Nate Weger's Blog
June 20, 2017
The Christian Roots of Postmodernism
Resentful Cain and Righteous Abel
Review of Explaining postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault by Stephen Hicks
My attention was directed to this book by Jordan Peterson but I had first heard about 'postmodernism' listening to Ravi Zacharius on YouTube.
Although Stephen is not shy letting the reader know what he thinks of postmodernism from his 'rational' philosophical perspective I think that he is even handed in articulating at least where it comes from and its basic tenants.
The book is technical but comprehensible by anyone that has heard about postmodernism and wants to know more about it knowing on the outset that the author doesn't support it.
If you are a Western, non-marginalized product of the enlightenment you will probably agree with him. If not then you will probably write a review saying something like 'no that is not what Derrida and Foucault meant' but then you would have to use reason to prove your point which will be difficult and they will then instead resort to colorful language to express your resentment and ad hominom points.
Having said that, I was particularly interested in Stephen Hicks analyses of postmodernism's roots in Kant, Hegel and even Kierkegaard.
The reformation created this idea that man doesn't need an intermediary (pope, priest, etc..) to talk with God. Through both revelation and reason the Bible could be understood and applied by anyone who took the time to apply themselves - that every person can have an individual relationship with God. This simple idea arguably gave birth to the enlightenment and as Hicks points out many of the 'enlightened' minds in the height of the enlightenment were card carrying Christians (Newton, Liebnez) or at the very least deists (Bacon).
As most people know, exposing everything to the light of reason brought many advances scientifically which positively affected the common man but this also had its own negative side affects, as well. Nietzsche points this out. He realized that since Darwin used enlightens reason to give an alternate understanding of how we all came about besides being created that this essentially 'killed God' and even though he was by no means a fan of religion, he recognized that this was not a good thing for humanity.
The child that was birthed by the Reformation grew up and killed its Father in the Enlightenment.
The problem was that a big black abyss of darkness filled where the Father used to be. This was called Nihilism and everyone who is 'reasonable' has to deal with it and what everyone since then has been trying desperately to neutralize.
The reality is that it caused an existential crisis in the child because of the paradox that if your father never existed how can you exist?
It is the nuclear waste that is a direct result of reason.
I understood this before I read this book but what I didn't know, and that Hick's points out, is that many of the philosophers of the enlightenment still had deep religious convictions and faith (of the Christian kind) and they all realized the threat reason posed on their faith but more importantly they became aware of this abyss called nihilism. This can be summed up on the Dostoevsky quote Hick's mentions "Even if I find out Christ is not real I would still believe in Him" The alternative at least for Dostoevsky was too dire (and stressful).
It became obvious that ones reason when pitted against ones beliefs caused anxiety. Kierargaard realized this and pointed it out. Hence, he became known as the first existential philosopher in that he reformulated Christian faith as an answer to the existential paradox reason created.
In their attempts to subvert reasons strangle hold on reality, the philosophers of old used their reasoning power to try and fight reason back and give a little room for faith or non-reason again (seems very ironic).
So, weirdly, according to Hicks, postmodernism's long lost cousin, in a way, is Christian doctrine.
Hick's even goes as far to connect the two in the present day using the example of creationists wanting to 'irrationally' set up their theory as truth and silence all others (not sure if this is totally fair) with postmodern ideology of not listening to any rational argument against it since reason itself is the source of the problem.
Another historical observation that he makes that I found very interesting was when he juxtaposed the two paths enlightenments reason took and the two very different outcomes it produced in Britain first (and later America) and France. The question that while they were cut from the same cloth of the Enlightenment, as it were, why did they have such different outcomes? The bloody French revolution and the relatively bloodless British and American revolutions.
He traces this back to the two philosophers Voltaire and Locke and how really reason itself took two paths.
Almost like the child that was birthed as reason mentioned above was actually a set of twins and like all Biblical stories of twins - one is bad.
Locke embraced the reason of the enlightenment but did not throw out the 'reasonable' Christian ideals from the reformation (the good twin that didn't kill the Father). He did make a point out of using reason to chop off
the dead wood that the reformation started chopping, though, hence 'separation of church and state'. He did this not as a matter of hating religion and religious thought, though, as it is used most frequently today.
He did it rather as a reasonable conclusion that true belief has to be belief that has the liberty to not believe.
Just like how Luther made the individual responsible for his own relationship with Christ (he is a 'personal' saviour), Locke went a step further and made the citizen responsible for their own liberty irrespective of religious affiliation. He did, however, go through great pains to show everyone that he really did believe that Christianity was a reasonable guide for the individual and key to a just, civilized society.
Just read the last of his three books (The Reasonableness of Christianity as Delivered in the Scriptures, A Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity, A Second Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity). Maybe he wrote them to sell his brand of enlightenment rational to the Puritans and Quakers or maybe he actually believed it - only God knows.
So, what did Locke keep that Voltaire threw out? Reasonable Irrationality I would call it. Others call it religion. Still others would say that there are some laws that are deeper than reason and that were set up as the very foundation upon which reason rests. These 'truths' are across all cultures and people's and are detailed out very well in CS Lewis' Book 'The Abolition of Man'. These truths must be the foundations of any religion for that religion to have any validity. These truths are the 'light' and only where they are absent is the 'darkness'.
The best example of this is the infamous line in the Declaration of Independence copied almost verbatim from Locke by Jefferson.
The original unedited Jefferson version goes:
We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness;
This idea of human equality and subsequent human rights is not a rational idea. The idea that all are 'created' equal does not drop out with reason. If there is one thing that is certain, it is that people are not born equal.
Some have higher and lower intelligence. Some are stronger. Some are born with diseases. Obviously, we are not equal. This was and is an irrational statement. Yet, all human rights pivot on this fulcrum. Where you do not have it you have atrocities and inequalities way worse than where you do have it. Where it is the foundation of the laws of a land you have liberty, freedom and unrivalled success.
It is important to note that at the time it was implemented it was an experiment. No civilization had ever tried this before. But, if it didn't come from reason where did it come from?
Sounds a lot like Romans 14, possibly?
Or as Tolstoy put it in War and Peace:
"And it occurs to no one that to admit a greatness not commensurable with the standard of right and wrong is merely to admit one’s own nothingness and immeasurable meanness.
For us with the standard of good and evil given us by Christ, no human actions are incommensurable. And there is no greatness where simplicity, goodness, and truth are absent."
The Reformations affect on Locke is corroborated by Francis Schaefer in his book How Should We Then Live?
This combination of reason and reasonable irrationality unleashed an incredible amount of good and human advancement. It gave room for the ideas of universities and hospitals to flourish and almost all of them were religious (reasonably irrational) institutions to start with.
Like Hick's points out, the average life of every person at least in the countries that adopted Locke's brand of reason has become unthinkably better. What used to take a whole legion of slaves to keep a house warm and well supplied is available to pretty much everyone in the Western world (not using slave labor of course). There are exceptions, but the mass majority have more food, faster and more comfortable transportation (even if you are just using the bus), fresh water, heat or AC that only kings and nobles could have had less than 150 years ago (and most times even better). Refrigeration alone completely transformed food for society. Now you can eat meat and fruit all year long. Can you imagine 200 years ago telling someone this? They would think you were nuts or a magician.
That alone should make you happy whatever situation you find yourself in. Go to your local McDonalds and have a Big Mac - just because you can.
The other path? Reason only. Well, like Hicks suggests, this is what Voltaire advocated for and led to the bloody French Revolution and Marxism led to communism (socialism based on the state) and national socialism (socialism based on race).
Both of these nihilistic philosophies tried to eradicate any reasonable irrationality and both brought unprecedented suffering and spilled blood like never before in the history of the world. So much so, that it was ironically irrational.
When Nietzsche said "God is Dead" what he really said was:
"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?"
Nietzsche amost had it right. There will always be lots of blood. The question is just whose blood.
It is true that God's blood was spilt by humanity but way before Neistche wrote this. Was it not of the same motivation, though? That eternal blood that was spilt was enough for all humanity and when embraced by the Lockean's was enough to pay the price. Juxtapose that with the 100's of millions of gallons of blood that were spilt under nihilistic regimes and anyone with a shred of 'reasonableness' has to admit that reason alone - Simply - Doesn't - Work. The sacrifice just was not enough to pay the price of paradise.
You need to choose which twin to follow and in that regard Hicks speaks well when he states postmodernism is nihilistic.
Postmodernism is the reincarnation of the resentful twin-brother. Resentful because God didn't die forever. He survived in liberty and freedom of choice (belief) and the world is a better place because of it. He wants to poison everyone, to make them turn on their liberty and accuse it for any problem that has ever happened to them rather than their own responsibility. He is only a skeptic, though, with no real answers. He is the Grand Inquisitor saying that the weight of liberty is too heavy for the average person to bear.
He is irrational like his brother but not reasonable. He is Cain and his sacrifice was not worthy and we are watching with our very own eyes as he tries to kill Abel.
The good news is that there is a wave of new philosophers that have room for reasonable irrationality of faith claims again and you see it in folks such as William Lane Craig, Alvin Plantiga and Ravi Zacharias. The unfortunate thing is that their contempories, the so called 'New Atheists' sound a lot like the postmodernists.
