Book Review: What I Saw in America

This book is available free online, but I don't have a Kindle and I like to mark up my copy with pen, so I put it on my wish list from Amazon and got it. (Thanks, Eric and Deanna!) Found out a couple of things:

1.) G.K. Chesterton makes for good airplane reading.
2.) The book's a slow starter because GKC focuses on the hotels and like that he saw on his trip, and these more immediate kinds of things don't relate as immediately because they've changed in some ways. But when he starts to go after advertising in city lights it gets good. Then when GKC talks history it gets better. GKC's most endearing characteristic is that he was interested in the history of ideas, not of wars or great men or the like. It's one of the things that makes his writing unique. For instance, Abraham Lincoln was a hero because of his stalwart adherence to an idea. I like that.3.) This book was written after the Harding election. (!) Yet it's still worth reading.
4.) One quote is so good I have to put it on here:

"We cannot be certain of being right about the future; but we can be almost certain of being wrong about the future, if we are wrong about the past. The other thing that we can do is to note what ideas necessarily go together by their own nature; what ideas will triumph together or fall together." p. 166

Oh, why stop there?

“Exactly what gives its real dignity to the figure of Lincoln is that he stands invoking a primitive first principle of the age of innocence, and holding up the tables of an ancient law, against the trend of the nineteenth century; repeating, 'We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator, etc.,' to a generation that was more and more disposed to say somethinglike this: 'We hold these truths to be probable enough for pragmatists; that all things looking like men were evolved somehow, being endowed by heredity and environment with no equal rights, but very unequal wrongs,' and so on. I do not believe that creed, left to itself, would ever have founded a state; and I am pretty certain that, left to itself, it would never have overthrown a slave state.” [Pg 302]

"And we see, even in modern times, that the same Church which is blamed for making sages heretics is also blamed for making savages priests." p.7

Delighting in the color of the NYC advterisement lights: "Therefore it was that I desired the peasant to walk down that grove of fiery trees, under all that golden foliage, and fruits like monstrous jewels, as innocent as Adam before the Fall. He would see sights almost as fine as the flaming sword or the purple and peacock plumage of the seraphim; so long as he did not go near the Tree of Knowledge. … If a child saw these coloured lights, he would dance with as much delight as at any other coloured toys; and it is the duty of every poet, and even of every critic, to dance in respectful imitation of the child.” (p.22-24)

"This tradition is truly to be called life; for life alone can link the past and the future. It merely means that as what was done yesterday makes some difference to-day, so what is done to-day will make some difference to-morrow. In New York it is difficult to feel that any day will make any difference. ... Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive." (p.40-41)

"It is customary to condemn the American as a materialist because of his worship of success. But indeed this very worship, like any worship, even devil-worship, proves him rather a mystic than a materialist." (p.63)

"We are perpetually being told in the papers that what is wanted is a strong man who will do things. What is wanted is a strong man who will undo things; and that will be a real test of strength." (p.74)

Definition of psychoanalysis: "Confession without absolution."

"The nineteenth century prided itself on having lost its faith in myths, and proceeded to put all its faith in metaphors. It dismissed the old doctrines about the way of life and the light of the world; and then it[Pg 196] proceeded to talk as if the light of truth were really and literally a light, that could be absorbed by merely opening our eyes; or as if the path of progress were really and truly a path, to be found by merely following our noses. Thus the purpose of God is an idea, true or false; but the purpose of Nature is merely a metaphor; for obviously if there is no God there is no purpose. Yet while men, by an imaginative instinct, spoke of the purpose of God with a grand agnosticism, as something too large to be seen, something reaching out to worlds and to eternities, they speak of the purpose of Nature in particular and practical problems of curing babies or cutting up rabbits." (p. 109)

"But in the conflict between the Republic and the Church, the point often made against the Church seems to me much more of a point against the Republic. It is emphatically the Republic and not the Church that I venerate as something beautiful but belonging to the past. In fact I feel exactly the same sort of sad respect for the republican ideal that many mid-Victorian free-thinkers felt for the religious ideal." (p.114)

"[H.G. Wells] tells us that our national dignities and differences must be melted into the huge mould of a World State, or else (and I think these are almost his own words) we shall be destroyed by the instruments and machinery we have ourselves made. In effect, men must abandon patriotism or they will be murdered by science. After this, surely no one can accuse Mr. Wells of an undue tenderness for scientific over other types of training. Greek may be a good thing or no; but nobody says that if Greek scholarship is carried past a certain point, everybody will be torn in pieces like Orpheus, or burned up like Semele, or poisoned like Socrates. Philosophy, theology and logic may or may not be idle academic studies; but nobody supposes that the study of philosophy, or even of theology, ultimately forces its students to manufacture racks and thumb-screws against their will; or that even logicians need be so alarmingly logical as all that. Science seems to be the only branch of study in which people have to be waved back from perfection as from a pestilence." (p.133)

