Abandon all Thought Ye Who Enter Here

 

If there was something along the lines of a gate or portal by which people entered the service of the regime now infesting the government of our Glorious Union, I imagine that the words appearing in the title to this post would be emblazoned on it.  With the substitution of a single word, they of course are inscribed on the Gate into Hell in Dante's Inferno.

Some might say the word substituted, "hope," should be returned to the wording and made part of an inscription to be placed over an entrance into the USA itself.

We know that the titular head of the regime believes personal loyalty to him to be a condition of participation in it.  There is nothing less conducive to intelligence and critical thinking. What it requires is unthinking obedience to commands.  Questioning them, or even considering their appropriateness is disloyal.  Allegiance is owed to a single person, rightness is determined using a single standard.

As a mechanism to discourage thinking, inquiry and the application of intelligence to problem solving, the requirement of unquestioned loyalty is more effective than dogmatism.  Dogmatism is the absolute acceptance and arrogant application of particular ideas and positions. Thought may come into play in deciding which ideas one accepts.  Loyalty, however, is an emotional attachment, sometimes combined with hero-worship.

To an extent, dogmatism has played a part in most administrations.  In the past, the two political parties have not been radically different in certain matters, but have disagreed on questions of social policy.  The social policies favored by the party in power have dictated executive actions in many instances, which has meant that those actions have been undertaken mostly because dogmatism demanded it.

But in the current case, dogmatism is combined with personal loyalty of a kind typically granted to the leader of a cult.  The result is the implementation of policies consistent with both directed to ends espoused by the leader without regard to consequences.  Why consider consequences of sweeping actions when they are self-evidently appropriate because they're taken in pursuit of the desires of the leader?  No other considerations are significant.

So, for example, in the haste to terminate government employees in accordance with cult and dogma, mistakes are made.  Essential personnel are fired.  Then efforts are made to rehire them.

This unthinking compliance with the demands of cult and dogma is especially dangerous given the efforts made to extend presidential authority.

This is what our system has brought about, apparently. It may be corrupt, or we may be corrupted.

 

Reflections on the Glass Ceiling

It's been some time since I posted here.  Much has happened worthy of comment, but I've felt no real desire to do so.  Call it a kind of disgust at worst, resignation at best.  Despite the fact that the presidential contest has become more interesting, I remain baffled by the fact that the Republican candidate remains popular with many of the voters here in God's Favorite Country.  It's a testament to the fact that a liar--not just any liar but a kind of titan or demi-god of lying, though the argument can be made that he's simply vastly deluded--can capture the hearts and minds of people who are citizens of our Great Republic. It doesn't speak well for us.

But I feel inclined to comment on the metaphor of the "Glass Ceiling" normally used to refer to a sort of invisible barrier which, wrongly, prevents certain people from achieving a higher place in the hierarchy in question.  More specifically, it refers to that barrier which will, presumably, be demolished if a woman is elected president of our Glorious Union.

The fabled Glass Ceiling figured in an earlier presidential election, as we all recall.  If I remember correctly a representation of it was on display, ready to be broken, at the campaign headquarters of Hilary Clinton on election night in 2016.  But while it seems her victory was anticipated, it remained unbroken.  Too much was taken for granted.

We males have historically been confused in our understanding of women generally, but especially in particular where politics and positions or events of importance are concerned.  It's interesting to consider whether our conception of them is most unrealistic and inaccurate when we become consumed by the belief that they are either inferior or superior to men; either better or worse than men.

If a Glass Ceiling exists preventing them from obtaining positions of power or importance, one would think it does because they're considered inferior in certain respects; or at least lacking in certain respects or by nature unable to be adequately concerned with certain matters.  But a Glass Ceiling also may be a barrier even when they're considered superior to men.

They have been considered superior to or better than men throughout our history in specific ways.  Most obviously they've been so thought of with respect to raising children and minding a home.  For a very long time that was considered to be their place in life, an obvious inference some thought from the fact that women, not men, bear children.  That view in itself would be sufficient to create a Glass Ceiling.

They've also been considered superior throughout our history, again in other specific ways.

