ANNUIT COEPTIS

This ambitious motto, inscribed on the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States, is consistent with this nation’s self-awareness of her Manifest Destiny. Rooted in hallowed antiquity (being a paraphrase from one of the greatest poets of the Roman Empire Vergilius), it puts a supernatural imprimatur (God Himself “gives a nod”) upon America’s undertakings!
But, standing in awe of such divine sponsorship, let us be ever mindful of the fact that, by the same token, it becomes this nation’s solemn responsibility to measure up to the historical task at hand. Every ill-conceived fancy and harebrained scheme elevated to the status of a national undertaking is consequently tantamount to flagrant blasphemy, and it brings to mind another great quotation: “unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required.” (Luke 12:48.)

AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL

It is easy these days to dismiss America as a stereotypical caricature, but this would not be fair to American history, her glorious spirit, and the great achievements made by this nation through hard work and stubborn perseverance. It is true that even in the “good old days” the good traits of the American character coexisted with the proverbial ugliness, but for the sake of fairness we must not forget the beauty behind that ugliness.

The great American original--Teddy Roosevelt--speaks to the balance of the two contrasting qualities in the following memorable observation:
“From the very beginning our people have markedly combined practical capacity for affairs with power of devotion to an ideal. The lack of either quality would have rendered the possession of the other of small value.” (Theodore Roosevelt: Speech in Philadelphia, November 22, 1902.)

Less than a decade later, Woodrow Wilson seconds the motion:
“America is not a mere body of traders; it is a body of free men. Our greatness is built upon our freedom -- is moral, not material. We have a great ardor for gain; but we have a deep passion for the rights of man.” (Woodrow Wilson: Speech in New York City, December 6, 1911.)

Needless to say, I am in agreement with both of them, and in the next large segment of my American section I shall refer to America the Beautiful under the subsectional heading ‘The Spirit of 1776.’ I sincerely believe that the present-day’s frequent instances of inexcusable ugliness do not represent the true nature of America, but on the contrary a betrayal of that true nature. I will make this point quite clear as this section progresses.

A CITY UPON A HILL

During his presidency, Ronald Reagan used to make numerous references to America and her image in the world as “a city upon a hill.” Perhaps, the most important part of President Reagan’s legacy to his nation is this constant reminder of that image.

These calendar days, between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, America enters a period of reflection on the glories and indignities of the past and the challenges of tomorrow, to measure up to the glories and to overcome the indignities. Over the next five weeks I will be posting entries in that spirit, some laudatory yet some critical, all of them about America. This section’s title, Twilight’s Last Gleaming, can be interpreted either pessimistically (as modern America failing to measure up), or as a challenge which is properly hidden in Francis Scott Key’s immortal words. In fact, it is still up to America herself what she and the world shall “see in the dawn’s early light” of tomorrow, “a city upon a hill” or a “house of prayer” turned into “a den of thieves.” (Matthew 21:13)

My final preambular comment is this: American moral history is heavily imbued with Christian symbolism, as is evident from the quotations in this entry. It is most unfortunate and harmful that in modern America the Christian community has frequently been abusing Christian symbolism, as if the devil himself were quoting the Scriptures. In my view, the best message that America has to deliver to the world is larger than any particular religion, and therefore all culturally-specific religious references in that message ought to be taken in a larger world-historical and general-humanitarian context.

Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. (Matthew 5:14)
Thus speaks Jesus in the Bible. Now, the following is an excerpt from perhaps the most momentous sermon ever given, John Winthrop’s 1630 A Model of Christian Charity---

"…For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us; so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world, we shall open the mouths of our enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God’s sake; we shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whether we are going: And to shut up this discourse with that exhortation of Moses that faithful servant of the Lord in his last farewell to Israel Deut. 30. Beloved there is now set before us life and good, death and evil in that we are commanded this day to love the Lord our God and to love one another to walk in His ways and to keep His Commandments and His Ordinance, and His laws, and the Articles of our Covenant with Him that we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may bless us in the land whether we go to possess it: But if our hearts shall turn away so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced and worship other gods, our pleasures, and profits, and serve them, it is propounded unto us this day that we shall surely perish out of the good Land whether we pass over this vast sea to possess it;---
Therefore let us choose life, that we and our seed may live; by obeying his voice and cleaving to him, for he is our life, and our prosperity."

