What Makes a Gentleman...

"Hence it is that it is almost a definition of a gentleman to say he is one who never inflicts pain. This description is both refined and, as far as it goes, accurate. He is mainly occupied in merely removing the obstacles which hinder the free and unembarrassed action of those about him; and he concurs with their movements rather than takes the initiative himself. His benefits may be considered as parallel to what are called comforts or conveniences in arrangements of a personal nature: like an easy chair or a good fire, which do their part in dispelling cold and fatigue, though nature provides both means of rest and animal heat without them. The true gentleman in like manner carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast;—all clashing of opinion, or collision of feeling, all restraint, or suspicion, or gloom, or resentment; his great concern being to make every one at their ease and at home. He has his eyes on all his company; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd; he can recollect to whom he is speaking; he guards against unseasonable allusions, or topics which may irritate; he is seldom prominent in conversation, and never wearisome. He makes light of favours while he does them, and seems to be receiving when he is conferring. He never speaks of himself except when compelled, never defends himself by a mere retort, he has no ears for slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing motives to those who interfere with him, and interprets every thing for the best. He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp sayings for arguments, or insinuates evil which he dare not say out. From a long-sighted prudence, he observes the maxim of the ancient sage, that we should ever conduct ourselves towards our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend. He has too much good sense to be affronted at insults, he is too well employed to remember injuries, and too indolent to bear malice. He is patient, forbearing, and resigned, on philosophical principles; he submits to pain, because it is inevitable, to bereavement, because it is irreparable, and to death, because it is his destiny. If he engages in controversy of any kind, his disciplined intellect preserves him from the blundering discourtesy of better, perhaps, but less educated minds; who, like blunt weapons, tear and hack instead of cutting clean, who mistake the point in argument, waste their strength on trifles, misconceive their adversary, and leave the question more involved than they find it. He may be right or wrong in his opinion, but he is too clear-headed to be unjust; he is as simple as he is forcible, and as brief as he is decisive. Nowhere shall we find greater candour, consideration, indulgence: he throws himself into the minds of his opponents, he accounts for their mistakes. He knows the weakness of human reason as well as its strength, its province and its limits." - from John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University, 8.10

Fear of Wind....(Anemophobia)

Okay...I admit it...I used to be afraid of the wind (past tense).  Hasn't everyone gone through a phase like that? No? Well, I'm happy to report that I never cowered in fear because of a thunderstorm.... unless of course that same storm was accompanied by a little wind - and lightning. So how about those other, "usual-suspect" fears? Snakes? Yes. Rats? Yes. Sharks? Who isn't scared of them? Plebeians? Ick.  Radioactivity? Yes, yes. Crowded elevators? Affirmative. Is that so unwarranted? But this was a so-called irrational fear, a phobia. I used to believe that my house was going to blow over, used to imagine trees being uprooted and cars being tossed around in the sky, used to anticipate windows imploding, dishes shattering, walls collapsing,  furniture overturning, cliffs eroding, people fleeing, animals howling and my beloved basketball hoop crashing down to the ground. Every time the breeze would appear, I would begin mildly hyper-ventilating, pacing up and down, chanting my "why? why? why?" mantra. But I had cause. What the heck can you do on a windy day besides fly a kite? Well...make a long story short, the weather apocalypse never came to my hometown; but unfortunately did arrive elsewhere. It was always the midwest or the south and I used to be mesmerized by visions of tornadoes and hurricanes on the news, so what was I getting so worked up about growing up in California? We had smog, heat-waves, earthquakes, mud slides, brush fires, traffic jams, zodiac killers - a myriad of indigenous horrors to deal with! Why couldn't I cling to my neurotic clown phobia or my fear of polyester?  It was those dreaded Santa Ana storms that arrive during the late summer and continue into the fall, at the peak of fire season. 

Piano or Guitar

The ultimate dilemma: piano or guitar? What does it say about a person to choose one over the other? Granted, I neglect  to mention violin, flute, trumpet, organ, cello, tuba, French horn, oboe, clarinet, banjo, bass or ukelele  as part of this competition, but you understand. It's like cats and dogs. What does it say about a person to choose one over the other? Must decide. Serious dilemma...for some of us.

Paging Don Draper

Note: Don Draper, of "Mad Men" fame, is the fictional character whose complexity as a modern American male,  embodies the ambiguities of arete that the ancient Greeks first identified; namely the tension between "conventional goodness" (understood as respectable, law-abiding, self-controlled behavior) and "greatness of soul" (understood as courage, independence, risk-taking adventurism).  Don is not much for staying home and keeping the hearth-fires warm; he's out there in the arena, making his mark, letting his star shine bright, conniving, competing, mixing it up, going in search of dragons to slay, outwitting rivals, entangling himself in the lives of others, acquiring mistresses and proteges, complicating matters and making things really messy for himself and everyone else. Needless to say, so many of our celebrities grab our attention in a similar sort of way by displaying what the Greeks would call "greatness of soul" while violating certain conventional norms.  By not letting their moral inhibitions get in the way of a good time or another conquest, they conform to one side of the "virtue coin" while neglecting the other, because virtue (arete) is unfortunately for us mortals, two-sided. And somehow we judge THEM - these normal-rules-don't-apply-to-me types - by a different standard, we root for them, admire them, forgive them always and everywhere, cheer them on, model our day-dreams on their life-script, because they're so darn confident and charismatic. Does this ring a bell with anyone? Just think of your favorite "wild and crazy" celebrity and what you allow him or her to get away with, while the exact same behavior from a neighbor down the street would make you twitch with outrage and indignation. Ah Don, ah humanity. Well, Socrates, there's another can of worms you just happened to leave open...See prior post.