Sometimes, this conception of superiority is expressed by implication, sometimes expressly.  Boethius, for example, portrayed Philosophy (capital "p") as a woman, come to chide him for his weakness when a captive of Theodoric the Great.  She recalled him to Philosophy, and the knowledge that success, fame, fortune, persecution and death were trivial things, like life on Earth in general.  She was the incarnation of Philosophy, the best of us, in his Consolation of Philosophy which he wrote while imprisoned.  It's to be hoped she provided him some consolation while he was bludgeoned to death by his captors.

Dante in his Divine Comedy was guided by the pagan Virgil through Hell and Purgatory, but of course a pagan could not enter the kingdom of heaven and so the woman, or spirit of a woman, named Beatrice was his guide in Paradise.  Beatrice may or may not have been based on the woman, also named Beatrice, Dante loved in a courtly fashion--which is to say not physically.  In any event she served to represent religious faith, grace, enlightenment and love as portrayed in this work, a higher being than Dante himself, and men in general.

Then there is Goethe, who ended his Faust with an idealized woman redeeming the protagonist, and the words "Eternal Woman (or the Eternal Feminine) draws us upward." (Das Ewig-Weibliche ziet uns hinan).  Woman is in a sense nobler, more attuned to God, wiser, more spiritual than man; a kind of goddess.  This is Goethe's Faust; Christopher Marlow in his Doctor Faustus ended his play by having him dragged down to Hell where he damn well belonged.

But this perception of women as better...sometimes much better...then men also serves to bar her from earthly affairs such as politics and business and the professions because she's JUST TOO GOOD.  A woman cannot bear with or make decisions regarding the matters and people which and who must be dealt with, let alone serve as a commander in war.  Hence women are precious, to be protected, put on the proverbial pedestal.

So the Glass Ceiling where women are concerned is the result of conceiving of them as both superior and inferior to men.  Kipling of course took a different approach.  He famously wrote that the female of the species is more deadly than the male.  This interesting view seems to be based on a portrayal of women as reckless and even fanatic in some respects and in some manner, related primarily to the protection of the family.  But again, this would disqualify women from reasonably making decisions that must be made in the world of affairs.

Perhaps we're just too enamored with categorizing in our thinking.  Perhaps this tendency is a kind of bequest to posterity by Aristotle, that Relentless Categorizer.  That hinders us in our acceptance of possibilities.  The Glass Ceiling may be broken if we can recognize each other as humans, far more alike than different.

Nothing to Say

 

Mr. Ed, pictured above playing chess with his companion Wilbur, is famous for never speaking unless he has something to say.  I emulate him, in this blog and otherwise, and so have not posted for some time.  I find that I have nothing to say, here, at this time.

This is because I know of nothing worth blogging about.  I've tried to find something that piques my interest or my ire, but have been unsuccessful.  What more is there to be said about the venality and stupidity of our politicians, their tolerance of a fatuous and corrupt con man, their willingness to exploit bigotry and ignorance, their hypocrisy, their sanctimony?  What more is there to be said about our national fetish for guns?  What more is there to be said of the narrowness and meanness of our jurists?  How often can one lament the fundamentally cruel and intolerant fundamentalism of the Christianity popular in our Great Republic?  The remarkable propensity of people to believe anything they encounter on the Internet they find satisfying or disturbing is certainly remarkable, but even that aversion to critical thinking, which seems omnipresent in these times, has become nothing to remark about.

These and other aspects of our society have become familiar.  They're commonplace.  They're to be expected, in fact.  What, indeed, would we be without them?  We wouldn't exist. What we see and hear and read in our media (including social media) is sad, even contemptible, but dull.  It's impossible even to be outraged any longer.  Only the professionally outraged express outrage, and that also has become a part of the background noise that is our culture. 

There are dangers involved in the expectation of stupidity and corruption, of course, and to their acceptance as normal.  Perhaps Dante should have devoted one of the Circles of Hell to the sin of Acceptance.  We saw enough of acceptance and indifference in the face of cruelty and the corrupt in the 20th century to cause us concern.  If we accept what we have, and treat it as inevitable, than we'll continue to have it.

