It is hard to listen. We set out to stay quiet, but questions force into our mind.
Two kinds of suffering shout at us this week: individual and social; infectious and portentous. We face the first at the bedside; the second on the radio.
What do you say when a husband or wife just died? What words help brain cancer?
I talk too much. My inability to fix tightens my throat. So, I blab and reassure to prove I still have breath.
I think myself a listener, but I often cringe later. Blather and repetition. Did I just use logic to eliminate half of their lament?
Job’s friends always impressed me. They sat in silence. Talking ruined their credibility.
Isolated Suffering
The last few months have been hard to watch. Patients deteriorate at home, alone. Elderly who barely coped with a large social network before lockdown became islands during it. Aimed to avoid morbidity and death, social distancing did the opposite, too often.
Maybe hope left long ago. Infection and isolation lay in equal and opposite directions. Scylla and Charybdis.
They had survived on intangible surveillance: a neighbour’s glance, a daughter dropping by. A parade to the mailbox each morning proved they could still do it.
Little neighbourly irritations disappeared in lockdown. They used to show that Mrs. Smith was still feisty, bothersome, and alive.
Collective Suffering
The second suffering comes with the rest of our diet from America. Canada’s social class join in knelt solidarity. We act like a 51st state.
Racism is evil; senseless death worse. Jail seems too good for some.
Do we share the same dose of rot beneath it? Are all white Canadians racists, as the NY Times explains of Americans?
What if you are half-white? Part-white? A blend of ten kinds of white? Or is it just whiteness that’s the issue?
There I go again. Blather.
Activists draw crowds for the same reason tent preachers do. All have sinned. Guilt is a universal emotion except for the antisocial and self-righteous.
So preachers fill tents and activists streets.
Public repentance can change lives. Recovery often hinges on a come-to-Jesus moment. Too often the moment hinges nothing; doors having fallen off long ago.
Dutschke’s Long March
Abiding change takes generations. Nonsense from the Frankfurt School makes me cringe, except the brilliance in this: change follows a long march through the institutions.
Social change requires generations. Every institution inverted, ploughed under by revolution. Critical theorists dissolve society from the inside out.
Parasitic ideas need robust hosts. As society burns, so too the infection. How long can professors entertain by teaching students to tear down what no longer exists? What will remain to lament?
No, Canada is not the 51st. Confessing our sins cannot look the same without devaluing the unique atrocity. We have our own to confess.
Society changes when individuals change. This requires ideas. Politics is downstream from culture, which is downstream from philosophy and religion.
To What End And How?
Labelling groups as bad because other groups have suffered falls for the collectivist superstition. It ends poorly.
Those who lead Jacobins inherit Robespierre’s fate. These revolutions never consummate. They end worse. Only the Great and American revolutions built something new.
Silence is violence, once again. It is a totalitarian axiom: If you are not for us, you are against us.
Two kinds of suffering: infectious and portentous. Each fanned by reasoned hysteria; needless but inevitable. Marx said society held the seeds of its own destruction. Our seed is believing it, while offering nothing better.
A dawn of poetry and satire awaits.
Hi again Sean,
First I digress. In my retirement from decades of. Neurology, I have taken English Classes at the university…they let us old guys audit them. A couple have been on English literature and medicine. We did the Plague a couple of years ago. Probably not the best for most to read now. This year did one on Close Reading beginning with poetry and then literature. Didn’t think I would like the poetry but persisted. Poetry is to language as music is to noise, I learned, on reading John Carey’s small new volume, A Little History of Poetry.
I always enjoy your writings, a lot of thought goes into them. However, it would be good to see a poem you might pen now….in light of your final comment on poetry and satire, and the worse that can happen is it maybe mistaken for ‘noise’…..few will study it carefully enough to understand the meaning….such is the joy of not realizing language and noise, along with their mates of poetry and music, occupy different spaces in our brains! Ha ha don’t do a Close Reading on this email!
Keep up the great writing….we need that now!
Hello Allan
I must confess jealousy at you auditing courses! That sounds fun. Poetry scares me. I think I am supposed to figure out the music and be able to explain exactly what the composer was thinking on each line. I end up missing the music and still not knowing the thought. Your connection of poetry-language and music-noise is brilliant.
Sure appreciate you taking time to read this and share a comment. A friend of mine said that we should aim our writing to approach poetry (or something like that). But again, poetry is frightening. You got me thinking…I could offer my family endless torture as practice.
These times are too confusing and volatile to be concrete. But silence guarantees an absence of society.
Thanks again!
Be well
Thanks and not to prolong you angst but I really got to understand and like sonnets: This one by John Milton, of Paradise Lost fame, is good, a bit depressing but the last line is a classic , and beyond any religious connotations, this line says it succinctly, especially for older folks. He wrote it when he was going blind. He was a powerful rhetorical writer and poet as you may know….my Irish colleague said they studied this in school, as usual they were ahead of the curve as they say….
John Milton Sonnet 19
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”
I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.”
