Ancient Roman defeats

Reading Plutarch's account of the battle of Carrhae in 53 BC when Crassus led his legions into a trap, is like watching a slow train wreck.  Aside from bad military decisions, he followed the advice of a local Arab who was obviously working for the Parthian king.  This pattern of an elder political general who falls under the spell of an enemy agent was repeated in 9 AD when Publius Quinctilius Varus, aged 55, marched his 3 legions into an obvious German barbarian trap in the Teutoburg Forest.  A later imperial power saw a similar calamity when British troops in Kabal, Afghanistan were ordered to retreat by their 60 year old General Elphinstone, who kept believing the promise of safe conduct made by the Afgan leader, resulting in the massacre of his troops in 1842.

The Romans suffered some other horrendous defeats, losing 50,000 to 75,000 men at Cannae in 216 BC against Hannibal, when they adhered to their crazy policy of alternating army commanders each day.  Earlier, in the First Punic War against Carthage, the Romans lost their entire newly built fleet and perhaps 90,000 men in a great storm in the Mediterranean Sea about 255 BC.  It is thought that the Roman vessels were top heavy due to the additional structure of a corvus or boarding bridge, thus making the ships unstable in heavy seas. But they just chopped down more trees and built another 140 ships and continued the fight.  

Many people think of the Roman Empire coming to an end with the fall of Rome in 476 AD but they forget the Empire had been partitioned into western and eastern territories, and the eastern part, becoming known as the Byzantine Empire, lasted almost another thousand years, falling to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.  This event precipitated the influx of scholars with their classical Roman and Greek texts to Italy and the West, giving a further stimulus to the nascent Renaissance which was to fundamentally transform and energize western Europe.  

 

A Bit of Fun from the Beatles

It is said the Beatles may have taken their name from Lee Marvin's motorcycle gang the Beetles in Brando's 1953 film The Wild One.  Since this movie was banned in England, it is still possible the Beatles saw a bootleg copy or got a copy from the continent.  There must have been considerable interest in such a notorious film and enterprising individuals must have found a way to satisfy such a demand.

Marcus Licinius Crassus

Portrayed as a lean mean fighting machine in Spartacus season 3, which is currently running, Crassus may have been much less an athletic figure.  Known as the richest man in the Roman world, he financed Julius Caesar and became co-ruler of the Republic with Caesar and Pompey later.  His victory over Spartacus' undisciplined slave army may have helped his career, but it gave him an unrealistic view of his military prowess. This brought him to grief later in life, at the age of 60 he set forth from Rome with plans to conquer Parthia in the Middle East, ignoring an extraordinary series of what an objective observer would recognize as really bad omens.

Two years later, ignoring the offered assistance of the allied Armenian army, which had experience dealing with the horse-riding Parthians armed with compound bows, Crassus made wrong decisions every step of the campaign, leading to his death and those of 20,000 Roman soldiers with an additional 10,000 captured.  This event and the loss of Legionary Eagle standards humiliated the Romans and ensured they would be back for vengence.  It also broke apart the delicate political alliance that held together the Republic, after this the antagonism between Caesar and Pompey could not be glossed over, and civil war and the end of the Republic was the result.  

This incredible loss against an inferior force showed the limitations of the Roman military technology and strategy in dealing with enemies on the eastern frontier.  It also showed the bad side of the Roman tendency to give military commands to influential politicians who had miminal or no army experience.  They continued to have problems with the Parthians for centuries and never fully conquered them or succeeding dynasties, thus creating the first solid boundary stopping their previous expansion.  

Art of Worldly Wisdom - more

98. Write your intentions in cipher.
The passions are the gates of the soul. The most practical knowledge consists in disguising them. He that plays with cards exposed runs a risk of losing the stakes. The reserve of caution should combat the curiosity of inquirers: adopt the policy of the cuttlefish. Do not even let your tastes be known, lest others utilize them either by running counter to them or by flattering them.