I am filled with hope with folks like Jordan Peterson, though. Liberal folks who recognize the beauty and value in the traditional beliefs and work to synthesize them into arguments palatable to the hopefully post-post-modern mind.
May 10, 2017
Thoughts about Beauty and the Beast and Tale of Two Cities
I followed War and Peace with I think the next best book I could read - Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities.
Seems I went back in time and read the preface to the Napoleonic rise.
Beside that, "A Tale of Two Cities" is important just for the fact that it is the second-best-selling single-volume book of all time (200 million approx. sales). In other words, everyone should read it.
It is always interesting for me to try and find out what it is that makes a story so popular and not just popular for its own time but popular for generations past, present and probably future.
Like a fairy tail or a parable, the story must contain some archetypal themes that activate the parts of our souls that have a similar substance.
This is why reading and discussing another actual fairy tale, 'Beauty and the Beast', at the same time is a great companion to A Tale and Two Cities and could be a preface to the preface as it were. (Disney thought so, more on that later)
Each gives cadence to the other and helps to expound the other.
One - they both are set in France and have similar characters and classes of people.
Two - they both have a similar over-arching theme - self sacrifice which brings about the redemption of someone else. (Carton for Crosby, Beauty for her Father)
Fairy Tales, tend to be a warning or give a moral reasoning why one way should be preferred over another. Seeing as Beauty and the Beast was written 40 years before the beginning of the French Revolution it seems the warning was not heeded.
Let's look at the characters of Beauty and the Beast first:
Beauty - she is not just a beauty in her looks but she is one in her heart - 'who she is'. She is naturally beautiful, pure, smart, enlightened, full of kindness, goodness, high in openness and conscientious. Even when her sisters (her enemies) despise her she doesn't just tolerate them but loves them wholeheartedly wishing their best and giving more to them than she takes for herself. She is super human in her love. Very few people can love like she does. It would take a certain type of genius to think up a character better then her. (I think she is better than Cinderella, Snow White and Rapunzel). She is the true lady liberty. She is a Christ figure.
She is best summed up in
She represents the ideals of the reformation and the human race. She is smart, logical, brave and at peace with her Father.
The Father - Like another fairy tale, Pinocchio, Beauty's Father represents a common theme - traditions and beliefs. That, what has kept us from anarchy so far. That, what is good and what works which has been passed down through the generations. True religion.
The father is kind, magnanimous and generous.
The Beast - Ugly and stupid. He has a special kind of ugliness, though, that type that causes dread. He is dangerous in that he has power to imprison the Father and give full vent to his anger. The beast represents the French culture of the day. The Monarchy specifically - brutal, ugly, beastly. The church was its prisoner. The only hope for it was progress, the only hope was love. Only Beauty could see some redeeming characteristics through the ugliness. Only love could change the beast.
Chesterton was spot on when he wrote:
The question and the warning is: Will the Beast embrace love and will the Beauty have enough love to overcome his ugliness? Could the ugliness of the French monarchy and the nobility be transformed into something beautiful? Could he be tamed? Could it have 'checks and balances' put on it?
How ugly is the Beast? Well Dickens helps us with that - Pretty ugly it seems. Ugly and wicked.
Fast forward 40 years... A Tale of Two Cities.
The brutal scene of Evrémonde running over a child in the street and nonchalantly throwing a coin out of the window as payment.
The same Evrémonde and his brother raping and then murdering two members of a peasant family and sending the doctor they commandeered to help to life in solitary confinement for telling on them. This is the reality of the beast. This is why he is hideous.
We see no signs that he is being wooed by lady liberty and so, in her place, another mistress arrives. Revenge, justice, jealousy, blood thirst - Defarge. There is no doubt in my mind that Disney added her to Beauty and the Beast as Gaston. The mob, anarchy, attractive at first but ultimately arguably uglier than the beast. Nietzsche's ubermensche.
Complete lack of liberty for all but a few - 'Citizens' or 'Comrades'? Complete and utter tyranny, and guess who stepped into that void? The first dictator instead of a King (Or Handsome Prince) - Napoleon.
The first in a long line of wicked, military dictators. (Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot). For all of the beasts problems he was just a shadow of the atrocities which were to come.
Notice how there are no kings on the list of leaders who have killed the most people.
Even the unique horror of the guillotine has been dwarfed by the gas chambers of the Holocaust, the organized brutality of the gulag, the mass intimidation of Mao's cultural revolution, or the killing fields of Cambodia - Doyle
You have to appreciate how Disney's changes incorporated the eventual French Revolution and modified it just enough to 'Disneyify' it.
- The rose dying signified the time running out for the French nobility in its beastly form. Will it be reformed?
- Gaston mortally wounding the beast just like the guillotine mortally wounded the French nobility.
But then Disney switched back to the fairy tale happy ending and didn't follow how history actually went. They let the beast's death and resurrection provide the proverbial grain of wheat dying and rising to life producing good fruit in the end. True Love, True Romance, New Life, Salvation, Happily ever after. They hijacked the metaphor.
The real point is that revolution (personal and societal) requires sacrifice. Someone has to die. The Reformers in the The bloodless revolution of 1688 in England decades earlier based their revolution on the sacrifice typified by the Beauty and by Carton - a freely given, self-less act birthed out of love. That sacrifice rooted in love turns into something beautiful, something noble, something approaching perfection. This idea that we need to be reformed. That we (every one) is beastly and the loving thing to do is to place checks and balances on us.
It is not an accident that Dickens was a British writer writing about the difference between two cities (London and Paris) but really the difference was what blood would be used as the sacrifice.
We did kill God but long before Nietzsche wrote this. What Nietzsche prophesies here is that either you use God's blood or you use the blood of the masses. No matter how much human blood is split it will not atone for humanities 'beastly' sins. Only eternal blood as irrational as it sounds truly 'washes' us in the Nietzschean sense. It is an easy and profound thing to accept but difficult because of it simplicity.
We all are beasts sentenced to the guillotine and each of us needs a doppelganger to go in our place. It has been finished.
Reference:
https://vimeo.com/19096709
Seems I went back in time and read the preface to the Napoleonic rise.
Beside that, "A Tale of Two Cities" is important just for the fact that it is the second-best-selling single-volume book of all time (200 million approx. sales). In other words, everyone should read it.
It is always interesting for me to try and find out what it is that makes a story so popular and not just popular for its own time but popular for generations past, present and probably future.
Like a fairy tail or a parable, the story must contain some archetypal themes that activate the parts of our souls that have a similar substance.
This is why reading and discussing another actual fairy tale, 'Beauty and the Beast', at the same time is a great companion to A Tale and Two Cities and could be a preface to the preface as it were. (Disney thought so, more on that later)
Each gives cadence to the other and helps to expound the other.
One - they both are set in France and have similar characters and classes of people.
Two - they both have a similar over-arching theme - self sacrifice which brings about the redemption of someone else. (Carton for Crosby, Beauty for her Father)
Fairy Tales, tend to be a warning or give a moral reasoning why one way should be preferred over another. Seeing as Beauty and the Beast was written 40 years before the beginning of the French Revolution it seems the warning was not heeded.
Let's look at the characters of Beauty and the Beast first:
Beauty - she is not just a beauty in her looks but she is one in her heart - 'who she is'. She is naturally beautiful, pure, smart, enlightened, full of kindness, goodness, high in openness and conscientious. Even when her sisters (her enemies) despise her she doesn't just tolerate them but loves them wholeheartedly wishing their best and giving more to them than she takes for herself. She is super human in her love. Very few people can love like she does. It would take a certain type of genius to think up a character better then her. (I think she is better than Cinderella, Snow White and Rapunzel). She is the true lady liberty. She is a Christ figure.
She is best summed up in
"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful, it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."
She represents the ideals of the reformation and the human race. She is smart, logical, brave and at peace with her Father.
The Father - Like another fairy tale, Pinocchio, Beauty's Father represents a common theme - traditions and beliefs. That, what has kept us from anarchy so far. That, what is good and what works which has been passed down through the generations. True religion.
The father is kind, magnanimous and generous.
The Beast - Ugly and stupid. He has a special kind of ugliness, though, that type that causes dread. He is dangerous in that he has power to imprison the Father and give full vent to his anger. The beast represents the French culture of the day. The Monarchy specifically - brutal, ugly, beastly. The church was its prisoner. The only hope for it was progress, the only hope was love. Only Beauty could see some redeeming characteristics through the ugliness. Only love could change the beast.
Chesterton was spot on when he wrote:
"Beauty and the Beast deals with a very deep idea: that love creates beauty."
The question and the warning is: Will the Beast embrace love and will the Beauty have enough love to overcome his ugliness? Could the ugliness of the French monarchy and the nobility be transformed into something beautiful? Could he be tamed? Could it have 'checks and balances' put on it?
How ugly is the Beast? Well Dickens helps us with that - Pretty ugly it seems. Ugly and wicked.
Fast forward 40 years... A Tale of Two Cities.
