Perspicadius and the Plagiarist

Socrates famously said that the unexamined life is not worth living.  For over two millennia this statement has provided thinkers a rationale for their queries.  These words have inspired those wanting to reflect upon their life and be deliberative in their actions.  What most people don’t realize is that the Athenian philosopher stole this line from the fifth-century orator, Perspicadius of Corinth, and pulled it out of context.  Historians of ancient Greece had only recently discovered the Corinthian’s original words buried in a Carolingian codex on the discarded shelf of a French monastery.  Posterity is more familiar with Perspicadius’s oft-cited line: “All Athenians are assholes.”  (Harsh for pious ears, a medieval scribe amended the phrase to “All Cretans are Liars” and attributed it to Epimenides of Knossos.)  Here are the words of Perspicadius: “The unexamined life is not worth living, but it is even more worthwhile to live your life without any thought at all.  Consider the beasts of the field.  Do they not live without introspection? Do they not care about their purpose or the meaning to life and yet they seem to be content?  Why should man be different?”  As it turns out, historians think the randy Socrates plagiarized the first statement in order to entice Athenian teens wanting to study philosophy under the master.  For the younger boys, Socrates used candy.  The historical damage has been done.  Socrates lives on in the memories of future generations, while the deeper truths of Perspicadius remain in obscurity.

Unmensch

Most people who meet me don’t like what they see.  Some think I’m the mother of all assholes, while others consider me no more than a loathsome spider they’d just as soon stamp out if they could.  What they have in common is that they’re repulsed, quite visibly so, and I can’t blame them.   I mean, I’m okay on paper, but once people interact with me face to face, they soon become bitterly disappointed.  One woman after meeting me, I’m told, contemplated suicide but somehow managed to pull herself out of this dark place enough to live at least a life of emotional pain and solitude in her basement.  Do you ever have moments when you wish you could have lived your life differently?  Do you ever reflect in the quietness of your heart that the road to happiness and enlightenment starts with little steps?  Do you ever come to a kind of cosmic realization that you could turn your life around?  That a person’s worth is not measured by others?  That there's always a way out of the darkness if you just look for the light?  Well, not me, but let me be absolutely clear on one point: If you see me from afar, you won’t think much of me, good or bad.  If you hazard a conversation or otherwise interact with me, however, you’ll walk away feeling convinced that there is no God and all that you hold as sacred in this life amounts to a pile of poo.

The Book of Job

I haven’t been feeling well these past few days.  Bearing these ills with patience and longsuffering, wretch that I am, is no easy task.  I’m not looking for sympathy, just an ear.  Why has food become such an enemy?  I don’t deserve to be obese and have type 2 diabetes.  Anyway, I’ve run out of insulin and the pharmacy won’t be open until Monday.  My liquor cabinet has been empty for days and I don’t have money to restock it because I basically torpedoed my family's financial security at the casino last Thursday.  Worst of all, my meth lab exploded yesterday and ruined the entire basement.  Fortunately the wife and kids were out of town at the time, as I had sent them to my parents' house with explicit instructions on how to play on their guilt for some cash.  To add insult to injury, the strip club down the street closed down.  That was my only recreation in life.  Really?  Am I really reduced to looking up call girls in my little black book?  Yes, unfortunately.  It's not easy to endure this suffering with a quiet heart.  I cry out to you, O Lord, but you do not answer me.  Oh well.  At least I haven’t broken out in boils from head to foot. 

Two Hearts on Canvas

A mysterious painting has drawn me here every day.  I gaze upon it and let my thoughts wonder.  The image on the canvas is foreboding, but I don’t think I’m alone in experiencing the almost insufferable sense of loneliness that it conveys.  This latter thought strangely comforts me.

 

I’ve been coming to this art gallery for nearly a week now.  At first I just sort of wandered around aimlessly, initially more interested in the sculptures than the engravings and paintings.  Full disclosure: I know very little about art, but I needed some kind of inspiration and figured a visit to the gallery would get me out of my funk.  Things haven’t been so great for me these days.  My life is in a state of flux and I feel like I’m swimming in a sea of self-doubt.  Last month I was essentially laid off from my job of fourteen years, though I was the last person at work to know.  I have other issues in my life right now that I don’t care to share.  Well, if you must know, I’m estranged from my parents and even before the layoff I’d been experiencing an “existential crisis,” if I can coin that outmoded phrase.  So viewing art, and one painting in particular, has been my only outlet and a diversion from my problems.