In chess a player will resign when defeat is certain.  An aspiring Stoic shouldn't resign, though, as long as it's possible to be virtuous.  Perhaps virtue includes saying what's already been said.  So, not time to resign quite yet.

To Hell in a Handbasket

These are sad days here in our Glorious Republic, the home of the free and the brave, beautiful for spacious skies and purple (really?) mountains.  This land which is my land but not necessarily yours.  For some of us, certainly not yours unless you are in some manner us as well--unless we are what you are, which is simply to say unless you are already here in which case this land may indeed be your land if, that is, you truly are like us.

But although we're being told that the America we love is disappearing due to massive demographic changes, fear and loathing (trembling too, no doubt) are not reserved for immigrants and foreigners only.  Paroxysms of anger and dismay may be triggered by so many things in these fraught times.  We perceive ourselves to be besieged by enemies of all sorts.  There is, of course, the media which our tiresome and unusual president tells us repeatedly is "the enemy."  Then there are efforts to prohibit speech of particular kinds on college campuses.  There are fascists and white nationalists everywhere.  Nuns are being forced to purchase contraceptives, according to our Attorney General.  Chicago is a war zone.  NFL players kneel or sit down or raise fists when the National Anthem is played.

One must wonder if other nations are similarly plagued by outrage and anxiety and whether expressions of outrage and anxiety occur on a daily basis in other, less favored, lands.  Here, we wake up to revelations of monstrous conduct each day, or in the rare case when there is none, we're regaled with new information regarding those evils which have taken place. 

It's as if we've been consigned, as a nation, to the Fifth Circle of Hell as described in Dante's lighthearted Inferno.  There, those who have committed the sin of Wrath are either engaged in constant conflict with their fellow sinners, or lie sullen and silent beneath the waters of a river, stewing, as it were, wrathfully.  We are a nation of the irate.

I wonder how this came about.  I don't think we always were so highly annoyed at most of what takes place, though certainly some of us always have been.  We have all come to consider ourselves dispossessed in one manner or another, but unfortunately there are those who have not actually been deprived of anything but what they think is their due or is proper rather than anything tangible, and they are the loudest in their discontent.  I refer to those who are offended by other people doing things or saying things which, it's believed, shouldn't be done or said.  What's done or said in many cases does no harm to those who object to it--some monuments are taken down, some pundit or institution is boycotted, some people speak a language which isn't English, etc., or someone is a boor. 

What has brought us to this?  Our ancestors faced economic depression and terrible wars.  We face nothing like that.  Instead, we take with great seriousness what people say and ignore our many problems.  The self-righteousness required to feel anger and outrage over such things is monumental. 

This kind of pettiness is troubling.  If we react in outrage to such things, who knows what we'll do if we're actually subjected to some real injustice, or are impoverished for some reason, or grow suddenly and seriously ill.  Perhaps we'll lose all control, all reason.  Has there ever been a case where a nation has fallen apart because it's people are, for the most part, spiteful and small-minded?  It would make us unique in history, I think. 

If you've ever wondered about the phrase "going to hell in a handbasket" and have done an Internet search of it, you'll probably find as I did that it is an American colloquial expression the origin of which is uncertain.  Why is going to hell in a handbasket different from going to hell in some other manner?  What makes it remarkable or poignant or interesting enough to comment on; what distinguishes it?  If you search for the definition of "handbasket" you'll find such useful definitions as "a small basket, which may be carried by hand."

The articles which may be carried in a handbasket are small, relatively speaking, and that may be why the saying seems especially apt at this time.  We've become small as have our concerns and grievances and so will fit in a handbasket as we're carried by some force or by ourselves to a hell of our own creation.

Comparing Stoicism and Christianity

Anyone who does some reading about Stoicism has encountered books in which it is compared, unfavorably, to Christianity.  These books seem to have been written, at the latest, in the 19th and early 20th centuries.  More recent books about Stoicism don't make the comparison, and I wonder whether there simply is no longer an interest in doing so.  Sometimes, the comparisons that were made seem to be in earnest, and even thoughtful.  Sometimes they seem quite partisan, and far less than impartial.  They all seem to have certain claims in common, however.

