Francis Berger's Blog, page 186

Gradually And Then Suddenly . . .

"How did you go bankrupt?" Bill asked.

"Two ways," Mike said. "Gradually and then suddenly."


I have been mulling over this little gem from Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises for the better part of two days now.  Humorous and ironic, the profundity of Mike's sullen description of how he lost his money lies in the realization that gradually, then suddenly is not just a clever quip, but a recognizable pattern of life that can be extended to any aspect of human existence. 

Take your health, for example.  Imagine you are out-of-shape and begin an intense exercise regimen in an effort to get fit.  During the first week all you feel is pain, but slowly and gradually your fitness level improves until one fine morning - ta-dah!  You are suddenly in shape! 

Writing follows a similar pattern, in my opinion.  You type and type and type and revise and rethink and rip up and throw out and rewrite and then one day you suddenly realize you are finished. 

The idea can also be applied to success.  Though instant success happens, it is rare and dangerous.  The more common path to success also follows the gradually then suddenly pattern. 

Of course, gradually then suddenly is not always positive, as Mike so gloomily reveals when describing his state of financial misfortune.  Going back to the example of health.  If you are in shape and stop exercising and taking care of yourself, you gradually, then very suddenly realize you are no longer fit.  In writing, if you no longer imagine, write, and create, you gradually, then very suddenly stop being a writer. 

In terms of success, I have noticed that my novel is gradually catching the attention of more readers.  More ratings and reviews are popping up on Goodreads and Amazon.  Whether or not this gradual increase in interest and awareness will translate into anything in the suddenly portion of the equation described above remains to be seen.

Regardless, it is nice to see a few more people take notice of the novel. 

Why The Left Lost Hungary This Time (And Why It's A Good Thing They Did.)

I am not a political pundit.  Of contemporary elections, democracies and campaigns, I am most certainly not an aficionado.  More often than not, I literally do not care who wins or loses any given election.  Having said this, I freely admit I watched the recent election in Hungary with keen interest.  Overall, I am pleased with the way it turned out.  I am satisfied that Orbán won, but that satisfaction does not rival the absolute pleasure I experienced by witnessing the crushing and humiliating defeat Hungarian voters handed the pathetically cobbled-together coalition of left-wing parties whose only fundamental objective was to rid Magyarország of Orbán.

I imagine the leaders of the Unity Party (or whatever they called themselves) are currently sitting in dark rooms somewhere in Budapest, sipping palinka, licking their wounds, and wondering how they managed to suffer a defeat of such epic proportions yet again.  What happened?  They were destined to win! After all, they had Ron Werber in their corner!  And Orbán, they surmised, had done so much to isolate and alienate Hungary from the globalized international community that it would be no great chore to unseat him from the throne of power.  But none of that made any difference.  What was it then?  What was it that made the Left such an unappealing choice for most Magyars?

I offer the following theory for consideration.  The Left's fatal flaw was its inability to discern the difference between attacking Orbán and attacking Hungary itself.  For over four years, left-wingers in Hungary, with the eager help of their international sympathizers and supporters across the globe, have waged a vitriolic public war against Fidesz.  Within the framework of democracy there is essentially nothing wrong with that; however, the Left's noxious criticism often overflowed the dykes of political partisanship and flooded into the plains of the country itself.  Rather than keep their malice aimed solely at their political and ideological opponents, the Hungarian leftists liberally criticized the very fabric of the nation they hoped to one day represent. 

To put it bluntly, the Left in Hungary revealed themselves to be, above all else, anti-Magyar.  They carelessly and arrogantly wrote articles and diatribes denouncing Hungary to the world.  They gave bitter interviews, mostly for magazines and newspapers in the West, in which they not only condemned their political foes, but the country their political foes had been democratically elected to represent. When they ran out of ammunition or ideas in their relentless rebukes of all things Magyar, they enlisted the help of foreign friends and disgruntled expats to continue the work of vilifying Hungary for them. 

Hungarians, regardless of their ranking on some stupid and meaningless world happiness report, do not take kindly to people denigrating their country and have shown they have no interest in electing anyone whose main political platform amounts to little more than espousing national shame and national self-hatred.  Who would?  Can you imagine the American people electing a candidate whose entire platform was built upon incessant and malicious criticism of the United States of America?  Not just the current state of the country, but of everything that makes it what it is?  Its founding, its constitution, its economy, its history, its customs, its faith, its values?  Yet this is exactly what the parties that made up that unholy alliance known as Unity did for the better part of four years in Hungary.  When they were not doing it themselves, they made sure to line up squarely behind those who were.  Despite all of this, they honestly believed they stood a chance at being elected. It's beyond tragic-comical.  