 

The artist managed to create two hearts in one crimson brushstroke and set it against a wispy, swirling grey background.  She called her work simply “A Brushstroke,” probably to make it absolutely clear that she pulled this image off with one remarkable move of the hand and wrist.  The artistry and simplicity of this canvas captured my imagination, admittedly not at the first viewing.  I kept coming back to this painting, as it resonated with my memories and life experience.

 

Maybe something else brings me here almost every day.  As I stood gazing at this painting on my second visit to the gallery, I became aware of a woman sitting on an ottoman near the wall opposite the framed picture.  She let me know with a polite clearing of her throat that I had been obstructing her view.  I moved to the left and offered an apology with my body language.  She had been writing or etching something into a pad of paper, so I assumed she was an art student.  Why was she so interested in this painting too?

You might find it odd that we didn’t interact.  I mean, why should we?  We’re complete strangers.   We exchanged courteous smiles as she got up to leave the gallery an hour later.  I thought I saw deep solitude in her eyes, but I later surmised that I was looking at my reflection mirrored back to me.  The next day, however, we spoke.  She asked me what I thought of the painting.  She said she’s getting a masters in art therapy and studying the effect that art can have on a person’s disposition.  This painting, she conceded in perhaps an unguarded moment, had captivated her but she didn't know why.  I told her I would tell her what I think over coffee at the diner.  We stepped outside and walked across a rain-soaked street under an overcast sky.

Bodhisattva

As you can well imagine, I occasionally take the “slings and arrows” of outrageous criticism for my views.  If I’m doing my job on this blog, you won’t find many partisan discussions of controversial issues that plague our bipolar political culture; however, I’m not averse to making a stand on certain issues that are important to me.  Most of my readers understandably agree with me, but there are a few contrarians out there.  The time has come to address my critics.  For instance, a colleague, in response to one of my blogs, asked me if I think of myself as some kind of enlightened one who dismisses other viewpoints.  Well, as it turns out, I am an enlightened one.  When I say enlightened, I mean this in a literal and technical sense.  You see, when I wore a younger man’s shoes, I gave up everything, all my possessions, including the shoes, and traveled to a remote Hindu monastery in the Himalayas to find wisdom and solace in this life.  I studied under some of the great Hindu masters of the past two generations.  I really don’t want to brag, but I would be remiss not to mention my discipleship under Swami Chandrasekharan Aranya who guided me toward sannyasa via the Dashanami Sampradaya tradition.  And I don’t mean to drop names here, but I studied under Mageshkumar and Jagmohan Taranjit Balakrishnan.   Anyway, I was able to renounce all material possessions and earthly desires.  Through a strict regimen of rice and spiritual meditation, I emptied myself of the self, achieved a blissful state of detachment from the world, and reached the pinnacle of complete humility.  I guess what I’m saying is that my views aren’t so much opinions as they are oracles of wisdom, sagacious sayings that few would dispute if they too were enlightened (my italics).

Forgiving and Negotiating with Evil: Memoirs of the Rwandan Genocide (2/2)

This summer and fall I’ll have students read Paul Rusesabagina’s autobiography for the Rwanda portion of my course.  He hid Tutsis at the Hotel Mille Collines where he served as hotel manager.  His heroism became the inspiration for the movie Hotel Rwanda.  The insights I gained from this book were pleasantly surprising.  Rusesabagina’s survival and his protection of over 1,200 people depended on his ability to negotiate.  The power of words got him through this difficult ordeal, though it didn’t hurt to have other negotiating “tools” at his disposal, such as alcohol and money.  His earlier training as a pastor had helped sharpen his communication skills.  Above all, Rusesabagina possessed innate political savvy.  He knew how to size up a person and how far he could go in negotiation.  He was a shrewd observer of poolside politics.  “Around this small square of water is where the real business of the Mille Collines is conducted.”  He learned how to use charm and work through the unspoken patronage system that governs relationships and grants favors.  This experience provided a valuable education and came into use during the genocide.