The brutal scene of Evrémonde running over a child in the street and nonchalantly throwing a coin out of the window as payment.
The same Evrémonde and his brother raping and then murdering two members of a peasant family and sending the doctor they commandeered to help to life in solitary confinement for telling on them. This is the reality of the beast. This is why he is hideous.
We see no signs that he is being wooed by lady liberty and so, in her place, another mistress arrives. Revenge, justice, jealousy, blood thirst - Defarge. There is no doubt in my mind that Disney added her to Beauty and the Beast as Gaston. The mob, anarchy, attractive at first but ultimately arguably uglier than the beast. Nietzsche's ubermensche.
Complete lack of liberty for all but a few - 'Citizens' or 'Comrades'? Complete and utter tyranny, and guess who stepped into that void? The first dictator instead of a King (Or Handsome Prince) - Napoleon.
The first in a long line of wicked, military dictators. (Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot). For all of the beasts problems he was just a shadow of the atrocities which were to come.
Notice how there are no kings on the list of leaders who have killed the most people.
Even the unique horror of the guillotine has been dwarfed by the gas chambers of the Holocaust, the organized brutality of the gulag, the mass intimidation of Mao's cultural revolution, or the killing fields of Cambodia - Doyle
You have to appreciate how Disney's changes incorporated the eventual French Revolution and modified it just enough to 'Disneyify' it.
- The rose dying signified the time running out for the French nobility in its beastly form. Will it be reformed?
- Gaston mortally wounding the beast just like the guillotine mortally wounded the French nobility.
But then Disney switched back to the fairy tale happy ending and didn't follow how history actually went. They let the beast's death and resurrection provide the proverbial grain of wheat dying and rising to life producing good fruit in the end. True Love, True Romance, New Life, Salvation, Happily ever after. They hijacked the metaphor.
The real point is that revolution (personal and societal) requires sacrifice. Someone has to die. The Reformers in the The bloodless revolution of 1688 in England decades earlier based their revolution on the sacrifice typified by the Beauty and by Carton - a freely given, self-less act birthed out of love. That sacrifice rooted in love turns into something beautiful, something noble, something approaching perfection. This idea that we need to be reformed. That we (every one) is beastly and the loving thing to do is to place checks and balances on us.
It is not an accident that Dickens was a British writer writing about the difference between two cities (London and Paris) but really the difference was what blood would be used as the sacrifice.
Nietzsche put it best...
"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us - for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto"
We did kill God but long before Nietzsche wrote this. What Nietzsche prophesies here is that either you use God's blood or you use the blood of the masses. No matter how much human blood is split it will not atone for humanities 'beastly' sins. Only eternal blood as irrational as it sounds truly 'washes' us in the Nietzschean sense. It is an easy and profound thing to accept but difficult because of it simplicity.
We all are beasts sentenced to the guillotine and each of us needs a doppelganger to go in our place. It has been finished.
"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known"
Reference:
https://vimeo.com/19096709
April 18, 2017
War and Peace - Patriarchy versus Matriarchy
I finally finished War & Peace after nearly 2 years of reading! The wonders of Kindle and being able to keep your place across multiple devices.
I slowly consumed this grand novel like one would eat a small elephant. A little bite here and a little bite there; on the train, on my tablet or at my son’s hockey practice on my phone.
One chapter at a time across many days not unlike the book itself. This seems to be what every person who reviews this book says at first.
The problem with reading such a famous book by such a famous author for the first time is that you don’t know if you think the book is great because it is great or it is great because you think it is great.
With that in mind, what struck me first in this chronicle of life was that it could be set in any time with any characters and it would evoke the same essence. In that way, it is timeless and still applicable.
Take anyone you know (or even yourself) and boil down the most dramatic parts of all of their relationships, thoughts, beliefs and actions along with 20 people in their sphere of influence across their whole life and you will arrive somewhere near this novel.
Many times I found myself saying, ‘Hey that is exactly what I think’ or, ‘I know someone that is exactly like that’ and then highlighting it on my Kindle.
You can only write like that if you are one thing – very honest. Honest about yourself and those around you. How else could Tolstoy write this unless he observed it and lived it?
Like Dostoevsky, Tolstoy’s genius let’s us into his character’s heads and hearts where the reader is able to pick and choose from a smorgasbord of personalities, tastes and beliefs that they personally find appealing. They may not like where they end up but if they are wise they will take heed.
So many novels (especially modern novels) fail to capture this simplistic honesty and paint a picture not of how people should or could be but rather how they really are. Ironically, in seeing how we really are we learn how we should be.
Sadly, no publisher would publish this book now a days (it breaks all the rules, way too many darlings) but even more sad is that no one could write it now a days.
The novel is a narrative about the Napoleon Wars on Russia starting in 1805 and climaxing in the war of 1812 which serves as the stage on which three leading and very different families are the main actors.
These three families are representative of all families and can roughly be broken down as:
Conservative – Patriarchal, male dominated, totalitarian
Liberal – Matriarchal, female dominated, progressive
Broken – Complete lack of parental influence or family structure, chaotic
Now there are a ton of supporting characters with their own families and personality profiles but the entanglements of the members of these three families derive the bulk of the novel and the main characters. They start the novel and they end the novel.
Conservative – The Bolkonsky’s
Marie and Andrew Bolkonsky’s father Nikolai is at the far end of the conservative spectrum. Super conscientious and extremely demanding. Almost no agreeableness or openness but oddly high in neuroticism. Like him or hate him, he is very successful and his children are ruled by his relentless personality and they must fight its absolute power to develop themselves. This is a patriarchal family ruled by a unbending, unaffectionate task master.
Prince Andrew is handsome, brave and conscientious like his dad and only slightly more agreeable. A say slightly because he can’t stand his little agreeable, open, ‘chit of a wife’ who tragically dies giving birth to his only son. His poor, pure sweet agreeable wife pretty much gets chewed up and spit out but this uncompassionate family (Take heed – A warning for all you super agreeable people).
This also a very good example of a family that has zero trait agreeableness and how the naturally occurring agreeableness and openness found in the female sex is completely disregarded as useless and even dangerous. It is mocked, scorned and abused being seen as a weakness. This is the type of family that produces a certain type of feminist, I think (a good type in my opinion). It is no accident that Tolstoy gives the miserable Maria the name of Christ’s own mother because only one as pious and saintly as her could withstand this onslaught of the more ‘feminine’ personality traits. One could argue that she suffers the most in this story and oddly she is the most religious.
After Prince Andrew gets horribly wounded by a cannonball and nearly dies in the first dust up between the Russians and the French and his poor ‘angel’ of a wife dies giving birth to their son he has a bit of an existential crisis which he desperately needs to keep him from completely turning into his father. It is his ‘death’ and the question is whether the seed planted in this death will bring new life? Will he change? Will he ‘progress’?
Liberal – The Rostov’s
Natasha and Nicholas Rostov’s dad Ilya is the complete opposite of Nikolai Bolkonsky. Super high in agreeableness but severely lacking in conscientiousness. Not really neurotic at first but he eventually becomes high in it in the end from his lack of conscientiousness (I think there is a lesson there for me). He is servant to the whims of his wife and children and provides them a life that they can’t afford and that he is too afraid to reign in. They are a matriarchal family. Family life is dominated by the female members wants and needs and Natasha is the shining star of the family, bursting in life, loveliness and creativity. Trait openness, agreeableness and neurotisicm reign and it produces creative but undisciplined children. They are obsessed with the latest fashions, arts and social standings. They are the Kardashians of their day (At least the Kardashian’s from 5 years ago).
It is by all accounts a good family, though, and it sticks together through tough times and all the neurotic ups and downs which eventually kill the poor father. Who, if he would have been a little more conscientious, might not have squandered the family fortune and if he would not have been so agreeable he might have reigned in the spending of his wife and daughter and for goodness sake at least got a little upset at his son when he came home and told him he just lost a ton of money in a poker game gone horribly wrong and needs him to bail him out. The whole situation does have one positive affect on the Rostov boy Nicholas; he decides that he is going to dedicate himself to the discipline of the army. This is the best decision he can make and stabilizes his lack of conscientious upbringing. It will serve him well later in life.
For all of the Rostov’s faults there is love in this family mixed with passion and fun. Almost all the characters in the novel are drawn to it like moths to a light and frequent the Rostov home throughout the novel.
Broken – The Bezukhov’s
Then there is Pierre’s dad, Kirill Vladimirovich, a wealthy profligate who has a slew of kids out of wedlock and decides to leave his fortune to the one son he likes the best but doesn’t really know because he sent him off to party in Europe. (Related to Fydor Karamozov maybe?)
Pierre’s family is not really a family at all and the reality is that his family has been his ‘friends’ who prove to be not very good choices for friends. He can’t think for himself. He is a lost soul. Because of this. he makes a horrible decision in marriage choosing an immoral person who had an affair with her brother (yep, that should have been a red flag), won’t have sex with him but cheats on him with any one she can find. If there is an antagonist in the story it is her (and her incestuous brother). He is in chaos and subsequently in hell and now he is married to the devil.
