Hitherto Oblivious

"Think thy shell broke" ~John Donne

2011-08-30T12:36:00.000-07:00

Think in how poor a prison thou didst lie;
After enabled but to suck and cry.
Think, when 'twas grown to most, 'twas a poor inn,
A province pack'd up in two yards of skin,
And that usurp'd, or threaten'd with a rage
Of sicknesses, or their true mother, age.
But think that death hath now enfranchis'd thee;
Thou hast thy expansion now, and liberty;
Think, that a rusty piece discharg'd is flown
In pieces, and the bullet is his own,
And freely flies: this to thy soul allow,
Think thy shell broke, think thy soul hatch'd but now.

The above is an excerpt from one of John Donne's Funeral Elegies. See The Works of John Donne, Volume 6 I like the last line of the excerpt (I haven't read the entire elegy yet.)

"Think thy shell broke, think thy soul hatch'd but now."

One World by Tal Brooke

2011-08-26T13:42:00.000-07:00

One World by Tal Brooke

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Often clear, insightful and dramatic argument that occasionally goes over the top into paranoid hypothetical outrageous scenarios denounced with spectacular hyperbole. An entertaining and even thought-provoking book but I'm afraid this reader can't take it as seriously as the author intends it.

View all my reviews

Amos 9:11-12 and Acts 15:15-17 example of contradictory translations of Bible texts

2011-07-02T08:15:00.000-07:00

The following example is from "Should I not be concerned?" posted by Fred Clark at Slactivist on March 2, 2011.

Open an English translation of the Christian Bible and turn to the final chapter of the book of Amos. There, in Amos 9:11-12, the King James Version reads like this:

In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up the ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old: That they may possess the remnant of Edom, and of all the heathen.

Now flip over to the New Testament, to the book of Acts, and read along (Acts 15:15-17) as James, the brother of Jesus, reads from this same passage in Amos:

And to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written, After this I will return, and will build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up: That the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles.

Same proof-text, opposite meanings.

First time throne speech interupted in Canada

2011-06-04T08:41:00.001-07:00

OK, she broke the rules and nobody should hold up a sign during the speech from the throne again, but a lot of Canadians, including me, feel sympathy for Bridgette DePape's creative, dignified and non-violent protest. Maybe it's time to reform the election rules that enable one quarter of the voters to elect a so-called 'majority' government.

Questions Regarding Examiner.com Article Touting Canada's 'Clean' Coal and Nuclear Energy

2011-05-28T07:24:00.000-07:00

Overall I agree with the positive outlook in this article at Examiner.com. However I don't understand how "clean coal" fits into the clean and renewable category. What makes clean coal clean, and after all the coal has burned, how do we renew it?

Furthermore, you can call nuclear energy 'clean' in the sense that it doesn't release carbon into the environment, but it does leave dangerous nuclear waste that takes thousands of years to degrade. Plus it creates a strong temptation for countries to use their nuclear technology to produce nuclear weapons under the pretext of their need for 'clean' nuclear energy.

No free will?

2010-09-15T13:14:00.000-07:00

It seems to me that free will necessarily assumes the ability to direct our attention. The following passage kind of jumped out at me:

"Clearness was introduced as an attribute to lend systematic clarity to the place of attention in psychological experience. Clearness allows a particular place to a sensation in consciousness; clear sensations are dominant and outstanding; less clear are subordinate and undistinguished. Clear sensations are those to which we attend; attention and sensory clearness are identical. By making attention into an attribute, Titchener eliminated the need to appeal to a 'power' of attention while at the same time giving it a systematic place within his system."
~ The Great Psychologists copyright 1963 by Robert I. Watson p.367

Getting unstuck: a micro-post

2010-09-04T13:46:00.000-07:00

The longer I wait before posting to this blog, the more pressure I feel to write a long, uncharacteristically brilliant one and the less likely it becomes that I'll ever post here again.

The solution of course: post something short and stupid. It takes just one small step to start again.

Today I spent a couple of hours writing a response to someone's request for a Perl script that extracts code from two files, compare the two blocks of code and print the code lines that differ between the two. Here's the script.

Bad Tip in Dusty Wallet

2009-09-27T10:00:00.000-07:00

Garry,
I liked "Tipping tips from the gratuity guru" published Friday, September 25, 2009 -- except for the Dusty Wallet tip at the end. I'm glad you consulted Stephen Dublanica and mentioned his book, Waiter Rant; which I read recently and enjoyed.

However, the Dusty Wallet tip about buying yourself gift cards to avoid tipping does a disservice to servers. I assume you intended it as a joke because it is obviously incorrect when you think about it, but unfortunately many people will not realize this because who has time to think these days? Why should servers not receive a tip on the portion of the bill paid by a gift card? "The food and service industry seems to have no mechanism yet for deducting a tip," does not mean the server does not deserve a tip nor that you do not owe one. The food and service industry doesn't (normally) automatically deduct a tip from cash payments of any kind, but you still tip. And if for some technical reason a tip can't be paid from your gift card, then give cash for the tip.

Regards,
David Ellis

Updated September 30, 2009
Received the following prompt reply from Gary Marr, the author of the "Tipping Tips" article:

Thanks for reading.
The Dusty Wallet is always a bit tongue-in-cheek. I was talking about Starbucks and places like that. I wasn’t condoning it but when you use your gift card there, there is no mechanism for a tip. For now.
The tipping topic has generated no end of comments. I wish I had the definitive answer on tipping! I don’t.
Cheers,
Garry

Perhaps I took the Dusty Wallet tip too seriously. I'm sure no harm was intended but I'm afraid many readers are all too ready to rationalize not tipping or tipping less than a fair amount. I wish the institution of tipping did not exist, because it confuses and embarrasses me. But because it does exist, service workers depend on tips to make a living wage.

Photoshop warnings mandatory?

2009-09-25T12:39:00.000-07:00

France Set to Regulate Airbrushed Pics

Five Points About Jonah

2009-09-22T12:30:00.000-07:00

1. The story of Jonah is "The only case of a prophet being sent to the heathen [i.e. non-Hebrew people]."

2. "Jonah was the only prophet in the Bible to REJECT God’s call."