...Judging from this sermon, I do not think that the future Governor Winthrop saw Massachusetts merely as an emerging colony of second-rate British citizens. He is talking here not even of a new nation, but of a nation chosen by God to be unlike all others. A new, New-Testament Israel, and merrie olde England would have nothing to do with it!

…Before the Founding Fathers was John Winthrop.

EINSTEIN THE MARXIST?

No, I do not seriously consider him a Marxist, in the vulgar and grossly incorrect, yet commonly accepted in the West sense of the word. But, considering his unmistakable socialist leanings and his numerous deliberate and extemporaneous comments on the immorality of capitalist pursuits, he comes across as a wonderfully congenial Bernsteinian figure, an epitomic embodiment of well-matured, middle-aged, respectable Marxist ethic, at its neglected, suppressed, and habitually misinterpreted best.
My comments on Einstein are liberally sprinkled throughout several sections of this book, and, unashamed of the repetition, here again am I delighted to be quoting his sharp and unequivocal indictment not so much of capitalism per se, as of the peculiar capitalist mindset:

"This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism… An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career." (Albert Einstein, Why Socialism?)

Leaving Einstein’s scientific genius aside, here is a comment of his, which endears this man to me, not as the prodigy behind the e=mc² formula, but primarily as a kindred spirit; and it is this aspect of him that I will be pursuing much further, later on.

THE TWO KIMS

The "two Kims" in this entry are---
(1) Comrade Kim Son Ju, Soviet Army Major and Generalissimo of North Korea, who is commonly known as Kim The Rising Sun, or Kim Il Sung; and---
(2) Comrade Yuri Irsenovich Kim, born a full-fledged Soviet citizen in the town of Vyatskoye (near the city of Khabarovsk), who is now commonly known to every North Korean and to the world as The Great Leader Kim Jong Il.

So here we have a hereditary dictatorship of father and son in North Korea, and the curious question to ask is this: If Kim the 1st had what it takes, how possible was it for his son, Kim the 2nd to inherit from him not just his office but his exceptionality as well? Or perhaps the system built by the father was already so strong that it could sustain itself without putting too much demand on the son?

The great Kim Il Sung (and he was unquestionably a political genius) had built the nationalist political mold which was strong enough to accept and accommodate his demonstrably less-exceptional son into the leader mold and to hold him there by the sheer sturdiness of its cast. Thus an apparent paradox exists for those who have little or no understanding of the nature and viability of all totalitarian regimes. In the particular case of North Korea, a sorely inadequate (perhaps altogether miserable) economy readily coexists with a strong and stable political system. On the other hand, South Korea, which is an economic Great Power, does not have an adequate national system mold, and suffers from a chronic political inferiority complex, which was, for a while, manifested in its subservience to the United States, but today is being compensated by the persistent reunification dream with the politically virile North Korea. (Those who think that I am overstating the South Korean “Reunification Wish” under a single government on a virtually quasi-totalitarian basis, ought to look back at the situation there just a decade ago, or otherwise wait for a few more years when this “Wish” will start reasserting itself with an even greater explicit urgency than was the case at the turn of the millennium.)