It is a testament of what happens when someone has no culture or tradition in their life to safeguard them from the evils of this world and their subsequent suffering (yes, there are evils in life). He is ‘blown about like a rudderless ship on the sea.’ He is a man without an identity and so he is susceptible to ideologies. He becomes a Freemason, he likes Napoleon, he disastrously tries to implement too liberal policies on the peasants in his care.
There is one very redeeming quality about Pierre, though, which seems to make up for everything he lacks and that is that he knows his state in life. He is honest and humble. He is trying as well as he knows how to make sense out of the chaos of his life and he desperately wants to change and find stability, acceptance and love. He is the tax collector, “standing far off, not even lifting up his eyes to heaven, but beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”
His only good friend is Prince Andrew. They make and odd couple and he is just the person the conflicted Prince needs. Unapologetic of his state of constant repentance and searching, Pierre is not a competitive threat as he spouts off his theories on how Russia and himself should change. His honesty is disarming and welcome in a private setting but alarming and alienating in the public setting.
Pierre loves the Rostov family and its shining star Natasha. He observes and craves the love in that family like a kid looking through the window of a candy store. He doesn’t believe he is worthy of it, though, no matter how rich he is.
Push Play
So, take these three family types (somewhat like every one of ours) and then watch how the kids turn out when Tolstoy pushes the play button. Watch as the opposites attract and collide and how once the storms settle where all the pieces have fallen. Add a war to create stress and watch as that stress transforms the individuals and how they show their true personalities and character because nothing shows someones character like stressful times.
The brilliance of Tolstoy is that he tells the same story twice at the same time. Once in the micro (the families) and once again in the macro (the countries at war)
The two stories are parallel and timeless.
This idea of progress versus staying the same. Liberal versus Conservative.
The micro climax of the novel is the clash of the two opposite family cultures (personalities) in Natasha and Prince Andrew. There definitely is love there in a Romeo and Juliet sort of way. But alas, Prince Andrew is too cautious, too conservative, too unwilling to take a risk and do something for the sake of emotion, to break free from his father and change his culture (you need to be at least a little liberal to do that). All law and no grace is a road to hell and Natasha, poor Natasha is led down it. It breaks her and only proves to her that she is unlovable and not worthy of being cherished. It is her turn to die, spiritually, emotionally and almost physically. She attempts to commit suicide. She is at the bottom. Will she be reborn like the seed of wheat that falls in the ground?
The two extremes when brought together are like a hot and cold front meeting each other creating a massive thunderstorm. There is a lot of electricity but also a lot of violence. The damage done by this storm is irreparable. The resultant chaos surrounds Natasha and she, like Pierre, makes a deal with the devil to escape it (At least her and Pierre had that in common). Lucky for her, her culture and family work against her to rescue her from the arms of the devil.
Eventually, Prince Andrew has his epiphany and ultimate new life change of heart but it comes like it came for his father, on his deathbed. Some people are so low in openness and so stubborn that it takes the inevitability of their death staring them in the face before they realize that they are a miserable creature that needs to see they are wrong and finally open themselves to what really matters – love and affection.
The macro climax is the battle of Borodino. Liberal, progressive French versus conservative, serfdom, Russia. Arrogant, flamboyant Napoleon versus patient, boring Kutuzov. Like Natasha, the French are defeated in this battle but like Prince Andrew the conservative Russia is dead. The heart of what was old Russia has died, Moscow is lost. She is broken. She is Pierre.
After Prince Andrew dies closing the door on that possible train wreck of a marriage, Pierre awkwardly makes his move. Natasha, her ideals dead along with her Prince, submits to his undying, safe but real love on one condition – she must rule him, never again will she not be in control. She continues in the matriarchal manner she grew up with. Pierre, sick of chaos, readily agrees to the terms and submits fully to her slavery. There is matriarchal tyranny too! But even that is better than chaos for him. Natasha, in my opinion, embodies the negative type of feminism or as some call it – Marxism or as it later became known, communism, the nanny state. A prophetic warning from Tolstoy perhaps?
I think Tolstoy hinted at the direction he thought Russia should go when you examine Maria and Nicholas relationship.
They are the antithesis of Pierre and Natasha. Nicholas, with the assertiveness and discipline he gained from being in the Cavalry and fighting battles becomes what his dad never was – conscientious. Maria, used to strong patriarchal men, admires him from a far with a certain amount of fear (respect) but he is not like her father or her brother. She finds that he is not immune to her feminine traits like her dad was and her suggestions and requests do not fall on deaf ears. When she is upset at his violence against the peasants it deeply affects him and he changes his behavior. He loves her and it grieves him that she is upset with him. He also turns out to be a great dad, I imagine he recalls his own agreeable and open childhood as he plays and loves on his own children. To me if there is a protagonist it is Nicholas because he is the only one who truly changes and balances his personality traits. I also think that Nicholas most closely resembles Levin in Tolstoy’s novel ‘Anna Karenina’ and pretty much embodies Tolstoy’s own thoughts on how the peasant’s should be treated and how a husband should act.
They are the perfect balance between Conservatives and Liberal. The State and the Church. The Secular and the Spiritual. War and Peace. The Old Testament and the New Testament. God the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Maria’s feminism is a liberal, guiding force to the conservative, structured masculinity of Nicholas.
For society to work, religion needs to be a liberal guiding force and the state a conservative force.
Lesssons
Tolstoy has given us a mirror and it is up to us if we will ‘forgot what we look like’ after we walk away from it.
The micro lessons? Work on your weakest traits. Not very conscientious? Work harder at disciplining yourself. Not very agreeable? Try to have compassion even when people doesn’t deserve it. Not extroverted? Try talking in public. Why? Why go to the trouble in this futile existence to endure the uncomfortableness and pain of changing? Because you either suffer now or you suffer later. And it is not just you who will suffer but everyone in your family and then every one in your country. Also, guess what? It resets for every person no matter what family they are born into. You have to make your own way and fight your own monsters. Don’t believe in original sin? Hang out with a 2 year old for a day. Countries are just a sum total of its families and yesterday’s successes as a country can be erased by the next generation or improved on.
The macro lesson? You are not always right. You need others.
Admit that you don’t have all the answers and all the perspectives if you deem yourself conservative or liberal. Admit that even a ‘genius’ like Napoleon cannot control history, only God can do that. Show some humility. You are but a small character in a massively complicated story and it isn’t about you. That definitely doesn’t mean that you don’t play an important part, though. You may be the ‘hair that breaks the camels back’ or you may not be but every part of that load is just as necessary as the hair.
Heed these words..
Replace “grand” and “not grand” with “equal” and “not equal” or “diverse” or “not diverse” and you can arrive at the same sublime argument. Liberalism and social justice only work when they aim at the ‘greatest good’ to overcome conservative societies where “simplicity, goodness, and truth are absent.”
Tolstoy’s own views and philosophy on the ‘greatest good’ are decidedly religious as related in the story within a story told by the peasant Platon Karataev to Pierre about a man wrongly convicted of a crime. Tolstoy believed this to be the greatest story he ever wrote and he expanded it into the stand alone short story ‘God Sees the Truth, But Waits’
This story is so powerful that it is the basis of the highest ranked IMBD movie of modern times.
Why is it so powerful?
Because it is the story about the best, most good, most loving person that arguably the world’s best imagination could ever think up.
“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” An even greater love is a man who gives up his whole life for the salvation of a man that is his enemy. The only love greater than that is a man that gives up His life for everyone.
Many, many human imaginations can think up the most wicked, the most perverted, the most twisted person that could ever exist (just ask Steven King, or refer to the whole horror genre) but it takes a genius to do the opposite.
Conclusion
My conclusion is that this book is epic. It is up there with ‘Paradise Lost.’ It has no equal in the 20th century and definitely not in the 21st. It may take 100 more years until we will get another like it.
Burn all the religious books of the world but leave this one and it will lead you back home.
It warns you of how you should be and what you will become, but most of all, it tells you to die to yourself to save yourself like that great city of Moscow and in so doing you will defeat the ‘Anti-Christ’ within. Your death is the only thing the devil in you cannot survive.
I slowly consumed this grand novel like one would eat a small elephant. A little bite here and a little bite there; on the train, on my tablet or at my son’s hockey practice on my phone.
One chapter at a time across many days not unlike the book itself. This seems to be what every person who reviews this book says at first.
The problem with reading such a famous book by such a famous author for the first time is that you don’t know if you think the book is great because it is great or it is great because you think it is great.
With that in mind, what struck me first in this chronicle of life was that it could be set in any time with any characters and it would evoke the same essence. In that way, it is timeless and still applicable.
Take anyone you know (or even yourself) and boil down the most dramatic parts of all of their relationships, thoughts, beliefs and actions along with 20 people in their sphere of influence across their whole life and you will arrive somewhere near this novel.
Many times I found myself saying, ‘Hey that is exactly what I think’ or, ‘I know someone that is exactly like that’ and then highlighting it on my Kindle.
You can only write like that if you are one thing – very honest. Honest about yourself and those around you. How else could Tolstoy write this unless he observed it and lived it?