141. Do not listen to yourself.
It is no use pleasing yourself if you do not please others, and as a rule general contempt is the punishment for self-satisfaction. The attention you pay to yourself you probably owe to others. To speak and at the same time listen to yourself cannot turn out well. If to talk to oneself when alone is folly, it must be doubly unwise to listen to oneself in the presence of others. It is a weakness of the great to talk with a recurrent "as I was saying" and "eh?" which bewilders their hearers. At every sentence they look for applause or flattery, taxing the patience of the wise. So too the pompous speak with an echo, and as their talk can only totter on with the aid of stilts, at every word they need the support of a stupid "bravo!"

158.  Make use of your friends.
This requires all the art of discretion. Some are good afar off, some when near. Many are no good at conversation but excellent as correspondents, for distance removes some failings which are unbearable in close proximity to them. Friends are for use even more than for pleasure, for they have the three qualities of the Good, or, as some say, of Being in general: unity, goodness, and truth. For a friend is all in all. Few are worthy to be good friends, and even these become fewer because men do not know how to pick them out. To keep is more important than to make friends. Select those that will wear well; if they are new at first, it is some consolation they will become old. Absolutely the best are those well salted, though they may require soaking in the testing. There is no desert like living without friends. Friendship multiplies the good of life and divides the evil. ’Tis the sole remedy against misfortune, the very ventilation of the soul.

Number 98 sounds cynical but it can also be an exercise in limiting the ego in that we do not indulge ourselves with bothering everyone with our opinions, thoughts and tastes.  Chogyam Trungpa urges the adaptation of "inscrutability" as one of the traits of what he calls a warrior.

Number 141 also tends to undermine the ego, we don't try to double check ourselves when it is only necessary to be natural and at ease.

Number 158 starts off sounding cynical but then turns rather cuddly for Gracian.  He recognizes man as a social creature who needs the give and take of true friendship.

The Best Way to Travel

Walking the Eightfold Path

The Eightfold Path is the 4th of the Four Noble Truths, which are 1.  the truth of suffering, 2. the origin of suffering in craving, 3. the cessation of craving will eliminate suffering, and the way to accomplish this is 4. the Eightfold Path.  This path consists of Right View, Intention, Speech, Action, Livelihood, Effort, Mindfulness and Concentration or Meditation.   The Japanese Zen and Tibetan Kagyu schools place great importance on the 8th stage of the path, the sitting practice of meditation.  They believe this is the most effective way to follow in the footsteps of the Buddha, who also practiced meditation for many years before coming to his realization and beginning of his teaching career.  They also balance this with study of Buddhist teachings to provide the proper context for their meditation experiences.  It is said we are producing the seeds of karma all the time, which good or bad will ripen and create future constraints upon us, except when we meditate, when no karma is being produced. 

To stop producing karmic seeds creates a gap in our compulsive thought process and its tight ego and allows fresh air into the dank recesses of the cocoon of personality.  We begin to see the insubstantial nature of our self-created ego boundaries and sense of separation from the world.  This is considered a good thing, a relaxing thing, a ray of sunshine into the dark dungeon where our ego has fortified itself through innumerable lives.  Meditation creates chinks in this ego wall, stopping momentarily our compulsive subconscious gossiping mind and allowing what lies underneath, pure consciousness, to shine forth. 

Like any other skill or habit, meditation needs to be practiced regularly to become effective.  We do not go into our place of practice with towering expectations that we will immediately gain something from it.  We just sit, in an upright position, lowered eyes, watching our breath, and get up and stretch our muscles doing walking meditation from time to time.  An attitude of cool boredom, as Chogyam Trungpa puts it, is beneficial.  We sit when we sit and we try to cultivate an attitude of mindfulness practice in our ordinary life (the 7th of the Eightfold Path).  There can be said to be an air of regal ease in this practice.  We sit in great dignity and in the post-meditation experience delight in experiencing the chaos and clamor of the phenomenal world without aversion or enticement. 

