: And thus I’ll curb her mad and headstrong humour. He that knows better how to tame a shrew, Now let him speak; ’tis charity to show.
Imagine yourself at a party, perhaps sitting around a table with friends old and new. They discuss frivolous matters, make lude jokes, laugh boisterously; while you watch, perhaps snicker politely from time to time, thinking more about the inherent paradox in their social behavior, their misguided desires, their humor and joy at their own self-debasement. Luckily, the Induction can help you do so! You find yourself convinced of your lordship and adorned with the crown of judge!
I imagine Shakespeare standing in the stage wings, out of the audience’s sight, behaving in the same way as you around the table, watching the audience laugh and his actors play out a tragedy disguised in comedy. The playwright laughing along with them, perpetuating the joke only to wake them from their crass, thoughtless debauchery at the end.
As I cherish in his other plays, Shakespeare makes such clean use of juxtaposition and deception. The audience engages in comparisons and contrasts; continuously weighing factors to identify the hero and villain, looking for themselves on stage to deposit their sympathies. The play, as a vehicle, drives the audience through each act molding and shifting their laments at each stop.
Do we condemn the honest “shrewdness” of Petruchio and Kate? Do we commend Lucretio’s perseverance despite his deceptive cunning? Do we stop to empathize with the characters by considering the nurturing that molded their dispositions? Though Petruchio and Kate both share a shrewd anger, under this surface similarity one might consider Petruchio’s motives – like that of a spoiled child – and Kate’s muzzled voice under the social constructs of marriage and desirability of her younger sister Bianca. Do those same social constructs forgive Lucretio’s pursuit of Bianca at the cost of his honesty?
And finally, when this comedy rears its ugly, tragic head, do these men consider how “taming the shrew” transforms the very objects of their affection into property – voiding them of the spirit that makes them human, that attracted them? Do they take responsibility for their part in backing a man who would “kill a wife with kindness” with no consideration of his own shrewdness? Do Bianca and the widow realize how they might have admired Kate and wished to keep a bit of shrewdness for themselves?
The audience, those friends around the party table, now pity Kate when earlier they might have chastised her. They miss her and wish they hadn’t lost a beacon of something they take for granted in themselves. They stop laughing and admit to themselves that the villain wins and they all lose.
“But Mr. Shakespeare – what of the Induction? Shouldn’t you conclude the play by returning to those people?” He says nothing knowing full well that Christopher Sly will carry home all his deliberations as one in the crowd leaving the playhouse.
To share my passion of motorsports to all my readers! To get people of all ages and income levels into the absolute best vehicle possible for their specific needs and to make driving enjoyable every single day!
Cleaning Green World is about living as chemical free as possible and learning to cut down on waste and spending. I will show you tips on evinromental living without going to the extreme
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
BenReadsALot 