I've sometimes wondered whether Christian thinkers have resented Christianity's great debt to pagan philosophy.  Christianity hasn't benefited merely from Stoic influence, of course.  It incorporated the thoughts and works of Plato and Aristotle as well; Christian mystics and ascetics spoke and conducted themselves much as the ancient Cynics did.  The influence of the school of Epicurus is not as evident, as may be expected.

The early Christian Fathers didn't share in such resentment, though, nor does it seem to have been prevalent in medieval times, or during the the Renaissance when Aristotle was "the Master of All who Know" and he and other pagan thinkers spent their time in Hell in its relatively comfortable first level, according to Dante.  Certain of the Fathers, at least, spoke of Plato and others as having approached the truth, a remarkable concession from an otherwise highly intolerant crew.  Seneca was considered a kind of Christian, and Marcus Aurelius was said to have regretted or to even have been ignorant of the persecution which took place during his reign.  It was in a sense assumed that people who wrote and thought and acted so wisely, as these figures did, could not really have been all that unchristian; indeed, must have been proto or quasi-Christians.

Perhaps this kind of hat-tipping to the pagan thinkers began to disappear as it became clear that such fabrications as the correspondence said to have taken place between Seneca and St. Paul was established as being forged, and other myths such as Plato's friendship with Moses were found to be contrived.  I suppose it may have been easier to acknowledge the extent to which Christianity borrowed from the ancients when it was at least arguable that Christianity or "proper" Judaism influenced the works of the old philosophers in some respect.

It seems clear, though, that the New Testament doesn't indicate that Jesus and his disciples discussed or were much concerned with the fundamentals of pagan philosophy which became the fundamentals of Christian theology.  So some justification was required when the equivalent of Plato's forms and Aristotle's First Mover and natural law and universal law began to appear in defenses and explanations of the Christian religion.  Perhaps the acknowledgement simply became more grudging or reluctant.

We see Stoicism sometimes described as the noblest of the moral codes pagan antiquity managed to formulate.  But there is always something wrong with it according to these writers, something which, they maintain, caused it to dissipate though it was at one time the preferred philosophy and even religion of the thoughtful Roman upper and mid-to-upper classes.  It was, of course, Christianity that satisfied the need Stoicism could not.  Stoicism's subsequent revivals over the centuries in, for example, Justus Lipsius are acknowledged by these writers, but they seem to consider these events as similar to fits or fads. 

As might be expected, Stoicism's failure is ascribed to the fact that it's tenets are too stern, cold, abstract, unrealistic.  It's claimed that the Stoic view of the emotions and passions was too negative.  Most of all, it seems, it's claimed that Stoicism failed to acknowledge or recognize love--which is to say Christian Love.  And it's claimed the Stoic view of God was materialistic and distant, despite the efforts of Seneca and Epictetus to portray God as more the personal God of Christianity (more personal, at least, when that characteristic fits the apologist's purpose; the God of the famous proofs is notably vague and abstract).

What Christian Love is supposed to be is an interesting question.  The Gospels were written in Greek by men who could not have known Jesus personally.  Was the "love" referred to in the Gospels or St. Paul the kind of "love" we may read about in the works of the pagan philosophers?  Was the "love" presumably referred to by Jesus the same, or something different?

There are quotes from the early Stoics which seem to support the claims the writers make.  However, more recent thinkers have found the Stoic view of the emotions to be far more sophisticated than previously believed, and the therapeutic effect of Stoic practice to be far more effective than previously believed.

It's possible Christianity may be waning now, or that the personal God posited by it an other established religions may be considered less and less credible the more we know of the universe.  Stoicism is not so limited, however, though there also seems to be nothing prohibiting the Stoic from suspecting that God is, in a sense, concerned with human beings and "personal" in that sense.  Perhaps it is this flexibility that is one of the reasons it keeps appearing.  It's by no means defunct, and I suspect it never will be.