Arsen Darnay's Blog, page 4

Modern Extremes

Two stories featured on the WSJ front page today (lower right corner) deal with extremes. One covers very expensive Japanese whiskeys; another deals with new drugs, sold at astronomical prices, to treat rare diseases.

The Japanese whiskeys range in over-the-bar prices of $100 to $529 per shot. People aiming to display their wealth drink these and then announce the fact on social media. The expensive drugs are in support of gene therapies and range from $850,000 to $2.1 million per treatment regime. The story on drugs tells of schemes insurance companies are trying out to help employers pay for such treatments; the schemes involve collecting small sums monthly from all employees to accumulate totals that will be spent on the rare few. Such approaches, of course, leave people who are not insured under corporate health plans to their own devices.
As at the bottom, so at the top. I’ve never liked the taste of whisky; down a glass, make a face. Ugh. The effect that comes later is equally available drinking cognac or vodka. So the first group is drinking less for the effect and more for the status of being able to pay the price. But one has to announce that on Facebook, etc.
At the top another issue is involved. The general belief seems to be that life on earth, in these our bodies, is the absolute value second to none; hence millions of dollars are well worth a few months or years. Our own culture began with a much more sophisticated theory—namely that life on earth does not end with death; has that old theory really been disproved effectively? If yes, by all means labor hard to build up a few million in case your genes need therapy. If not, the answer to dire diagnosis is to shrug—and get on with making sure the will is written and the funeral paid for in advance. Wisdom seems easier. And a trip to the bar to get a $15 shot of U.S. whisky—while handing an $85 roll of bills to some homeless wretch sitting half a block away under a wall—may also be kinder.

Institutionalization and Reform

Most innovations probably arise from intuitions; the intuitions are triggered by external observations of reality or changes in society. How did calculus come to be invented at roughly the same time by Newton (b. 1643) and by Leibnitz (b. 1646); the occasion was a desire to predict mathematically points on a geometrical curve. It’s easy to predict the location of a point on a line; but when the damned thing is sloping away from you in an ark, not easy. The desire in both cases was powerful, the need to get good answers pressing. The new math worked! In due time we’ve come to formalize its procedures into calculus. And now it is institutionalized; it is taught in school. The reason why most people frown, their features signaling unease, when calculus is mentioned is because the method has become institutionalized. People taking calculus don’t have the burning need to understand curves in order, say, to understand the orbits of planets. Institutionalization makes it relatively easy to learn an art; no invention is necessary, no repetitive testing, frustration, torn up sheets, and back to the start. At the same time, if the art is a difficult one—and is taught because it’s part of some grand scheme (you want to graduate in some science eventually); it is rarely taught in answer to a burning urge.
Looking around I can at least imagine some time in the future when much of what we now experience as twenty-first century culture may have been largely lost, especially the complicated parts. Then some people in the future may meet the problem of the curve again. Those experiencing the difficulties will once more be powerfully motivated to find the math to help them. Imagine such a group when one of its members bursts into a laboring group; he’s  holding some ancient book. “It’s been done before,” he cries. “And it’s all in here. A little hard to understand, but it’s the answer.” The mood in the room can almost be felt. And it represents what I’d call Reform: the renewal of an art that began as an intuition, got institutionalized, and now will be reformed. The reform will be present because this new group will make additional innovations to the math while trying to understand that ancient text.
This subject is of value in the context of my current ponderings. Everything we live now was once an innovation; many things have become ritualized so they no longer live in us as driving needs. And institutionalization is followed by decay. Reform, however, has no doubt already begun—even if we don’t fully see it yet.

One Forgets

During my time of rarely violated absenteeism from blogging, I’d quite forgotten how much labor goes into this activity. Now memory is itself a vast subject. One of its mysteries is that we often forget something; that “something” can be quite trivial or complex; the truth is that we often simply don’t remember... Then, some short period after, our better half (usually), says something like “I’ve got it!” and she (or he) then produces a name or an account. Our mind then immediately knows that it alsoknow—and can meaningful make additions to the partner’s first mention. In other words, we know that we remember before we actually know. So it was with the matter of forgetting the effort that blogging constitutes. The memories were instantly back when I settled before this machine to do today’s little chore. But no chore in blogging is ever “little.”
One thought I had some time after writing the last posting was that the decay of a civilization is marked by many events indicative of decay which seem to be far and few but definitely cumulating in “slow motion”; but so do many events that ultimately signal something positive—the slow appearance of a new order of thought and feeling which in their turn set the stage for the birth of another culture somewhen in the far future, i.e., also in slow motion. “I’ll write about that tomorrow,” I said to myself while reaching for the lights-out switch.
When we are no longer accustomed to put our thoughts on paper (figuratively, these days), we forget that notions that seem self-evident to us are not so obvious at all. They need illustration and presentation backed by lucid argument. And half the time the intuition is correct but to flesh it out is labor.
Therefore, a mere note today to hint at future content. Let me simply say that the nineteenth century already showed, in many developments that surfaced then (e.g., in psychology and in religion to name two subjects) that the Age of Reason began, having reached its peak in the eighteenth, to build a new way of thought even as rationalism was just beginning to decay into what we now label materialism (to pick a single word). More anon.

