A blast from the past

reprinted from Monday, September 25, 2017

Quotes of the Day

Today's quote got TOF thinking -- always a scary thing -- and led him to hunt up a couple of other quotes that seemed in the same vein. First, the quote that started the thought process.

"The heroes of declining nations are always the same—the athlete, the singer or the actor. The word ‘celebrity’ today is used to designate a comedian or a football player, not a statesman, a general, or a literary genius." 

-- Glubb pasha, (1897-1986) 

"The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival" (1979)

Interestingly, he based this on his studies of the old Abbasid Caliphate, the Mamluq Empire, the 'Osmanli Turkish Empire, and others, compared cross-culturally. 

Sir John's historical analysis may be far too glib. Glubb glib? Say it ain't so! TOF can roll his eyes at some modernist categories used out of context. "Universities" in the 7th century? Forsooth! But recall that a "celebrity" once meant not someone who is merely famous, not to say notorious, but someone in whose honor a formal celebration had been held: a banquet served, scholarly papers read, speeches given. Galileo was given such a fest by the Jesuits shortly after his first book came out and was thereafter referred to as "a celebrated astronomer."

Now some literary geniuses are indeed celebrated in the modern sense of being famed, although genius ought be equated neither with best seller lists nor with the compatibility of their works with one's own prior socio-political commitments. There are surely some generals who can be celebrated -- for their competency in the arts of war, if nothing else. But statesmen? Are there really such things anymore? A slight digression in the sequence of quotes:

"Meanwhile, at the end of the twentieth century a degeneration in the conduct of the relations of states goes on. When I see or hear or read the language or the behavior of foreign ministers and ambassadors, I am a witness of an enormous decline, not only of intelligence but of diplomatic practice (including decorum) and human common sense. I write 'enormous' since the symptoms of a babbling barbarism are all around us... What may succeed it is the rule of tougher barbarians who will not, because they need not, babble." 

-- John Lukacs, At the End of an Age

And yes, he wrote that before Twitter was invented. But now let us couple Glubb's observation with two others. Among other signs of the autumn of the Modern world, John Lukacs cited the shift from books to images (movies, TV shows). "Show, don't tell." The celebrities cited by Glubb pasha seem right in line with this. And earlier, Jacques Barzun remarked:

The new pastimes of the educated amateur are the arts of nonarticulate expression: music and painting…  Everywhere picture and sound crowd out text.  The Word is in disfavor…

 – Jacques Barzun, The House of Intellect 

Barzun also noted the replacement by the 1950s of "I think that..." with "I feel that..." in colloquial speech.

More recently we have this comment from the then-archbishop of Denver which puts some consequences of the shift:

Visual and electronic media, today’s dominant media, need a certain kind of content. They thrive on brevity, speed, change, urgency, variety and feelings. But thinking requires the opposite. Thinking takes time. It needs silence and the methodical skills of logic. ... [This trend is] a very dangerous thing in a democracy, which is a form of government that demands intellectual and moral maturity from its citizens to survive.

--Charles Joseph Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., “Catholics and the ‘Fourth Estate’”

But as long as we are attuned to the Spirit of the Age and keep au courant with this morning's fads, all shall be well.

####

This led one commentor to write:

I guess the Elizabethans were all barbarians, given that every educated person and a lot who weren't, were given to singing partsongs at home and playing lutes. In fact, most of the great cultural periods assumed that you wanted to draw or sketch in ink, write poems, dress gorgeously, and also conquer the world and make wise decisions for the state.

which missed the point. Glubb was not noting that many or most people of a time and place enjoyed making music or acting. It was that singers, actors, and athletes were celebrated as heroes. Name a celebrated athlete from the Elizabethan era, or a celebrated singer. Even a celebrated actor: Certainly, Shakespeare worked as an actor, but we was celebrated as a playwright.

None of which has to do with barbarism. Although drawing-and-quartering and spiking decaying heads on Traitors Gate do seem less than genteel. Glubb was writing of the decline of great societies. Elizabethan England did not celebrate its singers as heroes.

Love and Sex

Well, that title got your attention didn't it?

What is love, you may ask?

You will not be surprised to learn that TOF has an answer. Surely, you would love to know what it is.

The Bible tells us to love our neighbours,
and also to love our enemies;
probably because generally they are the same people.

-- Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Even our enemies? Oy! This alone ought to tell us that love comes in different flavors, for we were never commanded to plant a big wet one on Saddam Hussein's lips, nor to give Hitler a little tongue action.

