I confess that I have never been a big fan of Dickens.  I get lost in the verbiage, and sometimes find his endings a bit dull and overdone.  Still, I admit he deserves his fame as an all-time great, and he was perhaps the greatest creator of supporting characters of all time.

One of my favorites is Mr. Chadband, whom I referenced in the last post.  But that post had a heavy and somber tone, and my tribute to Dickens’ creative powers would have been out of place.  But I present here perhaps the best of Mr. Chadband from Bleak House:

“My friends,” says Mr. Chadband, “what is this which we now behold as being spread before us? Refreshment. Do we need refreshment then, my friends? We do. And why do we need refreshment, my friends? Because we are but mortal, because we are but sinful, because we are but of the earth, because we are not of the air. Can we fly, my friends? We cannot. Why can we not fly, my friends?”

Mr Snagsby, presuming on the success of his last point, ventures to observe in a cheerful and rather knowing tone, “No wings.” But, is immediately frowned down by Mrs Snagsby.

“I say, my friends,” pursues Mr Chadband, utterly rejecting and obliterating Mr Snagsby’s suggestion, “why can we not fly? Is it because we are calculated to walk? It is. Could we walk, my friends, without strength? We could not. What should we do without strength, my friends? Our legs would refuse to bear us, our knees would double up, our ankles would turn over, and we should come to the ground. Then from whence, my friends, in a human point of view, do we derive the strength that is necessary to our limbs? Is it,” says Chadband, glancing over the table, “from bread in various forms, from butter which is churned from the milk which is yielded unto us by the cow, from the eggs which are laid by the fowl, from ham, from tongue, from sausage, and from such like? It is. Then let us partake of the good things which are set before us! [below is a print entitled, “Mr. Chadband Makes Clear a Difficult Subject”]

Everyone wants creativity, but everyone knows that it just not just “happen.”  Creative acts need a physical context (i.e. time, skill, etc.), but they also need a spiritual context.  That is, for human beings to see things in new ways they need the inner spiritual freedom that allows them to see in the first place.

Idolatry comes in many forms, but within Christian communities it will almost always take an indirect path and have an indirect manifestation.  We can idolize the past, or idolize institutions, for example. The Byzantine empire (ca. 330-1453 A.D.) gave much to the idea of civilization.  We can find evidence of its vitality in its unique artistic and architectural contributions.  They had a significant impact on the development of Russia outside their borders.  But, as a “grafted” branch onto the Roman tree, they persisted in an irrational attachment to Rome’s imperial idea long after things in Italy showed that the emperor had no clothes.  One could call it idolization of the past perceived glories of Rome, but they did not merely copy Rome’s culture.  They blended with their eastern surroundings and invented something new.  I think instead they stand accused of attachment to the institution of the emperor, or at least the idea of empire itself.

In another post we looked at how this idea led them into a foolish war against their Bulgarian neighbors, a conflict which took their eyes off more pressing concern of the rise of Islam.  They never fully recovered from this mistake.

The truth of the failure of the imperial idea became obvious to the eastern church by the 14th century.  The Islamic handwriting was on the wall to any person who had eyes.  The Byzantine Empire’s time was at hand.  Unfortunately, the eastern church’s realization of their failed investment in the institution of the emperor was too little, too late.  But as they freed themselves spiritually from their attachment to the emperor, they simultaneously created some of the most magnificent art ever done in the eastern iconographic style in the monastery at Chora, right near the beating heart of Byzantium, just outside Constantinople.

To my western eyes this may not seem that impressive.  But if we travel to Mt. Athos in Greece and observe contemporary works to those at Chora we see a difference in the examples below. . .

At Chora we see power in the images and a subtle touch only possible with a freed mind.  At Athos I don’t see quite see the same inner depth.

The reason for these differences might be the persistence of the idolization of an institution.  In Greece during the 14th century they still put their heart into the imperial treasure.   Perhaps their physical distance from the emperor made their hearts all the fonder, more fond than they should have been.  Though the monks in Constantinople were about to be engulfed, they may have had more inner freedom than those in Greece.

For the record, I am no art critic, and so would welcome any thoughts from more discerning eyes than my own.

Last year a colleague told me about Ivan Illich.  “Ivan Illych?”  I asked.  “No, the other one,” he replied.

I had never heard of him before.  His Wikipedia page mentions that he was a Catholic priest, but most known for his social criticism.  One look at his bibliography shows a wide range of interests.  His book In the Vineyard of the Text lives up to all of my friend’s hype.  I can’t call what follows here a “Book Review,” because the book is too dense, and the material too far out of my league, for me to fully grasp.  But I am excited by it and hope to make progress as time goes by.