3. A great fish swallowed Jonah, not a whale. Perhaps people called whales fish in those days. In his great novel Moby Dick, Hermann Melville writes, "In his System of Nature, AD 1776, Linnaeus declares, 'I hereby separate the whales from the fish.' [but goes on to declare] Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old fashioned ground that the whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me." (Moby Dick)

4. Why did Jonah disobey God at first and try to escape on a ship as far as possible in those days? We may assume he was afraid of getting a hostile reception in Nineveh, but this is not what Jonah says. Jonah says to God, after God has shown mercy on the people of Nineveh and thereby falsified Jonah's prophesy of doom, "O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 3Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live." (Jonah 4:1) Jonah wanted to be right about the impending destruction of Nineveh. He would rather be dead than wrong.

5. The name 'Jonah' means 'dove' in Hebrew. Remember the first time Noah released a dove from the Ark to find dry land after the great flood? Finding no place to rest, the dove returned to the Ark. Throughout the story, Jonah resembles that dove in his constant search for someplace to rest, or to hide, or to take shelter within, or underneath.

Waiter Rant by Steve Dublanica

2009-09-10T07:50:00.000-07:00

I liked the first few and the last couple of chapters the best so I can see why some reviewers say the book has too much filler. But this short book grabbed and held my attention from the first page to the last.

I don't mind the pensive parts where he tells us what he thinks about, and I don't mind that the stories the book tells include an account of why the author has worked so many years as a waiter in spite of his college education and higher aspirations.

Some people don't like that the author sometimes acts like a jerk as well as a hero. I think that anyone working long hours in a stressful job without enough sleep will find that they are not always on their best behavior. But he tries to do the right thing and his model is the fictional detective Philip Marlowe who, according to author Raymond Chandler, "... must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world." (http://www.thrillingdetective.com/trivia/chandler.html accessed on September 10, 2009 at 15:45)

Overall, I liked this short, informative and entertaining book a lot and hope the author continues to discover and explore his talents.

Steve Dublanica started a blog at http://waiterrant.net/ about his travails as a waiter but maintained his anonymity until well after his book appeared. Since then he has appeared on Oprah and several other television shows. Here is a link to an interview in the Los Angeles Times.

Bath Time In A Tough Neighborhood

2009-09-04T12:54:00.000-07:00

Although I have never read any of Anthony Burgess' novels, I picked up the first volume of his memoirs for 50 cents at a book sale and found much to like. He grew up in northern England in the Lancashire region, which is where one of my grandfathers came from. Some of what he writes about the dialect, food and way of life remind me of things my father used to tell us. Here is one little anecdote I liked from page 23 of Little Wilson and Big God:

Lodge Street was a tough street in a tough area. I had moved a short way south from my birthplace to the northern segment of Miles Platting, with Collyhurst to the west, but the Queen's Road where my mother had shopped was the tram-clanging artery which fed all these districts. I was in an ugly world with ramshackle houses and foul back alleys, not a tree or a flower to be seen, though Queen's Park and a general cemetery were available to the north-west if a breath of green was required. If the beer-intake of an urban area is an index of its prosperity, then Miles Platting was not badly off, but heavy patronage of the Golden Eagle often meant neglect of domestic responsibilities. A husband came into the public bar one evening in need of his pint. He was shaken. His wife, dead out from a debauch with her cronies, had left the bathing of the children to him. He conscientiously suiced them all in a tin tub, dressed them for bed, then asked one girl: 'Where's your nightdress, love?' The girl said: 'I don't live here.'

Just read "When Wonder Replaces Hope" on The Rat Race Trap

2009-09-02T08:41:00.000-07:00

When Wonder Replaces Hope is a great post about how letting go of our expectations and attachment to outcome empowers and liberates us to act more effectively, while "taking the pressure off the future."

I have one caveat and that is that sometimes we have to use the word 'hope' instead of 'wonder' to express our support for the fortunes of someone else. For example, if someone has an accident the least I can say to them is that I hope they're not hurt. Saying, "I wonder if you are OK?" doesn't manage to express the sympathy and concern I wish to convey. This is similar to the fact that we use words like 'happy' and 'sad' in at least two senses:

1.A public sense, to express our solidarity and support for someone's situation (I'm happy that his daughter won a scholarship and sorry that her grandmother died) and...

2.A private sense, as an expression of my personal feelings and mood (sometimes I'm happy, sometimes I'm blue).

HP says use QuickPlay for webcam. QuickPlay ignores webcam.

2009-08-27T07:38:00.000-07:00

I reached this link by searching for the model number of my HP notebook computer, which is Model #G60-230CA. I wanted to test the built-in HP webcam-101 with Quickplay because the only HP Quickplay program I can find on this computer shows CD and DVD functions only.

The instructions on this page assume I have a Pavilion computer, which I do not. I keep searching for model # G60-230CA and keep getting instructions for the Pavilion computer which tell me to "Press the QuickPlay button (normally located near the display.) There appears to be no Quickplay button on this computer. The instructions suggest as an alternative that I click Start and type 'QuickPlay'. This tells me "no items match your search."

I can sometimes stumble upon an HP QuickPlay program on this computer (I don't remember how). But when I do start it I see no place for selecting video sources. The only source is the LightScribe DVD player. QuickPlay does not detect the webcam.

The instructions also say

If you change the operating system on your PC and the HP webcam no longer functions properly, then you will need to un-install the webcam drivers, and download and install the correct drivers for the operating system that you are using. Look on the HP Drivers and Downloads page for the specific model and operating system.

I don`t want to re-install drivers because I have not changed the operating system. This computer came from the store with Windows Vista Home Premium installed.

Poem about a metaphysician quoted by Anthony Burgess

2009-08-06T12:54:00.000-07:00

There once was a metaphysician

Who proved that he didn't exist.

When others had learned his position,

They said that he wouldn't be missed.

Little Wilson And Big God

Cure for Blogger's Block

2009-07-30T07:56:00.000-07:00

At the end of Frank McCourt's delightful guest lecture and reading at the 92nd Street Y one of his brothers asks him for suggestions on overcoming writer's block. He says there is really no such thing in Europe, and in America it's only an excuse for going out and getting drunk. But he adds that he if you get stuck then just scribble for awhile.

Whether or not you can find an equivalent to scribbling on your keyboard, download and listen to this podcast, preferably while walking around if you can find someplace quiet enough. He rants about what he hated about teaching and how he learned to love it. He's funny, passionate, and never platitudinous or dull.

Reply to m0x re: effect of knowing afterlife = unconditional bliss

2009-07-28T08:37:00.000-07:00

On Twitter, July 27, 2009 @m0x said:

If an afterlife was proven as fact (no hell) with heaven or new non-physical life no matter how you die, would people commence mass suicide?