Nowadays, talk of love in English is muddled by the debasement of the term "love." They say "The Greeks have a word for it," but when it came to love, they had three-and-a-half words for it. According to Wikipedia, that font of all wisdom, these were:

1. Agápe (ἀγάπη) meaning "love in the sense of charity; the love of God for man and of man for God." It is also used in ancient texts to denote feelings for one's children and the feelings for a spouse.
2. Philia (φιλία) meaning "affectionate regard, friendship," usually between equals. It expresses loyalty to friends, family, and community. It is also used for desire or enjoyment of an activity, as well as between lovers.
3. Éros (ἔρως) meaning sexual passion. [However, Plato did not regard physical attraction as a necessary part of érōs, hence "platonic love."] With contemplation, Plato says, érōs becomes an appreciation of the beauty within that person, or even appreciation of beauty itself.  

• A fourth term -- storge (στοργή) -- meaning a natural empathy, was used only rarely in ancient texts. This referred to the feelings of parents for offspring, for the love for one's country or a favorite sports team, or for mere acceptance or putting up with situations. You do not actually love the Eagles or the Mets -- not agape, philia, or (especially, we hope) not eros -- but you can feel storge for them. Sometimes, you just put up with them. 

But in English, we are stuck with multi-tasking the word "love." That's a lot of straw for a single camel.

One of the benefits of having a word for something is that one can talk about it without talking around it.  For example, the ancient Greeks had no word for 'velocity' and so could not easily discuss the physics of local motion.  Not that they were unaware that things changed location at varying rates, but they simply called it 'motion.'

Thing is, the ancients (and early medievals) were interested in motion as such, more so than in its magnitude, so they wondered how a thing might move at all rather than in how one would describe that motion arithmetically, and their vocabulary reflected this.  We Moderns are just as hobbled when we try to talk about love, since the distillation of modern English boils everything down pretty much to plumbing. The fine distinctions of agape, philos, eros, and the like are not for the blunt Modern ear, which just wants to know if she is available and if so, how soon.  

A man may love many things and anything.  He may love a woman, or a comrade.  He may love his work or the place where he lives.  He may love a good drink or a good journey.  He might get lost – on the journey, or in the drink, or especially in the woman – but what is love without loss?  

-- The January Dancer

The beloved in repose

SUPPOSE YOU LOVE A GOOD STEAK, let's say one that is medium rare and juicy, cut from a fine filet and seared to perfection. Whose mouth does not water? Whose taste buds do not yearn for its savor?¹ You want to celebrate something with a friend so you take her to a fine steakhouse.

The beloved in celebration

Let us suppose further that you love your dinner companion, who may also be rare and juicy. Here, even the most stolid TOFian Reader may catch the glimmer of a Truth: viz., that one does not love one's dinner companion in quite the same manner as one loves one's dinner. Though lips and tongue may be enthusiastically engaged in either case, they are not used in quite the same manner.²

The distinction is this:

• You love your dinner because of the enjoyment you will get from it.
• You love your companion for her own sake.³

Notes
1. whose mouth does not water? Well, okay, vegans and suchlike. But this is a hypothetical: cf. "suppose." If you lack the empathy to entertain the example, substitute whichever toothsome foodstuff as pleases you for the warmed up muscle tissue of a castrated bovine. TOF himself is passing fond of corn on the cob, which are the sexual organs of a sterile mutant grass.
2. dinner guest vs. dinner. Cannibals excepted.
3. her. Or his. Work with me here.

The former is what Aquinas called "love of concupiscence" [amor concupiscentiae] and the latter, what he called "love of friendship" [amor amicitiae]⁴. Summa Theologiae I-II.26.4

This is clear enough in the case of the steak. You do not love the steak for the sake of the steak. The steak gets nothing out of the relationship save to achieve its final cause; viz., to be digested. This is not so much the good of the dinner as it is for the good of the diner.

The case of the dinner companion is more complex. We enjoy our companion's company, for whatever reason. Perhaps he is a fine story-teller and we enjoy his jokes and stories. But friend-love means we love him for his own sake, not simply because he entertains us and keeps us laughing. Or because he is useful: perhaps we cultivate his friendship in the hope of getting his business. But love is not all about us. It's all about him. Or her.

"Friendship" in our Late Modern Age is a pale shell of its former self. It was once a passionate, robust thing that implied a deep commitment. It was often accompanied by tokens exchanged between the friends, and betrayal of a friendship was a serious matter indeed, often leading to clan feuds or wars. The word in English that comes closest to approximating this meaning today is "buddies," as in "fishing buddies" or "foxhole buddies." Nineteenth century photographs often show men holding hands with their special friends, or with their arms across each other's shoulders; but the Late Modern secular obsession with pelvic issues insists on interpreting such gestures in a prurient manner and we seldom see them any more.⁵ Yet it was often the case among foxhole buddies that one would throw his own body on a grenade to save the others, and it is a truism that "greater love than this hath no man."