Eightfold Path

I was reading some online message board entries concerning the responses of the Roman and Chinese Empires to barbarian incursions and came across one that was a little strange.  It went on from the topic under discussion to proposing that while Christian belief in God became the hallmark of Western civilization, the Chinese were stuck with the Buddhist belief in the Eightfold Path, and wham! then they became vulnerable to Communism in the 20th century. Of course one could retort where did this Communism start from, but a solid Christian nation called Russia...

But the basic point of the guy is that non-theistic Buddhism does not provide the moral strength to resist the totalitarian viciousness of Marxism-Leninism.  That is to say, as with Dostoyevsky, if God did not exist, all things are permitted, and moral relativism and actual chaos will be the result.  If this were true, then the history of Buddhism should be strewn with colossal persecutions, wars and cultural degradation.   But that is not the case.  Dostoyevsky's mistake is like many theists, Christian, Jewish or Islamic, that they have the corner on the Absolute and non-believers or infidels are incapable of decent behavior because they have disconnected themselves from ultimate Being or the Godhead.  Of course the Communists use the same argument, substituting History for God.  

This is taking belief itself as the marker of morality, rather than evaluating action in the real world.  It also generates the dangerous proposition that  as long as we firmly believe in God we are unlikely to commit evil deeds, and encourages the smug feeling we don't have to do anything to change our life, no matter how many bad habits we have.  I think a more reasonable theistic approach would be to accept the proposition that the sacred can be experienced in many ways and manifest itself in many forms, and there are possibly many paths to heaven, enlightenment, or union with God.  Just because they are not familiar with other paths does not mean they are dead ends.  The history of fanaticism is, by the way, pretty much a theistic phenomenon, not non-theistic. The Eightfold Path, which we have entirely overlooked in this post, is a path of moderation, tolerance and sanity. 

Time Has Come Today

This iconic song from the 60's has appeared in three versions, short, medium long and really long.  I recall listening to it full blast while riding with a friend through Forest Lawn Cemetery,  a fitting locale possibly.  (An aside: another memory of a Venice graffiti that covered the entire side of a building:  "Time Kills."  Those crazy hippies!  So philosophical!

Short live version:

Medium length radio version:

 Really long version:

Some Procol Harum lyrics

The Unknown Frances Trollope

This English writer who was famous in her day (1779-1863), especially for her travel books, is now relatively forgotten and only her most notorious book is still published, Domestic Manners of the Americans, which came out in 1832 and made her reputation.  She was forced to make a living at writing due to the incompetence of her husband who seemed to torment everyone.  It is a shame her books are pretty much unavailable now except a few in OCR versions that are full of mistakes.  She was quite the outspoken observer who knew how to write humorous stories that beguiled the public of her day.  However after her novelist son Anthony disparaged her output in his autobiography, her reputation sank as his continued to rise.

Aside from many true insights about American culture of the early 1830's, she also wrote a witty novel called The Widow Barnaby that combines comedy with realism.   It would make a great TV show or movie.  There is a careful analysis of it here.  Her novel about American slavery probably inspired Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.  She wrote the first novel about child labor in the factories of England which caused an uproar leading to the Factories Act of 1844.  While personally pretty hard to get along with, she nevertheless saw though the absurdities of revivalism and slavery and could not make a living in Cincinnati because of that.  When she was on her way back to England through Virginia  she stayed with a slave-holding family.  When a black slave girl accidentally swallowed poison and was dying, Frances gave the girl mustard and water as an emetic saving her life, and then held the girl in her arms and tried to comfort her.  She noticed the white members of the household were amazed at her actions and even laughed at her concern.  Just goes to show how twisted cultures can become.

Quotes from Gracian

Number 152
Never have a Companion who casts you in the Shade.
The more he does so, the less desirable a companion he is. The more he excels in quality the more in repute: he will always play first fiddle and you second. If you get any consideration, it is only his leavings. The moon shines bright alone among the stars: when the sun rises she becomes either invisible or imperceptible. Never join one that eclipses you, but rather one who sets you in a brighter light. By this means the cunning Fabula in Martial was able to appear beautiful and brilliant, owing to the ugliness and disorder of her companions. But one should as little imperil oneself by an evil companion as pay honour to another at the cost of one's own credit. When you are on the way to fortune associate with the eminent; when arrived, with the mediocre.

