Clumsy Tyrants

So I started reading my History of England text because I feel I ought to though the course is over. The text is, The Story of Britain by Rebecca Fraser. I trust my instructor, but the text is a little odd. For one it lacks any foot/endnotes or a bibliography, so I'm also using Simon Schama's A History of Britain documentary as a compliment. Anyway, I came across an anecdote in the text regarding William the Conqueror. Apparently upon landing at Pevensey William tripped and sprawled his full length after disembarking his ship. Fraser claims that the superstitious Normans saw this as an ill omen. William took advantage of the situation the story tells us, "the duke leaped up with earth clutched in his fists, he exclaimed that he had only wanted to grasp his new kingdom more closely."
Its a great anecdote but I don't believe it. I'm the first to admit my scarce knowledge of the subject I endeavor to teach one day but I have read the same story, almost verbatim, but with Caesar in place of William. So either both stories aren't true, William did trip and suddenly remembered his classical history or its merely a myth. It probably won't change the course of history if the truth goes one way or another in regard to the story but it can totally change my opinion of the author. Or, maybe it is true and I should change my opinion of the previous author who had recounted Caesar's story.
As historical anecdotes or stories go, this one also reminds me of the oft cited anecdote regarding military brutality. My own dad has mentioned the Japanese and their bayonets while in occupation of China. Most stories simply change the perpetrator and victim to suit their own story. The occupying force tosses up babies and tries to catch them with their bayonets in the midst of everything they are already doing. Its a nice sentence to remember in place of all the atrocities that may have actually occurred. It serves as a symbol, like saying, "Hey, if they'll bayonet babies its not hard to believe that they would do anything else!" I don't doubt that it has occurred at some point in time, but I'm also unsure of who actually did it.
Anecdotes (good & bad) make history interesting for the passing observer but we tend to confuse them. I think remembering an individual story is much better than a vague generalization. If someone wants a story about the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel or Anne Frank tops bayoneting babies any day.

Violence over Sex

I was watching tv, killing time this morning before I had to go to work and came across an episode of Step by Step. I never watched the show but it appeared like most other sitcoms, nuclear family, etc. The intention of this particular episode was to show the comedic implications associated with explaining sex to a little girl.
Well after she had learned from her parents she told others of course. The boy she played with was told by his parents after they learned what the girl was spouting out that he wasn't allowed around her anymore. The parents of the girl decided to have a meeting with the boy's parents. After a small argument they allowed the children to play together again, the girl told the boy to come over to her house so they could watch the nature channel. The boy's parents were naturally alarmed until the girl's explained that it was a violent week so he was 'safe'.
Their was the automated laughter in the background and the show carried on. Whether the laughter was over the lack of sex or the approval of violence over sex doesn't matter to me. I'm not on a crusade against Step by Step. But that sense of mind is the tone of America.
For some reason, we will send our children to the most violent and blood thirsty movies before we send them to one with nudity. I tend to think it is our strong Puritan roots in the American psyche. Abstaining from any kind of pleasurable activity while actively pursuing violent behavior. Maybe its out of fear. Sex brings on a lot of connotations, growing up and leaving the next for one.
I watch just as many violent movies and play just as many violent games as the next person so neither am I on a crusade against that. From my standpoint, parental unwillingness to discuss such matters for whatever reason for both issues needs to be addressed. I read last semester about Japanese child bearing. While we tell a child who say throws a ball at a wall to stop because its rude or bad for the wall; the Japanese associate feelings with the ball: how bad it must feel. It apparently is capable of instilling compassion in the child. Maybe we need a similar kind of compassion. Partake in all the fake violence you like but know the difference. I guess the next step would be watch all the porn you want but know the difference?
The fact is though, I don't care. I just want it to stop. Discussing why man can be so cruel seems like a distressing topic to a parent, not why man can love so much.