Like Dostoevsky, Tolstoy’s genius let’s us into his character’s heads and hearts where the reader is able to pick and choose from a smorgasbord of personalities, tastes and beliefs that they personally find appealing. They may not like where they end up but if they are wise they will take heed.
So many novels (especially modern novels) fail to capture this simplistic honesty and paint a picture not of how people should or could be but rather how they really are. Ironically, in seeing how we really are we learn how we should be.
Sadly, no publisher would publish this book now a days (it breaks all the rules, way too many darlings) but even more sad is that no one could write it now a days.
The novel is a narrative about the Napoleon Wars on Russia starting in 1805 and climaxing in the war of 1812 which serves as the stage on which three leading and very different families are the main actors.
These three families are representative of all families and can roughly be broken down as:
Conservative – Patriarchal, male dominated, totalitarian
Liberal – Matriarchal, female dominated, progressive
Broken – Complete lack of parental influence or family structure, chaotic
Now there are a ton of supporting characters with their own families and personality profiles but the entanglements of the members of these three families derive the bulk of the novel and the main characters. They start the novel and they end the novel.
Conservative – The Bolkonsky’s
Marie and Andrew Bolkonsky’s father Nikolai is at the far end of the conservative spectrum. Super conscientious and extremely demanding. Almost no agreeableness or openness but oddly high in neuroticism. Like him or hate him, he is very successful and his children are ruled by his relentless personality and they must fight its absolute power to develop themselves. This is a patriarchal family ruled by a unbending, unaffectionate task master.
Prince Andrew is handsome, brave and conscientious like his dad and only slightly more agreeable. A say slightly because he can’t stand his little agreeable, open, ‘chit of a wife’ who tragically dies giving birth to his only son. His poor, pure sweet agreeable wife pretty much gets chewed up and spit out but this uncompassionate family (Take heed – A warning for all you super agreeable people).
This also a very good example of a family that has zero trait agreeableness and how the naturally occurring agreeableness and openness found in the female sex is completely disregarded as useless and even dangerous. It is mocked, scorned and abused being seen as a weakness. This is the type of family that produces a certain type of feminist, I think (a good type in my opinion). It is no accident that Tolstoy gives the miserable Maria the name of Christ’s own mother because only one as pious and saintly as her could withstand this onslaught of the more ‘feminine’ personality traits. One could argue that she suffers the most in this story and oddly she is the most religious.
After Prince Andrew gets horribly wounded by a cannonball and nearly dies in the first dust up between the Russians and the French and his poor ‘angel’ of a wife dies giving birth to their son he has a bit of an existential crisis which he desperately needs to keep him from completely turning into his father. It is his ‘death’ and the question is whether the seed planted in this death will bring new life? Will he change? Will he ‘progress’?
Liberal – The Rostov’s
Natasha and Nicholas Rostov’s dad Ilya is the complete opposite of Nikolai Bolkonsky. Super high in agreeableness but severely lacking in conscientiousness. Not really neurotic at first but he eventually becomes high in it in the end from his lack of conscientiousness (I think there is a lesson there for me). He is servant to the whims of his wife and children and provides them a life that they can’t afford and that he is too afraid to reign in. They are a matriarchal family. Family life is dominated by the female members wants and needs and Natasha is the shining star of the family, bursting in life, loveliness and creativity. Trait openness, agreeableness and neurotisicm reign and it produces creative but undisciplined children. They are obsessed with the latest fashions, arts and social standings. They are the Kardashians of their day (At least the Kardashian’s from 5 years ago).
It is by all accounts a good family, though, and it sticks together through tough times and all the neurotic ups and downs which eventually kill the poor father. Who, if he would have been a little more conscientious, might not have squandered the family fortune and if he would not have been so agreeable he might have reigned in the spending of his wife and daughter and for goodness sake at least got a little upset at his son when he came home and told him he just lost a ton of money in a poker game gone horribly wrong and needs him to bail him out. The whole situation does have one positive affect on the Rostov boy Nicholas; he decides that he is going to dedicate himself to the discipline of the army. This is the best decision he can make and stabilizes his lack of conscientious upbringing. It will serve him well later in life.
For all of the Rostov’s faults there is love in this family mixed with passion and fun. Almost all the characters in the novel are drawn to it like moths to a light and frequent the Rostov home throughout the novel.
Broken – The Bezukhov’s
Then there is Pierre’s dad, Kirill Vladimirovich, a wealthy profligate who has a slew of kids out of wedlock and decides to leave his fortune to the one son he likes the best but doesn’t really know because he sent him off to party in Europe. (Related to Fydor Karamozov maybe?)
Pierre’s family is not really a family at all and the reality is that his family has been his ‘friends’ who prove to be not very good choices for friends. He can’t think for himself. He is a lost soul. Because of this. he makes a horrible decision in marriage choosing an immoral person who had an affair with her brother (yep, that should have been a red flag), won’t have sex with him but cheats on him with any one she can find. If there is an antagonist in the story it is her (and her incestuous brother). He is in chaos and subsequently in hell and now he is married to the devil.
It is a testament of what happens when someone has no culture or tradition in their life to safeguard them from the evils of this world and their subsequent suffering (yes, there are evils in life). He is ‘blown about like a rudderless ship on the sea.’ He is a man without an identity and so he is susceptible to ideologies. He becomes a Freemason, he likes Napoleon, he disastrously tries to implement too liberal policies on the peasants in his care.
There is one very redeeming quality about Pierre, though, which seems to make up for everything he lacks and that is that he knows his state in life. He is honest and humble. He is trying as well as he knows how to make sense out of the chaos of his life and he desperately wants to change and find stability, acceptance and love. He is the tax collector, “standing far off, not even lifting up his eyes to heaven, but beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”
His only good friend is Prince Andrew. They make and odd couple and he is just the person the conflicted Prince needs. Unapologetic of his state of constant repentance and searching, Pierre is not a competitive threat as he spouts off his theories on how Russia and himself should change. His honesty is disarming and welcome in a private setting but alarming and alienating in the public setting.
Pierre loves the Rostov family and its shining star Natasha. He observes and craves the love in that family like a kid looking through the window of a candy store. He doesn’t believe he is worthy of it, though, no matter how rich he is.
Push Play
So, take these three family types (somewhat like every one of ours) and then watch how the kids turn out when Tolstoy pushes the play button. Watch as the opposites attract and collide and how once the storms settle where all the pieces have fallen. Add a war to create stress and watch as that stress transforms the individuals and how they show their true personalities and character because nothing shows someones character like stressful times.
The brilliance of Tolstoy is that he tells the same story twice at the same time. Once in the micro (the families) and once again in the macro (the countries at war)
The two stories are parallel and timeless.
This idea of progress versus staying the same. Liberal versus Conservative.
The micro climax of the novel is the clash of the two opposite family cultures (personalities) in Natasha and Prince Andrew. There definitely is love there in a Romeo and Juliet sort of way. But alas, Prince Andrew is too cautious, too conservative, too unwilling to take a risk and do something for the sake of emotion, to break free from his father and change his culture (you need to be at least a little liberal to do that). All law and no grace is a road to hell and Natasha, poor Natasha is led down it. It breaks her and only proves to her that she is unlovable and not worthy of being cherished. It is her turn to die, spiritually, emotionally and almost physically. She attempts to commit suicide. She is at the bottom. Will she be reborn like the seed of wheat that falls in the ground?
The two extremes when brought together are like a hot and cold front meeting each other creating a massive thunderstorm. There is a lot of electricity but also a lot of violence. The damage done by this storm is irreparable. The resultant chaos surrounds Natasha and she, like Pierre, makes a deal with the devil to escape it (At least her and Pierre had that in common). Lucky for her, her culture and family work against her to rescue her from the arms of the devil.
Eventually, Prince Andrew has his epiphany and ultimate new life change of heart but it comes like it came for his father, on his deathbed. Some people are so low in openness and so stubborn that it takes the inevitability of their death staring them in the face before they realize that they are a miserable creature that needs to see they are wrong and finally open themselves to what really matters – love and affection.
The macro climax is the battle of Borodino. Liberal, progressive French versus conservative, serfdom, Russia. Arrogant, flamboyant Napoleon versus patient, boring Kutuzov. Like Natasha, the French are defeated in this battle but like Prince Andrew the conservative Russia is dead. The heart of what was old Russia has died, Moscow is lost. She is broken. She is Pierre.
After Prince Andrew dies closing the door on that possible train wreck of a marriage, Pierre awkwardly makes his move. Natasha, her ideals dead along with her Prince, submits to his undying, safe but real love on one condition – she must rule him, never again will she not be in control. She continues in the matriarchal manner she grew up with. Pierre, sick of chaos, readily agrees to the terms and submits fully to her slavery. There is matriarchal tyranny too! But even that is better than chaos for him. Natasha, in my opinion, embodies the negative type of feminism or as some call it – Marxism or as it later became known, communism, the nanny state. A prophetic warning from Tolstoy perhaps?
I think Tolstoy hinted at the direction he thought Russia should go when you examine Maria and Nicholas relationship.