Number 192
Peaceful Life, a long Life.
To live, let live. Peacemakers not only live: they rule life. Hear, see, and be silent. A day without dispute brings sleep without dreams. Long life and a pleasant one is life enough for two: that is the fruit of peace. He has all that makes nothing of what is nothing to him. There is no greater perversity than to take everything to heart. There is equal folly in troubling our heart about what does not concern us and in not taking to heart what does.

#152 above seems to indicate a certain ruthlessness and conniving activity, why should it matter if a companion is flashier or smarter than ourselves?  I suppose we should look at it from the outsider's point of view, as in a movie, in this way we would see the other guy or gal soaking up all the attention of the people we have to live and work with, giving them the impression we are less capable by comparison.  So if this sort of association is continued for a long time, we are sure to lose the respect of others who matter most in our life, even if it is unfair and absurd.  

#192 shows  a Stoic bent, that is to say, let us not worry about that which we have little or no control, but concentrate our attention on that which we have some measure of power to effect the outcome.  It is also Stoic in its emphasis on the value of peacefulness and tranquility.  So here we have a softer side of Gracian's ideology.

Great Expectations

This novel of Dickens should be well known to most people, as it usually is assigned in high school, until recently perhaps, when more "socially relevant" literature has been substituted for that old imperialist trash.  The 2011 BBC production is quite good, although it has become foolish to expect even the BBC to create a faithful version of a venerable British work of art.  But they try.  David Suchet as Jaggers the imperturbable lawyer, Douglas Booth as Pip.  It occurred to me that Pip could have avoided a lot of verbal abuse if he just used his real name Philip instead of the ridiculous Pip. 

For some reason I keep thinking Pip is kind of a nonentity, as a character he seems to lack any identity of his own, he seems to need other people to define himself,  I don't know if that is a fair assessment as I have not read the book in quite some time.  Of course the character of Miss Havisham is over the top, and hardly realistic, but merely an exaggeration of how some people may have behaved in the face of disappointment for a while.  And it is hard to believe Pip would have continued to yearn after cold-hearted Estella for so many years, yet love can be quite absurd.  It is also hard to believe it so difficult a task to arrange for Magwitch to leave an England teeming with millions of people, with many available ports and thousands of ships going hither and thither all the time.  But I guess it has to be made difficult since the plot demands his capture and termination from the proceedings.  

I suppose one of the lessons Dickens wishes to convey here is the fruitlessness of pursuing the career of a gentleman if not backed up by an actual occupation.  That is to say, hey, get a job you snobs, like myself, your inherited money won't last long.  That may seem obvious to us today, but perhaps in 19th century England it was not.

Chenrezig or Avalokitesvara

This is the bodhisattva of compassion, in Tibetan and Sanskrit.  While usually a male figure who is considered a worldly manifestation of the celestial buddha Amitabha, in China this bodhisattva is the female Kuan Yin.  His name is translated as Lord who looks down, or who hears the cries of those who suffer on earth, and decides to help all overcome suffering.  As a product of the mahayana buddhist movement which seemed to originate somewhere between 100 B.C. and 100 A.D. in India, he is first mentioned in the Lotus Sutra at that time.  Gee, something seemed to happen west of India about the same time, I wonder what it could be.

Here are a few examples of his iconography:

Chenrezig is this case is 4 armed, two arms are folded holding the jewel of enlightenment through the teachings of Amitabha, and the second left hand holds a white lotus and second right a crystal mala or string of beads.  The white lotus is symbolic of many things, such as rising above the muck of impure thoughts and deeds to achieve the sanity and clarity of enlightenment.  Conflicting emotions are transmuted into the expression of sanity through the discipline of sitting meditation.  The mala represents the cycle of reincarnation and the mantra Om Mani Padme Hum which is said to invoke the benevolent attention and blessings of Chenrezig. 

