The Weariest River

 Sir Thomas Browne's classic essay on "Urne-Buriall" (an antiquarian and proto-archaeological disquisition on a set of funerary urns found in rural England, which leads its famously polymathic author into a set of larger philosophical and theological reflections on the theme of mortality) concludes, as it would have to do (in Browne's era) with a restatement of orthodox Christian teaching on the future state. But there are some who have found in the essay hints, perhaps, that its author did not in fact repose entire confidence in this teaching. 

The German author W.G. Sebald, who discusses "Urne-Buriall" extensively in his unclassifiable prose work, The Rings of Saturn, speaks of the essay's emphasis on "the indestructibility of the human soul, which the physician, firm though he may be in his Christian faith, perhaps secretly doubts." (Hulse trans.) Sebald nods to the passage in which Browne observes, "It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him he is at the end of his nature; or that there is no future state to come, unto which this seemes progressionall[.]"

The Phoenix

 As I wrote yesterday, Thursday evening's debate must have been the nadir of the presidential campaign. The absolute pits. No worst there is none. 

Already by the afternoon, however, we had started to pick up the pieces. The mood was shifting. Biden gave another speech before a smaller audience in which he was reportedly much more energetic. "When you get knocked down, you get back up," he said: and he actually seemed to have done so. Maybe—we dared to think—we could start to hope again. 

Perhaps that horrifying debate truly was a one-off. Maybe Biden was just tired and worn-down from the debate prep, and the event was held too late in the evening. 9 PM may simply have been after his bedtime. It certainly was after mine. 

Fears May Be Liars

 We must all be thinking it this morning. This, surely, is the worst. The low point. The pits. Finita la commedia. Last night's first presidential debate of the 2024 campaign was an unmitigated disaster. Biden failed to convey his key talking points, even as he seemed to formulate them in his head. Those who follow political messaging closely might be able to tease out what he meant to say in each case—but ordinary people watching at home, especially those who do not greatly care about politics, were probably unable to follow him. 

Meanwhile, Trump delivered his usual pack of lies with confidence and bravado. He repeated his standard falsehood about the 2020 election being stolen. He tried to scapegoat immigrants for every problem facing the country. Biden sought to refute some of these claims, to his credit; but he left many of Trump's worst slanders uncontested: such as Trump's statement that immigrants are depleting social security (when in fact, they pay far more into the system than they will ever receive—and indeed are the only people keeping the system solvent at this point!)

Interdiction-Violation

 In a recent post, I described the "Cupid and Psyche" episode from Apuleius's classical novel, The Golden Ass, as the "definitive fairy tale" and "a kind of index in its own right of the genre's primary motifs." I had in mind the fact, for instance, that the protagonist "violates not one but two sets of instructions through her impetuous curiosity." I knew that there was a name from folklore studies for this particular thematic element, though I couldn't remember exactly what. I went with "injunction" in the earlier post. 

This week, having gotten around to reading Vladimir Propp's classic study, The Morphology of the Folktale (Scott-Wagner translation), I now realize the word I was searching for was "interdiction"—though Propp also uses the term "prohibition" with it interchangeably. 

Looking Backward

 It is notorious that utopias are a great deal easier to gesture toward as a negative ideal than to describe as a positive one. When we invoke the utopian ideal as a contrast with the world around us, we can easily see the inadequacies of the latter. But, the more we try to describe the "perfect" society that should replace it, the more it sounds unappealing. As Orwell pointed out long ago, no one has yet succeeded in portraying a utopian society in which we can imagine actually being happy. 

As a result, utopian literature always manages to carry conviction so long as it is denouncing the evils of the present, but it becomes utterly unpersuasive as soon as it tries to articulate the New Jerusalem that would come after it. 