Ambiguities of Arete

Arete (definition): virtue, goodness, excellence,  greatness of soul, character

"Once more, Socrates, I will ask you to consider another way of speaking about justice and injustice, which is not confined to the poets, but is found in prose writers. The universal voice of mankind is always declaring that justice and virtue are honorable, but grievous and toilsome; and that the pleasures of vice and injustice are easy of attainment, and are only censured by law and opinion. They say also that honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty; and they are quite ready to call wicked men happy, and to honor them both in public and private when they are rich or in any other way influential, while they despise and overlook those who may be weak and poor, even though acknowledging them to be better than the others. But most extraordinary of all is their mode of speaking about virtue (arete) and the gods: they say that the gods apportion calamity and misery to many good men, and good and happiness to the wicked. And mendicant prophets go to rich men's doors and persuade them that they have a power committed to them by the gods of making an atonement for a man's own or his ancestor's sins by sacrifices or charms, with rejoicings and feasts; and they promise to harm an enemy, whether just or unjust, at a small cost; with magic arts and incantations binding heaven, as they say, to execute their will. And the poets are the authorities to whom they appeal, now smoothing the path of vice with the words of Hesiod: Vice may be had in abundance without trouble; the way is smooth and her dwelling-place is near. But before virtue the gods have set toil, and a tedious and uphill road: then citing Homer as a witness that the gods may be influenced by men; for he also says: The gods, too, may he turned from their purpose; and men pray to them and avert their wrath by sacrifices and soothing entreaties, and by libations and the odour of fat, when they have sinned and transgressed....And now when the young hear all this said about virtue and vice, and the way in which gods and men regard them, how are their minds likely to be affected, my dear Socrates, those of them, I mean, who are quickwitted, and, like bees on the wing, light on every flower, and from all that they hear are prone to draw conclusions as to what manner of persons they should be and in what way they should walk if they would make the best of life? Probably the youth will say to himself in the words of Pindar: Can I by justice or by crooked ways of deceit ascend a loftier tower which may he a fortress to me all my days? For what men say is that, if I am really just and am not also thought just profit there is none, but the pain and loss on the other hand are unmistakable. But if, though unjust, I acquire the reputation of justice, a heavenly life is promised to me." - Plato's Republic, Book 2, Jowett Translation

Alice Munro's Short Fiction

Correction by Thomas Bernhard

The art we need is the art of bearing the unbearable. - Thomas Bernhard.

"Roithamer is one of four children raised at Altensam, a palace which ruled over the area of the Aurach Gorge in Austria's mountainous northwest. Both the narrator and Hoeller were working class kids in the village below the palace and close friends of Roithamer when growing up. The narrator is also a Cambridge don in the sciences. Hoeller, who has never left the area, is a taxidermist and has built his own home in the gorge. Roithamer has had an extremely unhappy childhood, or at least this is his memory and construction of it, and he has fixated on his sister, deciding he will "save" her by building the most incredible building in the world, a gigantic cone in the very center of the local forest, in which she will live. It is a home for Rapunsel if ever there was one. The home, in some strange way we don't actually know, kills her and Roithamer's grief and defeat lead to his suicide. The time line action of the narration, in the sense that one can say there is one,  is that the narrator has come back to Hoeller's garret, where Roithamer lived when in Austria, and from where he designed and oversaw the building of the cone, in order to sort through Roithamer's papers. It is from both the narrator's tale in the first paragraph, and from Roithamer's papers which the narrator studies in the second paragraph (entitled Sifting and Sorting) that we learn the above and much, much more. The form is simply astonishing. I've already pointed out that this 271 page book of quite tiny print is only two paragraphs long. In some of the earliest pages it was not unusual for sentences to run well over 2 pages, so at first I had the sense there were more pages than sentences. Overall, however, I suspect the book must average about 3 sentences a page, perhaps fewer, I didn't count. The novel is 100% the narrator's first person story with a very few remembered conversations and a few quoted passages from Roithamer's papers (normally identified by "so Roithamer" at the end of the sentence). The seeming time line of the novel itself is probably two to three days at the most, all of which the narrator spends in Hoeller's garret (Roithamer's garret?) except for one brief meal with the Hoeller family spent mainly in silence." - from "Comments" on Correction  by Bob Corbett, January, 2001