Decline in Slow Motion

Back when I began this blog, in February 2009, thus more than a decade ago, I kicked things off by introducing one of the main interests in my life, cyclic history (that post is here ). Now I’m urged to resume making entries to this blog by a person who cannot be denied. And what with having watched CNN and MSNBC all these months (rather than posting blog entries), I am keenly aware just how accurate my cyclic historians have been. Hence this post too will deal with cultural decline; indeed, if I wished to reflect the decline I see in the title of this post, I’d call it Decline in SloMo. That phrase is much more up-to-date with the linguistic trends. After all, as yesterday’s New York Times reported, our President is either quite unaware of the difference between there and their, or he does not give a damn. Now to explain “slow motion”…
Long ago and far away, back when I first became aware of the cyclic nature of cultures and civilizations, the world looked much more rational than it does today. I was then reading books about the societal collapse of Rome; and, looking around, etc., I wondered how it might have manifested in ordinary life. A clue was present in the very few fictional works that have survived from roughly the fourth through twelfth centuries of Europe. In those no one held forth about the Decline of Rome. The stories may have been about disorders, military or otherwise, but the landscapes were still green, the forests still dark, and the rivers just kept running on. They’re still running on today.
The facts is that every culture/civilization exists in a different time zone than ordinary human life. It often take a culture 500 years to reach adulthood and once again as long to reach senescence. If we are living eighty-some-odd years of one of those periods, developments marking growth or the decline of these gigantic and seemingly organic structures will not show, in detail, changes that, in cumulation, produce new societal patterns that, in their turn, will be called cultures. One of my gurus, the German historian, Oswald Spengler—he who argued most convincingly that cultures/civilizations are organic—used the words “culture” for the youthful and “civilization” for the adult phase of these structures. In the late stages of civilizations, absurd and often irrational events sometimes multiply so that even the half-asleep among us begin to shake their head. Such a time is with us now, are, indeed, displayed across the world. Then, looking around, some days, one can’t help but see that the old historians, who saw all this coming back in the 1930s, had glimpsed something real in the future. Events still proceed in slow motion; hence we still maintain hopes that normalcy will once again return; and return it will, eventually; but in SloMo that might take another 500 years.
With that cheerful thought, my resumption of blogging has begun this Labor Day 2019.

*That* Day in February

It may seem very odd indeed to make a post about that day in February on the 19th -- a day that this year was on the 18th and originally (in 1732) on the 22nd. My own interest in that day came about because I entered the U.S. Army on February 21, 1956; and the next day was a day off. The next day, of course, was Washington's Birthday; it had been made an National Holiday in 1885. Then, in 1968 Congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday Act; it became effective in 1971. Since that Act Washington's birthday is celebrated on the third Monday of February every year; that gives the nation three days off in February. The third Monday this year fell on the 18th. The same day also celebrates Abe Lincoln's birthday, which actually took place February 12, 1809.

All those who dislike the study of history do so because too many dates compete for our attention -- with little reward for the actual knowledge. This post illustrates the reason why. Presidents' Day. Okay. It's on the calendar. As for the rest, what difference does it make?

Snow

It took a while this winter. The first big snow came yesterday. All earlier attempts by our local Winter Fairy to produce the first genuine “must shovel” snow had failed. She had, presumably, become confused by Global Warming talk and trends. The earliest attempts came in November but never even fully covered drives, never mind roofs and roads. “It snowed a little,” was the phrase. And while the white did unevenly mark the grass out back, it was light enough so that even shy autumn leaves could hold up small brown sails; some even moved east in the wind, reminding me that Fall Raking had fallen short of one hundred percent.