On Twitter, July 27, 2009 @David_Ellis said:

@m0x Doubt it. Rationally, no reason to hurry if not in unbearable pain. Afterlife can wait. Moreover, ppl not 100% rational.

On Twitter, July 27, 2009 @m0x said:

@David_Ellis Aye. what if the "afterlife" was found to be a place of bliss; Heaven in essence, regardless how persons dies? I think suicides [...?]

[I attempted to use TwitterLonger.com to post a response to Twitter this morning but when I tested the resulting link to my answer I got a server error, so I'm putting my response here instead.]

I have a problem answering @m0x's hypothetical question because I doubt there is any way someone could know the premise to be true. How could someone "find out" that everyone will experience unadulterated bliss in the afterlife? Well, they could have a near-death experience and remember it as blissful. But that doesn't prove that everyone would experience that bliss (and in fact some people have had near-death experiences without bliss).

You may say someone could find out about the afterlife from a supernatural being such as a spirit or god, or through revelation. As an agnostic I think it's more reasonable to retain a shred of doubt when making such a literally life and death decision. I can't prove that we have something to gain or contribute by continuing to live in this unhappy world. But I doubt anyone can prove that how we treat ourselves and each other doesn't matter.

(@m0x, I'm not sure if I understood what you meant because the end of your tweet was truncated at "I think suicides" so I missed the rest of what you were saying there.)

Religious Views

2009-06-17T13:11:00.000-07:00

On my Facebook profile I changed my Religious Views value from "Frisbeetarian" to "Various." Frisbeetarianism was invented by George Carlin as a joke. But joking aside, I guess I'll go with various: baptized and raised Protestant, church attendance limited to special occasions, Unitarian for about a year, like reading about Buddhism but don't consider myself a Buddhist.

Robert Frost once said, “Don't be an agnostic - be something.” It seems to me that many people call themselves atheists because they feel "agnostic" sounds too wishy-washy. An atheist is not necessarily someone who claims that no god exists. Ask an atheist how he knows there is no God and he is likely to turn the question around to ask how you know there is one. A typical atheist then does not claim to know that God does not exist, but only to doubt that He does. How then is an atheist different than an agnostic?

Another blog called "Waking Up"

2009-04-25T12:35:00.000-07:00

Fred Clark, who writes the Slacktivist blog, links here to a post in a blog I didn't know existed, also called "Waking Up". Looks good too. I should have named my blog something unique and original that no one else would ever have thought of. What though?

Has anyone named a blog "Greedy and Lazy"? That would be a great name for a blog about using RegEx (Regular Expressions) in computer programming. I like that in RegEx the opposite of 'lazy' is 'greedy'. It sounds so much less judgemental.

Anecdotal Evidence: `What an Absurd Task'

2009-02-26T13:21:00.000-08:00

Here's an excellent post about the absurdity of claiming to analyze or pin down the meaning of a great piece of literature. Anecdotal Evidence: `What an Absurd Task'

Transgression and Knowledge in American Pastoral

2009-02-21T08:21:00.000-08:00

What sticks in my mind the most after reading American Pastoral is the theme of transgression as a path to knowledge. The Swede wonders if his daughter set off a bomb to somehow wake him up from his obliviousness to everything wrong in his world -- to "bring the war home." At the end of the novel a professor of literature spouts a lot of rhetoric about knowledge gained through transgression and although she appears as an unpleasant, abrasive character what she says makes us think that in some way we have to cross over the lines of accepted thinking and behavior in order to learn. And yet this is no excuse for blowing people up.

Here is a quote from an article that I find interesting:
"To transgress is to step across a boundary or past a limit; and Roth's success in bursting the boundaries that confined his father's generation is rife with crosscurrents. A second-generation American from a lower-middle-class Jewish home, Roth dramatizes in his fiction the arc of a career of a talented literary rebel who uses liberal times, the permission of his gift, and early success to express damned-up Jewish ambition, appetite, and anger, only then to suffer the backlash, the countercurrent, of communal recrimination and psychological guilt." -- Transgression in the Fiction of Philip Roth
Journal article by Robert M. Greenberg; Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 43, 1997

Maybe Swede's tragic flaw consisted in never doing anything wrong. The closest he came to disobeying his father was marrying Mary Dawn Dyer, a Catholic. But he brought Dawn to his father's office to seek his approval, which his father grudgingly gave.

Maybe Swede's failing as a father was never to draw a line that his daughter could rebel against, so that she felt compelled to extreme violence in order to know the world and herself.

Adam and Eve and the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil

2009-02-20T10:54:00.000-08:00

Reading American Pastoral, wherein one of the dinner guests says that transgression gives knowledge, made me want to look at God's famous injunction again. Here it is:

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. -- Genesis 2:17 (King James Version)

Searching for interpretations of this passage, I came upon an interesting suggestion of what knowledge Adam and Eve may have gained by their transgression from http://www.gardenofeden.net/eve/2008/05/08/the-tree-of-knowledge-of-good-and-evil:

The significance of this act may have been that the pair gained the knowledge that God lied to them (as they did not die on the day they ate the fruit), and that their creator had given them free will to disobey his orders.

American Pastoral by Philip Roth

2009-02-19T08:31:00.001-08:00

In this terribly good novel, the Jewish hero's friends call him "Swede" because of his Nordic features, athletic prowess and blonde hair. But why does the author call him Seymour? His name reminds me of Seymour Glass of the Glass family portrayed in several of J.D. Salinger's novels and stories. The family name 'Glass' implies both fragility and transparency and 'Seymour' sounds like the hero can "see more" than most people. Seymour Levov, on the other hand is anything but transparent and seems oblivious to so much of the chaos and evil around him until he is forced, by his daughter's horrific behavior, to see more.

Ironically, the narrator of American Pastoral laments the opacity of people. You never really know someone's real character. You can't get beyond appearances. You think you know how they feel or what they think, but you get it wrong, then you revise your opinion and you get it wrong again. How many times does Nathan Zuckerman, the narrator, tell us that he was or could be wrong about "Swede" Levov's story? Quite a few, and yet he writes the story anyway.

Interesting that a novel about the decline of manufacturing in America features a family of glove-makers. This highlights the root meaning of 'manufacturing' which was making things 'by hand' (i.e. 'man'ually). Glove makers work with their hands to make something for people's hands. As Seymour's father tells everyone, Robert Louis Stevenson's father, and William Shakespear's father were glove makers -- so there seems to be some association between glove manufacturing and great writers. Also, the Levov's gloves are made from leather, which is made from skin and skin suggests surface as opposed to anything inside. They work with their hands using real material, but their understanding does not penetrate the surfaces of things. Can anyone's understanding 'stand under' the surfaces of our human substance? (The word 'substance' contains root words meaning 'under' and 'stand'.)

