Peter Sean Bradley

Los Angeles: AD 2017 by Philip Wylie

https://medium.com/@peterseanbradle/the-name-of-the-game-524b221e2b49

If you are over 60, you might remember a TV show called ‘Name of the Game.” The show involved the Howard Publishing empire. The show was formatted in an unusual rotating style. One week, it would have a show featuring Robert Stack as the editor of a crime magazine that involved the crime of the week. The next week, Gene Barry would be the publishing mogul, Glenn Howard, and he would have a show about what it was like to be a mover and shaker. The next week, Tony Franciosa was a reporter for something like “People” before “People” was even conceived.

One of the Gene Barry/Glenn Howard episodes involved Glenn traveling in time to 2017 when all the predictions of an environmental disaster had come true. The air is unbreathable. The population has dropped by 80% as people huddle underground in bunkers in a dystopian police state.

This was the only episode that has stayed with me over the last 52 years. Interestingly, it appears that this episode was directed by a 24-year-old wunderkind named Steven Speilberg. So, maybe that has something to do with it. According to Wiki: “The director, the 24-year-old Steven Spielberg, used camera angles to drive his first movie-length television episode across and remarked in later years that the show “opened a lot of doors for me.”

So, there you are: no “Name of the Game,” no Jaws, ET, Indiana Jones, etc.

Based on that 50 year old memory, I decided to read the Phillip Wylie novelization. Wylie wrote the incredibly schlocky “When Worlds Collide” and “After Worlds Collide.” Wylie is a “Golden Age of Science Fiction” writer who nobody remembers.

I will cut to the chase with my recommendation: you don't want to get this book. It is far too expositive. There are long, long passages where Glenn Howard talks about, contemplates, and discusses “free sex.” Initially, he is invited to a party with the movers and shakers where the men - all men - are set up with the sex partner of their desire, watch stag films, and attend a stag show. Howard doesn't partake, but he's overcome with guilt about his “sexual hangups.” When he is in the future, we get more of the same because the world has changed into a world not entirely unlike the world we live - hooking up is not stigmatized. However, it also appears that the people of the future have adopted the idea that even children are sexual beings, and sex education involves hands-on teaching at the kindergarten stage. One character confesses to Howard that her attraction is that he reminds her of her grandfather, with whom she had sex as a nine-year-old.

So, make the story “Drag Queens with Children,” and Howard's future is our present. 

Hooray.

Honestly, I'm not sure what Wylie's take on this is. Howard recognizes it as pedophilia, but that word is never used. There is a discussion about the arbitrary drawing of lines about the age of consent that are viewed as crazy in the future, i.e., our present. It seems like Howard is coming around to dealing with his “hang-ups” by the end of the story.

The ambiguity of Wylie on this is not surprising. In 1971, elite culture was on its way to normalizing pedophilia. If you doubt that, consider that Roman Polanski's anal rape of a 13-year-old was viewed as no big deal by the elites, who were outraged that Polanski was expected to serve any jail time. Consider also Whoopi Goldberg's defense of Roman Polanski on the grounds that what he did was not “rape rape.”

“It's not ‘rape rape.' It's the good kind of ‘learning experience' rape by a very important person, serf.”These kinds of stories about people from the past being transported into a future society have a standard structure. For the most part, this story falls into that structure, except that Glenn Howard is a Marty Stu. He's rated Triple A plus because of his special genes, meaning he must have sex with all willing women. For some reason, he's opposed to this until he works out his “hang-ups.”

Glenn is appointed to the board of directors of the United States, Inc., which has taken over from the defunct constitutional government. The villains are capitalists who insist on continuing to pollute. 

The book is a leftwinger's wet dream. The bad guys were the industrialists that Howard began the story with. After hearing about the ecological disaster that must surely end the world by the mid-1980s, these industrialists decide on a plan to discredit and cancel environmentalists, which leads to disaster. In other words, the characters were flat as carbon paper. 

Nonetheless, I enjoyed the story as a kind of retro-alt-hist. We get to see what people were concerned about in 1971 and what they thought the future would look like. For example, the environmental disaster was wrong, but it involves the same things that doom-criers are still crying doom about: acid rain, global warming, toxic waste, etc. On the other hand, there were things that Howard got wrong. Nuclear waste features prominently in his disaster. We should be so lucky as to have clean, non-polluting nuclear power. 

Wylie predicted global cooling as the thing that tipped civilization over into disaster. When this book was written in 1971, that was the concern, although Wylie allows Howard to say that it could have been global warming just as easily. One thing about this indeterminacy is that global warming is a far nicer problem than a “year without a summer.”

Another feature of the story is how sexist it is. Even 2017 is a man's world. Women are free to have sex with whomever they want, but that comes off more as a great deal for the men. For their part, men are still confidently in charge, while women are still playing support roles. Even for future seeing writers and media moguls, no one expected that “Women's Liberation” was going to mean anything. (Or it could be that in 1971, “Women's Liberation” was still about three years in the future.)

So, the book is schlocky, but if you are masochistic and like schlocky science fiction or social history preserved in amber, you may like this book.

Triptych (Will Trent 1) by Karin Slaughter

https://medium.com/@peterseanEsq/book-review-will-trent-1-d5d1e5f5cb60

I decided to read this book after watching the Amazon “Will Trent” series. I enjoyed the Will Trent character on Amazon with his scarred background, dyslexia, and ability to read a crime scene. The series followed the book in this regard. The book gives us more details about Trent's history, particularly his relationship with fellow foster-system victim Angie Polaski.

The character of Will Trent is a draw for this book. Trent suffers from dyslexia and has to develop workarounds for his disability. His disability is a feature of this book, but Trent is not depicted as a victim. He fears being called stupid as someone who cannot read and strives mightily to hide the fact that his reading is impaired. Stoicness defines his character.

The plot in this book also works. The story involves grotesque attacks on teen girls. We are offered a likely suspect who has been recently released from serving time for a similar crime thirty years before. This character becomes the most sympathetic character in the book.

Trent and Polaski follows the clue to a surprising conclusion.

So, this is a book with charismatic characters, a satisfying mystery, and thrilling action. I recommend it.

The Jewish Jesus by Peter Schafer

Peter Schafer specializes in the study of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity during the early Christian/early Rabbinical Jewish period. Schafer's general thesis is that the separation of Christianity from Judaism took far longer than commonly thought and that the two sister faiths helped to shape each other during this long period of interaction. Schafer views rabbinical Judaism and Christianity as sister religions:

“One final remark: we are talking here about the very early relationship between “Judaism” and “Christianity”—long before they became two distinct communities, let alone religions. Instead of following the old paradigm of the “daughter religion” (Christianity) being born from the “mother religion” (Judaism), I prefer to use the term “sister religion” for Christianity, since, ultimately, I am arguing that once the idea of the Christian Messiah was put forth—with all its ramifications—Judaism could not remain the same.”

Schafer's principal source of information involves a reading of the rabbinical Mishnah and Talmud. In particular, Shafer examines the rabbinical responses to arguments made by unspecified heretics (minim), which echo Christian arguments or positions.
An example of this interconnectedness involves Paul justification of the custom of women covering their heads on the grounds that a hierarchy exists, which in descending order ranks Christ/God—man—woman. In this hierarchy man is the “image” and “glory” of God, whereas woman is the “glory” of man.(1 Cor 11:2-16.) This concept seems to come from Genesis 1:27: “And God created man in his image, in the image of God he created him.” (This text is used by the Latter Day Saints to justify their doctrine that God has a corporeal body.) This text was used by Rabbi Simlai to refute the “heresy of two powers” – which maintained that there were two divine powers in heaven, also called “binitarianism.” R. Simlai rebutted a minim argument that used the creation of man in “our image” by teaching: “In the past Adam was created from dust, and Eve was created from Adam, but henceforth: ‘in our image, after our likeness' (Gen. 1:26). Neither man without woman nor woman without man, and neither of them without the Shekhinah.” Some have argued that the rabbinic midrash is dependent on Paul, but Schafer believes that the more likely explanation is that Paul and Simlair are dependent on a common a common Jewish source.
Other minim challenges involve the different names given to God in the Torah. A key point is that the minim's challenge always involve three names, which suggests that the minim are Christian. Schafer suggests that this identification may not be entirely apposite in that Christian interest in the Holy Spirit was not a strong element of Christian thinking prior to the fourth century. He also suggests that changes in the imperial structure wrought by Diocletian's collegial imperial system may have fostered thinking in terms of a limited divine rulership.
Schafer maintains that Jewish rabbis were aware of Christological debates. Christian concepts originated in Judaism:

“It was Christology that most occupied the Fathers of the Church during the first centuries C.E. (up until the mid-fourth century)—and thus worried their rabbinic colleagues. R. Simlai and the majority of the rabbis not only knew these debates but referred to and grappled with them.82 And this is hardly surprising, for reflections about the form and essence of its God were certainly not alien to prerabbinic and rabbinic Judaism. A classical example is the Wisdom theology as developed in the biblical book of Proverbs and in the noncanonical books Jesus Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) and Wisdom of Solomon. In Proverbs (third century B.C.E.?) we are told of Wisdom (hokhmah) that she was created before the creation of the world and was with God as his “confidante” or his “master worker” when “he assigned to the sea its limit” and “marked out the foundations of the earth.”

Philo of Alexandria developed a Logos and Wisdom theology:

“It would therefore not seem a difficult task to develop from such initial stages the idea of a second divine power next to and with God—as indeed Philo did with his comprehensive Wisdom and Logos theology. Judaism did not choose to go this route—at any rate not the variety of Judaism that would gain acceptance in the centuries to come. Jesus Sirach—written about 190 B.C.E. in Hebrew, translated ca. 132 B.C.E. into Greek, but never accepted as part of the official canon of the Hebrew Bible (although highly regarded by the rabbis)—applies Wisdom of Solomon's wisdom to the Torah...”