They are the antithesis of Pierre and Natasha. Nicholas, with the assertiveness and discipline he gained from being in the Cavalry and fighting battles becomes what his dad never was – conscientious. Maria, used to strong patriarchal men, admires him from a far with a certain amount of fear (respect) but he is not like her father or her brother. She finds that he is not immune to her feminine traits like her dad was and her suggestions and requests do not fall on deaf ears. When she is upset at his violence against the peasants it deeply affects him and he changes his behavior. He loves her and it grieves him that she is upset with him. He also turns out to be a great dad, I imagine he recalls his own agreeable and open childhood as he plays and loves on his own children. To me if there is a protagonist it is Nicholas because he is the only one who truly changes and balances his personality traits. I also think that Nicholas most closely resembles Levin in Tolstoy’s novel ‘Anna Karenina’ and pretty much embodies Tolstoy’s own thoughts on how the peasant’s should be treated and how a husband should act.
They are the perfect balance between Conservatives and Liberal. The State and the Church. The Secular and the Spiritual. War and Peace. The Old Testament and the New Testament. God the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Maria’s feminism is a liberal, guiding force to the conservative, structured masculinity of Nicholas.
For society to work, religion needs to be a liberal guiding force and the state a conservative force.
Lesssons
Tolstoy has given us a mirror and it is up to us if we will ‘forgot what we look like’ after we walk away from it.
The micro lessons? Work on your weakest traits. Not very conscientious? Work harder at disciplining yourself. Not very agreeable? Try to have compassion even when people doesn’t deserve it. Not extroverted? Try talking in public. Why? Why go to the trouble in this futile existence to endure the uncomfortableness and pain of changing? Because you either suffer now or you suffer later. And it is not just you who will suffer but everyone in your family and then every one in your country. Also, guess what? It resets for every person no matter what family they are born into. You have to make your own way and fight your own monsters. Don’t believe in original sin? Hang out with a 2 year old for a day. Countries are just a sum total of its families and yesterday’s successes as a country can be erased by the next generation or improved on.
“As the sun and each atom of ether is a sphere complete in itself, and yet at the same time only a part of a whole too immense for man to comprehend, so each individual has within himself his own aims and yet has them to serve a general purpose incomprehensible to man.”
The macro lesson? You are not always right. You need others.
Admit that you don’t have all the answers and all the perspectives if you deem yourself conservative or liberal. Admit that even a ‘genius’ like Napoleon cannot control history, only God can do that. Show some humility. You are but a small character in a massively complicated story and it isn’t about you. That definitely doesn’t mean that you don’t play an important part, though. You may be the ‘hair that breaks the camels back’ or you may not be but every part of that load is just as necessary as the hair.
Heed these words..
“C’est grand!” say the historians, and there no longer exists either good or evil but only “grand” and “not grand.” Grand is good, not grand is bad. Grand is the characteristic, in their conception, of some special animals called “heroes.” And Napoleon, escaping home in a warm fur coat and leaving to perish those who were not merely his comrades but were (in his opinion) men he had brought there, feels que c’est grand, and his soul is tranquil.
“Du sublime (he saw something sublime in himself) au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas,” said he. And the whole world for fifty years has been repeating: “Sublime! Grand! Napoleon le Grand!” Du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas.
And it occurs to no one that to admit a greatness not commensurable with the standard of right and wrong is merely to admit one’s own nothingness and immeasurable meanness.
For us with the standard of good and evil given us by Christ, no human actions are incommensurable. And there is no greatness where simplicity, goodness, and truth are absent.”
Replace “grand” and “not grand” with “equal” and “not equal” or “diverse” or “not diverse” and you can arrive at the same sublime argument. Liberalism and social justice only work when they aim at the ‘greatest good’ to overcome conservative societies where “simplicity, goodness, and truth are absent.”
Tolstoy’s own views and philosophy on the ‘greatest good’ are decidedly religious as related in the story within a story told by the peasant Platon Karataev to Pierre about a man wrongly convicted of a crime. Tolstoy believed this to be the greatest story he ever wrote and he expanded it into the stand alone short story ‘God Sees the Truth, But Waits’
This story is so powerful that it is the basis of the highest ranked IMBD movie of modern times.
Why is it so powerful?
Because it is the story about the best, most good, most loving person that arguably the world’s best imagination could ever think up.
“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” An even greater love is a man who gives up his whole life for the salvation of a man that is his enemy. The only love greater than that is a man that gives up His life for everyone.
Many, many human imaginations can think up the most wicked, the most perverted, the most twisted person that could ever exist (just ask Steven King, or refer to the whole horror genre) but it takes a genius to do the opposite.
Conclusion
My conclusion is that this book is epic. It is up there with ‘Paradise Lost.’ It has no equal in the 20th century and definitely not in the 21st. It may take 100 more years until we will get another like it.
Burn all the religious books of the world but leave this one and it will lead you back home.
It warns you of how you should be and what you will become, but most of all, it tells you to die to yourself to save yourself like that great city of Moscow and in so doing you will defeat the ‘Anti-Christ’ within. Your death is the only thing the devil in you cannot survive.
August 12, 2016
Honey Bear Adventure Giveaway
Free Today Only! Aug 12-2016
4 Honey Bear Johnston Adventures Kindle Books
MG Fiction about 2 kids, a giant talking bear and the adventures he takes them on.
Get them here:
tinyurl.com/z822aob
Or here (to add to GR)
www.honeybearjohnston.com
The 5th adventure has been reviewed 2 times and has a 4.5 rating. It also has illustrations.
Please Review and Share!
4 Honey Bear Johnston Adventures Kindle Books
MG Fiction about 2 kids, a giant talking bear and the adventures he takes them on.
Get them here:
tinyurl.com/z822aob
Or here (to add to GR)
www.honeybearjohnston.com
The 5th adventure has been reviewed 2 times and has a 4.5 rating. It also has illustrations.
Please Review and Share!
August 11, 2016
Come for the entertainment but leave with some philosophy - Review of the Brother's Karamazov
For me there are two types of fictional books.
Book's that entertain and give you a shot of adrenaline from a either fright or some plot thrill; or a dose of dopamine from some romantic encounter.
These types of writer's are in a sense drug dealers. They provide a narrative that causes your imagination to get worked up enough to trigger your glands to give you your 'hit'. A sort of mental masturbation as it were. (Isn't that what the whole romance genre is?)
And like all drugs they are very good at distracting us and numbing us from our reality for a little bit - That we are lonely. That our lives will never live up to the characters in our books. That we are anxious and depressed and we don't know why. That our family sucks. That life is futile. Not to mention the gnawing knowledge that we are but specks of dust on a speck of dust hurtling through space.
And then there are books that come at you in the disguise of entertainment but really they are meant to open your mind to the big questions.
Why are we here?
What is point of things?
What is the meaning of life?
Does anything matter?
What is the greatest good?
Books, that once you have read you can't unread them. Books that are actually honest about what it means to be a human and not just portray one dimensional heroes and villains.
The Brother's Karamazov is one of those books.
You can come for the sordid love triangle and the whodunit parricide but underneath the covers is the Magnus Opus of a writer that drank fully from the crucible of human vice and suffering and then poured it into his characters.
Just to name a few of his very own real life sufferings and 'shortcomings' that are in various characters in the book:
Had a toddler that died.
Had horrible seizures.
Had a horrible addiction to gambling.
Was a womaniser and adulterer.
Here is a great biography detailing this: YouTube Biography
And as for the reasons for all of these questions he argues both sides - atheism and theism (Christianity in particular) and both sides point to this book (especially Book 5) as reference. And both sides should read it to find out what they actually believe.
Not to mention:
Philosophy profs,
Gregory B. Sadler
And psychology profs
Jordan B Peterson
Pretty much if you want to understand existentialism you don't need that 4th year PHIL course - you can just read this book.
The whole thing boils down to one big question - what are you going to do with your existence and the freedom of choice that being human affords us (if such a thing exists).
According to Dostoevsky, being human means at its heart two things.
1. There is suffering (everyone suffers)
2. You can decide to be irrational (being irrational is distinctly human)
What character in TBK do you most align yourself with or are most drawn to? It can reveal a lot about yourself. It is sort of a Myers Brigg test for your soul.
His biggest philosophical statement comes from the famous line given by Ivan "If God does not exist, everything is permitted"
It is a heavy argument because logically if this life and reality is all there is and you become non existent after you die what difference does it make what kind of a person you were alive - If you were noble and kind like Alyosha or a complete ass like his dad Fyodor. It is within this wonderful juxtaposition that all the other characters fall and must navigate in this most brilliant of books.
Come for the entertainment but leave with some philosophy.
Book's that entertain and give you a shot of adrenaline from a either fright or some plot thrill; or a dose of dopamine from some romantic encounter.
These types of writer's are in a sense drug dealers. They provide a narrative that causes your imagination to get worked up enough to trigger your glands to give you your 'hit'. A sort of mental masturbation as it were. (Isn't that what the whole romance genre is?)