"It is often said that we learn to love the characters in romances as if they were characters in real life. I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. There are a great many human souls whom we should accept more kindly, and even appreciate more clearly, if we simply thought of them as people in a story." (p. 143)

“The devil can quote Scripture for his purpose; and the text of Scripture which he now most commonly quotes is, 'The kingdom of heaven is within you.' That text has been the stay and support of more Pharisees and prigs and self-righteous spiritual bullies than all the dogmas in creation; it has served to identify self-satisfaction with the peace that passes all understanding. And the text to be quoted in answer to it is that which declares that no man can receive the kingdom except as a little child. What we are to have inside is the childlike spirit; but the[Pg 280] childlike spirit is not entirely concerned about what is inside. It is the first mark of possessing it that one is interested in what is outside. The most childlike thing about a child is his curiosity and his appetite and his power of wonder at the world. We might almost say that the whole advantage of having the kingdom within is that we look for it somewhere else.” (p.155)

"Generally speaking, men are never so mean and false and hypocritical as when they are occupied in being impartial. They are performing the first and most typical of all the actions of the devil; they are claiming the throne of God."

Book Review: Special Exits

I've been in journal-reading mode lately, but I did find time to read this graphic novel from the library about a woman taking care of her two aging, independent but dying parents. It's told with enough versimilitude that I thought it was autobiographical, yet I can't find any confirmation that it was. Whatever its state of fiction, it's a powerfully realistic tale about death, not sentimental or really anything other than a straightforward account of what it's like to go through nursing homes and hospice and home care. The characters are vivid -- the older couple is immediately likable and shows distinct personality that alone is worth the read. The other nice thing about graphic novels is they only take an hour or two to read, so I recommend this in place of a movie -- it's probably a richer experience and shows something most everyone's going to have to live through multiple ways: first as the daughter caretaker, second as the older couple. Dona nobis pacem.

Northern Lights

Even though I'm far enough north to see the Northern Lights, I've never seen them with my own eyes (pesky clouds). But this video has got to be the closest I've come to actually seeing them. Amazing!: http://vimeo.com/21419634

Book Reviews: Harry Potter 1 and 4

Not only is it a new experience to read the Harry Potter books aloud to a child, it adds a new dimension to be reading two of them at the same time. I read Sam book 4 (Goblet of Fire) as I was reading Aidan book 1 (The Philosopher's Stone, because we get the British versions). Of course, the length of the books is vastly different, and the vocabulary much more advanced for the later book. Side by side it becomes apparent that not much happens at Hogwarts itself in book 1, because it takes half the book just to get there. It may take as long in book 4, but there's still 3/4 of the book left by that point. Book 4 has some annoying padding that repeats stuff from previous books and feels like an editor asked to have that in, you know, for kids. But underneath it all is the same amazingly (and at times needlessly) intricate plot, there in nascent form in book 1 but fully realized in book 4. Another funny thing about book 4 is the tweenage romance stuff just flies on past Sam (he's as dense as Ron), but one thing made him tear up: when Mrs. Weasley sends Hermione a tiny candy egg for Easter because of the nasty and untrue articles circulating about her in the wizard's press. Apparently Sam has a deep sense of candy justice. At last, the books have several elements of quite subtle foreshadowing that make rereading them that much more valuable.

Book Review: The Hemlock Cup

Once again the quest for vivid historical scholarship turns up a good book. The Hemlock Cup by Bettany Hughes is about the life and death of Socrates and the democratic Athenians he walked among. Hughes has researched the latest artifacts dug up from the ground and has traveled to most of the sites in the book -- she'll often tell you what a battlefield or ancient town is like today. Her portrait of Socrates is illuminating, especially for the big question of how could a city like Athens kill a man like Socrates? I didn't think I could understand why but after reading this book I can finally see how it happened. This book is even more useful for its portrait of Athens than of Socrates: Socrates stands out from history so much that most people have some idea of what he was like, but Hughes is able to detail some of what must have been going on in the average Athenian's mind, which is harder to do. The detail of why and how they believed in the gods that they believed in is fascinating and certainly colors any wrongly over-rationalized pictures of the Golden Age of Greece one might have. In fact, if a person was walking around Athens 500 years later the first thing he'd probably notice was how many statues to how many gods they had scattered around (see Acts 17 for more). This was a very theistic city, and also very troubled by war with Sparta and the inherent insecurity of democracy. If I was a student of history and had time for it, I could write a whole book comparing and constrasting Jesus and Socrates, and this would be the main source for Socrates. It's that good.