It may be interesting to compare certain common aspects in the careers of the two junior Asian geniuses (as opposed to the super-genius of Mao), namely Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam and Kim Il Sung of North Korea. In both cases Moscow played a significant role, although both these leaders (and, in a broader picture, all three of them) displayed a large amount of nationalistic individuality (in Kim’s case, his Juche Doctrine of active self-reliance is clearly a forceful projection of a strong nationalistic mentality) which could well put them on a collision course with Moscow. (In the Soviet Union they had been trying to portray Juche as some kind of Korean version of Marxism, but it was by no means as “harmless” as that.)
Kim was, however, a grandmaster of political maneuvering, and even at the peak of the Sino-Soviet hostility of the 1960’s, he managed to remain on reasonably good terms with each of his “older brothers” (who were meanwhile both sending him cash and other kinds of Comradely assistance, without insisting that he must choose their side in the ongoing bilateral conflict), while managing to promote his nationalist Korean Juche with virtual impunity.

Neither he nor Ho Chi Minh were able to realize their twin dreams of national reunification in their lifetime, although Ho by the time of his death in 1969 had come much closer to his than Kim could ever hope to find his own. Both had to face the superpower fury of the United States, and to be fair, while Ho won in Vietnam essentially by his own devices, and throughout the war never had to leave Hanoi, Kim had to flee to China, and had it not been for Mao’s Liberation Army, he would have been forced to live the last forty years of his life in an inconspicuous foreign exile. Of course, the fact that such bleak fate did not befall him, speaks not only for the strength of China’s military. Any political genius of staying power must have good luck on his side, and in the Korean War, an incredible luck, rather than skill, was conspicuously on Kim’s side. (See my entry Stalin’s Korean Charade, were the other components of Kims “good luck” are all spelled out.)

His son Kim Jong Il succeeded him as pre-planned after Kim’s death. I repeat that, to me, the son does not rise to the level of his father’s genius, and it is most probably the strength of North Korea’s political system, as created by Kim Il Sung, which now sustains Kim Jong Il in power. Nor can the son take credit for North Korea’s successful nuclear program, as it had been initiated and cleverly developed, with ready assurances of stoppage given to the West, by the great Kim-the-father. History will obviously provide an answer to how the son will eventually be remembered; and having acquired nuclear weapons on his watch is a huge credit point on the lesser Kim’s résumé. But, somehow, I think that the son will ultimately fade, as there can be no luminosity left for anyone who follows in the footsteps of the Rising Sun itself, as such is the meaning of Il Sung in Kim Il Sung’s name, and such is the legendary legacy he has bequeathed to his nation for all time. Yes, for all time, because no nation can ever renounce its nationalistic legends, and the “Eternal President” Kim Il Sung has certainly become one.

NATIONAL COMMUNISM OF HO CHI MINH

Today, May 19, 2011, is the 121st anniversary of the birth of Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh.

The most important question which ought to be asked about Ho Chi Minh is whether he was a communist or a nationalist first? This is of course a purely rhetorical question, often befuddled in the past, for the purposes of cold war propaganda. Both the circumstances of his life and the most important statements he ever made, give an unequivocal answer to the question. Yes, he was a Vietnamese nationalist first and foremost, and his “communism” was in fact his only available tool to achieve his nationalist goals.

Here are a few of his most famous statements (ignored or dismissed in the West during the Cold War). One may argue that they may have been deficient in sincerity; but when a great Communist leader famously says, “It was patriotism, not communism, that inspired me!” this is in fact the opposite of how communist propaganda would have had it (even if caricaturely assuming that politicians are propagandists by nature). It is safe to assume that in this case Ho Chi Minh's words come as close to honest truth as to become indistinguishable from it.
Here are some of his other characteristic quotes:
“Nothing is more valuable than independence and freedom. Those who wish to seize Vietnam, must kill us to the last man, woman and child… I follow only one party: the Vietnamese party. You can kill ten of our men for every one we kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and we will win. (This refers to France’s and America’s wars in Vietnam.) It is better to sacrifice everything, than to live in slavery! The Vietnamese people deeply love independence, freedom and peace. But in the face of United States aggression they have risen up, united as one man… We have to win independence at any cost, even if the Truong Son mountains burn.”