The impossibility of understanding people would seem to entail the impossibility of knowing them. But does it? In this novel knowledge appears to have a cost -- the cost of crossing the line, going to extremes, eating the forbidden fruit. The novel concludes with a dinner party at the Semour's soon-to-be-abandoned house, where the significance of the story of Adam and Eve's original sin comes up. For the Seymour's father, the story simply means that when God tells us not to do something then we had better not do it. But other guests share the view that knowledge is the product of transgression, since the fruit which God forbids Adam and Eve grows on the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil.

Seymour tries hard to do the right thing all his life and believes that his only major transgression was to marry Dawn Dyer, an Irish Catholic. Seymour is the older of two siblings and, as often the case with the elder, is much more affected by parental expectations. While he perceives marrying outside his religion as a major transgression, his younger brother marries and divorces several times without feeling worrying how his parents will react. In turn, they accept Jerry's rebellion much more readily than Seymour's. When Seymour and Dawn's only child carries her teenage rebellion to horrific extremes, it raises the question of whether his daughter's misery resulted from his own rebellion against his father.

I found the theme of the spoiled child flouting her liberal, overly-permissive parents hard to endure, as it has become almost a cliché by now. One can't help wondering, however, what Seymour, who tries so hard to do everything right, could have done differently? Where should he have drawn the line so that his daughter could have transgressed less disastrously?

I like this review in the New York Times Archives of American Pastoral by Michael Wood.

"Remembering John Updike" 92nd Street Y podcast

2009-02-01T13:36:00.000-08:00

This podcast records just the Q&A after the reading so it is short (about 16 minutes.) I love the part where he says, "Writing is not justified by the benign or happy effect it produces on the writer. You're trying to make something that will please or entertain or intrigue people who don't know about you and don't care about you."

This tip could help a lot of aspiring writers, students or anyone wanting some kind of credit for expressing themselves. (It could also explain why as of today -- February 1, 2009 -- my blog has no followers.)

Computer ignores iPod

2009-01-30T13:06:00.000-08:00

Last night before turning of our computer I plugged in my iPod to synchronize with iTunes and nothing happened. When I started iTunes manually (normally it starts automatically) it didn't show the iPod as connected and so couldn't make any changes to the iPod. My Computer didn't show the iPod -- neither did the "remove devices safely" gadget nor anything else. The iPod started charging its battery, but that's all it could get from the computer connection.

Fortunately today I found a suggestion by Googling the key words of my problem. Although it was in response to someone with a somewhat different problem, it worked for me. I don't know what caused the computer to ignore the iPod, but rebooting the iPod made the problem go away -- for now, anyway.

The suggestion was: "I know that with iPod nanos, iPod minis, iPod photos and iPod videos you can force it by toggle hold switch on then off> hold menu and select button until Apple logo appears[...]"*

* "Copy music from Shuffle to a new computer?" iLounge, http://forums.ilounge.com/archive/index.php/t-192142.html (accessed January 30, 2009).

What 'Begging the question' means

2009-01-29T13:34:00.000-08:00

Sometimes people say that a statement "begs the question" when they mean that it raises some further question which they wish to pose. For example: "No matter how much the [pharmaceutical] industry claims its advertising provides public health benefits, the amount spent promoting drugs for conditions of varying severity begs the question of whether the industry truly is acting for the public benefit."* Why not say that it raises the question? 'Begging the question' names a logical fallacy wherein an argument supports a conclusion by making an assumption that either asserts the conclusion in slightly different words, or is no less contentious than the conclusion it entails. Here are some examples of arguments that beg the question, from Wikipedia:

"Why I'm the boss? It's because I call the shots around here."
"Of course I had a reason, or I wouldn't have done it."
"God exists, because the Word of God tells us so."
"The improbability of macro-evolution is irrelevant; you're here, so obviously it worked."
"I didn't steal it. I'm no thief!"
These statements strongly suggest logical arguments (A is true because B is true) that don't actually provide any proof, because they are circular (in each case B can only be true if A is already assumed to be true)**

* Gardner, Dan. 2008. Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear. McClellend & Stewart.

** Wikipedia contributors, "Begging the question," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia,http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Begging_the_question&oldid=263713863 (accessed January 16, 2009).

William De Witt Snodgrass (January 5, 1926 – January 13, 2009)

2009-01-26T13:26:00.000-08:00

I hadn't heard Mr. Snodgrass before listening to the 92nd Street Y March 28, 1963 podcast. It's an impressive performance. His reading is precise and impassioned. What an expressive voice -- like a musical saw-blade. He sounds affable and excited with a barely contained energy as if the next moment he might climb the walls and claw through the ceiling.

92y Podcast: Remembering W.D. Snodgrass

Our Bias by W.H. Auden

2008-12-21T11:19:00.000-08:00

The hour-glass whispers to the lion's paw,
The clock-towers tell the gardens day and night,
How many errors Time has patience for,
How wrong they are in being always right.

Yet Time, however loud its chimes or deep,
However fast its falling torrent flows,
Has never put the lion off his leap
Nor shaken the assurance of the rose.

For they, it seems, care only for success:
While we choose words according to their sound
And judge a problem by its awkwardness;

And Time with us was always popular.
When have we not preferred some going round
To going straight to where we are?

I read this in Collected Shorter Poems (1930 - 1944) Faber 1950. I copied it from a Romanian translator's website and corrected a few minor punctuation discrepancies where it differed from the book.

Oxford by W.H. Auden

2008-12-20T12:18:00.000-08:00

Nature is so near: the rooks in the college garden
Like agile babies still speak the language of feeling;
By the tower the river still runs to the sea and will run,
  And the stones in that tower are utterly
  Satisfied still with their weight.

And the minerals and creatures, so deeply in love with their lives
Their sin of accidie excludes all others,
Challenge the nervous students with a careless beauty,
  Setting a single error
  Against their countless faults.

O in these quadrangles where Wisdom honours herself
Does the original stone merely echo that praise
Shallowly, or utter a bland hymn of comfort,
  The founder's equivocal blessing
  On all who worship Success?