A Mess of Pottage

 It may be hard for future generations to believe this, but Marco Rubio was at one time one of those politicians whom people regarded as a relatively "reasonable" Republican. For years of my professional life at an advocacy organization, we always included Rubio on the short list of potentially "persuadable" GOP senators whom we hoped we might win over on this or that human rights issue. This was all based on Rubio's earlier improbable history as one of the "gang of eight" senators who co-sponsored comprehensive immigration reform back in 2013. Based on that one glimmer of bipartisan collaboration, we always held out hope the senator from Florida might break in our direction. 

Of course, he never did. Yet somehow, that didn't diminish the vague feeling that he might. He was like one of those antiheroes in a TV drama—a Jimmy McNulty or a Tony Soprano, say—who always seem just likable enough that you think they must be about to redeem themselves in some way. But they never do. Still, none of this stopped me from ranking Rubio as better than the rest of his party. I even briefly considered registering as a Republican in 2016 just so I could vote for him in the primaries. This was not because I wanted him or any other Republican to be president (horrors)—it was simply my notion of doing everything in my power to stop Trump from ending up at the top of the ballot. 

Contrarians

 I was reading an interesting new biography the other week of the Quaker intellectual Henry Cadbury (don't ask). I loved the book, and Cadbury proved to be a fascinating and in some ways enviable figure. He lived the type of ideal twentieth century life I always imagined for myself—he was part public intellectual, part human rights advocate, part scholar and teacher, working in both the nonprofit and academic fields, while taking controversial and influential stances on the major issues of the day. 

Amidst this incredibly diverse career, however, what emerges as the stand-out moments (at least in this book's telling) were probably Cadbury's public opposition to U.S. entry into both World War I and World War II. Such positions, of course, were a logical consequence of Cadbury's ideological pacifism (though not one followed out as rigorously by other prominent Quakers of the time—perhaps surprisingly). But simply for taking them, Cadbury faced grave professional consequences and public opprobrium. 

Unexpected Humanism

 I was pointing out to a friend that I had been reading less absurdist nihilistic literature than usual the past few months. The desire to read it had somehow left me. It didn't match my mood. But then I spent a few weeks in Florida visiting family, and slightly increased my alcohol intake (namely, in the form of a margarita one night and a beer two nights later). And suddenly, the desire to read absurdist, nihilistic literature flooded back into me. 

This leads me to wonder how much of the "anxiety," angst, ennui, and Weltschmerz reported by twentieth century authors was in fact due, not to any fixture of the modern condition, but to the then-higher daily average consumption of alcohol. It was all those afternoon cocktails, perhaps—rather than the death of God—that did it. And now, perhaps, the average amount of existentialism will slowly leach out of the population, as public awareness grows of the deleterious effects of alcohol. 

The Fate—Say! Of The Flowers

 There's a classic magazine profile of the legendary Simpsons writer George Meyer that includes an anecdote from his childhood. A sister of Meyer's reported that once, as a young boy, he burst into tears during a trip to the mall at the sight of a store that specialized in selling only goods for left-handed people. Meyer was reportedly moved to tears because he worried that not enough people would shop at a store like that to keep it in business. His sister used it as an illustration of his unusual capacity for empathy. 

I felt a great shock of recognition when I read this story, all the way back in high school—and not just because the "leftorium" found its way into the Simpsons show, by way of Meyer's recollection (Ned Flanders at one point quits his job, in an early season, in order to start his own company selling only left-handed goods). I also recognized the story because it happened to me. I was moved to deep sadness as a child on multiple occasions by the sight of businesses that I thought could not attract customers. 

Magic Words

 Gustave Le Bon's classic study on crowd psychology includes an extensive discussion of the power of mere names in political life. Because the French Jacobins described their new government as a "republic," for instance, they were able to get away with creating an authoritarian despotism more bloodthirsty than the ancient regime and the Inquisition put together. 

Likewise, with the new doctrine of socialism. Because the European socialists all used the same name for the doctrine for whose cause they were fighting—Le Bon contends—they were able to convince themselves that they all had the same goal (even though a cursory glance at their political literature revealed that they actually meant quite different—and, in some cases—mutually exclusive things by the term "socialism").