These statements explicitly represent a great nationalist leader, but he was, admittedly, a communist as well. So, how do these two go together? It is true that communism, or rather totalitarianism, which I have already frequently discussed both in depth and at length, is much better suited to nationalist causes than capitalism or the milder forms of socialism, and it may be legitimately argued that Ho Chi Minh would have ended up as a totalitarian, even if he had not been pushed toward communism and Moscow’s Comintern by the force of circumstances. But it is still a fact that he was pushed in the ultra-left direction by the West (much reminding in this the historical experience of Fidel Castro).

Having lived, between 1911 and 1923, in the West (in France, England and the United States), he petitioned Western powers on numerous occasions on behalf of his native Vietnam, but was always ignored. Following World War I, he petitioned for recognition of the civil rights of the Vietnamese people in French Indochina to the Western powers at the 1919 Versailles peace talks, but was ignored. Citing the language and the spirit of the US Declaration of Independence, he petitioned President Woodrow Wilson for help in the removal of the French from Vietnam, replacing them with a new, nationalist government, but was ignored.
It was after that, in 1921, during the Congress of Tours in France, that he became a founding member of the Parti Communiste Français, and thereafter spent much of his time in Moscow, becoming Comintern’s “Asia hand,” and its principal theorist on colonial warfare.
After the August Revolution (of 1945), organized by the Viet Minh, Ho became Chairman of the Provisional Government (Premier of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and issued a Declaration of Independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, which borrowed from the French and American Declarations. Though he convinced Emperor Bao Dai (a surprisingly honorable man who certainly has deserved a special mention in my Nations section) to abdicate, his government was not recognized by any Western country. He repeatedly petitioned American President Harry Truman for his support of Vietnam’s independence, citing the Atlantic Charter (which was the contemporary nickname given to the joint Churchill--FDR statement, visualizing the post-WWII world order, issued by them in August 1941 in Newfoundland), but was yet again ignored…

Ho Chi Minh was a very controversial figure in the West, but who knows how his relationship with the West would have developed had he been accepted as a legitimate nationalist leader, rather than pushed even much deeper into the Soviet camp than he ever wanted to go. It is also pointed out in his Western biographies that in the last ten years of his life he was somewhat squeezed out of power in Hanoi itself. But no matter what, after his death his legend lives large in his native land, and he will surely forever remain Vietnam’s greatest national hero of all time. Whether he, as a real person, measures up to his legend or not, misses the point that it takes a genius only, to become his country’s national legend, and such was Ho Chi Minh.

LE GÉNÉRAL

(It is quite amusing that I am now posting this De Gaulle entry exactly on the fourth anniversary of Nicholas Sarkozy assuming the office of the President of France. M. Sarkozy, of course, has represented himself as some kind of modern-day reincarnation of Charles De Gaulle, although, in my opinion, this claim has been grossly exaggerated.)