Promising to the sharp sword all the glittering prizes,
The cars, the hotels, the service, the boisterous bed,
Then power to silence outrage with a testament,
  The widow's tears forgotten,
  The fatherless unheard.

Whispering to chauffeurs and little girls, to tourists and dons,
That Knowledge is conceived in the hot womb of Violence
Who in a late hour of apprehension and exhaustion
  Strains to her weeping breast
  That blue-eyed darling head.

And is that child happy with his box of lucky books
And all the jokes of learning? Birds cannot grieve:
Wisdom is a beautiful bird; but to the wise
  Often, often is it denied
  To be beautiful or good.

Without are the shops, the works, the whole green country
Where a cigarette comforts the guily and a kiss the weak;
There thousands fidget and poke and spend their money:
  Eros Paidagogos
  Weeps on his virginal bed.

Ah, if that thoughtless almost natural world
Would snatch his sorrow to her loving sensual heart!
But he is Eros and must hate what most he loves;
  And she is of Nature; Nature
  Can only love herself.

And over the talkative city like any other
Weep the non-attached angels. Here too the knowledge of death
Is a consuming love: And the natural heart refuses
  The low unflattering voice
  That rests not till it find a hearing.

I read this in Collected Shorter Poems (1930 - 1944) Faber 1950 and couldn't find the poem online so typed it here, carefully. Any typos are, of course, mine alone. I especially like the part about the child graduating “with his box of lucky books/And all the jokes of learning.”

Ideology

2008-11-27T12:39:00.000-08:00

Ideology originally meant the study or classification of ideas but it is generally used these days in a pejorative sense. The following is one of the better definitions on the web, from Saint Michael's College in Vermont: "Ideology: A set of beliefs and ideas that justify certain interests. An ideological position reflects and rationalizes particular political, economic, institutional, and/or social interests."

Or as blogger Piers Lewis succinctly puts (accessed February 22, 2009) it, "An ideology is a system of theories and ideas that is used to justify, or seize, political power."

Learning the Meaning of 'Erogatory': A Supererogatory Quest

2008-10-27T10:59:00.000-07:00

The other day I read the following passage in Quiddities by W.V. Quine: "Altruism ranges from a passive respect for the interests of others to an active indulgence of their interests to the detriment of one's own. It ranges from the barely erogatory on the one hand to the supererogatory on the other." Instead of inferring the meaning from the context, I took the trouble to search for 'erogatory' in our dictionary. No luck. It didn't seem to be in the on-line dictionaries either, although 'supererogatory' is defined in some of them.

What I learned from this:
1. When Googling the definition of a word it is better to type define:erogatory than the more free-format search terms I tried first such as erogatory definition, erogatory define, etc. because define:erogatory gives you a terse summary of actual definitions found in on-line dictionaries minus the various other web pages where variations like "super-erogatory" or "[d]erogatory" occur.
2. 'Erogatory' does not have the same, nor the opposite, meaning as 'derogatory'.
3. There is a Community Dictionary where you can submit proposed definitions of any word not already defined therein. For every two new words added in this way to the dictionary a charitable donation sufficient to feed a hungry child will be made.
4. 'Erogatory' is an adjective pertaining to an action that is required by duty. It can also be used to describe an requirement not to perform some action, as in "Not taking over the world is a terrific example of an erogatory act..." which I found in a lengthy discussion about comic book characters at a blog called 'A Trout in the Milk' where the words 'erogatory' and 'supererogatory' are bandied about quite freely.

Colin Powell rebukes Republican slur on Muslims

2008-10-22T08:12:00.000-07:00

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=INHV6YuHybc

Could Obama have said what Colin Powell said?

The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz

2008-10-07T08:29:00.000-07:00

Recently I finished reading The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Schwartz. He paints a vivid picture of how an increasing amount of risk and responsibilities has been shifted to individuals, often in the name of freedom. You can read more about this excellent book, including my own brief comments at Google Books.

Reading the book reminded me of how often the lack of universal health care in the USA is sold to Americans as "freedom of choice." The assumption is that instead of having to have our health care decisions made by a faceless government bureaucrat, we would prefer dealing with a faceless corporate bureaucrat at the insurance company of our choice. One of the main reasons for political opposition to government-funded health care in America is the assertion that people would rather choose among many plans offered by insurance corporations rather than being "forced" to accept an insurance plan from the government as we supposedly are in Canada.

When we lived in the States our doctor's office had a sign telling people to ask their insurance provider any questions about what services and procedures their policy may cover, as the doctor and office staff could not keep up with all the companies' rules. As Canadians, we were used to expecting medical personnel to know something about what care is deemed necessary or optional because everyone in our province belongs to the same health care plan. In the US it is often up to each individual to research the many options available, anticipate what level of care and kinds of medication they are likely to need in the future plus the amount of deductible expense they can risk having to pay before the insurance kicks in, and then choose the "best" plan. Most people don't have the time, concentration or energy to do all this research -- not only for health insurance but for retirement savings, mortgage financing, major consumer purchases, career choices and thousands of major and minor life-changing decisions. As a result many people pick instead of choose their health care coverage. That is to say they pick a choice without adequately gathering and reflecting on the available information to really choose. Or else they postpone the decision indefinitely and don't buy any health insurance.

Schwartz gives another example where people make bad decisions or avoid choosing because they are presented with too many choices: company sponsored 401K plans. People are more likely to participate in their companies 401K retirement investment plan if it offers a few funds to choose from than if it offers many. When a company offers a few mutual funds for their 401K the employees may feel the company has taken the trouble to check the quality of these funds and they feel safe in choosing (or maybe picking) a few of them for their personal portfolio. But when the company offers dozens of funds or more many employees don't know which funds would be the best for them and as a result they don't invest in their 401K, even when the employer offers matching contributions.

NO LOGO by Naomi Klein

2008-08-30T11:04:00.000-07:00

Excellent. A real eye-opener. Companies increasingly value brand over product. They reinvest more of their profits into managing the image of their brand and less in manufacturing the product, which is "sourced" to virtually unknown contractors in third-world tax-free zones who employ hungry, mostly young workers. When North American jobs go oversees, the jobs don't just go offshore, they change into much lower-paying, exhausting, temporary jobs.

The products are imported back into our stores where they are sold by mostly young, underpaid, temporarily-employed retail clerks.