Christianity maintained the character of wisdom and logos, particularly in John 1. Judaism identified wisdom with the written Torah, but Judaism could have continued on with the ideas of Wisdom and Logos:
“Judaism, too, could have carried on with the ideas of Wisdom and Logos—it is precisely for this reason that the rabbis perceived the developments within Christianity as simultaneously tempting and threatening—it decided, however, under the impact of Christian theology (or rather, under the impact of what would ever more forcefully become the trademark of Christianity), against this option. It would take until the Middle Ages—until the emergence of the Kabbalah as the climax of Jewish mysticism toward the end of the twelfth century—for Wisdom as a person to find her way back into Judaism.”
The rabbinical Jews also formed the idea of a young and an old God. This developed from the presentation of God as a war hero at times (Ex. 13:18, 15:3) and as an old man (Exodus 24:10) at other times. (God as an old man needs a footstool.) The latter imagery projected concepts of mercy; the former of strength. This reaches a height in Daniel 7:9 in the “Ancient of Days” motif. These presentations raised the “two powers” heresy, which was battled by rabbinical midrashes affirming the unity of God. (Since the midrash contemplates complementary powers, Schafer rules out a gnostic system.)
Because Daniel 7:9 speaks of setting thrones – plural – in heaven, this also suggests the “two powers” heresy. This naturally led to speculation about who was to sit in the other throne. Rabbinical suggestions indicated that the second throne would be occupied by the Messiah-King David. This suggestion was slapped down by other rabbis who saw the Christian danger in it.
The Daniel trope led to non-canonical scriptures identifying the messiah-king as the son of God, which led to the canonical gospels identifying Jesus as an heir to David and the son of Man who took his seat on the throne reserved for Him at God's right hand. Schafer explains:

“It is highly probable that R. Aqiva in the Bavli knows of this Jewish chain of tradition and refers to it (yet of course without its Christian implications). And it is little wonder that R. Yose and, even more so, R. Eleazar b. Azariah, both aware of the Christian ramifications, try to immediately defuse any such implications in R. Aqiva's exegesis, seeing as how they threaten to evoke (in their view) that most dangerous and detested of all heresies—Christianity—and in its most provocative form. Both Jews and Christians shared a belief in the Davidic Messiah, and when Aqiva has his Messiah take his seat next to God in heaven, all rabbinic fences erected against this particular heresy are pulled down—with incalculable consequences for rabbinic Judaism. So I wish to argue that in our Bavli sugya we are indeed confronted with rabbinic polemics against Christianity, that is, Christianity in its very essence, with the Messiah Jesus competing with the Jewish Messiah.”

Rabbinical Judaism went in a different direction. One passage in Exodus created a conundrum:

“A certain heretic (mina) said to Rav Idith: “It is written: ‘And to Moses he [God] said: Come up to the Lord (YHWH)' (Ex. 24:1). But surely it should have said: ‘Come up to me!'”

Why is God inviting Moses to come up the mountain to see God as if there are two different “gods”? One explanation was that the being giving the invitation was Metatron:

“He [Rav Idith] said to him [the heretic]: “This was Metatron, whose name is like the name of his master, as it is written: ‘for my name is in him' (Ex. 23:21).” “But if so,” [the heretic retorted,] “we should worship him!”

Metatron's identity shifts. At some times, he is an angel. He is identified with the angel who accompanied the Jews on their journey through the desert and was given the incredible power of forgiving sins in Exodus 23:20:
“(23:20) I am going to send an angel (mal'akh) in front of you, to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared. (21) Be attentive to him and listen to his voice; do not rebel against him (al-tamer bo), for he will not pardon your transgression; for my name is in him (ki shemi be-qirbo).”

This led to heretical speculation that this was Metatron and that Metatron was interchangeable with God. In the Talmud, Metatron assumes the position of the highest angel because his name is like the name of God.
Further speculation equated Metatron with Enoch who “walked with God,” i.e., was taken up to heaven and became an angel. Metatron was also identified with Michael, who functioned as the celestial high priest in Heaven. This rabbinic speculation was rife with risks:

“On this level, therefore, our passage is still quite “innocent.” It is interested in Metatron's function in heaven, clearly as an angel, and not in his relationship with God. But one can see how it might give rise to other more dangerous speculations. Once Michael is identified with Metatron and the Metatron traditions sneak in, a Pandora's box is opened: one might then consider that the plural of “thrones” in Daniel 7:9f. might refer not just to God's throne but rather to one throne for the “Ancient of Days” and another for David/the Son of Man or Metatron;72 or consider the dangerous implications resulting from the insight that Metatron's name is like the name of his master.”

Another part of the Talmud had God spending time teaching Torah, which was also assigned to Metatron:

“The two Babylonian rabbis Aha (bar Ya‘aqov) and Nahman bar Yitzhaq (fourth-generation amoraim, first half of the fourth century C.E.) search for a biblical proof that God stopped laughing after the destruction of the Temple. Having rejected the verses Isaiah 22:12 and Psalms 137:5f., they settle on Isaiah 42:14—obviously undisturbed by the fact that God's crying is compared to that of a woman in labor. But since the Talmud does not want God to spend all day and night crying (the sugya continues with the question of what God does at night), it reserves the fourth quarter of the day for something more productive: the Torah instruction of schoolchildren (presumably the little children in heaven who have died a premature death). This leads to the further problem (typical of the Bavli's reasoning) of who instructed the poor children before God took over, that is, before the destruction of the Temple. Answer: You may wish to assign this task to Metatron—or you may conclude that God himself instructed the schoolchildren before the destruction of the Temple as well as after. Here Metatron enters the discussion almost casually. The answer clearly presupposes his presence as a very high angel in heaven, if not as a second divine power. Hence, the seemingly dispassionate or casual answer (whatever you prefer: Metatron or God) reveals that the Bavli editor doesn't really care and in fact makes Metatron and God interchangeable—as we know by now quite a dangerous attitude.”

Thus, Metatron's image created the risk of the emergence of a potential second divinity in heaven. Schafer notes:

“But even the critical approach can hardly conceal the fact that certain (Jewish) circles in Babylonia must have fancied the idea of a second divine power next to God. More precisely, it appears that with the figure of Metatron certain Jews in Babylonia in particular found a vehicle for entertaining—in a remarkably pronounced and undisguised way—ideas that seem to have been unparalleled in other (Palestinian) sources.142 Why were these ideas perceived as so dangerous that they needed to be attacked in the Bavli and even toned down in 3 Enoch? In what follows I will attempt to situate these ideas in the context of the intricate tangle of the two sister religions “Judaism” and “Christianity,” emerging in the first centuries C.E., interacting with and responding to each other, and gradually becoming ever more differentiated in the course of time. There can be little doubt that pre-Christian Judaism developed ideas that helped pave the way to a “binitarian” theology—cases in point are speculations about Logos and Wisdom, certain angelic figures, Adam as the original makro-anthropos, and other exalted human figures143—of which the early New Testament speculations about the Logos Jesus are but one particularly prominent example. The Metatron traditions, as part of the larger Messiah–Son of Man complex, clearly belong to this store of potentially powerful and dangerous ideas, as several scholars have observed.”

Schafer denies that the Metatron concept played a role in the development of Trinitarianism. Rather, the thinks that the Metatron concept was an answer to the “the New Testament's message of Jesus Christ.”
The role of response and counter-response is seen in the issue of whether the laws of Moses were given directly by God or were mediated by angels. The Christian position is explicitly the latter, but the Bible suggests the former. However, there was substantial development in the Second Temple period that proposed greater angelic mediation. The Christian claims caused rabbinic backtracking. Schafer notes:

“ Since Paul and the author of the Letter to the Hebrews are definitely arguing with Jews, we can take it for granted that the “law ordained or declared through angels” reflects a common Jewish standpoint. Hence, when the rabbis of rabbinic Judaism contest this standpoint and claim that God neither needed nor used the angels to carry out his revelation on Mount Sinai and the subsequent salvation history, they are obviously arguing against a (Jewish) view introduced during the Second Temple period and taken up in the New Testament.79 One could even go a step further and argue that they contested this standpoint and insisted on God's direct involvement because the New Testament used it to propagate the inferiority of the Law of Moses and its abolition by Jesus Christ. Confronted with such a claim, the rabbis could not but insist that the law was given by God himself and that God remains the master of history, including the ultimate salvation of his people—or to put it another way, that the old covenant was still valid and there was no need for a new one.”

Schafer also notes a Talmudic story about the death of a baby messiah and an indifferent mother of the messiah. Schafer sees this as a complete inversion of Christian's nativity story:

“On the contrary, in my view the Yerushalmi story is a complete and ironical inversion of the New Testament—the lowing cow versus the star; the Arab versus the angel of the Lord and/or the magi; the Jewish peddler versus the magi; diapers versus gold, frankincense, and myrrh; and the murderous mother versus the murderous king. Quite an impressive list, which, summarized in this way, sounds almost comical, like a parody of the New Testament infant story. And this, I propose, is precisely what our story wishes to do. It is a counternarrative, a parodistic inversion of the New Testament, of the Christian claim that this child Jesus, born in Bethlehem, the city of David, was indeed the Messiah. As such, it is of great theological significance. For it undermines the essence of the Christian message by arguing that no, this child Jesus is not the Messiah, at least not the Messiah who you Christians say lived among us on earth in order teach the new doctrine of the new covenant, and to be crucified and ultimately resurrected and lifted up to heaven. This Jesus cannot be the Messiah for the very simple reason that soon after his birth he was snatched away by whirlwinds and disappeared.”

This is a hard book to evaluate. I am not sure that Schafer has made the sale by showing the back and forth of Jewish and Christian thinking. There were certainly examples of polemics and counterpolemics, but a lot of the examples seemed deep in the weeds. The really intriguing aspect of the book to me was the Jewish Talmudic information. Raised on the notion that the Jewish source is the Tanakh, we do not appreciate the intellectual development that went on internally in Jewish thinking.

Seneca: Selected Dialogues and Consolations (Hackett Classics) translated by Peter J. Anderson

I would appreciate a “clap” on Medium: https://medium.com/@peterseanbradle/seneca-selected-dialogues-and-consolations-hackett-classics-translated-by-peter-j-anderson-4a9995f98844

A friend of yours comes to you with her troubles. She tells you that her son has died. Do you:

A. Tell her that your share her sorrow?

B. Give her a silent hug?

C. Review various anecdotes about great men who were forced to commit suicide with her, dwelling particularly on the nobility of Cato the Younger?

If you doubt that “C” is the only appropriate action, then clearly, you haven't read your Seneca.
After all, it is fated that everyone will die when the Gods so will. Our inordinate sorrow does nothing useful for the dead. All inordinate sorrow does is take away our reason and freedom, making us slaves to ill fortune. A wise man should act in a way that maximizes his freedom by showing indifference to fortune and calamity, which are illusions compared to the wise man's will.
This is a book - actually, a collection of essays by Seneca on various topics - that can change the way a reader thinks. An immersion in this text, and in Seneca's pithy, aphoristic style can't help but change the patterns and cadence of the reader's thoughts.

This collection includes; On Providence, Consolation to Marcia, On the Happy Life, On Retirement, On Serenity of the Spirit, on the Shortness of Life, Consolation to Polybius, and Consolation to his mother Helvia. Although this book is viewed mostly as a primer to Stoicism - it is often described as the greatest work of Stoicism - we should not overlook its historical value. Seneca was born in 4 BC and died in 64 AD when he was ordered to commit suicide by his former protege, Nero. His epoch, therefore, overlaps that of Christ, Paul, Peter, and the early Christian Church. Seneca inhabited the top tier of Roman society. He was a mentor and advisor to Nero. He had been exiled by Claudius. He tells anecdotes about the insane Caligula and describes “his pale coloration (testament to his insanity) was repulsive,” thereby perhaps starting the “soulless day walker” meme that has plagued “gingers” ever since.