I will even go as far as to claim that the Left's political attitudes are at least partially responsible for the rabid ultra-nationalism epitomized by Jobbik.   Much of the rhetoric of the far-Right is nothing more than a reaction to the acerbic platitudes of the Left.  With any luck, this latest defeat of the Left will translate into something perpetual in Magyar politics. Perhaps the absence of constant anti-Magyar rhetoric from the Left will help quell the rising reactive tide of narrow minded pro-Magyar rhetoric on the Right.  One can only hope.    

The Definitive Symbol of Our Age

Over the past few days I have contemplating symbols and ages.  I have been thinking about certain periods of history and ruminating over which symbol or collection of symbols would best represent or epitomize an historical event or time. 

Take the French Revolution, for example.  Which would be the more apt symbol?  The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen or the guillotine? 

It did not take me long to choose.  After I made my decision, I realized my choice uncovered much more than my standpoint concerning the historical event; my choice of symbol ultimately revealed my sensibilities, my beliefs, and my outlook, not just about the French Revolution, but of life in general. 

I quickly understood that my choice of symbol would inevitably be challenged by those who had chosen the other symbol to represent the French Revolution.  Their choice would also reveal much their standpoint, their sensibilities, their beliefs, and their outlook.  Disagreement, scorn, and general unpleasantness would surely follow.

Luckily, there will be no such ideological squabbling over the symbol I propose to affix to our own age.  Regardless of standpoint, I am sure all will agree that the attributes and characteristics of my proposed symbol reach a level of sublime transcendence that will appeal to all regardless of their standpoint.  All will recognize the inherent truth in the representation -  albeit for differing reasons - and I am certain everyone will experience an epiphany of Aristotelian grandeur and find themselves uttering, "Ah, that is it" once they see it. 

So, what is the definitive symbol of our age?  Ladies and gentleman, I humbly submit my entry . . . .







The Selfie

Crimea: The *Real* Story.

A few weeks ago I wrote a post in which I criticized the Western elites for their practice of using concepts like freedom and democracy as smokescreens to hide the true nature of their foreign campaigns of resource exploitation and financial marauding.  I also argued that the current 'crisis' in Ukraine provided a perfect example of this practice and claimed that anyone with an iota of critical awareness could see beneath the surface and understand the true nature of the events that were unfolding in Kiev. 

But I am no expert when it comes to geopolitics.  Thus, I'll leave explaining current events transpiring in Crimea and its recent referendum in the hands of an expert:

http://souloftheeast.org/2014/03/07/the-bear-roars-back/

Free Kindle Version of Novel Available - March 12 -16

The other day I noticed I have five unused promotion days left in my account at Kindle Direct Publishing. 

A short time ago I more-or-less vowed to stop promoting and marketing the novel through these kinds of avenues.  Having said that, it would be a shame to let those accumulated free days go to waste.

Therefore, I invite anyone who may be interested to download free Kindle versions of The City of Earthly Desire, which will be available at Amazon from March 12 to March 16.

A Voice From the Wrong Side of History: Bread On My Mother's Table

If you ask the average person in North American what a Danube Swabian is you will inevitably get one of these responses as answers: An "eyes-as-big-as-dinner-plates" stare of utter vacuity or some timorous guess about some obscure dish in German cookery.  

The truth is few people in the world today know what a Danube Swabian is - or more correctly, what a Danube Swabian was.  As far as being a distinctive ethnic subgroup with its own culture and customs, Danube Swabians very much exist in the past tense.

Tracing the tragic circumstances of her own family, Ms. Andor's book provides a few insights as to why the ethnic cleaning of the Danube Swabians has never been, and will most likely never be, front page news or silver screen material.

As a source of information about a virtually unknown chapter of the twentieth-century, Bread On My Mother's Table is extremely valuable.  As is the case with Holocaust survivors, survivors of the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Europe's ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia, Romania, and Hungary are dying off.  Another decade, and there won't be any left; unlike the Holocaust, the memories and events of the Danube Swabian experience do not exist in hundreds of films, documentaries, museums, books, novels, memoirs, etc.  In this context, Ms. Andor's memoir serves an important purpose - documenting and keeping alive a memory of which the world is largely ignorant.  