"Just as factory jobs that once supported families have been reconfigured in the Third World as jobs for teenagers, so have the brand-name clothing companies and restaurant chains given legitimacy to the idea that fast-food and retail-sector jobs are disposable, and unfit for adults." -- p.238

"Elect to Work" employees in Ontario

2008-07-30T09:08:00.000-07:00

In June the factory where I work temporarily closed several assembly lines. Those of us working there through a temporary services company were told not to come in for our regularly-scheduled shifts but to phone to inquire in advance whether we were needed for that shift. As a result many of us worked fewer shifts than normally scheduled. As a further result many employees did not receive any pay for July 1st, Canada Day, which is a statutory holiday. Why not?

According to the Employment Standards Act, employees who have worked their previously scheduled shift before and after a statutory holiday must receive statutory holiday pay determined by a formula based on the hours worked in the previous four weeks, with one exception: temporary service companies do not have to pay their so-called "elect to work" employees who work in Ontario any statutory holiday pay. This exception applies only in Ontario (see Employment Standards Fact Sheet - Temporary Help Agency Employees Ontario Ministry of Labour ).

The company we work for does sometimes pay statutory holidays, but according to its own policy which adds the condition that employees must have worked a minimum of 12 shifts in the previous month. And so many employees received no stat pay for July 1st because there was less work available in June and many of their shifts were canceled through no fault of their own.

This condition seems to me arbitrary and unfair. For example someone who managed to work 12 eight-hour shifts would get stat pay whereas someone who was assigned only 11 shifts would not, even if they had worked 11 twelve-hour shifts. What is the reason for this exemption for employers of "elect to work" employees and why does it exist only in Ontario?

Miss Lonelyhearts & The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West

2008-07-18T08:50:00.000-07:00

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from ?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong ? -- "Eleanor Rigby," The Beatles

The two short novels in this book were originally published in the '30s so the action takes presumably takes place in the '20s. Nathanael West was a brilliant writer way ahead of his time.

The Day of the Locust may well be the best novel ever written about Hollywood. In those days many great writers worked for the new motion picture industries in Hollywood. The novel is about people who have come to Hollywood chasing their dreams. To survive in the tawdry real world they have to exploit their own and others dreams. They are always acting and pretending to suffer, even when they are really suffering. For example, while Harry Greener the old vaudeville clown tries to peddle his silverware polish by pretending to be ill he has a heart attack. Although the heart attack is real, he continues to "act" sick while he almost dies. Everyone's behavior is affected by the presence of an audience.

The theme underlying both of these novels, and more explicitly in Miss Lonelyhearts is the question of loneliness and suffering. Why do so many people suffer and why can't the comfort each other?

Tess of the d'Urbervilles

2008-06-07T08:28:00.000-07:00

I'd been reluctant to read Tess because I had some idea of the plot from having seen a movie version long ago and don't usually like the star-crossed lover formula. But of course it transcends by far any formula and is a beautifully-constructed work of art. There are so many parallels between Tess and Nature, such as the description of how the grain is harvested in the field by starting around the outer edge and working around the centre, in which all the wild creatures take refuge until it is all cut down and there is nowhere left for them to go. Tess also ends up with nowhere left to go and she strikes out at the fake d'Urberville as would a cornered animal.

A couple of the passages I liked:

All these young souls were passengers in the Durbeyfield ship--entirely dependent on the judgement of the two Durbeyfield adults for their pleasures, their necessities, their health, even their existence. If the heads of the Durbeyfield household chose to sail into difficulty, disaster, starvation, disease, degradation, death, thither were these half-dozen little captives under hatches compelled to sail with them--six helpless creatures, who had never been asked if they wished for life on any terms, much less if they wished for it on such hard conditions as were involved in being of the shiftless house of Durbeyfield. Some people would like to know whence the poet whose philosophy is in these days deemed as profound and trustworthy as his song is breezy and pure, gets his authority for speaking of "Nature's holy plan." (Chapter 3) [The phrase "Nature's Holy Plan" occurs in W. Wordsworth's poem, "Written in Early Spring".]

"Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?"
"Yes."
"All like ours?"
"I don't know; but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the
apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound--a few
blighted."
"Which do we live on--a splendid one or a blighted one?"
"A blighted one."
"'Tis very unlucky that we didn't pitch on a sound one, when there
were so many more of 'em!"
"Yes." (Chapter 4)

I don't think there are really any villains in the novel, and it seems that her husband, Angel Clare causes her as much suffering as the cad Alec d'Urberville. It is Angel who tells Tess that he may never feel she is his wife as long as "her natural husband," Alec, is alive. When Angel walks in his sleep and carries Tess to a tomb, it seems to show that he could love her better dead than alive. Angel falls in love with his romanticized fantasy of Tess as a pure, virginal child of Nature (Hardy implies Nature has been too often romanticized) instead of loving her unconditionally. But Angel is not the only one who loves things only for their what they mean to him. In chapter 44 Tess does not love the Froom valley as much as she used to because "Beauty to her, as to all who have felt, lay not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolized."

One of the many ironies in the novel is that Tess blames herself for the death of the family horse, named Prince, who was accidentally stabbed in the heart by a mail cart, and ends up convicted of stabbing Alec d'Urberville (a commoner with a noble name) in the heart when he disparages Angel's long-overdue arrival.

Angel himself disparages old families whose descendants have lost their elevated position in society, and it's interesting that the Hardy family is one of those dairyman Crick mentions in chapter 19 as having seen better days, "He [Angel] says that it stands to reason that old families have done their spurt of work in past days, and can't have anything left in 'em now. There's the Billets and the Drenkhards and the Greys and the St Quintins and the Hardys and the Goulds, who used to own the lands for miles down this valley; you could buy 'em all up now for an old song a'most."

Application for P&G temp contract (1st step)

2008-05-27T08:11:00.000-07:00

I attended the P&G info session at the Employment & Education Centre at 9:00 AM on Tuesday May 27th 2008, passed the test and handed in my application. The next step was a pre-screening interview with Michelle at the EEC Wednesday May 28th at 9:00 AM. After that my application was presumably forwarded to P&G and kept in a pool until there are vacancies for the position, upon which P&G will call me for an interview.

David Boren: "[...G]reatest misdistribution of income since 1929."

2008-05-08T10:02:00.000-07:00

"We literally doubled the purchasing power of the average American family in the 28 years following World War II, and it's been flat or declining ever since. Consider the Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, Carter, and Ford administrations: All through that whole period, the top 10 percent of the country had about 30 percent of the income; now they have 50 percent. The top one tenth of 1 percent averaged a $4million increase in their incomes last year, while the bottom 90 percent lost purchasing power. As the New York Times recently wrote on their editorial page: It's been the greatest misdistribution of income since 1929. And it didn't end well that time."

