Daily Advice 12.16.20

[readoldthings]

 The main focus of this blog is going to be Seneca's On Providence until I make my way through the whole thing. Every sentence is gold.

Flee luxury, flee enfeebling good fortune, from which men's minds grow sodden, and if nothing intervenes to remind them of the common lot, they sink, as it were, into the stupor of unending drunkenness. The man who has always had glazed windows to shield him from a drought, whose feet have been kept warm by hot applications renewed from time to time, whose dining- halls have been tempered by hot air passing beneath the floor and circulating round the walls, - this man will run great risk if he is brushed by a gentle breeze. While all excesses are hurtful, the most dangerous is unlimited good fortune.
 

I really think that this is the condition in which we find ourselves these days. Today on my Facebook account, a picture came up that I took on this day 3 years ago. I was living in California, and the largest wildfire in the state's history had just broken out. Over the next few months it would burn 280,000 acres. Then when the winter rains finally put it out, they caused a series of enormous mudslides which killed another 20 people in the hills near Santa Barbara. 

The debate then and now is-- Did this happen because of global warming or because we don't cut down enough trees? 

The answer, of course, depends upon whether you voted for Donald Trump or Joe Biden. 

Well, again, that was 3 years ago. Not that long, really. And now we're in the middle of a pandemic which has-- supposedly-- caused an excess of 200-300,000 American deaths. Whose fault is it, and what can be done about it? Again, the answer depends upon whether you voted for Donald Trump or Joe Biden.

Maybe we're all wrong, though. Maybe the Thomas Fire happened because these things happen. And the Coronavirus is happening because these things happen. 

Maybe the reason we're so shocked by it all, and so desperate to find some cause, someone we can pin it on, and something that can make it stop is because we've just been through about 80 years of unprecedented good fortune-- an era of peace and prosperity unprecedented in human history. 

Maybe we've all been enfeebled by all of this good fortune, and sunk, as it were, into a stupor of drunkenness-- from which the gods are now, slowly, painfully, awakening us.

Comments

[violetcabra]

If I may regarding the unity of America:

I agree with the basic premise of the cultural and frankly geographic divides in the United States. Having lived all over the country: from New England to the Deep South to the not-so-deep South to the Great Basin and all up and down the west-coast, with lengthy sojourns in northern Idaho, Maine, Michigan, Florida, Missouri, Upstate New York, Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky and with an endless greyhound trip that defined my early twenties, I agree that there really are radical divisions vis-à-vis the various segments of people who live in this continental landmass.

Perhaps you are correct that what holds us together is a religious notion of 'America'. That said, we do have some common interests to some extent: I think that we all benefit from the fact that hostile foreign governments don't outright own the territory of California. I feel, to bring it back to the Seneca quote, that as a nation we've had too much good fortune. We forget that even mighty nations can fall, and fall to the mercy of hostile foreign powers, and that "divide and conquer" still works as a viable strategy.

I may dislike the culture of California --- both southern and northern --- but I prefer the culture of California to the culture of Imperialists of any foreign nation. The cold, factual military interests that unite the various regions of the United States are, to my mind at least, profound as they are pragmatic and are too often forgotten in the stupor of ending drunkenness inculcated by the excess of good fortune the United States has had vis-à-vis other foreign nations for going on 80 years now.

[readoldthings]

I don't disagree at all. It's only that I was discussing American identity specifically-- it's artificial and basically religious. That doesn't mean that it isn't useful, though, for just the reason you give here. I think that this very issue was addressed early on in the Federalist Papers.

As you know, much of America functions as a network of internal colonies, exploited by the coastal cities. That sucks-- but would it be better for Appalachia or rural Oregon to be external colonies of China or some other great power?

I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't be better to strengthen the specifically religious character of American identity. We already have shrines to the Founding Fathers. Why not burn incense to them and ask for their blessing? Theirs, and that of other American heroes-- we can call them santoamericanos and sell candles with their images in the supermarket.

[violetcabra]

The idea of santosamericanos candles is great! People in Hoodoo practice burn candles to MLK, whose initials of course spell out Malkuth. I've often wondered if Abraham Lincoln, whose initials are of course AL the Name of G-d for the Sphere of Chesed, would be able to work miracles on that level...