As a memoir, Bread On My Mother's Table is an engaging read.  At times the prose is immensely vivid and moving.  Having said this, I found the last two chapters, where the author infuses her own personal philosophy of life and war and death and everything else under the sun - somewhat annoying.  Ms. Andor aims to leave us with profound words of hope at the end of the book; what she leaves us with instead is a vision that barely rises above the message of the "It's A Small World After All" ride at Disney World.

Despite these shortcomings, Bread On My Mother's Table is a powerful and much-needed book - both as a memoir and as an historical document.  Hopefully it will help make the world more aware of Danube Swabians and their tragic history, because for the Swabians and their descendents (yours truly among them) history is all that is left.  As the subtitle suggests, all most Danube Swabians or their descendents can do is remember.  For most of us, nothing else exists.

One Side is Self-Interested; The Other Side is Insane. An Accurate Assessment of the Ukraine Crisis.

An accurate assessment of the two sides of the Ukrainian Crisis:

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.ca/2014/03/ukraine-crisis-eastern-and-western.html

May I See Your Democracy License, Please?

Peaceful Ukrainian Protesters For as long as I can remember the West - America and its business driven NGO's especially - have been waging a ceaseless war against anyone and anything that stands in the way of their vision of a democratic world.  During the Cold War or the Second World War the West's campaign of fighting to make the world safe for democracy may have held some legitimacy, but ever since the collapse of the Iron Curtain, the West's perpetual "demo-sade" has degenerated into a shameful farce.  How is the West able to get away with glaring hypocrisies regarding democracy?  I believe the answer lies in the manner in which elites in the West have conditioned us to think about democracy and the way they use this conditioned ideal of democracy as a license to destabilize and loot any region of the world they deem "undemocratic."

Democracy has become a Pavlovian word in our culture; merely utter it and you are sure to get people salivating as their minds flash to visions of just societies, individual freedoms, voting booths, and all-you-can-eat buffet restaurants.  School textbooks, Hollywood films, flashy newscasts, and print editorials have lauded and continue to laud the indisputable moral, ethical, social, and economic superiority of democracy to all other forms of government that have ever existed in human civilization.  Though not perfect, democracy, we are told, is, and will forever be, the highest form of government human beings can ever hope to assemble on this planet.  We have been conditioned to believe that democracy is an ultimate good, something noble, something worth striving for, fighting for, even dying for.  Thus, when we are told people in other parts of the planet, like in Ukraine for example, are striving, fighting, and dying for democracy, we feel an affinity for them and their struggle.  We watch their rebellions and revolutions from the comfort of our homes and we wish for them to succeed.  We hope they will conquer the forces of oppression they face and take their place next to ours at the table of peace and prosperity.

All of this would be fine and well if the Western elites who propagate the supremacy of democracy actually believed in and honestly practiced the tenets of democracy in their own societies and in their foreign policies, but sadly, with every revolution that passes, with every "spring" that blossoms, it is becoming increasingly evident that the powerful in the West are hypocrites of the most hideous kind.  They use democracy as both rallying cry and a shield to hide their true purposes and questionable agendas in other countries around the world.  To prove this point all one has to do is imagine what the American reaction would be to a few thousand protesters descending upon the White House and Capitol Hill armed with Molotov cocktails and baseball bats intent on a little game of "regime change." Do you honestly think the president and his staff would heed calls for restraint and dialogue?  Would there be a chance in hell that the president, that any president, would give up his democratically elected power under such circumstances?  Yet this is exactly what the White House demanded of the democratically elected Ukrainian leader before he was ousted by hordes of violent rioters who looked like they were auditioning for bit parts in some upcoming Mad Max film. 

And that is just one point.  There are countless others.  Far too many to delve into here.  But my intention in this little tirade was not to pick sides in the Ukrainian Crisis, but to bring to light how Western elites use the concept of democracy as a license to pursue their often utterly unethical and undemocratic goals.  As the leaked phone conversations of top American officials revealed, regime change in the Ukraine is a goal in which the United States and the European Union is very actively involved, right down to debating the best choice of interim leader once the insurrection achieved its aim of ousting the democratically elected guy.  One person's coup is another person's revolution, I suppose. 

The most tragic part of all of this intrigue is that it often leads to bloodshed.  Over the past decade or so I have been perpetually seized by a Metternichian paranoia whenever I hear the word democracy excessively bandied about by politicians and the media.  Like Metternich, it has been my experience that a week or two of democracy talk usually precipitates a few weeks of bloodshed. 

Believers in democracy should take note and take action, but I doubt they ever will. 