And like all drugs they are very good at distracting us and numbing us from our reality for a little bit - That we are lonely. That our lives will never live up to the characters in our books. That we are anxious and depressed and we don't know why. That our family sucks. That life is futile. Not to mention the gnawing knowledge that we are but specks of dust on a speck of dust hurtling through space.
And then there are books that come at you in the disguise of entertainment but really they are meant to open your mind to the big questions.
Why are we here?
What is point of things?
What is the meaning of life?
Does anything matter?
What is the greatest good?
Books, that once you have read you can't unread them. Books that are actually honest about what it means to be a human and not just portray one dimensional heroes and villains.
The Brother's Karamazov is one of those books.
You can come for the sordid love triangle and the whodunit parricide but underneath the covers is the Magnus Opus of a writer that drank fully from the crucible of human vice and suffering and then poured it into his characters.
Just to name a few of his very own real life sufferings and 'shortcomings' that are in various characters in the book:
Had a toddler that died.
Had horrible seizures.
Had a horrible addiction to gambling.
Was a womaniser and adulterer.
Here is a great biography detailing this: YouTube Biography
And as for the reasons for all of these questions he argues both sides - atheism and theism (Christianity in particular) and both sides point to this book (especially Book 5) as reference. And both sides should read it to find out what they actually believe.
Not to mention:
Philosophy profs,
Gregory B. Sadler
And psychology profs
Jordan B Peterson
Pretty much if you want to understand existentialism you don't need that 4th year PHIL course - you can just read this book.
The whole thing boils down to one big question - what are you going to do with your existence and the freedom of choice that being human affords us (if such a thing exists).
According to Dostoevsky, being human means at its heart two things.
1. There is suffering (everyone suffers)
2. You can decide to be irrational (being irrational is distinctly human)
What character in TBK do you most align yourself with or are most drawn to? It can reveal a lot about yourself. It is sort of a Myers Brigg test for your soul.
His biggest philosophical statement comes from the famous line given by Ivan "If God does not exist, everything is permitted"
It is a heavy argument because logically if this life and reality is all there is and you become non existent after you die what difference does it make what kind of a person you were alive - If you were noble and kind like Alyosha or a complete ass like his dad Fyodor. It is within this wonderful juxtaposition that all the other characters fall and must navigate in this most brilliant of books.
Come for the entertainment but leave with some philosophy.
August 2, 2016
Chronicles of Narnia Review
It seems to me that the best judge of a children's book should ironically be, children.
Chronicles of Narnia for me was a highlight of my childhood and I can still remember the feelings I had when I read those books; unable to go to sleep until I had read 'just one more chapter'. The feelings were very much feelings of excitement and joy and a certain way I have never been able to acquire those feelings again in the same way.
I grew up in a Christian household which is why they probably were on my family bookshelf to begin with but I think I (the youngest of 4) was the only one to really become absorbed in them.
If I read them now, of course, I can see all of the Christian imagery that Lewis deftly wound into the chronicles but when I read them as a kid I had very little clue.
Is it just good writing that creates a good book? Lewis of course was an Oxford graduate and a first rate intellectual but there have been thousands and thousands (millions?) of intellectuals that could not have written a book that is so widely accepted and loved by religious and irreligious alike.
Lewis, like his contemporary and friend Tolkien, both studied the great stories of history and the reoccurring themes or as Jung would say, Archetypes in them and then took those themes and metaphors and buried them deep in their own works. And guess what happened? Kids, teenagers, adults and seniors love the chronicles of Narnia and LOR like the generations of people before them in history loved their versions of those stories.
Ultimately, that was what led to Lewis' own conversion from atheism (with the help of Tolkien) as he asked 'why as humans are we attracted to these stories?' realizing that the stories in the Christian religion are echoed through out all great literature.
The 'Chronicles of Narnia' and LOR were the beginning of what we know as modern fantasy literature and they greatly influenced anything written in the genre today. Most of today's fantasy doesn't have the Christian themes buried in them and they have to rely on Nietzschen existentialism to replace them but in my mind they never can get the same level of magic and joy Lewis and Tolkien were able to produce in the soul of an 8 year old years ago.
Chronicles of Narnia for me was a highlight of my childhood and I can still remember the feelings I had when I read those books; unable to go to sleep until I had read 'just one more chapter'. The feelings were very much feelings of excitement and joy and a certain way I have never been able to acquire those feelings again in the same way.
I grew up in a Christian household which is why they probably were on my family bookshelf to begin with but I think I (the youngest of 4) was the only one to really become absorbed in them.
If I read them now, of course, I can see all of the Christian imagery that Lewis deftly wound into the chronicles but when I read them as a kid I had very little clue.
Is it just good writing that creates a good book? Lewis of course was an Oxford graduate and a first rate intellectual but there have been thousands and thousands (millions?) of intellectuals that could not have written a book that is so widely accepted and loved by religious and irreligious alike.
Lewis, like his contemporary and friend Tolkien, both studied the great stories of history and the reoccurring themes or as Jung would say, Archetypes in them and then took those themes and metaphors and buried them deep in their own works. And guess what happened? Kids, teenagers, adults and seniors love the chronicles of Narnia and LOR like the generations of people before them in history loved their versions of those stories.
Ultimately, that was what led to Lewis' own conversion from atheism (with the help of Tolkien) as he asked 'why as humans are we attracted to these stories?' realizing that the stories in the Christian religion are echoed through out all great literature.
The 'Chronicles of Narnia' and LOR were the beginning of what we know as modern fantasy literature and they greatly influenced anything written in the genre today. Most of today's fantasy doesn't have the Christian themes buried in them and they have to rely on Nietzschen existentialism to replace them but in my mind they never can get the same level of magic and joy Lewis and Tolkien were able to produce in the soul of an 8 year old years ago.
July 27, 2016
Review of Stephen King's novella anthology - Different Seasons
How (and why?) can a Steven King short story become the foundation for the highest rated movie on IMDB?
Think of all the movies that have been made with millions (billions?) of dollars in special effects and perfect looking actors and actresses and none of them even come close to the ratings this movie puts out.
How can this humble movie, set in a depressing setting with not much more than dialog entrance so many people? Are they all crazy? There is no sex (besides inferred creepy sex), some violence but not like most prison movies, no women at all besides the cheating wife and posters. One could even say that the 'community' in the prison was 'conservative' by many of today's standards.
But, somehow, it is one movie that I (and seemingly many others) can find myself watching over and over again and not be bored with it. I seem to see some new nugget of meaning every time I watch it.
What just goes to show you that 'content is king', in this case Stephen King.
This little anthology, in my opinion is the closest King has come to literature. I have read enough of his other books to know that he can delve deep into his imagination to explore the horrors that can be created there (Pet Sematary freaked me out) but in these stories he explores in his effortless style the existentialism of humanity.
In 'The Body' he explores the existential crises that arises when children fully realize that death is a part of life. Echoes of 'Nature's first green is gold' and the dying of the innocence of ignorance in childhood can be seen. I will never forget the moment my own kids started to understand that there are evil things and death.
In 'Apt Pupil' he explores the wickedness that is in every one of us, as an inescapable property of humanities existence, and how we all have to take responsibility as humans for what humans can and have done. 'Every single one of us has the devil inside' or 'When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you'.
But back to 'Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption' what makes it so appealing? When I learned that he had based the story on a Tolstoy short story 'God Sees the Truth, But Waits' it started to make more sense why this work carried such psychological and philosophical appeal.
The Tolstoy short story has many of the same plot points, a man wrongly imprisoned, grows old and suffers but in the Tolstoy story the man dies in the end after the person who actually committed the crime confesses to it. Kind of depressing, I know. It seems the Steven King twist is more uplifting and that is one of the main reasons people love this story so much - the feeling of hope in it.
But why, what is the hope; that you can escape prison and go and hide out in Mexico? There is something resonating in this 'hope' that is not merely just hope of a better life outside of prison it seems to have a touch of magic to it.
I think the key to this appeal is looking at the story as a metaphor of not just a bunch of guys in prison but rather of all human existence. If you think about it, life on earth is like life in a prison a certain way. The reality of our existence is that we are prisoners to its rules of physics and time (no one escapes the prison of death) and King, like Dostoevsky, lets the characters in this story live out their philosophies as we watch how their beliefs lead to their logical conclusions.
What is life in prison or existence in general if there is no hope that the suffering and injustice down here (or in there) has any meaning. Why put up with the suffering? What is the use?
You see the characters try to solve this existential dilemma in various ways:
The warden and guards are representative of the authorities on earth, the governments, the religious institutions that keep humanity from descending into chaos, sometimes by brutality and injustice.
You see the character of Brooks unable to find any existential hope and rather falls into the abyss of nihilism causing him to find no meaning in life any more, so he 'gets busy dying' and commits suicide.
You see the dark underbelly of humanity that gives its existence over completely to its own selfish and lustful inclinations in 'the Sisters' and especially 'Bogs' who could have been Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov's brother.
And then you have Andy, the Christ figure, the suffering hero. He is in prison but is innocent (like Christ). He is more of a Nietzschen version of Christ, though. You see him filled with existential hope as he gives his famous line “Get busy living or get busy dying.” which is essentially quoting Camus', 'There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide'
To finish it off you have Red, who is the narrator and essentially is you. Are you going to choose to follow Andy with your freedom and find paradise?