There is a lot of ground that could be covered by this review. So, I will select a few that interest me. 
One is Seneca's theodicy. Seneca acknowledges that bad things happen even to the wise who have fully adopted a Stoic lifestyle. He also acknowledges the existence of gods and providence, which certainly appear to be divine. So, why do bad things happen to good people (and why be good if bad things are going to happen to good people?)
Seneca unwraps a “testing” theodicy:

God has a father's spirit toward good people - that is, he loves them with a powerful love and says, “Let them be harassed by work, suffering, and loss, so that they can acquire true strength. They are growing soft, fattened through inactivity, and are not only tired out by hard work, but even by moving their own weight.” Prosperity that has never seen trouble can't endure any attack. But for a man who constantly battles his misfortunes, toughness carries him through his injuries and he doesn't yield to any badness. No, even if he has fallen, he fights from his knees. 2.7. Are you surprised that god, who loves good people very much and who wants them to be as good and noble as possible, puts them in situations that can train them? I at least am not surprised that the gods seize the opportunity to see great men struggling with some disaster.

Seneca. Seneca: Selected Dialogues and Consolations (Hackett Classics) (p. 3). Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Thus, misfortune is actually a good thing since it is the condition that allows for virtue to be developed and exhibited:

Without an adversary, virtue withers; how great virtue is, and how potent, is clear at the moment it shows what it can do through endurance.

Seneca. Seneca: Selected Dialogues and Consolations (Hackett Classics) (p. 3). Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

In any event, misfortune is illusory or a superficial matter:

“Why do many difficult situations happen to good men?” Nothing bad can happen to a good man: opposites don't mix. Many rivers, the great quantity of fallen precipitation, and the great potency of medicinal springs do not change the taste of the ocean - they don't even dilute it. In the same way, the attacks of adverse circumstances don't change a brave man's spirit. He stands his ground and colors whatever happens with his own perspective, because he has power over every external circumstance. 2.2. I'm not saying that he doesn't feel these things, but that he rises up to meet their attack and conquers them, although in every other respect he is peaceful and calm. The good person thinks that difficult circumstances are tests.

Seneca. Seneca: Selected Dialogues and Consolations (Hackett Classics) (p. 2). Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Although modern people may not see it initially, if we take a step back, we can see how much of this makes its way into Christianity. A Christian might say that what happens in this world is ultimately insignificant; what matters is one's eternal destination. A good person - a saved person - might suffer in this life, but such suffering pales in contrast to the glory that waits for him if he passes the tests of this world. Likewise, as Christians have asked in their own theodicy, how can we know good if we do not know evil?

Seneca is aware of something profoundly human in his “testing” theodicy:

3.3. Among the many magnificent sayings of our Demetrius2 is this one, which I just read (I can even still hear it in my head): “Nothing seems less fortunate to me than a man to whom no adversity ever happened.” Such a man, you see, wasn't allowed to test his strength.

Seneca. Seneca: Selected Dialogues and Consolations (Hackett Classics) (p. 5). Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Young men - young people - want to be tested. They want to put their strength against others or the environment to show what they can accomplish. That's why there is a tradition of going into the military and moving away from home. This tendency can continue throughout one's life, as shown by the many who challenge themselves by climbing Mt. Everest, many of whom die on that mountain.

In Christianity, this same testing was found in the martyrs and, subsequently, in those who became religious hermits or joined ascetic monasteries. Ascetism seems to be coordinated with religious life for a reason and is often called “white martyrdom.”

Likewise, a Christian cannot read Seneca and not map the character of Christ onto Seneca's “wise man.” Seneca's characterization of the ideal man as indifferent to insult and injustice because he carries everything of value within him could be drawn from a Gospel Passion narrative.

8.1. To continue: justice can't suffer an injustice, because contraries cannot coincide, and injury isn't able to happen except through injustice. Therefore, injury isn't able to happen to a wise man. There's no reason to be surprised that no one can do the wise man an injury: no one can do him a favor either.

Seneca. Seneca: Selected Dialogues and Consolations (Hackett Classics) (p. 25). Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

As for people, he doesn't form so high an opinion of anyone that he thinks that a person has acted with the judgment only a wise man possesses. The thoughts of all others are not sound judgments, but tricks and traps and uncontrolled passions of the spirit, which he treats the same way he treats chance events. You know, chance rages all around us, especially against what is commonplace.

Seneca. Seneca: Selected Dialogues and Consolations (Hackett Classics) (p. 26). Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Compare that with Luke 22:

70 They all asked, “Are you then the Son of God?”
He replied, “You say that I am.”

Likewise, consider Jesus' dictum to “turn the other cheek” and to give the wrongdoer your shirt when he demands your coat. We have often presented these passages as a teaching of pacifism when they are probably intended to express a Stoic contempt for the uncouth:

14.3. “But what will a wise man do if he's struck by a hand?” Just what Cato did when he was struck in the mouth. He didn't blow up, or avenge the injury. He didn't even forgive it. Instead, he denied that any injury was done. With a greater spirit than if he had just ignored it, he simply did not acknowledge the injury happened.

Seneca. Seneca: Selected Dialogues and Consolations (Hackett Classics) (p. 32). Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

The passage before that is one that all “Karens” should keep in mind:

14.2. “What then, doesn't a wise man arrive at doors that a bully of a doorkeeper is guarding?” If some essential business calls him there, he'll of course endure it. And he'll soothe the bully - whoever he is - just like he would soothe a vicious dog, by throwing scraps. He won't consider it below his dignity to spend some money to enter the house, since he also expects to pay a toll to cross certain bridges. So, he'll pay the man who's doing the toll-collecting for the morning salutatio, since he understands very well that when something is for sale it gets bought with money. A man has a puny spirit if he is pleased with himself because he spoke his mind to a slave doorkeeper, or because he broke his stick on the doorkeeper's back, or because he pushed his way to the doorkeeper's master and asked for the slave to be beaten! When you put up a fuss, you make yourself into an opponent. And in order to win the fight, you have to have brought yourself to the same level as your opponent.

Seneca. Seneca: Selected Dialogues and Consolations (Hackett Classics) (pp. 31–32). Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Isn't that great advice? So many people would be so happier if they followed it. Incidentally, this book has numerous examples of Seneca giving good advice like that. It is worth the effort just to collect those pearls.

Here is another example of Seneca's practical advice on how to deal with mockery, i.e., mock yourself first:

17.2. What about how we're offended if someone imitates our voice or how we walk, or if someone apes some defect of our body or language? As if more people are going to notice these things because someone imitates them than because we do them ourselves! Some people don't want to hear about how old and gray they are, but other people pray to stay alive that long. The taunt “Poor-boy!” really gets to some people, although anyone who hides his poverty is really just insulting himself. You take away material for jokes from insolent and rude people if you take the initiative and move on it first. No one becomes a joke if he laughs at himself.

Seneca. Seneca: Selected Dialogues and Consolations (Hackett Classics) (p. 34). Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

You can at least warm your heart with this thought:

17.4. And anyway, it is revenge of a sort to take away the pleasure of an insult from the ones who made it. They usually say, I think, “Poor me! He just doesn't get it!” That's how much enjoying an insult depends on the feelings and indignation of the target. In the end, someone like that will one day meet his equal - someone will pop up who'll get revenge for both of you.
Seneca. Seneca: Selected Dialogues and Consolations (Hackett Classics) (p. 34). Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Turning back to affinity of Seneca's stoicism with Christian morality, Seneca's attitude toward wealth seems ambivalent. On the one hand, Seneca thinks being wealthy is not a bad thing. Wealth and poverty are matters of general indifference to the wise man, but all things being equal it is easier to be wealthy. Seneca writes:

21.4. You see, a wise man doesn't think he's unworthy of whatever gifts come to him by chance: he doesn't love riches, but he does prefer them. He receives them into his house, not into his spirit, and doesn't refuse possessions but controls them - what I mean is he wants his wealth to help by giving more practice for his virtue.

Seneca. Seneca: Selected Dialogues and Consolations (Hackett Classics) (p. 88). Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

However, Seneca condemns wealth to the extent that it traps a person into inordinate concern with protecting wealth or addicts the wealthy to pleasure:

How will a man who's busy taking pleasure be able to withstand hard work, physical danger, abject poverty, or the threats that make human life difficult? How will he endure the sight of death, the feeling of pain, the blows the world gives - and those our fiercest enemies give - if he's defeated by such a tender adversary? “He will do whatever pleasure convinces him to do.” Come on, don't you see how many things pleasure can convince him to do? 11.2. “Pleasure won't advise anything corrupt, because it is joined to virtue.” Again, don't you see what sort of “greatest” good something is when it needs a guardian to actually be good? How will virtue govern pleasure, which it follows, if following is the quality of someone who obeys and leading of someone who commands?

Seneca. Seneca: Selected Dialogues and Consolations (Hackett Classics) (p. 78). Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Seneca offers the example of Apicius, who killed himself when he found out he was down to his las ten million sesterces:

10.9. After he had thrown a hundred million sesterces at his kitchen and had sucked back many imperial handouts, and the Emperor's earnings, with one wild party after another, he for the first time took a look at his accounts because he was heavily in debt. He calculated that he had ten million sesterces left, and fatally poisoned himself. It was as if he would have been living at the edge of starvation if he had lived on ten million. 10.10. What luxury he was living in if ten million was abject poverty for him!

Seneca. Seneca: Selected Dialogues and Consolations (Hackett Classics) (p. 195). Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

In the Gospels, we find the example of the Rich Young Ruler, who claimed to be very good but was not able to throw away his wealth in order to follow Jesus and become perfect. 
So, there appears to be a lot of resonance between Christianity and Stoicism. Was there something in the air at the time? Was Paul acquainted with Stoicism? These seem to be good questions to ponder.

I read this for the Online Great Books program. At the age of 63, I am completing the reading list of Books I Should Have Read In College. On which point, since retirement is beginning to glimmer in the horizon, I must say that I felt more than a little guilty in reading Seneca's condemnation of squandering time.

Old age crushes the still childish spirits of these men when they reach it unprepared and defenseless. You see, they didn't really think ahead: they fell into old age suddenly, totally unaware - they didn't realize that it was approaching them every day.

Seneca. Seneca: Selected Dialogues and Consolations (Hackett Classics) (p. 147). Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

3.5. You'll hear many say, “I'm going to take it easy after I'm fifty, and I'm going to retire fully when I'm sixty.” Tell me, what guarantee of a long life are you getting? Who's going to allow these plans of yours to go the way you're arranging them? Aren't you embarrassed to be leaving the leftovers of your life for yourself, for your good mind, and to buy on layaway only the time that can't be devoted to any other activity?

Seneca. Seneca: Selected Dialogues and Consolations (Hackett Classics) (p. 140). Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Some aren't happy with any path they can take through life. Instead, their deaths overtake them while they're yawning languidly, so much so that I'm sure what the greatest of poets said, as if he was a prophet of the gods, is true: “The part of life we actually live is short.”4 Every other moment is not life, just time spent.