Love in the Western, i.e., Christian, tradition was defined simply as "to will the good of the other precisely as other." That is, for his or her own sake, not for our own. It is not defined as an emotion, let alone as a feeling, but as an act of will. And yet surely when we behold our beloved, we experience both emotions and feelings⁶, even if the beloved is not named Shirley. How do we explain this paradox?

Notes
4. concupiscentiae... amicitiae. Note the genitive case endings -ae. This is not love of a thing called concupiscence or friendship, but love generated by concupiscence or friendship. "Genitive" = "born of"
5. seldom sees such gestures. At least in this country. TOF saw it frequently in Chennai, TN, India. Two likely lads walking along with their nigh arms over each other's shoulders and with their outer arms holding hands across their bodies. The pose held no meaning other than friendship, we were assured.
6. emotions... feelings. These are not the same thing.

"What do you want to know about love?  ... Well, there are chemicals in the brain that regulate pleasure..." 

-- Jerry Oltion,
"What Science Means to Me"

As an aside, there are those who claim that all such things are nothing more than the motions of atoms in a void, and they try to explain love by reference to brain chemistry and other such foo-foo.⁷ But TOF's reader can spot the palmed ace. Jerry Oltion in his comment above is not writing about love at all, but about pleasure, a feeling of one's self, and this is not the same thing. To the pleasure-minded hedonist, other people are never quite real. They are only instruments to be used to enhance one's own pleasures. As Aquinas says:

When friendship is based on usefulness or pleasure, a man does indeed wish his friend some good: and in this respect the character of friendship is preserved.  But since he refers this good further to his own pleasure or use, the result is that friendship of the useful or pleasant, in so far as it is connected with love of concupiscence, loses the character to true friendship. -- Summa Theologiae I-II.26.4

If one cannot be loved, it is at least no small thing to be useful. Yet, tools are useful and who wants to be a tool? This is why love is an act of the will and not an emotion or feeling. The feelings of pleasure that we experience are a result of the love, not the love itself.

Pleasure can also lead to love in that the Pavlovian conditioning that associates the pleasure of being in the Other Person's company can lead one to love that Other Person as well. Hence, the pleasurable sex act is called "making" love. The consequence of taking pleasure is love.

So, it works all ways. You can experience pleasure as a result of loving the Other; you can fall in love as a consequence of taking pleasure; or you can love without any physical act of pleasure (which is called Platonic). In our Late Modern world, we have learned that you can even take pleasure without love entering the picture at all.

Notes:
7. Brain chemistry. Or they seem to explain. By their own account, materialists are merely compelled by the forces of physics to say such things.

“It’s not love unless it is unwilling. 
Otherwise, why speak of ‘falling’?” 

-- Méarana Harper, in The January Dancer

One of the great myths of the Late Modern Age is that love is something that happens to you when you are not looking; as if "to love" were a Latin deponent verb: active in sense but passive in form. Hence, "I am in love" rather than "I love." From this stems many of our particular ills.¹

Now, there is a grain of truth to this. The image of Cupid loosing his arrows at the unwitting (or, in India, Kama the Bodiless) is a very ancient one, so it's not just we Moderns who make fools of ourselves. Culture produced the arranged marriage precisely because it could not trust hormone-crazed lust-puppies to make rational decisions in this area. But the grain of truth is also the stone in the shoe. The problem is not that we have a good time with out beloved. It's whether having a good time is our purpose.²

TOF had a HS classmate who was in an arranged marriage. She showed up at the senior dance with an older man (No, not that old.) and told us they had been promised when still children. "But do you love him?" her horrified classmates asked. "I will learn to love him," she answered. This answer was incomprehensible to those raised in the Cupid's Arrow school of modern Hollywood love. We did not understand that love is not a passion but an action; viz., an act of will. And yet, a few years ago her cousin's husband told TOF that she was still happily married to this same man, so go figure.³ Maybe the divorce rate is so high these days because mating choices are generally being made by hormone-crazed lust-puppies.

If people confuse love with the feelings or sensations, then when those feelings or sensations diminish from repetition, they are apt to suppose "love" has died. But a new shoe is apt to pinch and one feels it constantly on one's feet. Once it is "broken in," we no longer notice the shoe; but this in no way means that the shoe has died.