For her embarrassment

So today I was with my girlfriend and we were wrestling (totally innocent) anyway she ended up throwing me off the bed. I was rather surprised but the most shocking statement made was from her, "Ha!" she said, "you let your knight be kinged..." This wasn't an innuendo of any kind but it is rather encouraging if I ever decide to play chess with her.

Project Gutenberg

I've been aware of Project Gutenberg and the like for some time but only now have I realized their full potential. I took an 8 and then 5 hour train ride to and from Chicago during the first half of the week, during which I spent many hours reading The Sign of Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Decline and Fall by Gibbon through TextOnPhone which utilizes Project Gutenberg.
The availability of free books after their copyright has expired is a gift to the public. Now, regardless of class, race, and most importantly the end of all things, economic status one can read the finest classics of world literature.
Since the Project deems Gutenberg the honor of his name attached to their charitable work, I thought I'd discuss Gutenberg the man. (This will also enable me to utilize my new Britannica subscription.)
Johannes Gutenberg was a German printer who utilized a new form of printing that, "was used without important change until the 20th century." Apparently, what little we know of Gutenberg comes from financial documents with his name somewhere therein. When it was discovered that Gutenberg was working on something secret, those who were funding his exploits demanded a partnership. A five-year contract was drawn up and curiously it stipulated that if any of the partners died their heirs would not be brought into the partnership but compensated financially. Curious because one of the members did die and his heirs sued. Though they lost the trial revealed that Gutenberg was working on something new.
Gutenberg continued to work on the invention and he borrowed money from everybody. At least one who was willing at first would later sue Gutenberg wishing for a quick return on their loan. By 1455, Gutenberg had produced his famed Bible. Ten years later the archbishop of Mainz would pension Gutenberg but not before one of his loans from Johann Fust would backfire. Fust was the one who wanted a quick return and he won his suit, gaining control of many of Gutenberg's printing materials and printing on his own with them.
Some may criticize our canonization of Gutenberg because he was certainly not the first, and definitely not the first in the world. (The Chinese had discovered printing as early as twelve centuries before.) At least in the West, Gutenberg symbolizes so much. And for our minds it is much easier to put all that symbolism into one being. With Gutenberg we see printing and through the printing press we see the advent of journalism, the catalyst for the political pamphlet and a massive increase in books. If anyone has seen the global warming movie, The Day after Tomorrow you may recall the little soapbox about the written word. I tend to agree. The written word and through Gutenberg's its publication may be man's greatest invention.

The following are two links to Britannica's articles on the matter, one regarding printing and the other Gutenberg:

Gutenberg

Printing

Britannica

Anyone who happens to stumble upon my blog may note that the column to the right features (currently) 3 widgets from the encyclopedia Britannica. These are available free to anyone out there and can be quite helpful for the theme of my blog, useless knowledge. But the much more important tidbit of information I wish to share is Britannica's new WebShare initiative.
If you have not heard already, the folks at Britannica are offering full use of the encyclopedia to anyone who regularly publishes on a blog or website. They individually select candidates so creating a blog for the encyclopedia is probably a dumb idea.
Anyway, they were nice enough to grant me access so in the pursuit of my studies I'll be citing them. Those who do not have access will be able to view the articles I cite for free on Britannica's website.
Its an initiative to read blogs and we're advertising the encyclopedia for them, win-win I guess.