Seneca. Seneca: Selected Dialogues and Consolations (Hackett Classics) (p. 138). Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

And finally:

1.4. This is how it is: we aren't given a short life but we make life short, and we aren't deprived of it but throw it away.

Seneca. Seneca: Selected Dialogues and Consolations (Hackett Classics) (p. 137). Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Once you get past a certain age, you do begin to think that you did not live your life; you merely spent time getting there.

Be warned.

But that is a topic for another day.

The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem by Matthew Hollis.

Give me a clap at Medium (Now with jokes) - https://medium.com/@peterseanbradle/but-what-does-it-mean-16cff4b95187

I really want to like The Waste Land. I love some of its parts. I love “April is the cruelest month” and “Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.” But I've been handicapped by not being able to understand the damned thing.

Part of the problem is that the search for meaning in this poem is a search for fool's gold. T.S. Eliot never intended the poem to be an integrated, unitary whole. As we learn from Matthew Hollis in The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem, Eliot wrote the five parts of The Waste Land - I. The Burial of the Dead, II. A Game of Chess, III. The Fire Sermon, IV. Death by Water, V. What the Thunder Said - as independent units, often taking sections from prior unpublished poems to put into The Waste Land. Sometimes, Eliot would strip a section of vast quantities of text.

Another part of the problem is that the poem is deliberately cacophonous. The Burial of the Dead section shifts from voice to voice, creating a kaleidoscopic effect. I think this is the intent as Eliot is communicating that modernity is a jumble of sensory inputs that confuses the modern mind (as of 1920, at least.) In 1920, modernity was funneling the news of the world to the average citizen by movies, radio, and newspapers. Moderns had just gone through a Great War, which was a world war in scope. That war had killed millions. It was followed up by a Great Pandemic that killed millions more on the home front. 

In 1920, most people probably thought there was too much information to keep up with. The term “Future Shock” would not be coined until the 1960s by Alvin Tofler, but many people were experiencing Future Shock in the 1920s. (In contrast, in the 2020s, we experience Future Shock but don't notice it or talk about it anymore.)

With that long wind-up, I am here to tell you Hollis's book will not solve the interpretative conundrum of The Waste Land. There are some clues at a pretty high level, at the level of unit structure, for example. For the most part, Hollis does not touch the meaning of individual lines. There is some discussion of our friend Phlebas and whether his Phoenician background is a stand-in for a Semitic antecedent (and therefore alludes to anti-semitism.) We get no insight into summer over why “Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee” or who “Marie” is.

For me, what this book mostly provided was an introduction to the English literary world in the early 20th century. Hollis's is an encyclopedia. His book is well-written and minutely researched. The main figure of the text is T.S. Eliot, which is not a surprise, but Eliot sometimes seems to get edged out in favor of Ezra Pound. At times, it seems like Hollis's real mission is to re-acquaint the literary world with Pound's importance to the world of literature and poetry.

In the 1910s, Pound was an indispensable man in the English literary world. Pound acted as editor to influential journals. He also acted as a coach and mentor to those with literary talent. Pound discovered Eliot and rued the fact that Eliot was squandering his time as a bank teller at Lloyd's of London. In the 1920s, Pound befriended and found ways to subsidize James Joyce as he wrote Ulysses. During the same time, Pound had one of the two priceless manuscripts of The Waste Land, which he edited with a heavy hand. Pound was responsible for two of the incomprehensible Great Works of the Twentieth Century.

Pound also befriended a young, unpublished Ernest Hemingway:

“When Wyndham Lewis visited from London for the first time, the two men were producing such a noise from within the studio that no one answered the bell; he pushed open the door and found them in mid boxing bout. ‘A splendidly built young man, stripped to the waist, and with a torso of dazzling white, was standing not far from me,' Lewis recalled. ‘He was tall, handsome, and serene, and was repelling with his boxing gloves a hectic assault of Ezra's. After a final swing at the dazzling solar plexus Pound fell back upon his settee.'33 The young man was Ernest Hemingway, and with Pound he would get on like a house on fire: he had ‘a terrific wallop', Hemingway would acknowledge, ‘and when he gets too tough I dump him on the floor'.34

Hollis, Matthew. The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem (p. 318). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

Pound's loyalty to his friends was something that would not be forgotten by some - but not all - of them despite Pound's disgrace after World War II:

“For his friends, said Hemingway and Eliot alike, Pound was both advocate and defence. He found publishers for their writing, review coverage for their books, journals to carry their work; he found audiences for their music and buyers for their art. When they were hungry he fed them, when they were threadbare he clothed them. He witnessed their wills and he loaned his own money, and encouraged in each of them a fortitude for life. ‘And in the end,' said Hemingway, ‘a few of them refrain from knifing him at the first opportunity.'

Hollis, Matthew. The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem (p. 319). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

I am always fascinated by the way in which historical figures overlap and act like real human beings. For example, Hollis implies that philosopher Bertrand Russell seduced Eliot's wife, Vivian: 

“Russell had been a cuckoo in the nest of the Eliots' short marriage. He had dazzled and spoiled and harried Vivien, and had taken something very precious in the form of the couple's fidelity to each other. The cottage at Marlow would cast a shadow over the marriage until Eliot was able to release himself from the rent entirely in the summer of 1920. By then, the events had triggered in Eliot a despair that was to reach a crisis while he was in the company of Ezra Pound in France in the summer of 1919.

Hollis, Matthew. The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem (pp. 49–50). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

Eliot had been Russell's student at Harvard.

“Eliot had been an ‘extraordinarily silent' postgraduate student in Russell's seminars at Harvard when they met in the spring of 1914, but he made a remark on Heraclitus so good that Russell wished that he would make another.148 On meeting him again in London that autumn, Russell had taken a growing interest in Eliot (‘exquisite and listless'), and, in turn, Vivien (‘light, a little vulgar, adventurous, full of life'), so much so that by the autumn of 1915, to ease their finances, he had taken the couple in to his flat in Bury Street, London's Bloomsbury.

Hollis, Matthew. The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem (p. 45). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

This is the kind of detail that rounds out historical knowledge. For example, Hollis mentions Russell's arrest for advocating pacifism, which left Eliot, who was maybe 29 at the time, looking for someone to replace Russell as a tenant in a country cottage. 

Vivien Eliot does not come off in the best light. Eliot abandoned her in 1932 but remained married to her until her death in an asylum in 1946. Eliot explained:

“‘To her, the marriage brought no happiness,' wrote Eliot. ‘To me, it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land.'41

Hollis, Matthew. The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem (pp. 9–10). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

That has to be some consolation.

This book is a firehose of information. However, I never felt like I got into Eliot's self-understanding. We certainly get information on his personal life, but the overall impression of Eliot is a sense of diffidence. For example, I would have been interested in knowing what Eliot's thoughts were on becoming Anglican. How did that conversion affect him? He seems to have become more conservative and traditionalist as he got older, so it seems that the conversion had meaning to him. But on the whole, I never got any sense of an answer to these questions.

Admittedly, Hollis's focus is on The Waste Land, which means that the time period Hollis is interested in is the same period during which The Waste Land was being formed, approximately 1915–1923. This is going to prevent a lot of reflection on a lot of issues. Nonetheless, Hollis makes space for topics that happen after 1923, such as Ezra Pound's disgrace and rehabilitation.

I like the book, but would I recommend it? And to whom?

I liked the book because I like history, and I got a sense of a slice of history I know next to nothing about, i.e., literary history. That said, large chunks of text meant nothing to me but probably would to someone with more knowledge about “Fusionism” and various poets and writers.
So, I would not recommend this book to someone with a casual interest in the subject. On the other hand, if literature is your bag, then this is a good book for you.

Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics by St. Thomas Aquinas

It turns out that Metaphysics is theology.

Aristotle is hard to read. Aquinas is hard to read. Aquinas's explanation of Metaphysics is surprisingly readable. This is particularly true compared to the Metaphysics, which comes often comes across as the cryptic notes I take during trials where a word captures a thought. For me, at least. Anyone else would be baffled. Aristotle often makes his point by stringing together three seemingly unrelated words, e.g., head, fish, and building, as examples.

Another thing about reading Aristotle is that he had a huge body of work that is interdependent. Aristotle assumes that you've read everything he's written so you will recognize that the essential lynchpin to his argument is found in the Physics or De Anima. Of course, if you haven't, it will seem “like Greek” to you.

Aquinas has the virtue of having read Aristotle's corpus, and so he shares the essential insights from other texts that connect confusingly cryptic thoughts. He also explains what the examples are examples of.

I wouldn't try to read the Metaphysics by itself. The reader needs a guide and Aquinas is a good guide.

That said, I assume that the reader has to be on guard about some of the ideas that Aquinas smuggles into his reading of Aristotle. There are occasions where Aquinas flat out disagrees with Aristotle, such as Aristotle's view that some causes are purely a matter of luck or chance. That is a non-starter for Aquinas, for whom everything is within God's providential control.

The metaphysics starts with a granular look at “ousia” or “substance” with respect to the sensible world. The reader gets a review of the pre-Socratic philosophers of elements, none of which are satisfying since they seem to reduce everything to one undifferentiated type of thing, which does not seem right. Platonic forms, on the other hand, lack causality with respect to things in the world.

Aristotle solves the problem by introducing matter into the equation. Everything can be boiled down into Form, the privation of form, and matter, which is the object on which form and privation work. Form, privation, and matter introduce the notion of “actuality” and “potentiality.” Forms are actual; privations are deprivations of the actual; matter is the potentiality for forms and privations. Aristotle is certain that this three-fold arrangement provides a better explanation than his competitors for questions about why things corrupt and are generated.

Then, at the end, with startling suddenness, we are - in Aquinas' view - dealing with theology. The hints were there all along. Aristotle did tell us that everything we read prior to Book XII was the lesser part of the subject and that the dominant part would define the “science” of Metaphysics. Thus, there are three kinds of substances - movable (i.e., changeable/corruptible) sensible things, eternal sensible things, and eternal immaterial things. The first are things like birds and squids; the second are the visible stars; the third are necessary things we can't sense, i.e., God and divinities.

Where does this breakdown come from? I don't know. Maybe from “On the Heavens”? Maybe from “De Anima”? This is the kind of thing that makes Aristotle frustrating.

Aristotle certainly views the eternal insensible as necessary. Any system without them lacks a starting point and is subjected to the self-refutation of eternal regression. So, the eternal insensible are necessary as the “unmoved movers.” They start the motion of things and keep the motion in play.

Aristotle seems to refer to the unmoved movers as God, at least the unique first Unmoved Mover (“UM”) that moves the first heaven - that which holds the stars or at least coordinates the order of the universe as a whole. This UM (all UMs in fact) must be without matter because matter corrupts, and nothing eternal can be allowed to corrupt. Matter is also potential, and nothing eternal can have potential because potential includes the potential not to be.

Turn the switch of being off, and what will turn it back on?

So, the UM is pure actuality without potential, which makes it perfect and, therefore, good.