Moody Blues

I always liked the Moody Blues, and bought their albums in the heyday of psychedelic rock.  I was astonished when a hippie salesman at the local record store where I was buying an album said he didn't care for the Moody Blues...the idea never occurred to me.  Anyway, here are a couple of youtube graphics versions of one of their more mystical spacey songs: Om - In Search of the Lost Chord:

This one seems to have a more buddhist flavor:

And this one has some nice visuals:

The 48 Laws of Power

This book by Robert Greene doesn’t exactly say so, but is a modern restatement of Gracian’s aphorisms with the addition of historical examples to show the consequences of transgression of each law and its of its observance.  For example, 1. Never Outshine the Master…now that sounds familiar, doesn’t it?  Anyway, he does cite Gracian for his political subtlety.

Other laws springing from the ones I used as examples from Gracian are:

4. Always Say Less Than Necessary
5. So Much Depends on Reputation – Guard It With Your Life
7.  Get Others To Do The Work For You, But Always Take The Credit
8.  Make Other People Come To You – Use Bait If Necessary
11. Learn To Keep People Dependent On You.
16. Use Absence To Increase Respect And Honor
46. Never Appear Too Perfect

And now for something completely different...

Reminds me of that strange German film Schultze Gets the Blues.  One thing that I noticed about reviews of it is everyone thinks the guy rented the blue boat.  It seems to me he stole it as I do not recall any scene where he is paying for it, and later when he gets stuck and the Coast Guard arrive, he briefly puts out his hands together as if expecting to be handcuffed.

I used to think Zydeco was pronounced zy-DEK-o, just seeing the word online but now I realize it is ZY-de-co. 

Balthasar Gracian

A Spanish Jesuit, Gracian wrote at a time when the glorious days of Spanish supremacy were coming an end.  He was already looking backward to the exploits of such as Hernan Cortes whom he admired for his flexibility and boldness in unfamiliar and trying circumstances.  In 1637 he wrote a book of maxims often translated as The Art of Worldly Wisdom.  These aphorisms and their accompanying short explanations may seem quite barbed as well as sneaky.  However, whether at a corrupt Court of his day or today's office politics, these sayings still ring true.  A few examples: 

    5  Make people depend on you.
    7  Avoid outshining your superiors.
  19  Arouse no exaggerated expectations when you start something.
  75  Choose a heroic ideal.
  97  Obtain and preserve a reputation.
117  Never talk about yourself.
127  Grace in everything.
163  Never--out of sympathy with the unfortunate--involve yourself in their fate.
172  Never contend with someone who has nothing to lose.
187  Do pleasant things yourself, unpleasant things through others.
228  Do not be a scandalmonger.
238  Know what is lacking in yourself.
253  Do not explain too much.
278  Avoid notoriety in all things.
282  Make use of absence to make yourself more esteemed or valued.
294  Be moderate in your views.
297  Always act as if others were watching.

One could go on and on, at first one wonders, is this guy totally cynical, or is his attitude actually realistic?  One gets the impression that here all ideals are internalized and in the outer world one sees oneself pitted against unscrupulous as well as ignorant and self-indulgent characters who would treat one as trash if they could get away with it.  One has to know oneself as well as others without illusion to survive. 

Jefferson's Anti-Slavery Views

While it is apparently the vogue among scholars to depreciate Thomas Jefferson's ambiguous stance towards slavery, there are many effective actions he took to ameliorate or abolish slavery.  First of all, history seems to have forgotten his anti-slavery language in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence.  It condemns the introduction of slavery to America by the British King as one of the grievances listed.  Here is the actual text:

he [the king of Britain] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.  

Now that is pretty strong language.  Unfortunately, due to the opposition of the South Carolina and Georgia delegations, it was removed.