-- "A New National Narrative", David Boren interviewed by David Schimke in Utne May-June 2008

Productivity and leisure

2008-05-02T12:16:00.000-07:00

From the July-August, 1998 OCAW Reporter (Why hasn't anything been said more recently on this subject?)

"Each year we become more productive at work. In a fair and just economy, increased productivity should allow us to work fewer hours, not more."

Why hasn't increased productivity resulted in a further reduction of the work week to less than the standard 40 hours? Why does the average North American work longer hours than the average European?

Hamlet, Catcher in the Rye and confidence in selves

2008-04-24T08:49:00.000-07:00

The Confidence Man mentions one of the play Hamlet's characters. In one of his persona in the novel when he is calling himself Frank Goodman, the hero meets a stranger calling himself Charlie who rants and raves about how much he hates the old dotard Polonius in Hamlet for his famous advice to his departing son to choose his friends wisely and never to lend money. Although Frank doesn't agree with Polonius' advice:

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry."

nevertheless he is appalled by Charlie's hatred of Polonius and tells Charlie his vituperative denunciation of that venerable old fictional character goes too far:

"Why, bless me," in mild surprise contemplating his heated comrade," how you fly out against this unfortunate Polonius -- a being that never was, nor will be. And yet, viewed in a Christian light," he added pensively, "I don't know that anger against this man of straw is a whit less wise than anger against a man of flesh. Madness, to be mad with anything."

The confidence man preaches that we should have confidence in and act charitably toward all persons -- even fictional ones. Significantly, the hero of the confidence man has by this point in the novel appeared in so many disguises and told so many lies about himself that he, Frank Goodman, is himself a sort of fictional character. The hero of The Confidence Man is continually reinventing himself, trying on various actions and persona.

According to Colin McGinn in Shakespeare's Philosophy Prince Hamlet is trying on various actions and persona throughout the play.

"[...Hamlet] constructs many characters for himself in the course of the play, ending as the avenging hero he initially found it so difficult to enact. He can act only when he is acting -- that is, when he can conceive of himself in fictional terms. He can be only when he occupies a role. He is constituted by his own story."

The above seems also to be applicable to Holden Caulfield, the young hero of The Catcher in the Rye who -- although he complains that most people are phonies -- is himself a compulsive liar who claims to hate movies but can't resist acting like various kinds of movie heroes. Whatever happens to him he experiences as if he were in a movie.

"The Confidence Man" and "Displaying the Flag"

2008-04-19T18:17:00.000-07:00

I've been re-reading The Confidence Man by Herman Melville. I found it a difficult book to understand the first time I read it just after we had packed our things and were about to leave Macon in 2006. It wasn't well received by the critics, who found it baffling, when it was first published. (It is a blend of the "Ship of Fools" and the "Life is a Masquarade" motifs.) This time I liked it better and particularly like the philosophical arguments and parables about the main themes, which are: the importance in having confidence in ourselves and our fellow human beings; and the problem of identity in spite of change, particularly personal identity when individuals seem to have multiple selves and personalities, especially the hero of the book. The hero does some ethically questionable things, such as soliciting for organizations that probably don't exist and accepting money from a sick old miser to invest and then leaving without giving him a receipt or name. But as the novel progresses the hero appears to be one of the good guys.

A couple of my favorite passages:

"[A]ll thinking minds are, now-a-days, coming to the conclusion -- one derived from an immense hereditary experience -- see what Horace and others of the ancients say of servants -- coming to the conclusion, I say, that boy or man, the human animal is, for most work-purposes, a losing animal. Can't be trusted; less trustworthy than oxen; for conscientiousness a turn-spit dog excels him. Hence these thousand new inventions -- carding machines, horse-shoe machines, tunnel-boring machines, reaping machines, apple-paring machines, boot-blacking machines, sewing machines, shaving machines, run-of-errand machines, dumb-waiter machines, and the Lord-only-knows-what machines; all of which announce the era when that refractory animal, the working or serving man, shall be a buried by-gone, a superseded fossil." p.145 (in the LITERARY CLASSICS edition ISBN 1-57392-038-X)

and

"Nay, wait. -- You have hearkened to my story in vain, if you do not see that, however indulgent and right-minded I may seem to you now, that is no guarantee for the future. And into the power of that uncertain personality which, through the mutability of my humanity, I may hereafter become, should not common sense dissuade you, my dear Frank, from putting yourself? Consider. Would you, in your present need, be willing to accept a loan from a friend, securing him by a mortgage on your homestead, and do so, knowing that you had no reason to feel satisfied that the mortgage might not eventually be transferred into the hands of a foe? Yet the difference between this man and that man is not so great as the difference between what the same man be to-day and what he may be in days to come. For there is no bent of heart or turn of thought which any man holds by virtue of an unalterable nature or will. Even those feelings and opinions deemed most identical with eternal right and truth, it is not impossible but that, as personal persuasions, they may in reality be but the result of some chance tip of Fate's elbow in throwing her dice. For, not to go into the first seeds of things, and passing by the accident of parentage predisposing to this or that habit of mind, descend below these, and tell me, if you change this man's experiences or that man's books, will wisdom go surety for his unchanged convictions? As particular food begets particular dreams, so particular experiences or books particular feelings or beliefs. I will hear nothings of that fine babble about development and its laws; there is no development in opinion and feeling but the developments of time and tide." pp.261-262

"The Confidence Man" is a novel more of ideas and dialogues than one of plot. On the other hand, I recently read a marvelously ironic and entertaining short story by Thomas M. Disch called "Displaying the Flag". I read it in a book called Getting Into Death and Other Stories. It's about an executive in New York who undergoes behavior modification therapy to iron out some potentially career-limiting kinks in his personality and to stop smoking. It works so well that he is promoted and assigned to run the Atlanta branch of the company. He prospers there until a colleague takes him to lunch in a little bar that serves red, white and blue "Liberty Burgers," to which he becomes addicted. What is worse, he becomes fascinated with the right-wing ultra-patriot sub-culture of the bar and obsessed with fitting in with it, which proves eventually to be career-limiting because of the culture clash with his superiors in New York. Much funnier than my description sounds.

