World Beyond

Spring

Chilly Spring morning

snow melts beneath pale blue sky

barren trees revive

Meditations from Marcus Aurelius - III

I recently read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, a version translated by Gregory Hays.  Aurelius was a Roman emperor during the 2nd century AD.  He was probably the closest example to a "philosopher king" that the world has ever known.  Aurelius was a follower of stoic philosphy which in many ways is quite close to Taoism or Zen Buddhism.  I'm including some of my favorite quotes here:

"All that you see will soon have vanished, and those who see it vanish will vanish themselves, and the ones who reached old age have no advantage over the untimely dead."

"Enough of this wretched, whining monkey life."

"Whatever happens to you has been waiting to happen since the beginning of time.  The twining strands of fate wove both of them together: your own existence and the things that happen to you."

"Learn to ask of all actions, “Why are they doing that?”  Starting with your own."

"A straightforward, honest person should be like someone who stinks: when you’re in the same room with him, you know it…If you’re honest and straightforward and mean well, it should show in your eyes…It should be audible in your voice, visible in your eyes, like a lover who looks into your face and takes in the whole story at a glance…It should be unmistakeable."

Meditations From Marcus Aurelius - II

I recently read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, a version translated by Gregory Hays.  Aurelius was a Roman emperor during the 2nd century AD.  He was probably the closest example to a "philosopher king" that the world has ever known.  Aurelius was a follower of stoic philosphy which in many ways is quite close to Taoism or Zen Buddhism.  I'm including some of my favorite quotes here:

"In a sense, people are our proper occupation. Our job is to do them good and put up with them."

"Remember: Matter. How tiny your share of it. Time. How brief and fleeting your allotment of it. Fate. How small a role you play in it."

"Look inward. Don’t let the true nature or value of anything elude you."

"The best revenge is not to be like that."

"Speak the truth as you see it. But with kindness. With humility. Without hypocrisy."

"You can discard most of the junk that clutters your mind—things that exist only there—and clear out space for yourself: 

…by comprehending the scale of the world

…by contemplating infinite time

…by thinking of the speed which things change—each part of every thing; the narrow space between our birth and death; the infinite time before; the equally unbounded time that follows."

Meditations From Marcus Aurelius - I

I recently read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, a version translated by Gregory Hays.  Aurelius was a Roman emperor during the 2nd century AD.  He was probably the closest example to a "philosopher king" that the world has ever known.  Aurelius was a follower of stoic philosphy which in many ways is quite close to Taoism or Zen Buddhism.  I'm including some of my favorite quotes here:

"Things have no hold on the soul.  They stand there unmoving, outisde it.  Disturbance comes only from within—from our own perceptions."

"Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed.  Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been."

"Constant awareness that everything is born from change.  The knowledge that there is nothing nature loves more than to alter what exists and make new things like it.  All that exists is the seed of what will emerge from it.  You think the only seeds are the ones that make plants or children?  Go deeper."

A little wisp of soul carrying a corpse.  – Epictetus (One of Aurelius' favorite philosphers)

"People try to get away from it all -- to the country, to the beach, to the mountains.  You always wish that you could too.  Which is idiotic: you can get away from it anytime you like.  By going within.  Nowhere you can go is more peaceful -- free of interruptions -- than your own soul."

Miscellaneous

She is slender and enigmatic – just the two traits men want.  -- Alexander Pushkin

To know our wretchedness without knowing our greatness produces despair.  To know our greatness without realizing our wretchedness inflames our pride.  -- Thomas Morris

Two excesses: to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason.  -- Blaise Pascal

Man’s true nature, his true good and true virtue, and true religion are things that cannot be known separately.  - Blaise Pascal

Truth is so obscured nowadays and lies so well established that unless we love the truth we shall never recognize it.  -- Blaise Pascal

Men’s lives are not always consistent with their ideals.  -- Gregory Hayes

A human being survives by his ability to forget.  -- Varlam Shalamov

The Whisperers

I just finished reading an extremely informative and interesting book entitled The Whisperers by the historian Orlando Figes.  The book describes private life in the Soviet Union during the terrible Stalin years.  Figes has written several other books about Russia. The Whisperers combines his masterful expertise with the oral histories of over 300 individuals who survived perhaps the cruelest and most systematic repression ever encountered on this planet.