Another concrete action he took to stop or slow down the spread of slavery was his drafting of the 1784 Territorial Governance Act which would have outlawed slavery in all of the territories between the Appalachian mountains and the Mississippi River.  However, this act was defeated by one vote.  It did give rise to the passage of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which did outlaw slavery in Ohio and states to the north of it.  

Also as President he urged Congress to abolish the slave trade which imported slaves to the US, and in 1807 this was accomplished.   So even though Jefferson was a slave owner and may have shared the contemporary mindset about the inferiority of blacks, there is solid evidence he also considered slavery a great evil and did something about it.

Buddhist Art Exhibition

Gun-Free Zones

The Left has reacted in a typical hysterical manner to the NRA's proposal to place  armed policemen or guards in our schools.  See for example this masterpiece of absurdity from the Huffington Post, claiming this idea will turn our schools into gulags! It is pretty obvious Biden will not include it in his recommendations.  So here is another proposal to match the nanny state obsession with symbolic safety: Make the White House a Gun-Free Zone.  Here is the article from Powerline.  I think it's a great idea.  

Geishas out West?

An intriguing painting found at an auction, what could be two Geishas eating sushi with beer and saki at a Japanese restaurant that happened to have a painting of a desert scene on the wall, could also be taken to represent them inside a train cabin looking through a window at the sun setting over the Arizona desert.  

The writing to the right refers to sushi items like tuna, octopus, ell and mackerel and even the sign in front of the saguaro cactus refers to roasted fish, green soybeans, tempura, and various quantities of sake.  I once did an Internet search for Japanese paintings or painters who might have included such subjects, and thought I found one but then when I tried to go back to it, could not find it.  It could well have been done by a gaijin or non-Japanese, there doesn't seem to be any name on the front or back.

Bird Brain

Came across this video link in bird club newsletter, something I never thought of: motorized transport!  There is more information about this bird and his ride here.

Here are some pictures of my African Greys who would like to take a ride:

 

The middle photo show younger Grey with dark eyes, that goes away after a year or so.

 

Folk art

The New Utopia

I finally found a readable website copy of this 1891 document written by a popular writer of the times, Jerome K. Jerome  (here).
This was before H. G. Wells story "When the Sleeper Awakes," and must have been known to Wells.  It uses the premise of a Rip Van Wrinkle figure who awakes to find a few centuries have passed by, and his sleeping body has been protected and taken care of by the authorities.  

Wells by the way went on to revise his story later in 1910 and called it simply The Sleeper Awakes.  Despite being riduculed for some of his other crazy socialist utopian novels, this one follows a more dystopian path, and the lot of the workers is just as bad or worse as in the evil days of capitalism.  So we have to give Wells credit for being able to look at a subject from opposite points of view.   It would appear The New Utopia's dismal forecast of a socialist world order influenced the famous socialist Wells into imagining just how far things could go wrong when the power of the State is unchecked.

Jerome's short story draws some conclusions from egalitarian socialist theory: the majority decide everything and the minority have no rights, everyone has to dress and eat the same, superior physique or intelligence is stunted to prevent superiority, families are banned, babies are raised in public nurseries and schools until age 14, and everyone has to live in barracks so no one is better off than anyone else.  The incentive of parents to work hard to create  better circumstances for their offspring is seen as a great evil now overcome.  

What is interesting is the many similarities found here with Zamyatin's We (1921), Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1931), and George Orwell's 1984 (1949). It is believed Zamyatin's benighted socialist future was directly influenced by Jerome's story, as it follows many of its ideas.  Huxley could have been influenced by We, and Orwell certainly was.  In all of these works, the State is all powerful, individualism condemned; stark regimentation is the order of the day, and freedom of thought suppressed.  Huxley supposes a society dosed in epicurean pleasures will make people surrender their liberty, while Orwell presupposes a harsh North Korean-like society soaked in fear will do the trick.  

These works show the direction social engineering projects are headed.  The nanny state concept that today results in ridiculous actions as suspending a 6 year old from school for pointing his finger like a gun and saying "pow" is a recent example.  An endless list of such absurdities is on display at NannyState.com (here).
 