But what is it - the answer seems to be that its substance is “intelligible.” The UM is thought thinking itself. For Aristotle, there is nothing better than active thinking, and there is nothing better to think about than perfection itself.

It was not clear to me why God had to be thought. The answer might be found in De Anima.

At least, this is my sense of where we ended up. There was a lot in the Metaphysics that was incredibly obscure. I left a lot on the “reading room floor” since I didn't understand it and couldn't fit it into what I thought I understood. There were passages that read like Gnostic mumbo-jumbo.

I read Metaphysics for the Online Great Books reading program. I happened to be reading James Dolezal “All that is God” where Dolezal, a Calvinist theologian, critiques modern, liberal Calvinist theologians for undermining or rejecting doctrines like the “simplicity of God.” What was interesting in reading Dolezal in the context of Metaphysics was seeing the seeds of “divine simplicity” in Metaphysics. The UM is “simple” because it lacks matter and therefore lacks parts and potential. This is the way it must be, according to Aristotle (as read through the Angelic Doctor), and here we are, 2,500 years later, still dealing with the issue.

My recommendation is that if you really are going to read Metaphysics, you should get a group, find a leader, and tackle it week by week. It is a tough slog to an uncertain outcome.

You need reinforcements for that kind of trip.

The List (Slough House) by Mick Herron

This is a short story/novella set in the spy world of Mick Herron's “Slough House” - where the failed spies are sent to rusticate. This story clicks along to just the proper surprise that we expect in a well-crafted short story.

My exposure to Herron's “Slow Horses” spy world is this story and “Slow Horses.” Herron as the same facility that John LeCarre had to give his spy world a depth that suggests that it actually happens. Herron's spy world is perhaps a bit more about internal bureaucratic in-fighting that LeCarre's world of lamplighters and headhunters. LeCarre had the tension of the Cold War going for him, whereas Herron has to find the tension where he can, which seems to open up far more space for humor and irony.

The writing is well-done. The plot is tight. I recommend it.

Regency Immortal (The Immortal Chronicles 5) by Gene Doucette


Frankly, it is getting to the end of 2022 and I am a couple of books away from setting a 120 book personal best on Goodreads. I'm also bound down in the interminable trench warfare that is involved in reading Aristotle's Metaphysics. So, I'm hitting my mark with a couple of fun short stories.

This is a fun one. Adam is in Vienna in 1814. The “Concert of Vienna” is in full swing as the allies decide how the rest of the 19th century will unfold. Adam runs into a beautiful spy who is after a deadly assassin, who turns out to be a shape-changing rakshasha. The story has all the humor and adventure that we expect from one of Adam's recollections of his 60,000 year old life.

Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison

Soylent Green is.....?

Everyone knows the answer to that question.

What does “soylent” actually mean?

“Make Room! Make Room!” is the novel on which the Charlton Heston movie named, naturally, “Soylent Green” was based. As you will recall from the movie, in 2022, the world is overpopulated. New York has wall-to-wall people living on stairs and in the streets. Nothing works. Heston is a detective who, while investigating a murder - with an interlude for the death by euthanasia of Edward G. Robbins - learns that Soylent Green is, well, recycled people.

The book version is grimmer. It is 1999, and the world's population is 7 billion. The population of New York is 35 million. Nothing works, taxes are at 80%, the retirement age is 55, water is rationed, food is rationed, people live on the streets and in stairways, and you can find your rent-controlled one bedroom, which has no power, 20 hours a day, divided with a family of five because no one gives much of a rip about property rights. Most of the midwest is a dust bowl; farmers can't grow things because water is being diverted to the massively overpopulated cities, and no one but the very rich can get steak. Most people live off of ersatz plant-based meat analogs. (And, by the way, “soylent” stands for “soybean and lentil.”) In 1999, technology is still at the vacuum tube stage, slowly being replaced by solid-state circuits and transistors.

In other words, Make Room! is a projection of the time the book was written, namely 1966, projected into the future with the assumption that liberalism/leftism could predict the future.

The undermining of leftwing doctrines by how poorly this book compares to reality. For example, the one thing that Harrison got right is that the world's population would be more than the unthinkable high number of 7 billion. Right now, the world's population is over 8 billion. When I was born, the total world population was around 2 billion. That population explosion certainly seems like a disaster waiting to happen.

So, what did happen?

Well, capitalism happened. Between 2 billion and 8 billion, we got better fertilizers, energy sources, transportation sources, silicon chips, and the rest of modernity. We also became a global economy that could truly exploit the relative advantages of small differences factored over a global transportation network. It's been an amazing 60 years. People today live healthier and wealthier lives than they did in 1966.

Another interesting feature is the falling birth rate. Urbanization has led to crashing birth rates around the world just because raising kids is so much harder in urban apartments than on farms. The threat facing many countries today, such as Japan, is radical depopulation.

What was not the answer, though, was something that Harrison spent pages arguing, namely birth control. Harrison has the character, Sol, who I suspect is a fictionalized version of Harrison, angrily vents about stupid people still refusing in 1999 to legalize birth control. He particularly lays into Catholics who are still having tend child families. Sol shoots down arguments about the dangers of birth control and declares that if only birth control had been legalized, the dystopia of Make Room! could have been avoided.

Of course, this is unintentionally hilarious. Make Room! was written in 1966, the same year that the Supreme Court in Griswold v. Connecticut would discover a constitutional right to contraception.

Since we have seven billion people in the world, it doesn't seem that birth control saved us after all. On the other hand, if you note a whiff of hysteria in the air when Leftists claim that conservatives are about to take away birth control, this is the kind of place where it comes from.

When you read Make Room! from a perspective of 60 years, you can see other failures of socialism. Tax rate at 80%. Everyone is on welfare, even though there is obvious work that needs to be done. Price controls create scarcity and stifle innovation. Rent control and a system that awards rental space to those lucky enough to win a lottery mean the loss of housing supply.

The unemployed population living on the streets resembles mishandled Democrat cities in the 2020s. The idea of “soylent” food is something that our wealthy elites are trying to sell to the masses while they crookedly keep their supply of the real stuff, just like in the book.

There is a dystopia in this story, but it is one created by ideology.

As for the story, it holds together to present the dystopian world that main character, detective Andrew Rusch, lives in. There is a botched robbery that turns into a murder of a wealthy “fixer.” The murder story consumes most of the book but really is a red herring that frames Rusch's life. We get to see Rusch suit up for riot duty and deal with the problems of the city when water and food is cut off. Rusch meets a woman but loses her when he is forced to allow a family to move into his unit after his roommate Sol passes away.

There is no overarching mystery about where soylent comes from. The theme of the book is dystopian. All in all, though, it is a fascinating bit of cultural history.

Also, given how much the leftists seem to want this future for the masses, we may still see it.

Immortal at Sea (The Immortal Chronicles) by Gene Doucette

The theme of December 2022 is to read Gene Doucette's collection of side stories featuring his 60,000 year old drunkard, Adam. This one features a silly story about how Adam is shanghaid into sailing on a gold-plated ship from Portugal to India circa 1580.

There are pirates.

Also, a kraken.

Lots of improbable fun to be had in a very short read.

Hard-Boiled Immortal (The Immortal Chronicles #2) by Gene Doucette

Gene Doucette has the rare quality of consistency. He consistently turns out product that entertains. His stories hit the ground running. The quips and bon mots are well times. The story hums with action. There is an ending that ties up the loose ends. In this day and age, those features deserve acknowledgment.

This book is a short story in Doucette's “Immortal” stories. The main character of the series is Adam. Adam is around 60,000 years old. He doesn't age. He doesn't get sick. He doesn't have superpowers. He is just a guy who has been around since the beginning of human pre-history who has a lot of practical experience and makes up for the boredom with a lot of drinking.

Doucette has around six novels in the main series. He has written a fair numbers of short stories set in odd moments in Adam's life. This story is set in Chicago in 1942. Adam is a bartender at a dive frequented by losers. One of the losers, however, is working on “piles” at the University of Chicago, which enmeshed Adam in espionage, nuclear secrets, and a red-headed succubi FBI agent.

It is all played for fun and very entertaining. This a short read that provides from some nice diversion.

The Black Wave (Avery Cates) by Jeff Somers

It's hard to keep up with Avery Cates these days. Cates started as an up-and-coming gangster - a “gunner” in Somers' parlance - and then became the top gunner. All this was in the world of the globe-spanning “System.” Then, the System fell apart, everyone who mattered got “bricked,” and civilization totally collapsed to where the scattered remnants of humanity are fighting over the last remaining scraps of working System technology. Cates has grown into an old man with bad knees but the capacity to take a punch.

Cates' rise and fall is described over the course of around eight books. We are now about three books into the post-System world, which has been getting nastier and brutish.

In this book, Cates is leading a team to raid “Iron Island” for the last working hovercraft. The idea is that they can use the hovercraft to enter a secured facility and restart the System. Cates spent his life hating the System and does not have a favorable opinion of how this will work out, but it seems like the only move left.

The Cates series is very enjoyable action/adventure. The worldbuilding is gritty. However, the series works better when read from the beginning. At this point, there have been too many plot changes and characters to make sense of without following the storyline from the beginning.

This installment is about short story length. The story is not complete in itself. It is the first quarter of a complete novel. Still the story is satisfying and ends on a proper cliffhanger that motivated me to get the next installment.

When Christmas Comes (Cameron Winter) by Andrew Klavan

Because Klavan said that this is his favorite character, I decided to read this story.

It's a good, engaging read. There is an inexplicable murder of a very nice librarian by her heroic Ranger fiance. The fiance has confessed and going to be sentenced. It is an open and shut case.

Cameron Winter is called in by a desperate defense attorney to find some basis for exonerating the killer, who is a very honorable person who seems to have acted entirely out of character. Winter is a former spook and has a knack of pulling at the right thread to get an answer.

The story is a mystery that honestly provides the clues that set up the answer. I didn't get the correct answer. I had the right basic idea but was entirely on the wrong track. I liked the Winter character and will follow him in other stories.

We All Died at Breakaway Station by Richard C. Meredith


Richard C. Meredith is primarily known for his “Timeliners” trilogy, which hit science fiction like a meteorite in the mid-seventies. Unfortunately, Meredith died at the early age of 41 in 1979 with his best writing years ahead of him.

This book was written in the late 1960s and is absolutely first rate Space Opera that goes a step farther.

In the book, mankind has expanded into the universe around Earth. Travel is difficult because Faster than Light (FTL) travel is slow, awkward and inefficient. On the other hand, FTL communication is very efficient and a string to stations keep the further reaches of human space connected.

These stations provide an edge against the alien Jillies who have decided to exterminate humanity. Meredith does a great job with Jilly psychology. Jillies are very different from humans and their psychology is completely alien, and includes a casual attitude to vivisection.

Humanity has also perfected its medical arts and can restore the dead to life in many cases.