How The Irish Saved Civilization

2008-04-01T16:00:00.000-07:00

I don't usually read much history but I really enjoyed a short book by Thomas Cahill that was set out in an arrangement of books at the local library around St. Patrick's day. It's called How The Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe (1996). It covers a lot:

how and why the Roman Empire fell
Patrick was a Romanized Celt captured in Britain as an adolescent and taken to Ireland as a slave
He escaped to Europe to find it devastated by the barbarians
He returned home but decided to study enough to remedy his lack of education so he could bring Christianity and literacy to Ireland
For many years the Church in Ireland had little contact with the Roman Catholic hierarchy and was free and liberal in comparison, how he evangelized the warring Irish clans without conquering them and brought an era of peace and unity
Patrick encouraged literacy and a love of books -- religious as well as all kinds of classics that the Roman Christians thought pernicious
The Irish monks acquired books whenever possible and copied them assiduously, embellishing them copiously with doodles as well as adding remembered Irish stories, songs and legends.

Thomas Cahill packs a lot into a very engaging little book.

A Place to Stand, A Place to Grow -- Luke 14:10

2008-03-22T13:09:00.000-07:00

But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, 'Friend, move up to a better place.' Then you will be honored in the presence of all your fellow guests. Luke 14:10

Awakenings

2008-03-22T09:04:00.000-07:00

When we wake up in the morning, the night's dream dissolves, and we say, "Oh, it was only a dream. It wasn't real." But something in the dream must have been real otherwise it could not be. When death approaches, we may look back on our life and wonder if it was just another dream. Even now you may look back on last year's vacation or yesterday's drama and see that it is very similar to last night's dream. -- A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, p.209

How do we know that we are awake? Sometimes while we are dreaming we become aware that we are dreaming and that the objects we seem to perceive and the events that seem to happen belong to our dream and do not exist independently. Other times we dream that we have awakened but we are mistaken and the dream continues until we again have the experience of waking up. But is this second experience of waking up a true awakening? What would count as evidence that this second awakening experience is part of our dream? What if it were followed by a third awakening? Then we would say that we had a dream from which we dreamed that we awakened and then we dreamed that we woke up again and then ... we finally woke up for real or only dreamed for the third time that we did?

Rate of aging related to income?

2008-03-12T13:15:00.000-07:00

"According to [the Disability-free Life Expectancy] index, a low-income man in Canada enters old age at 49, while a high income man enters old age at 60. At this point, each has ten years remaining of disability-free life (Wilkins and Adams 1983, 1078). For women, the entry point to disability-free old age is 60 for the poorest, and 65 for the well-to-do." -- Canada's Aging Population by Susan A. McDaniel, p.14

From The Catcher In The Rye

2008-03-09T14:05:00.000-07:00

"Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules."

"Yes, sir. I know it is. I know it."

Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game, all right -- I'll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren't any hot-shots, then what's a game about it? Nothing. No game. [...]

- The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger page 12

Movie I'd recommend

2008-03-08T13:42:00.000-08:00

The Trouble with Harry (1955), Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Humboldt's Gift, by Saul Bellow

2008-02-28T13:28:00.000-08:00

I love the narrator's musings about the importance of sleep and wakefulness: how we need to experience beautiful and meaningful things that we bring to the dead or other supernatural beings for their benefit and ours. "Certain spiritual beings must achieve their development through men, and we betray and abandon them by this absenteeism, this will-to-snooze." -- Humboldt's Gift, Saul Bellow, p.293

Sleep, awakening and history (personal and collective) are major themes. Humboldt suffers from insomnia. "He said that history was a nightmare during which he was trying to get a good night's rest." -- HG, p.4
Humboldt's quip alludes to a famous passage in Ulysses by James Joyce wherein Stephen Dedalus (Joyce's literary alter ego who is also the protagonist of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) declares "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." Although Humboldt was joking when he said this, it could indicate a fundamental difference between Joyce's goal of freeing his artistic perspective from historical constraints and Humboldt's search for something different, maybe his own version of the American Dream?

The narrator, Charlie Citrine, is fascinated by the theory of multiple lifetimes during which the soul has the opportunity to wake up once in a while, between which the sleeping part of the soul (also called the plant soul?) continues to sleep. Citrine complains that most modern people waste their time sleepwalking through their daily activities when they should be awake and gathering important insights and experiences to bring to the spirit world when it is finally time to sleep.

For someone so preoccupied with searching for wisdom and tranquility, Citrine sure makes a lot of mistakes, leads an incredibly complicated life, and seems to lack wisdom in the conduct of his own affairs. How can he afford the peace and quiet time to pursue his studies while trying to maintain a beautiful young demanding and unfaithful mistress? It seems paradoxical that philosophers -- lovers of wisdom -- are often anything but wise.

Here are some of the other excerpts I copied:

"... only last week you were on the side of Tolstoi—it's time we simply refused to be inside history and playing the comedy of history, the bad social game." -- HG, p.125

"To myself I put it all as intelligently as possible: that we couldn't evade History, and that this was what History was doing to everybody." -- HG, p.210

"When I say American I mean uncorrected by the main history of human suffering." HG, p.300

"[H]uman beings are far too deep in that false unnecessary comedy of history—in events, in developments, in politics." -- HG, p.478

"The earth is literally a mirror of thoughts. Objects themselves are embodied thoughts. Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything. Every perception causes a certain amount of death in us, and this darkening is a necessity." -- HG, p.262

"You shouldn't wait for things to become quieter. You must decide to make them quieter." -- HG, p.263

"Some people embrace their gifts with gratitude. Others have no use for them and can think only of overcoming their weaknesses." -- HG, p.284

"And when, I wondered, would I rise at last above all this stuff, the accidental, the merely phenomenal, the wastefully and randomly human, and be fit to enter higher worlds?" -- HG, p.291

"I was sorry now that I had ever made her familiar with Gene Fowler's saying that money was something to throw off the back end of a train." -- HG, p.318

"The Big Spender Syndrome" -- HG, p.318

"'Though you are said to be alive you are dead. Wake up and put some strength into what is left, which must otherwise die.' That's from the Revelation of Saint John, more or less." -- HG, p.320

"...the temporary remission of difficulties which, according to certain grim experts, is all that people need to make them happy and is, in fact, the only source of happiness." -- HG, p.328

"The thought of the life we are now leading may pain us as greatly later on as the thought of death pains us now." -- HG, p.336

"How many souls hoped for the strength and sweetness of visionary words to purge consciousness of its stale dirt, to learn from a poet what had happened to the three-fourths of life that are obviously missing!" -- HG, p.340

"...[W]e are not natural beings but supernatural beings." -- HG, p.347