The Birth of Plenty & Civilization, The West and the Rest

I read William Bernstein's The Birth of Plenty, How the Prosperity of the Modern World Was Created, a few years ago.  It was published in 2004.  He lists four conditions necessary for human progress to take off: property rights, scientific rationalism, capital markets and improvements in transportation and communication.  

These four conditions were obviously most likely to be found in a relatively free society, such as those he mentions, the Dutch Republic, England and the United States.  To the extent other societies adopt these principles, such as mainland China today, they loosen the bonds of tyranny somewhat, giving birth to a middle class that one day will become fed up with dictatorship.  

Along comes Niall Ferguson in 2011 with Civilization, The West and the Rest, with his take on how Western Europe came to dominate the world.  He lists six components: competition, science, property rights, medicine, the consumer society and the work ethic.  It seems to me he is restating in a slightly more elaborate manner Bernstein's list.  Yet among the hundreds of works and authors he cites, The Birth of Plenty or Bernstein do not appear.  Are we to believe he did not refer to this book at all?  I find that pretty hard to believe.  

Neither does he cite Hernando deSoto's The Mystery of Capital, which Bernstein does reference,  on the consequences of making the ownership and transfer of private property a bureaucratic nightmare, as it is in many Third World nations.  He does analyze the development of property relationships in South America, as does deSoto, but relying on different souces apparently.  Or perhaps avoiding an author Bernstein relied upon.  

Anyway, I think both books make a valuable contribution to the discussion of what role capitalism and freedom make to improving the lives of ordinary men and women.  They make it clear that socialist and ever-expanding government control of the economic lives of  citizens causes poverty and political subjugation to the all powerful State.
  

A few desert scenes

Believe it or not, a Greek monastery in the Arizona desert.

This guy is spreading out all over.

Barrel cactus seen from above.

Stoicism and Buddhism

There is a book that came out a few years ago that seems fairly popular, called A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy, (here) by William Irvine.  He has succeeded in capturing the true spirit of the Greek and Roman philosophers who espoused this way of life.  He notes that even Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor who wrote about his Stoic views , ignored the Stoic teachings on logic and cosmology, and focused on the ethical core of the Stoic tradition.  

This is also what Irvine does, looking at how Stoicism can be applied to our 21st century lives.  He does this in an even-handed manner, trying to produce the best arguments against each Stoic principle and practice as he outlines them, and then attempting to come up with a valid response to these objections.  Not every writer does this. 

As far as Buddhism is concerned, by comparison, Irvine is honest in his personal reaction, that it is too different or oriental for him, and that its meditation practice too time consuming.  I think both of these objections are wrong, but I won’t go into that here.  He does note many similarities between Stoic and Buddhist teachings, especially regarding compassion and  living a life of simplicity and integrity. 

The one thing Buddhism has in its favor compared to Stoicism is the combined physical and mental practice of sitting meditation.  Stoicism has various mental practices as recalling the events of the day before going to bed and evaluating them.  This of course is not meditation but contemplation, of which the Buddhists also have many varieties.  But I think one of the reasons why Buddhism survived in a continuous lineage for so long compared to the Stoic tradition dissipating in late Roman times, is its foundation on the integration of body and mind in the formal practice of sitting meditation. 

Shopping with Mom

Too late to make Halloween Observations?

When I saw this Halloween display at MacDonald's, it made me start thinking how a 3 or 4 year old kid might react to it, as he is given a cup by his mom and told to go to the soda filling station and choose a drink.

I have to congratulate whoever set up this decoration, it certainly is scary and vibrant, however just put yourself in that kid’s shoes and think about how he might react.  Maybe kids today are used to this sort of thing now, who knows?

Another example of Halloween art in its Mexican style is this fabric displaying Day of the Dead motifs:

Speaking of riotous colors!  At least the swooning female is clothed, other depictions I’ve seen of Aztec warriors bearing maidens show more real estate.  I especially like the guy in the sombrero with the tequila shot glass.