Captain Absalom Bracer was dead. He has been revived and has been given the task of conveying a hospital ship filled with dead in “cold sleep” back to Earth where they can be revived and treated. His battlecruiser is accompanied by another cruiser. Both cruisers are the end of their useful lives. The crews are manned by the formerly dead who have had body parts horrifically replaced by ad hoc structures that serve as eyes, stomaches, legs, arms, etc. They need to get to Earth to get repaired.

They arrive at Breakaway Station, one of the stations on the human's FTL communication line. The station has been nearly wiped out. One more Jilly attack and it will be gone, blowing a hole in the FTL chain. Admiral Mothershed is heading home with war-changing information about the location of the Jilly homeworld.

You are the captain of a small flotilla that can't possibly stand up to a Jilly assault. You and your men have already died. They've come back missing significant parts.

What do you do?

I found myself empathizing with Bracer and his crew. This is a story about heroism, which is a nice change from what stories are about today.

Mostly, I found myself regretting Meredith's early death.

Science Fiction Noir

Jack of Swords (Dumarest 14) by E.C. Tubb

Things are bleak for Earl Dumarest. He has against found himself stranded on a planet where there is not enough work to earn enough money to get off planet. The local oligarchy keep their poor in another warren of shacks as they get rich raising “Beasts” - which I imagine to be super-bulls made tougher, bigger and meaner by genetic engineering.

He's on this planet because it is named “Terralde” which sounds something like “Terra,” another name for the lost Earth that he is searching for.

When Earl realizes his situation, he leads a group of losers in a raid of a Beast farm, resulting in one dead Beast, some men that will not starve, and an irate owner. The owner gets a break when one of the losers is caught trying to sell Beast meat. A net is thrown over Dumarest. An emissary of Earl's enemy, the Cyclan arrives and...

...Earl is taken off-planet by an owner who wants to locate a fabled treasure world hidden in a vast space nebula.

Never underestimate the role of luck in undermining Cyclan plans.

On the ship, we are introduced to the usual cast of greedy captains, cynical gamblers, and pampered princesses. In this version, though, Earl's unfailing eye for spotting the true among the false leads him to empathize with the Woman Who Has Lost Her Daughter, the Wealthy Old Woman, and the Blind Girl Navigator. Even the cynical gambler seems to have some redeeming qualities.

This story counts as one of the rare happy endings of a Dumarest story, apart from the fact that most of the ship dies and the treasure is absolutely useless. Nonetheless, Earl stays away from the Cyclan, although he does not seem to get any closer to Earth. [In one vision, he does seem to see Earth before it became a nearly dead world, so that may be something.]

That's not surprising. There are still another fourteen books in the series.

Escape from Yokai Land (Laundry 7.5) by Charles Stross


Bob is back, and he's sent to Japan to fight Yokai and Gaiju.

This is an enjoyable quick read - slightly longer than a short story - that introduces Laundryphiles to the paranormal world of Japan. The Japanese are worried that an epidemic of Yokai (Japanese monsters) will metastasize into a single big Gaiju disaster. Bob - who is settling into his Eater of Souls role - is sent to handle the problem.

Stross is brilliant in setting his story in the cute/adorable world of Japanese culture, where the Gaiju threat comes from “Hello Kitty” and the color scheme of the Lovecraftian apocalypse is pink and white and powered by the giggles of pre-teen girls.

My complaint is that this seems to be a section of a longer book - Laundry 8, perhaps. It satisfies our Laundry addiction, but leaves us hankering for the next fix.

Precious Little Things by Adrian Tschaikovsky

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R162HKV7MMAF96?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

It's hard to classify this as a fantasy or a science fiction short story. It is nice short about ‘homunculi” who have created a society. The homunculi are doll sized beings made of wood or paper or fabric and have been brought to life by the magic of a giant trapped wizard. Their lives are interrupted when three other giant wizards break into the castle that is their home.

This is a quick read. We don't get an explanation about what is going on here - magic? science? But it is a nice quick diversion. I assume that the explanations are offered in the larger book which is the basis of this short story.

Cicero: Selected Works by Cicero

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2H2F39O0QFQGJ?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

I read this for the Online Book Group. The reading assignment included the sections on Cicero's correspondence and his Second Philippics against Anthony.

Cicero's correspondence makes for interesting historical reading. This is prime material for anyone interested in the backstory of the late Roman Republic. I can imagine that anyone who writes on the subject has read these letters. For that matter, these letters have made me rethink my approach to history by institutionalizing a strategy of looking for correspondence as a good way of getting a more subjective view of historical events.

The Philippics also serve the purpose of telling us the backstory of history. I'm sure that a lot of what Cicero says about Caesar and Anthony is pure slander, but it kind of tells us what was floating around in the rhetorical space at the time. Also, some of it might be true.

Truth or falsity, aside, Cicero's rhetoric is superb and sometimes side-splitting. Every page drags Anthony through some finely crafted mud. The Philippic is worth reading just to excerpt some examples of high blown insults.

The Best Time by John Dos Passos

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2LLEBLJUO28W0?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp


This is a delightful and captivating worm's eye view of American literary life in the early 20th Century. Dos Passos (“Dos”) was exactly the right age and in the right place to be part of the wave that transformed American literature. As a young man in his early twenties, he was friends with Hemingway, E.E. Cummings, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and other literary luminaries. As a teenager, he volunteered to serve in the ambulance corps on the German front. He was transferred to Italy, where his radicalism resulted in him being invited to leave. Cummings had his own run-in with the French, which resulted in his imprisonment and the writing of “The Big Room.” He met Hemingway during the war and bummed around with Hemingway in Paris and Key West. Dos was an adventurous traveler. One chapter describes his journey through the Caucuses into Iran and back up through Iraq across the desert to Syria facing off brigands and robbers.

This is a sweet book because, I assume, Dos was a sweet man. This book really is his best memories. He has no knives to bury or grudges to share. For example, although the book was written in 1966 - five years after the death of Hemingway - the stories he shares about Hemingway are flattering to Hemingway. There is a brief note of melancholy when he reflects on how age can drive people apart, but there is nothing here about Hemingway's shameful treatment of his friend during the Spanish Civil War as “Hem” came under the influence of the Communists.

The first chapter may be the sweetest chapter as Dos reflects on his father. Dos was born in irregular circumstances and was not regularized until after his father's first wife died. Nonetheless, Dos shows a great deal of affection for his father, and the affection was shared. I ended that chapter with a tear in my eye.

Many writers, playwrights, and authors make cameos in his memoir from a period when they were just starting to become well-known. Some never made it or died in the war. We get to see unguarded moments when these icons were in their twenties and interacted with each other as young men. We see speak-easies and the casual avoidance of Prohibition. This is a living history or history as it was lived.

And, if you are older, you come to realize that the Best Times really were when you were in your twenties and everything was so serious but you really were existentially free to do whatever you wanted.

Bullet for a Star by Stuart M. Kaminsky

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RC4W1Y63BWVU1?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

This is the first in a series involving Hollywood Private Investigator Toby Peters. This book is set in 1940. Peters had worked for a studio as a guard until he was fired. So, now he is a low-rent PI working seedy divorce cases. At the beginning of this book, Toby gets a call from the studio because one of its stars is being blackmailed with a picture implicating him in statutory rape.

The star is Errol Flynn, who is making Santa Fe Trails at the time. The story is interwoven with the names of stars who make cameo appearances. Toby gets information from Humphrey Bogart, who shares with Toby that his next role will be as a private investigator in “The Maltese Falcon.”

These details are a big part of the charm of the book. In itself, the book is well-written and a decent mystery.

The Case for Christian Nationalism by Stephen Wolfe

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1VEDTLJ5E5ST5/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B0BHZMGXNF

Christian Nationalism is the current “Emmanuel Goldstein” of the Left. Christian Nationalists (CNs) are “white supremacists,” and they are everywhere. All conservative Christians merit the label of CN.

This perplexes me because I am a conservative Catholic, which some consider “Christian,” I have been labeled a CN tag, and I've never met a CN. Apparently, the Left thinks that someone who is both Christian and patriotic is, for that reason, a CN. If that's the case, then guilty as charged.

However, this book shows that this is not the case. I decided to read this book to see if there is something more to this CN phenomenon.

Author Stephen Wolfe identifies himself as CN. His version of Christianity is the Reformed Christian - i.e., Calvinist/Presbyterian - variety. This book shows that Leftism is producing a reaction that is not healthy for our body politic, albeit this particular reaction is really castles in the air unhinged from reality. It's aspirational, not practical.

The book starts out with some solid and very good points. Points, incidentally, that agree with St. Thomas Aquinas's explanation of love in the Summa Theologica. Namely, human beings are ordered to love. We are naturally ordered to love those closest to us, our family, our neighbors, our community, our nation, in that order. This is a natural and good thing since we spend most of our time with those closest to us. A love that ignores those who are closest to us in favor of those distant is inhuman and uncharitable.

It seems to me that it is akin to the love of Communists who love the working class in the abstract and hate the individual working man. It is worth quoting Eugen Lyons on this point:

“The recognition of this fact enabled me to solve (or so I thought) the most disturbing of the paradoxes of Soviet power: the deification of the Proletariat in the abstract - on posters and postage stamps, in official theses and official literature - while the flesh-and-blood working masses were treated most cavalierly. The communist functionary who worships the Proletariat as a class and spits on the self-seeking, wretched specimens of the class whom he handles in everyday life is not necessarily a fraud. On the contrary, his contempt for Ivan Ivanovich may be a measure of his respect for the Ivan lvanovich-to-be. The selfish, stubbornly unappreciative people whom he must whip into the shape of his vision seem to him an affront to the idealized Proletarian for whom he went to tsarist prisons, for whom he fought civil wars. Workers who achieve power cannot be expected to idealize other workers as romantic upper-class people do, they know the creatures too intimately.”

Eugene Lyons, Assignment in Utopia, p. 326.

Love should be concrete, not abstract.

Wolfe concludes that there is nothing wrong with “nationalism” in the sense of “love of one's country,” which is also called patriotism.

He jumps the shark in my opinion when he starts defining what he means by “one's country.” In this part of the book he begins to abstract like a Bolshevik.

For Wolfe, America is a Christian country. It was founded as a Christian country. It is still a majority Christian. So far so good as a historical matter.

However, he then defines Americans as Christians. Only Christians can be Americans.

Previously, he had explained his Christian political theory as involving Christians exercising “dominion.” Adam was given dominion over the world. Christ restored his followers to the status of Adam. Therefore, Christians have the same authority and dominion as Adam.

Leftists often prattle about “Dominionists.” This may be what they are talking about.

Having identified Christians as restored in Christ to the status of Adam in exercising “dominion,” Wolfe argues that Christians should not be afraid of forthrightly exercising dominion in a Christian country.