In a recent national poll, the French public voted General Charles de Gaulle, affectionately remembered as Le Général, as the greatest Frenchman of all time. While the shadow of Napoleon may have felt snubbed, it should not offend any other sensibilities (after all, Charlemagne was German!),--- except, perhaps, the purely political sensibilities of the English-speaking world, namely, the Americans, the British, and the English-speaking Canadians,--- because Charles de Gaulle was a bona fide genius, whose major influence on world affairs was not limited to his native France.
Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970) lived over two world wars, and, considering his remarkable perspicacity regarding the things to come, it is not surprising that he had chosen the military career for himself. Since an early age, he was actively interested in history, and would become an exceptionally gifted writer of a series of prognosticative books. His first book L’Ennemi et le Vrai Ennemi was written during WWI, when he was held as a prisoner of war by the Germans. Published in 1924, the book analyzed the internal developments and contradictions within the German Empire.
During the decade of the 1930’s, he wrote several extraordinary, historically momentous books and articles on military subjects. In 1931 came Le Fil de l’Epée, a thoughtful analysis of military-political leadership. In 1934 came his great work Vers l’Armée de Métier, followed in 1934 by La France et Son Armée. There he advocated the creation of a mechanized army with special armored divisions manned by a corps of professional specialist soldiers, instead of the static theories, exemplified by the Maginot Line. Ironically, the books had no impact on French military thinking, but Vers l’Armée de Métier was immediately noticed and taken as an essential blueprint for military development both in Stalin’s Russia and in Hitler's Germany.
Stalin had this book promptly translated for him, like he had had it earlier with Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and, very much impressed with De Gaulle's revolutionary idea, ordered its study and implementation within the Soviet Army. As for Hitler, according to Albert Speer’s Inside the Third Reich, “Hitler claimed total credit for the success of the campaign in the West. The plan for it, he said, came from De Gaulle’s book. ‘I have again and again,’ he told us, ‘read Colonel de Gaulle’s book on methods of modern warfare employing fully motorized units and I have learned a great deal from it.’”
It is of course cruelly ironic that Hitler was able to trounce France in 1940 with De Gaulle’s indirect help, but on a brighter note, had it not been for De Gaulle’s genius, the Russians might not have been able to produce, in superhumanly record time, the legendary T-34 generally recognized as the best tank ever made,--- the machine which was, in turn, largely responsible for defeating Hitler himself.)
After the French surrender to Germany in 1940, De Gaulle became the leader of the FFL, Forces Françaises Libres, and for his defiance of the Vichy regime he was sentenced to death in absentia, as a traitor. After the war, he was seen as a national hero, and even served as President of the Provisional Government of France, from September 1944 until January 1946, when he resigned, because of a political conflict in France at that time and because of his condemnation of the proposed Constitution of the Fourth Republic, which he found too weak and ineffective. His self-removal from politics lasted from 1946 until 1958, when the weak Fourth Republic finally collapsed, and De Gaulle was enthusiastically elected as the President of the Fifth Republic, inaugurated in January 1959.

De Gaulle’s decade in office has been seen as the Golden Age of France, although it was deeply soaked in domestic and international controversy. His anti-American (he saw himself as a bastion of resistance to the new American hegemony in Western Europe and elsewhere), anti-British (he called Britain a Trojan Horse for the United States) and anti-Israel (he effectively blocked all ongoing French military assistance to Israel, which he inherited from the previous administration) stance was coupled with his perceived detente with the Soviet Union, Communist China, and the anti-Israeli Arab world. What all this amounted to, of course, was his brave decision to chart an independent course for France, where his policy of mild neutrality in the cold war between the US and the USSR was seen by the West not as a balancing act, which it was, but as an act of betrayal of Western interests and consorting with the other side.

In domestic policy, De Gaulle introduced the concept of dirigisme, a heavy involvement of the government in the functioning of the leading French enterprises, including five-year plans of economic development, in which an unmistakable influence of the Stalinist economic wonder can be found, but in a greatly improved version, in which entrepreneurial initiative was encouraged and rewarded.
Furthermore recognizing the disadvantages of excessive economic fragmentation, which had plagued French industry prior to the Second World War, De Gaulle’s government encouraged mergers and the formation of “national champions,” large industry groups backed by the government.

Remarkably, in this, too, de Gaulle proved to be a world leader ahead of his time. Previously distinguished mostly by his military genius (his groundbreaking emphasis on tank warfare), this idea of his of nationally-oriented government-sponsored business mega-corporations, national champions, has been effectively adopted in today’s Russia by Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev.

In concluding this entry, I assert that throughout his life Charles de Gaulle exhibited a genius which not only fully qualifies him as a great Frenchman (arguably, the greatest), but also as one of the most outstanding and influential geniuses in all world history. I wish Michael Hart had made a note of this, in his Top 100 List!

STILL MORE APTE DICTUM

[Also see my blog entries Apte Dictum (November 3, 2010) and More Apte Dictum (January 7, 2011).]

Too Many Truths Spoil The Cloth. (A religious riddle.)