Notes.
1. "in love" vs. "love." And the confusion is spreading. Notice how often you hear "I am supportive of..." instead of "I support..." Is it only verbs of commitment that suffer from this oddly passive construction?
2. for a good time. One sometimes sees on the walls of public lavatories the inscription "For a good time, call Suzy." However, it seldom means that a good time for Suzy is intended.
3. arranged marriage. That's "arranged," not "imposed." The rule is "consent makes the marriage." Think of it as a Very Long Engagement, the advantage of which is the couple learns each other's foibles well before they become irrevocable.

Sex

Since this essay is already too long, TOF will refer Faithful Reader the the post by Eve Keneinan, "The Word 'Sex'" (Last Eden, 25 July, 2015) and mention that the gradual muddying of the term "sex" from noun to verb is largely responsible for the gradual decay of "love" into "my pleasure."

References

1. Aristotle, Rhetoric Book II Part 4.
2. Chastek, James (2008). "Families as the principle of harmony for the “dual ends” of sexuality". (Just Thomism, Aug. 5, 2008)
3. Chastek, James (2016a). "Love as primarily willed or emotional" (Just Thomism, July 15, 2016)
4. Chastek, James (2016b) "Friendship and incarnation" (Just Thomism, Oct 17, 2016)
5. Feser, Edward (2016) "Bad Lovin'" (Edward Feser Blog, July 12, 2016)
6. Feser, Edward (2017) "Mired in the roiling tarpits of lust" (Edward Feser Blog, Feb. 15 2017)
7. Keneinan, Eve (2016). "The Word 'Sex'" (Last Eden, 25 July, 2015)
8. Oltion, Jerry (2012) "What Science Means to Me" (Analog, Jan/Feb 2012)
9. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, I-II, 26, 4.

Thought for Thanksgiving

1. The atmospheres of Mars, Venus, and primeval Earth are/were 95% carbon dioxide.
2. On Earth, photosynthesis (the opposite of fire) bootstrapped most of this to Life
3. All of life and most of its products [cloth, wood, meat, plastics] are made from carbon dioxide, ultimately from photosynthesis.
4. Of the earth’s crust, only 0.15% consists of carbon. Of the atmosphere, only 0.04% consists of CO2.

Therefore, when we give thanks for nearly anything, we are giving thanks for CO2. Reducing CO2 means, ultimately, reducing Life.

Quote of the Day

"The mailings of pipe bombs, and similar activities, have been described as hate crimes. Is that what makes them bad — the hatred? Or is it the way the hatred is expressed?
Might it be okay, for instance, to mail pipe bombs randomly, to people you do not hate, indeed, don’t even know?"
-- David Warren

Released into the Wild

Well, they're kicking me out tomorrow, but not until Monday do I see the surgeon about maybe putting weight on my let foot. That means I have to hire a wheelchair ambulance on Monday to go from home to doctor and back. This is Very Expensive, since the government insurance (Medicare) covers it not. Forget about pre-existing conditions, what about covering existing conditions? How I will hop up the steps to the front door with one leg ia currently undecided. Perhaps the ambuleers will carry me up, chair and all.

A local politico is running ads about how his opponent will gut insurance protections for pre-existing conditions. Boo. His examples are deceptive : diabetes, cancer. But this is not what is meant. Currently, one may opt to buy health insurance after getting sick or injured. That's not insurance, that's demanding other people pay your medical bills. That may be a good and desirable thing, but it is not insurance and it is not sustainable. That's why Obamacare had that provision that everyone had to buy a policy. So healthy people would be paying into the pool without drawing out. But people wanted coverage for pre-existing conditions without the ugly necessity of buying an insurance policy first. Hence, premiums and deductibles skyrocketed.

Meanwhile, I sit and watch TV, which allows my brain to rot. There are hundred of channels, but they are all running veterinary shows, home renovations, reruns of Roseanne, M*A*S*H, Gomer Pyle, and That 70's Show, as well as a variety of football games, car repairs, and Donnie Brasco: The Real Story. Tonight. reruns of Family Feud will be strip-run on two different channels, neither of them the Game Show Network. When I surf from channel to channel, I almost never see an actual show in progress but invariably a commercial. And they are the same commercials, on every channel.

The good news is that there are only twenty commercials. The bad news is that they run over and over -- and half of them are political. An incredible number of commercials are for prescription medicines. There are traditional commercials for cars, but we seldom see any for toothpaste and of course never for beer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NybJiNihiZo
I assume we are to Ask Our Doctor about these wonderfuls drugs and their multitudinous side effects, including possible death. That's because the takers of these drugs are shown swimming, playing golf, reading to their grandchildren, and other activities that their hithero but now-cured illnesses presumably kept them from doing . Seldom are these activities related to the illnesses.