Wow. (Yes, that’s the best I can muster. Such a hoser.)
Embarrassed to say I cannot remember ever having read that. I remember reading a few lines of Milton on a plaque while visiting St Paul’s Cathedral, 7 or 8 years ago. “I must get around to reading Milton,” I promised myself at the time. But I did not. Policy, politics, and current affairs demanded attention. This led to an endless stream of facts with no time to think.
I really appreciate you posting this. Is the book you referenced a good place to start: A Little History of Poetry?
Thanks again. Inspiration and sheepish enthusiasm… 🙂
You are probably to busy to do a lot on this area but yes, it is a fun little volume and the professor who wrote it is fantastic. Get it online. Also listen to his interview on You Tube. I was the only old guy in a class of bright millennials, and my Professor was a great teacher, and very welcoming, she taught us Close Reading and didn’t give up on us! Good luck, and I will wait for your “poem”! Bye for now…
Hi Shawn.
I also enjoy your writing , same as Allan.
What I like especially (as it stimulates my mind – and indeed clarifies for me sometimes my own thoughts ) is your analysis of history and how we interpret it.
Coming from a “revolutionary ” country and living in another for nearly 15 years (Ireland and the USA respectively) , I have always debated “evolution ” vs “revolution” in the context of affecting change.
I believe both have their place but the real kicker if I may quote you is “Social change requires generations. Every institution inverted, ploughed under by revolution. ”
Both revolution and evolution effect change but both take generations to do it in my opinion.
What is happening in the USA will continue to make us all question in all countries is one groups suffering more than the others ?
Even in Ireland with 800 years of oppression and much of it in servitude , does that equate with oppression ,enslavement , bigotry and discrimination elsewhere ?
In Ireland we also said , that nobody would understand unless you lived there but we found out that actually we were wrong and the situation there (as regards fairness and equity ) is probably the best it’s every been with the help of the international community .
So I ask again (though this time more acutely and less circuitously – which I’m often accused of ) , is this a revolution or evolution .
Will it up-end hallowed institutions (such as the thin blue line ) over the generations or will it lead to an evolution ?
I certainly don’t know , I suppose we will know which direction when the Americans vote in November 🙂
Patrick,
Fascinating to see you connect experience across three countries and beyond. And what an excellent question to bring your thoughtful comments to a sharp point. I do not know either. But it seems to me that the last fifty years represent the pinnacle of enlightenment thought. Naked reason takes us higher and higher until we arrive at a state of post-modern thought. We reach the end to find dementing parasites.
I think we are at the end of a Polybius’ cycle: democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy, decay into ochlocracy (mob rule), oligarchy, and tyranny respectively.
Thanks so much for sharing this. Sure appreciate you taking time to share some encouragement. It will eat away at my brain over the day for sure!
Cheers
Hi Shawn.
Yes , that is the way things have worked so far in history -even pre-history (Polybius Cycle.. I never knew that cycle had been “formalized” )
Thank you for reading and indeed replying. (I’m now onto my 4th continent – clue -I’m FRACGP.)
Yes I see the battle lines forming are forming in the USA (Trump reversing more of the Obama Era “reforms” today – taking effect in late June . (ACLU ,Joe Biden and the more radical Democrats are un-able to stop him for now and very angry about it so… the polarization continues as it expected by your Polybius Cycle )
More homework for me now 😉 to research this Polybius guy/gal.
Regards
Patrick
Keep sharing your experience. How many do you know who’ve lived in so many places?
Hey Shawn,
It seems that every few generations, society needs to redefine itself through rallies and demonstrations lead by its youth.
No question, there are atrocities being committed that are wrong. But the injustices we are fighting today are growing from the immediate and personal to now include such things as petitions to change street names and the removal of past statues and monuments.
I had a “lively” discussion with my daughter about erasing history based on the lens of today. While there is no question there are historical figures that by today’s standards, were part of terrible injustices, I have an issue labeling them as strictly right or wrong and by that brush, removing them if they do not meet the threshold of today’s acceptability. Surely some of these individuals must have accomplished some good during their tenure on this planet and that by removing them, do you risk forgetting history?
I understand the youth of today wish to live in a society that THEY shape with THEIR ideals and morals. But I’m concerned that such a narrow perspective will lead to a society where past lessons will be ignored or forgotten. And one know that those that cannot remember the past…
Some may say right and wrong are universal truths, and we shouldn’t be needing to redefine them. Wrong is always wrong no matter what day or age you live in. Why is it then, that since we’ve been living in organized society now for so many millennium, we aren’t yet in a perfect utopia? Shouldn’t we have already figured out all the wrongs and corrected for them?
Or is it because there are those in power that make laws to serve an agenda rather than serve society? And we all know that what is legal is not necessarily what is right.
So why can’t we as a society, choose leaders that do the right thing, to create this utopia that we feel should exist? It is perhaps this failure that forces us every few generations, to raise our voices and say “enough”. I wonder if I can guess which of today’s laws and today’s leaders will be rallied against by the children of tomorrow.