There is only one way to prove the existence of God, the ‘scientific’ way, which is… by postulate!

Religion is like the Nietzschean poison: if it does not kill us, it makes us stronger.

We all know the story of the Six Days of Creation, but how many of us realize that the history of the world (the Past, the Present, and the Future) is God’s Seventh Day?

Only the Devil is always welcome to write a book about God. (An allegory.)

In God we trust, in freedom… we shouldn’t!

The proof is in the pudding, and not in the recipe. (A geopolitical riddle for those who for some reason think otherwise.)

A French proverb says, “The better" is the enemy of the good. In my paraphrase, “The worse” is the enabler of the bad.

The best characterization of chauvinistic mentality can be found in Nietzsche’s Jenseits-19:

“I am free, ‘he’ must obey.”

It is wrong to assume that Nietzsche’s master and slave moralities are distributed exclusively along national, racial, or ethnic lines. The fault line often runs among members of the same otherwise homogenous family. I guess one can have two identical twins, one a master, the other a slave.

The soul of a nation can be seen like a reflection of the moon in the lake of an individual soul.

It is not necessary to study the psychology of Helios, to realize that an Icarus would get badly hurt coming too close to him.

Sex without love is like passing stool: a bodily function, and nothing to be proud of.

Love is the most glorious triumph of irrationality over rationality.

Charging money for sex or expecting favors from it is the most inglorious triumph of rationality over irrationality.

In the long run, we shall all be… cured!

Many of our best thoughts are triggered by the wisdom of other thinkers, and I see nothing wrong in it. The main criterion in such cases is, to use the language of economics, whether the added value of the final product counts as a net profit to humanity, in which case, go for it, friend!

Folklore is the mother’s milk of human civilizations.

Art is a state of being rather than of becoming, thus representing a triumph of permanence over change.

VICTORY DATE

9th May, 2011.
Today is the 66th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.
Today,--- not yesterday, May 8th, not the day before yesterday, May 7th.

German capitulation took effect at 01:01 am Moscow time on 9th May, 1945. Considering that the clocks in Berlin at that exact time showed 23:01 of May 8th some have been arguing that the latter date has to be more accurate than the former. This is, of course, a much more curious argument than the bizarre squabble about whose signature on the capitulation papers carried more weight: that of Generaloberst Jodl who signed what amounted to an armistice, to be followed by actual surrender, with Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith, on May 7th in Rheims/France; or of his superior officer Generalfeldmarschall Keitel, who unconditionally surrendered to Marshal Zhukov and RAF Marshal Arthur Tedder (the latter as General Eisenhower’s Deputy and on his authority) on May 8th in Berlin. This matter was sensibly settled back in 1945, giving unconditional precedence to the Berlin document, and only in the coldwar (and post-coldwar) years of historical revisionism this utterly silly controversy has been resurrected along the political lines. Ironically, for some time now, the Allied landing in Normandy on June 6, 1944, has become a far more important date in the West than the actual date when Nazi Germany was forced to lay down arms.

Returning to the more subtle discrepancy of the two hours (of the time zone difference), raising the question of the precise date of the German capitulation, we may resolve it with a variation on the famous phrase “Vae victis!” Let this date be set by those who won the war, rather than by those who lost the war, or by those who joined the action after the outcome of the war had already become clear to all.
And by this criterion alone, Victory Day ought to be celebrated on Moscow’s time, that is, today, on the 9th of May.

Without minimizing or trivializing the overall Allied war effort, or the fact that for a whole brutal year from Dunkirk to Barbarossa, with the small exceptions of Greece and Yugoslavia, Britain stood virtually alone in her war against Hitler, history has long decided the question that it was the USSR who defeated the German war machine in World War II in a series of decisive large-scale victories, from the 1941 Battle of Moscow to Stalingrad and Kursk in 1943. At the time of the D-Day landings in 1944, the Soviet troops had in effect cleared the Russian territory of the German occupation forces and were poised to march across Europe with a manifestly guaranteed success. The Allied Invasion had no decisive effect on the outcome of the war in Europe.