Where does this leave non-Christians? The answer is “second class citizens” without political power:

“But what about consent? Would not Christians have to disregard the non-Christian withholding of consent? They likely would. But no one and no group can withhold consent such that they effectively deny the establishment of a properly constituted commonwealth. None can withhold consent in order to prevent the establishment of true justice. Can a group of people withhold consent to prevent laws against murder? We would find this unacceptable and disregard their lack of consent. But if we would disregard them in the case of murder, why not for a group's disregard for the highest good and the things of God? If we can disregard in the name of lesser goods, then certainly we can disregard in the name of the highest good. Therefore, if a Christian minority can constitute a secure commonwealth for true justice and the complete good, then they can disregard the withholding of consent by non-Christians. Non-Christians living among us are entitled to justice, peace, and safety, but they are not entitled to political equality, nor do they have a right to deny the people of God their right to order civil institutions to God and to their complete good.

Wolfe, Stephen. The Case for Christian Nationalism (p. 346). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.

What Wolfe is trying to recreate is the kind of state that existed in Holland in the late 17th century. Holland had a reputation for tolerance, apart from Catholics and Unitarians. He expressly argues that there would be a “Christian” - which is to say Protestant - magistrate who would rule in an enlightened biblical way, which should allow for “religious tolerance”:

“Indeed, the unfolding of Protestant principles—not Enlightenment or Roman Catholic “doctrinal development”—is what led Americans to affirm religious liberty in the 18th century, which I demonstrate in the next chapter. The point here is that Protestant magistrates ruling a Protestant people have principled flexibility when faced with religious diversity.

Wolfe, Stephen. The Case for Christian Nationalism (p. 375). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.

Wolfe's Christian Nationalism is, not surprisingly, an expressly Protestant Nationalism. Throughout the book he acknowledges that he is appealing to Protestants, but he does not discuss the implications for Christians-who-are-not Protestants. For example:

“Many readers may by now be frustrated that I have not mentioned the issue of baptism. My hope is that my arguments so far have appealed to a pan-Protestant audience.

Wolfe, Stephen. The Case for Christian Nationalism (p. 217). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.

And:

“Protestant harmony amid diversity does not require disestablishment. But granting religious liberty to all orthodox Christians, if deemed suitable, would effectively end dissension, as I've defined it, and create a sort of pan-Protestant civil society. This is precisely what I hope for future arrangements in North America. Still, there are times when establishment is necessary and good.49

Wolfe, Stephen. The Case for Christian Nationalism (pp. 394-395). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.

That last paragraph is ambiguous. It seems that Protestantism will be established, i.e., state-supported, but it isn't clear whether non-Protestant churches will be tolerated but not established or not tolerated at all.

Wolfe tries to finesse his pan-Protestantism by making disagreements between Protestants something that concerns only secondary issues:

“An established church that is a true church, though erroneous on something secondary, is better for a people than having an embattled church or no church at all.

Wolfe, Stephen. The Case for Christian Nationalism (p. 379). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.

Wolfe offers many observations that suggest he is thinking about a real return to the era of the Wars of Religion. For example Wolfe has some lengthy discussions about the suppression of heresy. Wolfe explains that religious belief cannot be compelled because human beings are free in their conscience, but their heretical public acts can be punished because of the “harm” such actions - speech, worship, persuasion - do to others. Wolfe admonishes:

“False belief itself must never be the basis of civil punishment.8 False religion externalized is the only principled object of punishment.

Wolfe, Stephen. The Case for Christian Nationalism (p. 357). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.

The punishment can be quite extreme:

“This is a remedy to stop the “poison,” as Calvin said. Turretin cites a great number of Reformed theologians who supported capital punishment for arch-heretics: Zanchi, Becanus, Bullinger, Beza, Franciscus Junius, Danaeus, Gerhard, Bucer, and Melanchthon.46 This is not to say that capital punishment is the necessary, sole, or desired punishment. Banishment and long-term imprisonment may suffice as well. And perhaps a Christian people may consider some heretics harmless, or they might conclude that suppressing heresy is, in at least some cases, more harmful than the heresy itself. The crucial point here is that civil action against heretics is justified in principle but the practice of it requires considerable discernment, care, gentleness, and prudence.

Wolfe, Stephen. The Case for Christian Nationalism (p. 391). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.

Wolfe attempts to construct a fire wall against the charge of persecution by this argument and suggestion:

In our time, the suppression of false religion is not an end in itself but a means and a matter of prudence; and such actions are prudent only if they conduce concretely to the good of the church. The church is ordinarily not well served by inciting powerful and destructive rage against it.

Wolfe, Stephen. The Case for Christian Nationalism (pp. 373-374). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.

Wolfe's approach unwittingly mirrors that of the Nazis who also thought that they were preserving religious liberty by allowing churches to do what they wanted in their churches but punishing them sternly if they brought that Christian stuff into the public square. In that regard, it is also the policy approach that Obama sought to follow during his administration.

Like the Nazis, and maybe Obama, Wolfe thinks that those who are not “orthodox Protestants” can't complain if they have access to the means of grace through their own churches:

“My point is that if it were false, its establishment would not separate Baptists from the means of grace. Ensuring equal access to the administration of grace mitigates the consequences of established error. Thus, an established church that is in error on a secondary matter is dangerous to Christian brethren only if that establishment denies dissenting believers access to the means of grace.28 Further mitigation might include extending toleration to dissenting Christians, allowing them to erect their own churches.

Wolfe, Stephen. The Case for Christian Nationalism (p. 378). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.

Wolfe started with the idea that it is natural to love the most those who one is physically close to. Somehow this morphed into loving those who one is closest to and who share one's beliefs. Wolfe sawed through the “share one's belief,” however, by arguing that the Protestant state has no obligation to take in foreign Protestants who have a different culture and speak a different language, which would stress the culture.

Then, weirdly, Wolfe saws through the Thomistic point that natural love is directed at those who one is closest physically to by gratuitously tossing in an “ethnic” qualifier:

“To be sure, I am not saying that ethnic majorities today should work to rescind citizenship from ethnic minorities, though perhaps in some cases amicable ethnic separation along political lines is mutually desired.

Wolfe, Stephen. The Case for Christian Nationalism (p. 149). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.

So, apparently, Protestant Nationalism may exclude Protestants in the community who are of different skin color or have different ancestry.

This is pretty much an impeachment of the first part - the good part - of the book since it is obvious that what Wolfe is doing here is not about naturally loving that one is physically closest to, but dividing up that community along religious and ethnic lines. Wolfe commits the same fallacy that Communists commit; he abstracts the people he should be loving rather than loving the concrete individuals who are in front of him.

Is there anyone who doesn't recognize the obvious folly of such an approach? Worse, it denies the natural emotion of charity we have to those who are in our community. Pluralism in a community bound together by a shared love of nation works. It took a long time for us to realize this fact. According to Rodney Stark, the first interfaith prayer assembly occurred in New York in the late 19th century after a tragic sinking of a ferry. Different faiths in a community have learned to work together and to adopt a shared civic religion while keeping our separate faiths alive. Further, the competition of different religions has strengthened all faiths in America. America does not have a dying religious economy because pluralism fosters healthy competition.

It is clear that Wolfe is reacting to the very real threat posed by secular culture. Secular culture is at war with religion. Secular culture seeks to do to all religions what Wolfe proposes to do for non-Protestants, namely drive faith in doors into different churches and nail the door shut. The threat is real.

But the answer is obviously not to start a war of Protestants against Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, etc. The answer is pluralism, which is the real tradition that developed in Protestant North America.

The Myth of American Inequality by Phil Gramm

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R30QJ0FIVNDFGV?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

America has spent trillions of dollars on fighting poverty. If you believe government statistics or the evening news, poverty has won the war. We are constantly hearing that the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer.

The good news is that it may be the case that those trillions have not been wasted. Phil Gramm, who had been a professor of economics before becoming a Republican senator from Texas. Gramm and other economists have recrunched the numbers used by the Census Bureau and come up with some surprising information.

Basically, Gramm discovered that the census numbers do not account for transfer payments and services provided to the poorest quintile of the population. This is not an insignificant detail. While those in the poorest quintile only earn about $3,000 in income, they receive more than $41,000 in transfer payments.

Moreover, the census bureau did not account for the money taken from the richest quintiles in taxes. When these corrections are made, the four lowest quintiles - or 80% of the population - make pretty much the same amount of money, which means that the narratives of economic inequality and growing inequality are without substance.

Gramm's group analysis also concludes that inflation has not been as high as economic calculations have held. Part of this is from systemic problems in the calculation of inflation. Another is from not picking up the tremendous price declines when innovative products hit the market. Another is the practice of product substitution as consumers buy the cheaper product.

The effect of all this is to provide a more optimistic conclusion about poverty than we get from official statistics:

“The more accurate measures show that only 1.3 percent of children and less than 0.4 percent of seniors live in poverty. For children living with married relatives, the poverty rate is a mere 0.2 percent. Poverty affects 1.7 percent of Blacks, about 92 percent fewer than shown by the Census counts. While the improved measures show that poverty among Blacks is still somewhat higher than for Whites, the difference is only 0.6 percentage points, versus the 11.5 percent difference in the Census numbers. With the improved estimates, poverty affects 1.3 percent of women and 1.0 percent of men.

Gramm, Phil; Ekelund, Robert; Early, John. The Myth of American Inequality (p. 97). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kindle Edition.

The actual problem is that the inequality is so slight that the second lowest tier makes only a small incremental amount compared to the lowest quintile, notwithstanding spending more than 30 hours a week more in labor.

“Also note the stunning fact that the second quintile of households has an average net income after transfers and taxes that is only 8.6 percent above the average income of the bottom quintile. This means the second quintile is only slightly better off than the bottom quintile despite the fact that the second quintile earned more than six times as much, it had more than twice the proportion of its prime work-aged adults working, and they worked, on average, 1.8 times as many hours per week.

Gramm, Phil; Ekelund, Robert; Early, John. The Myth of American Inequality (pp. 31-32). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kindle Edition.

The apparent absence of absolute poverty is something we could have inferred from observations about how people live:

“Compared to 1972, our homes today are much more spacious and modern. The proportion of homes with two or more rooms per person is 33.5 percent greater today. The proportion with two or more bathrooms has grown by 200.5 percent; 313.1 percent more have central air conditioning; and 68.3 percent more have dishwashers.3 Most homes in 1972 had televisions, but only about half were color. Today they are all color, and most are high-definition, flat-screen TVs connected to cable or satellites.4 Most homes in 1972 had at least one phone, but none had cell phones or internet access.

Gramm, Phil; Ekelund, Robert; Early, John. The Myth of American Inequality (pp. 84-85). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kindle Edition.

And:

“Our cars last more than twice as long,6 they are almost four times safer,7 and many have GPS navigation and premium sound systems. No standard model lacks air conditioning or power steering. Today almost three times as many of us are college graduates.8 Americans live 7.8 years longer,9 partly because the death rates from cancer declined by 31 percent from 1991 to 2018.10 Our median age is almost ten years older, and yet the proportion of people reporting poor health is 20.3 percent smaller.11 Real median household net worth is up 172.2 percent.12 In short, by virtually any physical definition of economic well-being, working Americans across all income levels, racial classifications, education levels, and other commonly used statistical classifications are substantially better off today than they were in 1972. So how did we obtain this massive cornucopia of prosperity without a pay raise since 1972?