In this book Illich looks at what he calls the origins of the age of the book.  He does not locate this with the printing press or the Englightenment, but with Hugh of St. Victor’s Didascalion written in the early 12th century (something else I had never heard of before).  Of course books existed before this particular work.  But Illich makes the observation that up until this point, books were made to be heard and not seen (i.e. The Illiad), or so visually stimulating that the text took a backseat.  The words were entirely secondary.

With Hugh of St. Victor Illich believes a significant transition took place, whereby Hugh writes to be read rather than heard.  Form follows function, so St. Victor writes in a way that allows for reflection.  Plays rely on visualization, but books ask you to exercise methodical reason.  Arguments build, and you have the opportunity to refer back.  WIth that opportunity comes expectation, and so on.   St. Victor, for the first time (according to Illich) writes with a thought towards creating the discipline of reading, which leads to the development of certain modes of thought, and for the next 800 years or so, we have the age of the book, an age which lent itself towards the formation of deliberative wisdom.

Illich, writing in 1993, notes that the age of the book has long since passed us by in favor of visual mediums.  While he does not address this transition, he notes that it will of course have dramatic consequences for society, and I wondered what consequences it might have for democracy.

Does democracy needs books to thrive, or perhaps even survive?

Democracy predates the age of the book.  We don’t need to think only of ancient Athens–we can think of innumerable local village assemblies from before Christ through the more official village and township elections of the Middle Ages.  But I’m not sure these small scale democracies should really count as examples that pertain to us today.   These  local democracies did not need a “mass-produced” way of making decisions.  Their communities were usually small enough for everyone to know each other.

Republican Rome had many democratic elements, but remained an oligarchy, for better or worse.  They had a variety of structures in place to prevent the people’s ability to make quick decisions, and the patrician Senate dominated policy until the army, another kind of oligarchy, did so starting ca. 100 B.C.

So, although it’s almost boring to say so, we are drawn back to Athens.

Athenian democracy had many more wide-open features than modern American democracy.  They made the majority of their decisions in the Assembly, which met 10x a year.  Anyone could attend and vote in Assembly meetings, provided you arrived early enough, and there may have been as many as 5000 seats.  Anyone in theory could speak, provided that you could hold the floor and didn’t get booed off stage.  Voting often took place on the same day that laws or policies were proposed.  It seems much more exciting than C-Span.

But the critics of Athenian democracy from Thucydides to Plato had a point when they argued that they often lacked the capacity for deliberative wisdom (I think both eminent men overstated their case, but they did have a case).  If we believe Thucydides, Xenophon, and others we see that they had moments where passions got the best of them and led them to disaster.  So while they were not a visual culture per se, they did seem to demonstrate the faults of visual cultures.  That is, they are easier to manipulate.  Now I do not agree that Athenian democracy had no brains behind it.  Many speeches passed down to us by Thucydides had wit and reason behind them.  It was not a smoke and mirrors show.  But at crucial moments they seemed to lack the ability to reason carefully.  This is a human fault, of course, not just one of democracies.  But the lack of “deliberation” built into their government and society made it so they were more vulnerable to the swings of emotion and powerful rhetoric.

If Illich is right that we are long past the age of the book than we may be back in the situation of ancient Athens.  I thought of this when I heard someone discuss our possible intervention in Syria.  He opposed it but admitted that if video existed of the chemical attacks and it went viral on the internet we would have no choice but to intervene.  The images would force our hand.  I think that would almost certainly be true.  Aside from whether or not we should intervene in Syria, would it be a good thing if images dictated our policy?  Will democracy experience a seismic shift in the You Tube age, or did this shift happen 20 years ago?

As a parting aside, I feel I must read Illich’s Deschooling Society  at some point.  His quote from that book, “School is the advertising agency that makes you believe you need the society as it is,” in itself offers much food for thought.

Jeff Bezos’ purchase  of the Washington Post has led to a flurry of articles about him, of which I liked these two.  Clearly Bezos has a brilliant mind, supreme confidence, and intense drive.  As I read some articles about Bezos I thought he had much in common with Steve Jobs.  Both have drawn great praise and great criticism, with the praise coming for their revolutionary ideas, with much of the criticism coming from how they treat employees.

Regarding people with brilliant minds being in charge, medieval Moslem philosopher Ibn Khaldun wrote,

Benevolent government is rarely associated with a ruler whose mind is over-alert and intelligence over-developed.  Benevolence is most commonly found in rulers who are easy-going or who behave as if they were.  The worst defect of such a ruler is that he lays burdens on his subjects which are greater than they can bear; and he does this because his mental vision outranges theirs and his insight penetrates into the end of things as well their beginnings. . . .  Divine Law prescribes in the case of rulers that excess of intelligence should be avoided. . . .because it produces oppression and bad government, and makes demands on people that are contrary to their nature.