So, whether you picked up on it or not, like the short story it was derived from, Shawshank is a metaphor of the Passion of Christ. Or at the very least, the suffering hero metaphor or archetype, who through their suffering allows others to find their own repentance (as seen in Red's last speech to the parole board) and then ultimate paradise.
Now King tries to make it very clear that the real answer to humanities existential dilemma is not Christ and the Bible and he essentially guts the Bible metaphorically and literally, removing the words inside of it to make way for his hammer signifying the perseverant will of man. The humanistic idea that no matter how bad it can get if you chip chip chip away at life you ultimately will break through and find meaning (and paradise) in life. 'That which does not kill us makes us stronger.'
But really, what does that hole in the wall signify? Seems a little tomb-like to me.
And to complete the 'suffering hero who dies and comes back to life' metaphor we see Andy entering the 'tomb' during a storm (chaos), making his way through the waste of humanity (hell), essentially dying only to come out on the other side to be reborn, baptised by the rain, transformed, a new man, truly free. The old man is gone, a new man has been reborn. This new man is very powerful and rich now. 'Unless a seed of wheat fall in the ground and die it remains alone but if it dies it brings forth much fruit'. Dostoevsky could not have put it better.
If you think I am reaching, look at the title, specifically the word 'redemption' in the title. At first, I thought 'Redemption' was a peculiar word for King to use in the title. Why didn't he use something like the 'Great Escape' or anything along those lines? Why redemption? Which really is a Christian word. This idea that humanity is somehow stuck with a debt to pay (a sentence) that has to be paid is the meaning of the word redemption. In case you didn't know, the Christian version of the story goes that Christ died to pay for the worlds sins and in so doing 'redeemed' humanity if people, like Red followed Andy to paradise, follow Christ. He went first to 'make a way' but like Red had to go to a specific field and find a very specific tree and yada yada every person has to obey and follow Christ (the narrow way) only if you want that same hope. And like the Biblical version, in the end, the wicked are punished and the righteous meek find paradise with Christ.
So, really most people don't know it but the reason they are attracted to the story is because it has been 'wrapped' very expertly in language and concepts that are agreeable and that they accept to hide it but it is a very subtle trick. King has 'hijacked' the metaphor. The only reason it works is because King does not deviate too far from the metaphor and he keeps the protagonist as the hero (Christ figure).
To prove the point, if you take away the humanistic and anti-religion elements in Shawshank; if you make the warden just mean and not religious and the book the hammer is hid in 'War and Peace' instead of the Bible the story still has the same power. Those added elements do not make or break the story. The only reason you might think you need them is because now they are there. This novella and movie would still be as popular without them.
It is a brilliant story derived from another brilliant story derived from another brilliant story.
The real question people who love the book and the movie have to ask themselves is 'why does this particular story resonate with me and give so much hope?'
Think of all the movies that have been made with millions (billions?) of dollars in special effects and perfect looking actors and actresses and none of them even come close to the ratings this movie puts out.
How can this humble movie, set in a depressing setting with not much more than dialog entrance so many people? Are they all crazy? There is no sex (besides inferred creepy sex), some violence but not like most prison movies, no women at all besides the cheating wife and posters. One could even say that the 'community' in the prison was 'conservative' by many of today's standards.
But, somehow, it is one movie that I (and seemingly many others) can find myself watching over and over again and not be bored with it. I seem to see some new nugget of meaning every time I watch it.
What just goes to show you that 'content is king', in this case Stephen King.
This little anthology, in my opinion is the closest King has come to literature. I have read enough of his other books to know that he can delve deep into his imagination to explore the horrors that can be created there (Pet Sematary freaked me out) but in these stories he explores in his effortless style the existentialism of humanity.
In 'The Body' he explores the existential crises that arises when children fully realize that death is a part of life. Echoes of 'Nature's first green is gold' and the dying of the innocence of ignorance in childhood can be seen. I will never forget the moment my own kids started to understand that there are evil things and death.
In 'Apt Pupil' he explores the wickedness that is in every one of us, as an inescapable property of humanities existence, and how we all have to take responsibility as humans for what humans can and have done. 'Every single one of us has the devil inside' or 'When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you'.
But back to 'Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption' what makes it so appealing? When I learned that he had based the story on a Tolstoy short story 'God Sees the Truth, But Waits' it started to make more sense why this work carried such psychological and philosophical appeal.
The Tolstoy short story has many of the same plot points, a man wrongly imprisoned, grows old and suffers but in the Tolstoy story the man dies in the end after the person who actually committed the crime confesses to it. Kind of depressing, I know. It seems the Steven King twist is more uplifting and that is one of the main reasons people love this story so much - the feeling of hope in it.
But why, what is the hope; that you can escape prison and go and hide out in Mexico? There is something resonating in this 'hope' that is not merely just hope of a better life outside of prison it seems to have a touch of magic to it.
I think the key to this appeal is looking at the story as a metaphor of not just a bunch of guys in prison but rather of all human existence. If you think about it, life on earth is like life in a prison a certain way. The reality of our existence is that we are prisoners to its rules of physics and time (no one escapes the prison of death) and King, like Dostoevsky, lets the characters in this story live out their philosophies as we watch how their beliefs lead to their logical conclusions.
What is life in prison or existence in general if there is no hope that the suffering and injustice down here (or in there) has any meaning. Why put up with the suffering? What is the use?
You see the characters try to solve this existential dilemma in various ways:
The warden and guards are representative of the authorities on earth, the governments, the religious institutions that keep humanity from descending into chaos, sometimes by brutality and injustice.
You see the character of Brooks unable to find any existential hope and rather falls into the abyss of nihilism causing him to find no meaning in life any more, so he 'gets busy dying' and commits suicide.
You see the dark underbelly of humanity that gives its existence over completely to its own selfish and lustful inclinations in 'the Sisters' and especially 'Bogs' who could have been Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov's brother.
And then you have Andy, the Christ figure, the suffering hero. He is in prison but is innocent (like Christ). He is more of a Nietzschen version of Christ, though. You see him filled with existential hope as he gives his famous line “Get busy living or get busy dying.” which is essentially quoting Camus', 'There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide'
To finish it off you have Red, who is the narrator and essentially is you. Are you going to choose to follow Andy with your freedom and find paradise?
So, whether you picked up on it or not, like the short story it was derived from, Shawshank is a metaphor of the Passion of Christ. Or at the very least, the suffering hero metaphor or archetype, who through their suffering allows others to find their own repentance (as seen in Red's last speech to the parole board) and then ultimate paradise.
Now King tries to make it very clear that the real answer to humanities existential dilemma is not Christ and the Bible and he essentially guts the Bible metaphorically and literally, removing the words inside of it to make way for his hammer signifying the perseverant will of man. The humanistic idea that no matter how bad it can get if you chip chip chip away at life you ultimately will break through and find meaning (and paradise) in life. 'That which does not kill us makes us stronger.'
But really, what does that hole in the wall signify? Seems a little tomb-like to me.
And to complete the 'suffering hero who dies and comes back to life' metaphor we see Andy entering the 'tomb' during a storm (chaos), making his way through the waste of humanity (hell), essentially dying only to come out on the other side to be reborn, baptised by the rain, transformed, a new man, truly free. The old man is gone, a new man has been reborn. This new man is very powerful and rich now. 'Unless a seed of wheat fall in the ground and die it remains alone but if it dies it brings forth much fruit'. Dostoevsky could not have put it better.
If you think I am reaching, look at the title, specifically the word 'redemption' in the title. At first, I thought 'Redemption' was a peculiar word for King to use in the title. Why didn't he use something like the 'Great Escape' or anything along those lines? Why redemption? Which really is a Christian word. This idea that humanity is somehow stuck with a debt to pay (a sentence) that has to be paid is the meaning of the word redemption. In case you didn't know, the Christian version of the story goes that Christ died to pay for the worlds sins and in so doing 'redeemed' humanity if people, like Red followed Andy to paradise, follow Christ. He went first to 'make a way' but like Red had to go to a specific field and find a very specific tree and yada yada every person has to obey and follow Christ (the narrow way) only if you want that same hope. And like the Biblical version, in the end, the wicked are punished and the righteous meek find paradise with Christ.
So, really most people don't know it but the reason they are attracted to the story is because it has been 'wrapped' very expertly in language and concepts that are agreeable and that they accept to hide it but it is a very subtle trick. King has 'hijacked' the metaphor. The only reason it works is because King does not deviate too far from the metaphor and he keeps the protagonist as the hero (Christ figure).
To prove the point, if you take away the humanistic and anti-religion elements in Shawshank; if you make the warden just mean and not religious and the book the hammer is hid in 'War and Peace' instead of the Bible the story still has the same power. Those added elements do not make or break the story. The only reason you might think you need them is because now they are there. This novella and movie would still be as popular without them.
It is a brilliant story derived from another brilliant story derived from another brilliant story.
The real question people who love the book and the movie have to ask themselves is 'why does this particular story resonate with me and give so much hope?'