 

It's Good To Be Reminded Obvious Truths

One of my students is the editor of the school newspaper.  I work in a small school - so small I marvel it even has a student newspaper.  Though he claims to be only the editor, the truth is he is the newspaper.  He plans out each issue, writes the editorials, solicits fellow students to write articles, proofreads the drafts, and formats each and every issue.  All of this he does through his own initiative, with little formal teacher supervision. 

Yesterday, he asked me to proofread an article he wanted to include in an upcoming issue.  After I finished, I asked the student if his classmates enjoyed reading the newspaper.  He informed me that not many students read the paper, but the few that did enjoyed it.  He confessed that some of classmates occasionally asked him why he even bothered to publish a newspaper at all.
     "And what did you tell them?" I asked.
     The student shrugged.  "A lot of my friends ask me why I do it.  They say, you don't have to put out a newspaper; the school doesn't really need one.  I tell them they're right.  I don't have to publish a newspaper, and the school doesn't need one, but I think a newspaper helps make the school a better place."
     It is good to be reminded of obvious truths.  It truly is. 
    

Sex Trafficking - It's Closer Than You Think

Part of my motivation for writing The City of Earthly Desire was to address the utter immorality and inhumanity of the sex trade, be it through prostitution, slavery, or pornography.  Writing the novel allowed me to come to terms with my own willful ignorance of the immorality the "sex industry" and provided me a vehicle through which to challenge contemporary society's willful ignorance of the cruelty and dehumanization inherent in the sex trade. In a way, the novel is also my formal objection to the current passive acceptance of the sexual exploitation and sexual commodification of human beings as perhaps an undesirable, but ultimately unavoidable reality that simply has to be tolerated. 

In a world that not only defends but also actively and ceaselessly encourages and manipulates the individual to strive for pleasure and happiness as some sort of sacred duty, it is not difficult to conceive how such a bleak view of reality is so readily accepted by so many.  Heck, there are a slew of "reality" shows on television depicting people aspiring to make it big in the sex industry.  The participants are mostly portrayed as savvy business people with great ideas and marketing plans.  It's glamorous.  It's mainstream.  All the participants have one thing in common - they are all "rational" adults who have made a conscious decision to enter the industry of their own free will. 

There is no denying that there are adults who, having seemingly nothing else to offer the world, make a conscious decision to put their bodies or other people's bodies on the sexual marketplace for profit.  There is also no denying that, with a few exceptions, most of the businesses and trades these adults choose to enter are legal.  Therefore, the sex industry is all consenting adults who are legally doing what they do of their own free will.  Nothing wrong with that, is there?  If you like it, you'll accept it.  If you don't, you can easily ignore it. 
In either case, you are not obliged to think too much about the topic and you are allowed to get back to the business of getting on your life. 

If only life were that simple. 

For many years I too held fairly liberal views about the sex industry; now, I realize it is depravity, pure and simple.  Like those with more liberal views concerning sexuality and what adults are allowed to do with their own bodies, I refused to accept that the sex industry has a dark side.  Of course I knew sex trafficking, child prostitution, and sex slavery existed, but I refused to group them with the legal and legitimate branches of the sex industry.  Child pornography and sex slavery were anomalies committed by sick individuals and had nothing at all to do with the healthy, rational choices adults like me made when they desired a little sexual stimulation to break up the grayness of a drab week or ease the stress of a long day at work.  Sex trafficking and the like were rare occurrences, I told myself.  If they did happen, they were perpetrated by perverted people and they mostly happened in faraway places with horrible economies where people are forced to engage in such crimes because it is often their only way of securing their own survival. 

Once again, if only life were that simple. 

I could go on for hours about the sex trade and its inherent evils, but the main purpose of this post was to draw attention to the reality that "anomalies" like sex trafficking are far more pervasive than most people would like to believe;  it is also happening much closer to home than most people would feel comfortable acknowledging. 

Case and point, York Region, the place I currently call home, compromises of a collection of affluent commuter towns that sprawl out over the northern borders of Toronto.  On the surface, it is a place of spacious homes, green lawns, playgrounds, and good schools.  It is almost excruciatingly monotone in its suburban composition, but it is exactly the kind of environment most people are drawn to when they begin searching for a nice place to raise the kids. 

It's also a nice place to run a sex trafficking and child prostitution racket:

http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2014/02/19/10_arrested_in_york_region_human_trafficking_probe.html

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/02/19/york-region-human-trafficking-investigation-arrests-ten-in-sex-trade-case-involving-young-teens/

Naturally, this has nothing at all to do with the legitimate sex industry.  It's just an anomaly, I'm sure.