It could have been a different story, though, had the Allied Invasion taken place in 1942 (as Stalin wanted, and insisted that it was promised to him in 1941), instead of 1944. It would certainly have cost many more American and British lives, but it would have saved millions of lives as well, including millions of Jewish lives lost between 1943 and 1945, in the tragedy known as the Holocaust. By all indications, the war might then have ended some time in 1943, and the world of the future wouldn’t have been shuddering ever since, on hearing the word Auschwitz.

THE GENIUS AND THE SAINT

Who is of greater value to humanity, a humanly-flawed genius or a perfect paragon of righteousness?
Who is of greater value in the eyes of God, as relates to His Creation?

Long live the tzaddik and the saint, and may they both have a life eternal! But let us humans partake of the genius more than we partake of the righteous. It is a genius, who lived and died hundreds or even thousands of years ago, who moves us to sacred tears by the holy power of his creation and brings us closer to God than any saint ever can. The righteous may well dwell in heaven, but here, on sinful earth, only sinful creators and procreators of immortal edifying works of art and literature are very much alive after death, and always with us.

…For the betterment of mankind and for the fulfillment of God’s mysterious, yet undeniably humanistic design for all of us, His creatures, let there be genius!

GENIUS YESTERDAY, TODAY, AND TOMORROW

Everybody who knows the educated meaning of “genius,” must agree that “yesterday,” the good old days, is replete with geniuses. Many, however, would beg to differentiate between “yesterday proper” (which ended somewhere before the onslaught of the twentieth century had begun) and the “so-called yesterday,” which is viewed by them as part of “today,” and therefore ineligible for membership in the yesterday club.
There is a great temptation to argue that ever since the decline of caste aristocracy with the introduction and social acceptance of materialism and capitalism, putting the emphasis on money and material values, genius has been degenerating along with society. This may appear like a fairly reasonable point, until we remember that societies have been degenerating ever since times immemorial, whereas genius never goes “along with society,” but stands outside it, or in opposition to it. Capitalism--so what?! Does genius condone slavery and serfdom of our aristocratic past, or does it pine for the good old stone age which is no longer with us?
There is an even more radical school of thought which nostalgizes for the classical times before the Romans had conquered the world: Plato, Aristotle: those were the days! Who do you really know after Aristotle who can measure up? Renaissance, ages and ages later, was just a return to Classical Greece!
These rather disingenuous champions of ancient classicism must have run short on Nietzsche, who beats them all with his delightfully irreverent take on the beloved Greeks. Plato and Aristotle? Hybrid types! The Pre-Socratics-- those were the real thing!
“Any nation is put to shame when one points out such a wonderfully idealized company of philosophers as that of the early Greek masters, Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Democritus and Socrates. All those men are integral, entire, and self-contained, and hewn out of one stone. Something quite new begins with Plato; or it might be said with equal justice that in comparison with that Republic of Geniuses from Thales to Socrates, the philosophers since Plato lack something essential…”
Well, Nietzsche does not really mean that after Socrates the nature of genius has deteriorated beyond repair. We may explain his grievance toward all post-Socratics by the fact that starting with Plato, philosophy, arts and sciences had become organized and professionalized, and the quasi-amateurish charm of the old guard had kind of died out with them. But nobody, even Nietzsche, was going to argue that the coin of the genius realm had lost its luster ever since.