Book Review: Darwinian Fairytales

David Stove is an Australian philosopher who wrote a highly entertaining attack on Darwin, Malthus, Dawkins, E.O. Wilson, and company in Darwinian Fairytales. The fact that he is Australian may be somehow reflected in the delight he takes in contrarian positions. The fact that his is a philosopher is evident from the way he makes his arguments. About half of his arguments hinge on statements made by Darwin or Malthus that include the term "all species" and he finds it sufficient to show that man doesn't fit the proposed pattern and therefore all species do not. This works for philosophers but to a biologist it just seems pedantic. About half of his arguments are more substantive and interesting to think about. Some of them attack evolutionary topics like "kin selection" that are no longer held, precisely because of the problems he points out, but it's still kind of fun to watch him poke at the theories and point out the problems.

"[Selfish theorists] think of people as though they were molecules of a confined gas, which have no mutal sympathy, or any other influence, except by way of collisions with one another. This is the selfish theory to a T, as long as you impute to each molecule a ceaseless and exclusive regard to its own interests. The only thing wrong with this idea is that there is nothing whatever in reality which corresponds to it." -- p. 159

The fact that there is more to man is a constant element in the arguments of G.K. Chesterton against materialism as well, and they have the additional strength of being true. The best essays come from Stove's observation that the new sociobiologists like Dawkins and co. are polytheists of a new stripe, and that Dawkins, Darwin and Calvin have a similar streak of proposing that humans are just puppets of irresistable invisible forces.

"[P]uppetry theories ... always display a strong tendency to expand. The man who has dreamed up a set of demons or puppet masters behind one field of phenomena is quite the likeliest man to dream up, later on, another set of demons behind another field of phenomena; or to come up with a single, but far wider set of demons, comprehending the set which he had happened to stumble upon first. The people who suffer from delusions of being conspired against are always being obliged to conclude that this conspiracy is more widespread than they had previously realized." -- p.187

This answers a question I've always had about Gnosticism. Why does it start with a bad material/good spiritual creation dualism and end up with an extensive angelology? It's because Gnostics are puppetry theorists, and once they find one puppetmaster they are compelled to find another. Dawkins and the Gnostics ... who'd have thought?

"A person is certainly a believer in some religion if he thinks, for example, that there are on earth millions of invisible and immortal non-human beings which are far more intelligent and capable than we are. But that is exactly why sociobiologists do think, about genes. Sociobiology, then, is a religion: one which has genes as its gods." -- p.248

As a believer myself I interpret this in the light of the injuctions against idolatry. Stove is adept at puncturing idolatry. But there's the rub -- he is so good at it that he ends up puncturing himself.

"The trouble is, though, that every religion (or at any rate every one I know of) is incomprehensible when it is not obviously false. Of course, something which is incomprehensible to us might nevertheless be true, and religious people often remind the non-religious of this fact. But, though it is a fact, it is no help, because there are always many competing incomprehensibilities, from religious and other sources, vying for our acceptance. Tertullian said that he believed the Christian religion because of its absurdity. But alas, every other religion possesses the same claim on our belief (if absurdity really is a claim on our belief)." -- p. 254.

This is where Stove and Chesterton (and I) part company. Stove cannot accept anything he cannot fully comprehend, or that he believes he can fully comprehend. I see a reason to adopt the absurdities of Christianity, in which the great inversion of the weak and the strong is accomplished by the tragedy and blood of the cross. That's a good absurdity that one can sink one's teeth into (literally so in the case of the Eucharist). Commitment to some form of absurdity is a necessity, because even Stove's agnosticism is an absurdity -- why should a free-thinking man expect the universe to fit in his head, after all? -- and Christ is indeed the absurdity on which I stand.

Book Review: Over Sea, Under Stone

Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper is the first book in a five-book series that should by no means be read first. As a quest story involving three children searching for the holy grail (yes, THAT holy grail), it's diverting enough on its own in a mid-20th-century adventures in caves for youth sort of way, but nowhere near as powerful as the second book, The Dark is Rising. Almost all of the magic is kept offstage and some major plot points such as disappearances of important characters are never explained. The pace is slow and there is little tension. There's certainly cleverness in the "treasure map" area and the sense of place is vivid, with Cornwall as a backdrop, but there's too much that Cooper was obviously learning as she went. One of the surprising revelations at the end about a character that was also in the second book is actually unmentioned in the second book, so you still get the reward of that if you read this second. So although I'm usually an adherent of the "published order" philosophy, I say it's better to read this second and to sort of steel yourself to slog through it with the reward of the third through fifth books in the series. Sam liked it fine, and I'm not going to let onto him that it's in my opinion surprisingly weak -- I'll let him figure that out for himself.