So January 19, 2019 (a properly uneven year) came with skies triple-grey and dumped snow any which way. It cumulated to about four inches and piled under wind-pressure to hillocks high enough so that taking the garbage out resembled an Arctic trek. We too got snow, not just the East Coast. But continuing to trouble our local Winter Fairy, in Alabama they had tornadoes.
Very white out there, very bright the sun. Lovely, lovely. A neighboring oak’s still holding on to leaves with the usual oaken tenacity; but that’s just a species. Other trees have all obeyed; the evergreens are decorated with white jewelry.
Question to the Fairy? Will this first 2019 storm be the last as well? Who knows, these days. Everything’s confusing when oceans boil and icebergs melt.

Conscription and Some Relatives

Back when I was in the military, thus well before 1973, military conscription was still in force. Most of the men I served with were therefore draftees. Tending to the contrarian, I had enlisted voluntarily and was therefore considered to be Regular Army. I signed up for four years; the Draft kept people for just under two. In addition I served another extra year so that we (Brigitte and I) could organize our transition from Germany to the U.S. more efficiently. We’d met in Germany and married there.

One of the largely overlooked benefits of the Draft was that large numbers of at least the male population actually experienced most aspects of military work. That experience taught a person that military life and work was, most of the time, about as far removed from heroism as is construction, farming, factory work, or professional sports. And what with the public fully aware of the nature of this lifestyle (let me call it that, tongue in cheek) the tendency to view soldiers as heroes was not continuously on display back then; now it is on display far too much. But that sort of talk or oration has its own benefit too. When people glorify “our heroes,” we  may be sure of two things. First, they may never have served themselves (indeed they had often heroically schemed to avoid service) and, second, they often praise our heroes to cover themselves with borrowed (if sometimes fake) glory—not because they believe a word of what they say.These thoughts arose as I put away one of my 2018 calendars named “America the Beautiful.” Its thematic, built of photographs of statues (half the months) and landscapes (the other half), is “patriotic.” In effect, it is similar to the glorification of the ordinary GI, but at a larger scale. To be sure, the landscapes show that the American land is beautiful—but so is land across the globe. As for heroics and military events, all countries have the equivalents in their history. Using such images to point at “beauty” has a flavor of self-praise; it’s innocent in the calendar, but it's a way of bending from the hard truth of things.
It only takes small steps from these instances (and flag-worship too) to White Supremacy, American Exceptionalism, and other dangerous forms of tribalism. To praise the soldiers, let’s praise service. To praise the country, let’s praise its mountains, rivers, waterfalls, and plains. Patriotism? Let’s pay our taxes. The higher achievements of humanity are never mere collectives you can put on— like fatigues.

2019: Superstitiously Yours

I’m not superstitious, but, alas, inside of me (down in the slums of my not that shining city of a self) lives another person, actually a very close but often troublesome friend. And that friend certainly is. Superstitious.
One of my superstitions is that even years are unlucky. Therefore I wear my watch on my right wrist (Wrist 1) in even years because the watch will counter the misfortunes that come with my left wrist (Wrist 2). Now like most right-handers, I’ve worn my watch on the left. But then, years ago now, I began to wear my watch on my right wrist whenever the year became divisible by two. I began this in order to fight the bad vibrations which, I thought, a year like 2018 would certainly bring. The year 2016 had, again, proved my dark self’s superstition (nor had my watch, on the right hand, help): the election results that year. And when 2017 arrived, with my watch still on the right wrist, I decided that I would leave it where it was—in its “guarding” location—even if the year was, otherwise, favorable, being uneven. 
Today, a little late for January, I am once more faced with the choice. Do I treat 2019 as a year that needs protection against malign forces that invisibly hover beneath grey and even sunny skies? Or do I burden my left wrist with a watch and, for some days, look on the wrong wrist for the time?
The BREXIT vote in the UK suggests that 2019 has not yet taken a positive hold. To be sure, Theresa May kept her office as Prime Minister the next day, but only by a slim margin of 20 votes. Anyway, she won. In an even year she certainly would have been kicked out: thus my dark self assures me. The U.S. is still a member of NATO. Thank you, uneven year. But can I be sure of you? And Mueller is still biding his time and may be barred from making his Mueller Mysterium public.
So decision time is difficult. A helpful idea, however, might be tried in 2019. I have, like most fogeys of my age, more watches than I have years left to live. For about $11.99 I can get a battery for one of them and, in this crucial but unpredictable year, wear two watches, one on each wrist. You’re wise. You get it. Such matters actually mean something when you are forced to wander slums.