Animal Farm

I recently read George Orwell's satire of the Communist Revolution and the Stalinist regime. I actually read it on my iPhone through a wonderful site called textonphone but it happened to skip over the copyright date. So as I read the book innocently with only some vague knowledge of when it was published (my theory was off by about 20 years) I continued to see the French Revolution played out before my eyes.
Granted, from the flag the animals made down to the massacres of those supporting the rebel Snowball it was obvious that it could just as easily be communism. It is quite startling to me to see the two revolutions so paralleled. The removal of their king (Mr. Jones) followed by his attempt to retake the throne (Louis XIV was of course held prisoner but his fellow monarchs did attempt to put him back on the throne) and the republic that was established. This of course was followed by the creation of a common enemy (traitors instead of the aristocracy) and a Reign of Terror ending in Napoleon the pig becoming like the real Napoleon. All of this was coordinated by a massive propaganda campaign to literally change history.
I'm not saying that Animal Farm is not about Stalin and the USSR, but intentionally or not Orwell pointed something out to me that I had never noticed. Of course depending on how much lenience you give and what broad strokes the artist uses, you can always interpret something out of it. For example, Plato's description of a dictator in The Republic sounds just like Hitler and maybe even Napoleon as well.
Basically, a tyrant comes to power because the people need a strong leader after something horrible has happened. Depression, terrorist attack, war, etc. The leader comes to power by the good graces of the people who are blind to how much power he wishes to take from them. He then has to constantly make war on other countries or even individual groups so that the people always have not only a common enemy but also a constant threat which leads to the need for a strong leader. Many might say that everything turns out alright in the end, because the dictator eventually is overthrown or dies but who would want to take the risk? I think people need to realize when tragedies happen that the government's ability to react should be just as limited as it always should be. To say that it will all turn out all right no matter how much liberty we give up is to forget that in the past millions die in the process.

A Response to Being Black and Jewish

For class today, I read a piece called Being Black and Jewish out of The Multicultural Experience by Naomi Zack. Zack outlines a series of problems with having this cultural and racial montage.
I'd like to first state that I am neither black nor Jewish and if one has to know I descend from a line of Italian (check out the last name) and Irish parents who themselves no doubt have intermarried through other cultures to create this half-baked melting pot called me. So I cannot speak from experience as Zack does but at the same time the whole basis of Zack's argument is centered around a need for a common enemy. Zack states that,

...in fighting with each other in public, blacks and Jews are in effect addressing an audience that each side may hope is the real enemy of the other side alone but that is almost certainly the enemy of both sides.

To me, the word 'enemy' in addressing the white population is rather strong. The problem with such articles on race and racism is that it falls into the very trap it is describing and usually usually attacking by making such broad strokes. There is a commonly held notion among many a pleb and philosopher that man needs a common enemy, Zack apparently believes that race and a race war is the answer to this equation. While I will not deny that throughout history people are brought together and often are closest when they are opposing some common 'evil' whether it is another nation or a whole race, this being best exemplified by the Nazis in every way. I think that this common enemy is totally dependent on the education of either the leader or the common populace. Granted, it has been shown that many of the most educated are still willing to commit the most heinous crimes I feel that education in itself is a broad strokes term, it involves practical education as well as some kind of moral education - whether that is philosophy, general ethics or religion is up to the individual. So such common enemies I think can be divided into almost a pyramid, the lowest being race followed by religion and then ideology.
Race is a baseless attack made by casual observance of your opponent or your simple need for a reason to exploit him/her. Religion is really more introspective, one looks at his own religion which he perceives as flawless and compares it to what he perceives as the heresy of another. I only place religious attacks above race because it requires at least a little more thought. Ideology, good or bad, does require one to put together his own ideology in the process of attacking another.

Zack also mentions the need for the Jews to have a homeland. To guarantee that someday someone sends me a reply to all that I have stated I thought I would seize upon this as well. I disagree. At the very least I disagree on the locale. The Zionist movement was a secular movement and Palestine as a home was a mistake. Without being a Biblical scholar I hesitate to back this claim up but in passing reference I think that the Jews could only lay claim to Palestine as long as a Canaanite does not happen to come along. But on a practical level I feel that by choosing Palestine the Jewish inhabitants alienated their sole refuge at least since the Ottoman Empire. I back this claim up by simply stating that after Jewish expulsion from Western Europe, the Jews fled to Constantinople and the Ottoman Empire, Muslims treated the Jews like Christians as 'people of the book'. But this is an argument for another time so I think I'll stop here.

This was simply my little soap box and it is very possible that I may change my mind as quickly as I came up with my opinion on the matter. I do hope in the future to post more comments on my individual research, be it history or otherwise.