Each time humans have attempted to build an utopia they managed to create a dystopic hell.
Individual freedom is the stumbling block for the utopians.
One humans’ concept of utopia is another humans’ concept of hell.
“ All the utopias will come to pass only when we grow wings and all people are converted into angels”.
( Dostoevsky)
“Whether you experience heaven or hell, remember that it is your mind which creates them.”
“Any reality is an opinion-we make up our own reality”
“Think for yourself. Question authority.”
― Timothy Leary
Fantastic quotes from both of you. Thanks so much for sharing them with us!
Reality exists, it is not a function of our ideas, it is what it is regardless of whether we want it to be.
The reality may well be that one is about to enter the gas chamber at an extermination as a tyrant attempts to create an utopia, it’s not an opinion…Frankle stated, even in that Situation, facing that fact, one possesses one last human freedom, the ability to choose one’s attitude towards that reality.
One can of course ignore reality …of course nihilistic post modernist philosophers deny its existence…. those on psychedelics question it…I have a 4 by 4 that can clarify the point.
Rob,
How dare you question whether the past was not a dark age to expunge. Can’t you see that present suffering is 100% due to historic evil? Why aren’t you convinced that tomorrow will be better once we exterminate the bad ideas?
Great comments. Where the past was bad, we need it precisely because it was so. Even if we disagree with some bit of nonsense, we highlight it so people can learn and avoid it. Trying to erase it or rewrite history guarantees that it becomes part of the future.
We seem determined to relearn what history has already taught.
Thanks so much for your thoughtful comment!
Cheers
Raised in Wales , the “ land of bards“ , where bards are chaired in the annual national eisteddfod…some years no poem is considered to be good enough and no chair awarded.
Our village had one famous bard named Dewi and one sat in awe on one of his bardic chairs in the dining room when one was invited to tea.
Bottom line, I’m no poet….Poetry was taught at school … I’m more in the John Gilpin ballad league…however I loved listening to poets reciting and to politicians such as Winston whose language are poetic….journalists who write in such a fashion are, unfortunately, dying out.
I agree that Canada is not the 51 st. State of its neighbour to the south and it should not behave as if it was…where slavery is concerned Canada was the terminus for the underground railway in the 19th century for the escaped slaves from the USA and it has been the terminus for ex slaves and oppressed ever since.
Tsar Alexander II emancipated the serfs within his empire in 1861, US slaves were emancipated a year later in 1862…emancipated serfs who had no land and who chose not to become bonded labourers to their past masters, took the opportunity to jump on the first boat to North America…the ex serfs from the Russian Empire from Ukraine, Poland etc, met discrimination on arrival, but they rolled up their sleeves, they were free, politically free without which all other freedoms are meaningless.
We poured into the professions and those remaining in the Empire became more literate with a higher marriage rate, lower illegitimacy rate and Lower unemployment rate than our ex masters…the same phenomenon occurred in the USA, freed slaves , realizing the value of education, founded universities such as Howard, and became more literate with a higher marriage rate and illegitimacy rate than their ex masters…Sowell has written on the subject, unfortunately matters went off the rails in the USA and reversed itself.
Ex serfs / slaves have done well in Canada having shaken off their old shackles, we see their descendants in our profession.
There are up to 40,000,000 slaves still existent in the world, not counting those enslaved in countries such as North Korea, 20% of the population of Mauritania remain in slavery and bonded labour….it is sad to see the indifference of the descendants of freed slaves and serfs ( it was cheaper to buy a serf in my homeland than to purchase one in Atlanta) towards those who remain enslaved around the world …self flagellation or the flagellation of neighbours, particularly by those who were themselves descended from serfs, is no solution.
As Shaun points out, North Americans have become , over the decades, a genetic cocktail, mixing the genes of serf and non serf…how do they contemplate how a modern North American cocktail would pay reparations to 60, 50, 40% of themselves?
LOWER illegitimate rate amongst ex US slaves …so Sowell pointed out…if a girl in that era, from that community, got pregnant in Chicago she got smuggled back to Mississippi for delivery now 75% of all births in that community are to single mothers.
Fascinating comments and history, as usual, Andris.
We — me included — know so little about what it means to live outside a western political system. Professors incite students to tear down the system that gave them the freedom to incite. But to even take up that line of thought appears heartless in the face of people sharing their own truth.
Thanks for posting!
Robin Williams was quoted as saying “ cocaine is God’s way of telling you that you are making too much money”….it seems that humans are wired not to tolerate too much prosperity being able to self destruct as individuals or as a society….it looks as if they are in the process of doing so South of the border.
There’s a cartoon of a person sawing off the branch that he is sitting on…that’s what is going on at present ” this branch is of a tree planted by an evil people, the branch is therefore evil, therefore I will saw it off”…..crash!!!
Classic. Never mind whether the tree is good. It was started by bad, therefore all bad. But don’t you dare draw attention to it