Dawn of the Monarchs

Some preliminary notes on context. In the summer of 2014 we moved from the east to the west of the Detroit metro area. In the east we lived in Grosse Pointe; now we live in a village called Wolverine Lake.

In Grosse Point Brigitte chanced upon a butterfly egg on a dill plant. The dill was growing in the crack of the concrete near our garage. Brigitte coaxed that egg into our first butterfly—raised indoors and then released. It was a Black Swallowtail. Thereafter we raised several generations of Swallowtails; they came to lay eggs on plentiful patches of dill we were always raising deliberately or by chance. Eventually we got to wondering why Monarchs never left traces enough for us to add them to the output of our Butterfly Ranch, as we came to call our tiny backyard. This led us to plant some milkweed there; Monarchs like to start new life on large milkweed leaves. That planting was around 2013, possibly earlier, but no Monarch ever came or, as we now believe, we never noticed.  Monarch lay very, very tiny eggs, faintly yellow in color, easily mistaken as mere spots on the leaves. From these spots come tiny caterpillars that, initially, require a powerful magnifier even to see. So 2013 passed. We packed and moved to Wolverine Lake.
Here, for some reason, Swallowtails haven’t yet found our forests of dill. We have much more yard here; thus we also planted several milkweed plants. On these, thanks to the much more educated eyes of our neighbor, Pat Littlefield, Monarchs left their eggs. With Pat’s help, we have finally succeeded in nurturing three of those invisible yellow spots into as many gorgeous Monarchs. We’re showing our third, a young lady, called Scarlet. When the first two, Romeo and Juliet, were ready to take wing, we had not yet mastered the art of releasing butterflies while also managing a camera.
So now the Era of the Monarchs has begun here, in the west. More to come. As for ancient history, see the index and click on Butterflies. You'll see information on Monarchs as well, but not one that we had raised ourselves and released after its emergence from its translucent pupae.

Green Thursday

Whenever Easter week arrives, and Thursday of that week, we always wrestle with the naming of the day. It takes a while before we re-remember that it is called Maundy Thursday. Not surprisingly, I’ve got a post on that subject going back some years ( link ). Today we discovered that in German the day is called Green Thursday. That religious day like that would carry a color (well at least since the 17th century and only in Germany) was another surprise and took some research to grasp.

It turns out that German etymologists are not in full agreement on how green came to be attached to Easter Thursday. The Biblical reference around which the discussion swirls is Luke 23:31. In the King James version it says:
For if they do these things [the abuse of Jesus on the way to the cross] in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry.
In German the word used for tree is wood (Holz); green wood is alive while dry wood is dead. 
The green wood here is Jesus himself, made clear in the full quotation, which I take from the Jerusalem Bible (Luke 23:26-32):
As they were leading him [Jesus] away, they seized on a man, Simon from Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and made him shoulder the cross and carry it behind Jesus. Large numbers of people followed him, and of women too, who mourned and lamented for him. But Jesus turned to them and said, ‘Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep rather for yourselves and for your children. For the day will surely come when people will say, “Happy are those who are barren, the wombs that have never borne, the breasts that have never suckled!” Then they will begin to say unto the mountains, “Fall on us!”; to the hills, “Cover us!” For if men use the green wood like this, what will happen when it is dry?’ Now with him they were also leading out two other criminals to be executed.
Green, thus has multiple meanings here: life itself, youth, freshness, and, by implication, sinlessness. Green Thursday is thus a day of forgiveness of sin, the renewal of the soul, dry wood made green again. The other explanations offered by etymologists range to references of season, to eating habits on Maundy Thursday in Germany (heavy on vegetables in a fasting season) and other similar associations. But the biblical reference is used most often, and, it seems, rightly so. The words come from Jesus’ mouth as he is making his way to crucifixion—to be followed by Resurrection!
The Hungarians and the Poles (to mark Brigitte’s and my places of birth) call this day Great Thursday. The French call it Jeudi Saint; that Saint we would here render as Holy.

Brigitte, whose gift for words is very deep, correctly surmised, before any research took place, that the Green in that Thursday may hark back to the green palms seen just a few days before on Palm Sunday. That turned out to be one of the competing explanations the German etymologists mentioned as well!
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In the course of this venture we also looked up why the Germans call Good Friday Karfreitag. The meaning of that Kar escaped us. That word comes for Proto-Germanic karo or kara, sorrow, trouble, and care. The word care comes from kara. If we wished to follow the German model, we’d call Good Friday Care Friday.