Toynbee quotes Khaldun in volume four of his A Study of History in the context of looking at civilizations that begin to lose internal harmony.  Decline in civilizations begins for Toynbee when society reveals various forms of spiritual schisms that misalign their focus.  The lopsided nature of a mere intellectually brilliant leadership comes not as a blessing but a curse to a civilization.  Perhaps Toynbee would not be so impressed with Bezos and Jobs.

But I do wonder if Toynbee was wrong about this.  Apple products have made enjoyment of music, for example, accessible in ways not previously possible.  I realize that a lot music is pirated but that is not Apple’s fault, and anyone my age can remember the necessity of buying whole cd’s to get the 2 songs you liked.  Amazon may get a bad wrap for putting Borders out of business, but I love that the world is now my library, and I have benefitted greatly from the access that Amazon gives me.  Of course nothing is perfect, but on balance it seems that Apple and Amazon have changed the world in positive ways.  Let us grant that Bezos and Jobs are/were tough bosses.  But both did, on the other hand, have a large role in creating companies that employ thousands of people.

But I hesitate to disagree with Toynbee, so I must imagine how he would respond.  He might say that increased access is only an improvement of technique and not a real breakthrough.  He might continue that improvement in technique does not improve our souls, and what’s more, this technical advance (unaccompanied by a spiritual advance) will likely fool us into thinking that we are “all that.”  This delusion will lead to much greater problems later on.

This would be a really good counter-argument, one I am tempted by.  But I don’t know.

I do really like Amazon Prime.

Mario Livio’s Brilliant Blunders looks at five of the major scientists of the modern era (Darwin, Pauling, Einstein, etc.) and examines the significant mistakes each of them made.  Livio does not take cheap shots.  He does not blame the scientists to errors they made due to what they could not have possibly known.  Instead, Livio focuses on blind spots in their theories that they should have seen, or prideful mistakes they made later in life.  Thus his book* functions as a psychological as well as a scientific study.

Each of the scientists in the book made their most significant contributions relatively early in their career (i.e., Einstein’s “Miracle Year”), and Livio believes this trend holds true for scientists in general.  The scientists then committed their “blunders” later in life, and when asked to comment on this, Livio stated that most likely, these men were not content to stay with a pat hand.  If at 35 you change the world with your theories, who wants to tinker with its finer points until retirement?  Instead, the scientists somewhat naturally seek other major breakthroughs, but this time in areas outside their wheelhouse, which is when they make their mistakes.

Are scientists unusual in this regard, or might it be a common human trait?  One thinks of presidential second terms that never seem to go quite as planned (Truman, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, GW Bush, Obama?).  Local Washingtonians remember the humdrum nature of Joe Gibbs’ second stint as the Redskins coach.  U.S. Grant made a much better general than president.  In literature we have figures like Merlin and Lear making their big gaffes late in life.

Of course it could be that we see “fall’s” at the end of things only in hindsight.  We call it the end because he /she “fell” and ended their careers on a bad note.  But they only would end if they did something bad, thus the theory is entirely circular.

I don’t accept this entirely, for some careers end well, and some know when to ride into the sunset.  But the question remains whether or not we trace something general about human life, and we don’t need a perfect record for that.  And if it reveals something about human life in general, it may reveal something about civilizations.

Spengler thought that civilizations had a natural lifespan, like biological organisms.  No civilization by definition could keep going ad infinitum.  I think that’s because he saw civilizations as the outworking of a particular idea, embodied in a particular people (or, perhaps for Spengler, a particular race).  If we take the city-state idea with Athens, for example, we can see

• An initial dynamism with the “new” idea of democracy embodied in a small community
• This dynamism having great success, which leads to expansion
• The expansion leading to inevitable betrayal of the idea, or at least, the idea can’t apply in the same way beyond their community.
• The tension and contradictions now need resolution, which comes in the form of the Peloponnesian War.

One can see a similar process happening with the Roman Republic, and perhaps even Israel.  The idea of a Jewish state had great moral and dynamic force in the wake of W.W. II.  This gave Israel a great cohesion and sense of mission with their founding generation (’48-’67).  But the success engendered by the force of the idea led to Israel becoming an occupying force, with all the inherent contradictions that implies for their original idea.

In the end I think we should recoil from inevitability Spengler preaches but still be strongly cognizant of the usual pattern of temptation.  In order for our ideals or our identities to experience continual renewal, we need to be aware of their limitations.

*I should say that I did not read the book, but heard the author interviewed.