Rwanda was a multilateral failure, and Rusesabagina calls it like he sees it.  The UN was “worse than useless.”  Indeed, any credible book on the Rwandan genocide is essentially an indictment of UN peacekeeping missions.  The author doesn’t even spare General Romeo Dallaire, the UN commander on the ground, who was one of the few third-party officials trying to stop the killing and protect the innocents.  He didn’t do enough, writes Rusesabagina.  While he likes Dallaire on a personal level and acknowledges the Canadian’s efforts, Rusesabagina thinks he should have disobeyed orders from his UN higher-ups in New York and intervened in the conflict.  “At the very least it would have forced the UN to beef up its peacekeeping force and send us real fighters instead of inept draftees from nations who seemed more interested in collecting their per diem payments from the UN instead of doing anything meaningful.”  Whether disobeying orders and engaging militarily in the genocide would have helped I leave up to the reader.

Rusesabagina has less but equally harsh things to say about France, “the policeman of Africa.”  The French government was so concerned about English-friendly Tutsi taking over the country, that President Mitterand sent troops to the southern part of Rwanda in order to protect Hutus; this “peacekeeping mission” gave killers “the chance to look like victims instead of aggressors.”  Rusesabagina weighs in on Uncle Sam’s role as well.  The U.S. could have jammed the airwaves of RTLM, the talk radio program actively cheerleading the genocide.  He recounts a phone exchange he had with a dismissive and apathetic White House staffer.  In another passage Rusesabagina sourly comments that President Clinton, during his mea culpa visit in 1998, never left the airport.  Unlike Immaculeé, the hotel manager is more critical of the United States and Paul Kagame, the current president, a Tutsi leader who commanded the Rwandan Patriotic Front that ended the genocide.  Whether these differences have to do with their ethnic background—Rusesabagina is Hutu and Immaculeé is Tutsi—is an open question.

What I most enjoyed about An Ordinary Man was the author’s shrewd assessment of human nature.  His observations of Rwandan history taught him that “most politics is an outgrowth of emotions that may or may not have any relation to the rational.”  Indeed, that’s how I see the rancorous division in the U.S., especially since the days of Clinton and Bush; the differences stem from visceral feelings and not from reasonable arguments.  In another passage of the book Rusesabagina comes back to this idea: “People are never as reasonable as they seem to be—in fact, 'reason' is usually an afterthought, nothing more than a cover story for the feelings inside.”  I’ve espoused the same viewpoint on this blog.  Where we differ perhaps is on the nature of evil.  In the concluding chapter Rusesabagina draws on C.S. Lewis to make the case that common decency is the norm in humanity; evil is an aberration.  Finally, the author ends his book on a realistic note.  He doesn’t give platitudes about a brighter future or give voice to the hopeful but vapid “Never again!” slogan.  No.  There will be genocides in the future.  All we can do is find strength and take example from those who resisted evil or, in the case of the hotel manager of the Milles Collines, negotiated with it to save lives.

Erika the Intern

I spent the late afternoon and evening with Erika in beautiful Mundelein, a village north of Chicago, where she’ll be working as an intern for a business that sells medical supplies.  She starts an eight-week internship tomorrow.  After checking into the hotel around 5:30, we explored this upscale town to see what it has to offer and how far the business is from the hotel.  I knew the town like the back of my hand before we left; that is, I gave the region a good scrutiny on Google Maps.  Mundelein and the adjacent Vernon Hills consist of industrial parks and plenty of places to eat and shop.  This place is definitely upscale and expensive.  We ate on the outdoor patio of a fine Mexican restaurant and had “Guacamole Live” as an appetizer.  A dude made it fresh on the spot!  Exciting.  I guess that served as our entertainment for the evening.  I went out on a limb and got three cheese enchiladas with rice and beans.  Erika did the same.  We had a fun discussion about the family.  I find Erika to be so easy going; she’s a pleasure to be around.  I think she’s a classic phlegmatic: an introvert and relationship-oriented person.  After the dinner we went to the grocery store so Erika could stock up her hotel room kitchen for the next week or so.  She’s settling into her hotel room and I’m currently in the lobby lounge area.  I’m proud of Erika.