Gramm, Phil; Ekelund, Robert; Early, John. The Myth of American Inequality (p. 85). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Other myths exploded by Gramm's team include alleged pay differentials between men and women and between the races. The answer can usually be traced to the number of hours worked or to the nature of the work done. Transfer payments and taxes also reduce the differentials.

“On average, Black households received $2,212 more in transfer payments than White households, and White households paid $14,482 more in taxes than Black households. As a result, the overall gap between Black and White household incomes after transfers and taxes was more than one-third smaller than the gap for earned income (23.4 percent versus 36.4 percent). Hispanic incomes after transfers and taxes also showed about the same difference—a 39.3 percent smaller gap with White income than existed between the earned incomes of the two.

Gramm, Phil; Ekelund, Robert; Early, John. The Myth of American Inequality (p. 159). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kindle Edition.

This book is heavy on the details. Gramm throws a lot of numbers at the reader. Surf along though and you can follow the argument and be surprised by how we've been swindled by uncritically trusting what we are told.

The Price of Doing Business by D.B. Jackson

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R22TC8MGG35BWN?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

This is a Tor.com short story. So, it provides a glimpse into the author's world. In this case, the story is set in Boston circa 1760. Ethan Kaille is a thief-taker with the ability to do some magic. He's hit up to take a job of recovering some stolen items which takes him through the Boston underworld where we are introduced to his friends and to his competitor.

This is generally a fun story that recommends longer books.

Did the Savior see the Father by Simon Francis Gaine

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R3RBPFPLPPFIHX?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

If we are honest, the idea of the Beatific Vision has been lost to the lay Catholic. The average Catholic may think of “going to Heaven” as the aim of life, but the idea that Catholics in heaven and after the Resurrection will perpetually be able to see God in His essence and, thereby know truth and joy, is something that would probably surprise most Catholics.

Once this was not so. The Beatific Vision is an essential doctrine of Catholicism. Prior to the 20th century, the Beatific Vision was in the common parlance of theologians, albeit I don't know how much this language was used by the lay Catholic. I suspect that most understood that joy consisted of the contemplation of God.

The idea that Jesus in his human nature also shared in the Beatific Vision in similar fashion as the saints in Heaven. St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica (“ST”) posited that Jesus in his human nature possessed the fullness of knowledge in three ways. First, Jesus possessed “infused knowledge” about everything as a kind of data bank that could be accessed by Him as he chose. Second, Jesus shared knowledge acquired by experience as other humans. Finally, Jesus possessed the Beatific Vision at all times during his life by which He saw God in God's true essence, and therefore knew all things through the divine mind as the saints in heaven did. (The concept of “knowing all things” is qualified by the fact that Jesus possessed a finite human mind; Jesus could only actually know things until He chose to know them.)

I suspect that modern Catholics find all of this bizarre. I know that when I read this in the ST, I found it novel and not at all consistent with very human picture of Jesus that I have been reared to. It is a feature of Aquinas's theology that while he acknowledges that Jesus voluntarily accepted the limitations of human pain and suffering, he puts no such limitation on Jesus's knowledge. Aquinas explains this latter feature from the necessity of Jesus to act as a human judge of humanity.

The author Simon Francis Gaine tackles the issue of whether Jesus had the beatific vision and the conceptual problems that arise from accepting that concept.

In the first chapter – “No one thinks that anymore” - Gaine forthrightly acknowledges that while the theory that the Jesus had the Beatific Vision was well-established prior to the 20th century, and is alluded to in the teachings of popes, in the 20th century several major religious thinkers have called it into question or have offered variant theories for Jesus's unusual knowledge. Previously, I would have said that Jesus's possession of the Beatific Vision was a Catholic doctrine, but at this point I will have to accept it as in the area of permissible speculation. However, it does seem that the Beatific Vision has been left behind in modern theology.

Chapter two – “It's not in the Bible” – makes the point that the Bible nowhere says that Jesus possessed the Beatific Vision. What Bible does say is that the saints in heaven will see God as he is and it acknowledges that Jesus had knowledge that was not known by merely human resources. In Gaine's view, the Beatific Vision is the leading candidate for explaining Jesus's knowledge inasmuch as saints see the essence of God.

Chapter three – “It's not in the Father” – also acknowledges that Jesus's possession of the Beatific Vision is contested ground. Modern theologians claim that this principle was not known to the early Church Fathers and was thought to run close to Nestorianism. On the other hand, some early Church Fathers, such as Augustine, came close to the concept:

“Now not only is Augustine speaking of the beatific vision, but very definitely also of Christ's human nature, since he immediately calls attention to the difference between the humanity ‘which the Wisdom of God assumed, through which we are freed' and the humanity of all other human beings. This difference, he says, can be understood from the fact that Lazarus, unlike Jesus, was only released after he had come out from the tomb. Augustine interpreted this to mean that our souls, which now have only an obscure vision in a mirror, cannot be entirely free of ignorance until after the soul is released from the body. What this implies is that in our case it is only after death that the veils are removed and we can possess the beatific vision, the beatific vision thus being responsible for definitively removing defects of knowledge. However, things are different with Christ, and it seems only with Christ, who has no such defect. In contrast to the case of Lazarus, the cloth over the face of the one who was ‘not ignorant' was instead found in the tomb – unlike Lazarus, Christ did not walk out from the tomb still needing to be released (Jn 20.5–7). Given that our being freed of ignorance is associated by Augustine with our coming to the beatific vision after death, it is implied that Christ's freedom from ignorance even before death is associated with a pre-mortem possession of the same vision.

Gaine, Simon Francis. Did the Saviour See the Father? (pp. 54-55). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.

The anti-Nestorian impulse led to the formulation of the Agnoetist principle that held that Christ was ignorant of things in his humanity. Holding that Jesus was ignorant in his humanity was problematic:
“Contrary to Agnoetist intentions, Gregory held that ascribing real ignorance to Christ could only end up introducing into him a second person. In no way then can it be doubted that the Fathers took Christ's human mind to have benefit from divine knowledge. The general tendency among the Fathers was to exclude all ignorance from the human mind of Christ and regard it as endowed with knowledge of all things, the human mind benefiting from the divine knowledge of the Creator.” (p. 63.)

Ultimately, the Fathers do not deny the Beatific Vision of Jesus, but some do accept it. Thus, Gaine concludes: “Thus, if the Fathers can be supposed to offer support to any theory at all, it can only be to the earthly Christ's beatific vision.” (p. 70.)

In Chapter four – “It's not good theology” – Gaine discusses the conundrum that pertains to the problem of divine knowledge and human knowledge. Divine knowledge is infinite, which is to say incomprehensible and incommunicable to the finite. “Were Christ's mind to have been elevated by the light of glory on earth, he would have possessed not only the vision of the inexpressible God and of things in God, which would have provided a divine source for his teaching, but also the ability to form from this vision, by an historical succession of temporal acts, a communicable knowledge of creatures and of creaturely concepts appropriate to apply to God. In that way he would have been a true teacher of divine things, his divine knowledge being received in an appropriate way into his human mind by way of the beatific vision, which would then have been a source from which he could draw knowledge of a sort that could be humanly taught and communicated to his disciples. He would thus be endowed with a unique ability from his most perfect and intimate knowledge of the Father to proclaim the Father's kingdom with authority.” (p. 101-102.)

In Chapter five – “But Jesus had faith” – Gaine addresses one of the objections to the Beatific Vision, namely, that Jesus's knowledge was based on faith. The problem is that the Bible never speaks about Jesus having faith, which is a significant oversight in a text that affirms faith on the part of God and everyone else. That leaves a space for the Beatific Vision, a space that might be filled by knowledge through faith.

In Chapter six – “But Jesus didn't know” – the principle that Jesus possessed the Beatific Vision runs into the problem that Jesus said there were things he didn't know, such as the date of the end of the world. Aquinas affirms that Jesus knew this information, which leaves Him chargeable with not telling the truth, which is impossible. Gaine explains that Jesus's knowledge in his finite human nature depended on him accessing the information provided to him through the infinite mind of God. Like a person who can solve a complicated mathematical equation, Jesus could be said to have knowledge in potential but not in actuality, and therefore to both know and not know.(The consensus of the Fathers accepted that Christ knew as did Aquinas.)

In Chapter seven –“But Jesus was free” – challenges the Beatific Vision on the grounds that it confined human will. This seems like an odd objection in that Christ's human will was directed to God at all times. The Beatific Vision provides an explanation for how this is possible. It also heightens Christ's freedom in that He knew what He was giving His life for. Gaine points out that the decline of the Beatific Vision principle has seen a rise in theorizing that Christ was peccable, that he could sin, which seems to verge on heresy. Gaine also explains something that is subtle and confusing in the ST that Christ's human will had a lower component – an instinctive desire to avoid pain and death – which motivated Christ's lamentation in the Garden of Gethsamine.

In Chapter eight – “But Jesus suffered” – Gaine addresses the apparent incompatibility that Jesus suffered pain but experienced the joy of the Beatific Vision. Here Gaine follows Aquinas and distinguishes between the intellect and the physical. Christ experienced joy in His intellect; He experienced pain in his physical body. Christ chose to accept the infirmities of a corporeal existence by which He was exempted from the normal effect of the Beatific Vision flowing through the soul through the mind and placing the body in a glorious condition. Christ in His humanity was not impassible. Given this special exemption, there is nothing incompatible with human physical suffering and intellectual joy in the vision of God.

This can be high level material. It helps to have a background in Thomistic theology. For those who do, it provides a nice “state of the argument” overview of the issue. I appreciated Gaine's answer to the conundrum of Jesus saying he didn't know when the end of the world would happen. Gaine's answer was more nuanced than my own, which posited that this knowledge was unknowable to a finite mind. My answer was negatived by the ST, which clearly says that Jesus knew. If we understand that Jesus knew means he had actual knowledge at the time, His answer to His disciples would have been disingenuous. Gaine's answer provides a way of resolving this conundrum.

The Dominion of Leviathan by Manish Melwani

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R25SQAITXVVZWD?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp

This is a Tor short story, which makes it a kind of preview of a larger book. In this case, we have the story set in a distant future. Man has populated the solar system. Mars was settled, then controlled by sentient space ships. The dominion of sentient ships was overturned by the Leviathan - which seems to be a sentient Jupiter - and its emissary Ajax, the creator of the Ascendants. The Ascendants are superhuman and have reduced the human race into serf status.

This is the story of a human serf raised to Ascendant status. It describes what she went through to get that promotion and her plot of revenge against Ajax.

All in all, the imagined future is complex and may be interesting. On the other hand, it was all a lot to absorb so quickly and I don't think the story made its sales as particularly entertaining.