I’m pretty familiar with Russian history and have read other books describing this period, but to me this is by far the best, because it describes the personal impact of Stalin’s paranoia and extremely dysfunctional nature of the Soviet regime across a broad cross-section of individual Russian lives and generations.  If you’re unfamiliar with this period in Russian history, you may want to bone up on some of the facts ahead of time, or be ready to do a little research on the internet to fill in some gaps.  Either way, you’ll be amazed and assaulted by story after story of the terror generated by this totalitarian regime.
 

I remember reading a quote attributed to Stalin that “the death of one person is a tragedy, the death of thousands is a statistic.”  The genius of this book is that it translates the horrible statistics of the Stalin years: millions arrested arbitrarily and exiled to work-camps, millions dead due to the extreme conditions at these camps, and hundreds of thousands more executed, into stark, individual tragedies.  And not simply the tragedy of the lives cut short, but also the enduring psychological toll the arbitrary arrests and long years of exile inflicted upon the survivors and their families.  These effects can still be felt as you travel throughout Russia and the former Soviet republics. 
 

Figes and those individuals who labored to collect this data have done a wonderful work in memorializing the personal pain and suffering of an entire nation.  The Whisperers stands as a testament to the suffering of millions of innocents at the hands of a morally bankrupt, autocratic regime.

In Russia, hopefully history will not repeat itself.  Certainly conditions are different now than in the days after the Russian Revoltion and Civil War.  But as the Russian government and state industries are dominated by former and current members of the intelligence services, where the rule of law is weak and those that oppose the Putin regime are arrested or die mysteriously, the future is murky at best.   

Leaderless Jihad

I generally only recommend books after I've read them, but in this case I need to make an exception.

Several weeks ago I added the book Leaderless Jihad by Marc Sageman to my list of books to buy.  But since I already had a good-sized stack to take with me on my upcoming trip out of country, I postponed the purchase.  I'll be gone for about seven weeks though, and I didn't want to wait until I get back to mention the book here.

David Ignatius mentioned the book in a recent column.  Quoting Ignatius,

The heart of Sageman's message is that we have been scaring ourselves into exaggerating the terrorism threat -- and then by our unwise actions in Iraq making the problem worse. He attacks head-on the central thesis of the Bush administration, echoed increasingly by Republican presidential candidate John McCain, that, as McCain's Web site puts it, the United States is facing "a dangerous, relentless enemy in the War against Islamic Extremists" spawned by al-Qaeda.

What we have here friends is some real analysis.  Finally.  Not just more fear-mongering and political posturing.  News Flash:  Most politicians want us scared so we'll vote for them, then approve whatever "big brother" agenda they're promoting this week.  Sageman has the credentials and presents a well-reasoned argument.  His policy advice?  (again quoting Ignatius)

is to "take the glory and thrill out of terrorism." Jettison the rhetoric about Muslim extremism -- these leaderless jihadists are barely Muslims. Stop holding news conferences to announce the latest triumphs in the "global war on terror," which only glamorize the struggle. And reduce the U.S. military footprint in Iraq, which fuels the Muslim world's sense of moral outrage.

It's much too late for the Bushies.  Hopefully the next administration will follow that advice. 

Love Stories

A few weeks ago I wrote a short message prompted by a review of the book My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead edited by Jeffrey Eugenides.  The book contains love stories written by a variety of authors.  If you haven't picked the book up yet, I suggest that you do.

I finished the book yesterday, and although all the stories are good, there are a few stories that I really enjoyed.  Your tastes are probably different, but I recommend them if you're pressed for time.  In no particular order:

Innocence by Harold Brodkey
The Bear Came Over the Mountain by Alice Munro
What we Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver
The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud
We Didn't by Stuart Dybek
Fireworks by Richard Ford
Jon by George Saunders
Yours by Mary Robison
Spring in Fialta by Vladimir Nabokov
Lovers of Their Time by William Trevor
The Lady with the Little Dog by Anton Chekov

Happy reading!!