We are also instructed that the other candidate is a crook or in the pay of Big Pharma or even -- I am not making this up -- a sexual harasser and child rapist. Fortunately, the targets are politically situated such that such Credible Accusations will never have a Kavanaugh-like fallout. Like a breath of fresh spring air are those commercials which tout instead the ieas and merits of the candidate him (or her) self. Alas, in many cases, these ideas are lunatic.

The commercials seldom mention the party to which they belong. ("this commercial was approved by the Congressional Leadership Council".) Although in naming the orc or troll in opposition they will mention his benighted party so their own affiliation could be deduced. Often they are deceptive in subtle ways. One local candidate mentions that she was inter alia a chemistry teacher in an inner city school. Go go google. A web site detailing candidates with a scientific background notes that she was a teacher for an entire year before packing it in. She also announces she was "the CEO of a successful start-up", but the science site tells us further that the company was started up by her husband. So perhaps the skids to CEO-dom were greased?  Another commercial deplores the rich backers of his opponent, but an election site states that he has spent $9.5 mill. to his opponent's $1.0 mill. Another is the grandson of a former VP-USA, Henry Wallace.

PA is in the envious position of having brand-new Congressional districts imposed on her by the courts, replacing those that had been drawn by the legislature. These were suspected, indeed convicted, of being gerrymandered.

New court-drawn districts

Old districts

Yeah, no fooling. Well, it was a predictable consequence of racial gerrymandering. It didn't take the Republicans long to notice that when safe districts were created for black candidates, the adjacent areas became safer for Republicans. This enabled Republican redistricters to pose as both virtuous and self-interested at the same time. Throw in a few twists and turns to ensure an incumbent of his seat and you could even get bipartisan support!

The court-drawn districts actually look reasonable, since they better preserve geographic contiguity. But they are numbered all differently. The Lehigh Valley, for example, constitutes a single district, rather than parceled out as hitherto and conjoined to areas lacking common interests. The new 11th District amusingly comprises the counties of Lancaster and York, so we may predict a rosy future for it.

I note that in the early years of the old Republic, Penna. sometimes elected two or three Congresscritters from the same district and even elected Congressmen at large for the whole Commonwealth.That's a charming notion. Instead of laboriously redrawing maps, make the districts permanent and bump up the number of representatives it sends in.

Disbursements so far:
1st District (Bucks Co.)
Brian Fitzpatrick     $1,923,009
Scott Wallace         $8,396,873

7th District (Lehigh Valley)
Marty Nothstein     $567,484
Susan Wild     $1,563,222

meanwhile across the river, in the 7th NJ
Leonard Lance     $1,231,529    
Tom Malinowski     $3,673,046

The Dangers of Childhood

The Incomparable Marge had a close call in her childhood. In fact, she had several close calls.

the incomparably cute

 

1. While visiting cousins in Dustin OK, she was chased by pigs and treed. These were not cute little pet pigs or cartoon pigs, but enormous farm pigs. They would eat anything, including small children. Fortunately, among their many skills, tree-climbing is not numbered and eventually her cousins came and corralled the pigs.
2. While she and a friend were a-setting on a rock overlooking a lake, Western rattlesnake crawled out from underneath said rock toward them. She never saw the snake until she was shown its carcass by her friend's father, who had shot it.
3. Once on vacation, she had hopped in her father's rowboat and her father cried not to move. Lo, there was a water moccasin in the boat between her and her father on the dock. She immediately teleported from boat to dock and the safety of her father.

4. 

   TIM on the stoop of her duplex
   with two neighbor boys

   When she and her father were living in a cluster of duplexes near the hobo jungle, she managed to get herself locked into the trunk of her father's car. This is no laughing matter in the Oklahoma heat. But Fortunately, her father and a neighbor managed to free her.
5. When playing Tarzan in the kitchen, she swung on the refrigerator door in lieu of a vine, and tipped the thing over, fortunately not on herself

By TOF's count, these were five opportunities for him to be deprived of the company of the Marge, which is four more than the close calls of his own. Or else, TOF was in danger in his own youth and was oblivious to it, obliviousness not being beyond the range of reason. Still, TOFling was never threatened by snakes, let alone a herd of pigs.

Quote of the Day

“Indeed men too often take upon themselves in the prosecution of their revenge to set the example of doing away with those general laws to which all alike can look for salvation in adversity, instead of allowing them to subsist against the day of danger when their aid may be required.”
-- Thucydides, History of the Pelopponesian War, Book III



http://www.wright.edu/~christopher.oldstone-moore/Thucydides.htm
The consequences of refusing to accept the outcome of an election -- in 431 BC.