As for the geniuses of today, there are admittedly too few of them. One may start naming names in science, but let us not confuse the weird uniqueness of genius with brilliant scholarship. Einstein’s 1905 formula was a lightning strike of pure genius; show me comparable strikes and we may then identify some other geniuses of science.
There is one incontestable genius in literature today, and she is J. K. Rowling. There is nobody else besides her. As for the other arts, alas, I cannot name a single name, under which I can inscribe ecce genius. As for politics and statesmanship, the world of today is in such dire straits that I can’t even confer the genius status on Vladimir Putin, who obviously stands out as an extraordinary man among the world elite…

Which brings us to the genius of tomorrow. I am sure that once in a while they will be coming from the gray shadows of general mediocrity, unpredictably! (Who could ever predict the coming of Rowling?!) As for an emergence of genius in world politics, Putin still has his chance. Of all the world politicians on the stage in the new millennium, he alone has shown the potential of being one. As I said before, it is not clear yet, but we shall see…

And finally, about America. I do not think that today America is a genius-friendly country, and especially in post-Nixonian politics (JFK and Richard Nixon were, perhaps, America’s last bona fide political geniuses, one assassinated physically, the other destroyed by the tiny, but artificially overblown pest of the Watergate scandal), where her by now habitual suppression of exceptional individual talent is demonstrable and... disinspiring.

MARSHAL TITO

(This entry was actually written on May 4th 2010 for the thirtieth anniversary of Marshal Tito’s death, but at that time, with only a handful of exceptions, I was not actively posting my writings on the blog. This doesn’t make today’s posting belated, though, as the subject matter here is of lasting significance.)

Today is the thirty-first anniversary of Marshal Tito’s (1892-1980) death. I am pretty sure that, had he still been alive (metaphorically, of course, if not physically) in the morbidly inflamed 1990’s, Yugoslavia would have stayed alive with him and thus escaped the horrors of the internecine slaughter that had befallen her. In this sense, the death of Tito signified the imminent death of his country. Some are insisting that the collapse of Yugoslavia was in fact a good thing, but I am sure that very many people, understandably less vocal than the others, are still painfully mourning the tragedy of “e uno plures.”

Marshal Josip Broz Tito is a unique phenomenon among the giants of socialism in the twentieth century: not only is he a bona fide political genius, but perhaps also the most original one of all. His “Titoism” cannot be properly translated into any generic mold, applicable exclusively to his Yugoslavia of that day and age. The regime he successfully installed in the country after World War II was not totalitarian per se, as Yugoslavia was not a nation-state, like Vietnam or Korea, nor a totalitarian empire, like the Soviet Union. In fact, it was by no means totalitarian at all. Tito himself was a clear-cut authoritarian despot. The country was ruled only by his unquestionable legendary authority, and when he died, it could not go on for much longer, eventually collapsing into chaos a decade after his death. I can further note that as a non-aligned nation during the cold war, Yugoslavia occupied a special highly privileged niche in the post-WWII world order, carved for her by Tito, and for a while, after 1980, the strength of the niche held the crumbling pieces together. As soon as the post WWII world order started collapsing, the niche disintegrated in the chaos of the “new world order,” and the state of Yugoslavia ceased to exist for all intents and purposes.

Tito cannot be called a nationalist, being a Croat in a Serbian-dominated hodge-podge. He basically created the concept of Yugoslavian national identity against a host of political, cultural and historical odds. Indeed, Tito was the only reason why Yugoslavia as a whole existed in the post-WWII world, which fact Tito must have fully realized in his lifetime to an immense gratification for his already vastly enlarged ego.

The following set of quotes illustrates how Tito was using his personal authority to establish an artificial, but viable in his lifetime concept of Yugoslavian nationalism, which, as a term, meant nothing but an allegiance to his towering persona.---

"We have spilt an ocean of blood for brotherhood and unity of our peoples and we shall not allow anyone to touch or to destroy it from within."

"No one questioned, “who is a Serb, who is a Croat, who is a Muslim.” We were all one people, that’s how it was back then, and I still think it is that way today."

"None of our republics would be anything, if we were not all together; but we have to create our own history: history of United Yugoslavia, also in the future."

"Without a powerful and happy Yugoslavia, there cannot be a powerful and happy Croatia."

"I will give everything from myself to make sure that Yugoslavia is great, not just geographically but great in spirit and that it hold firmly to its neutrality and sovereignty that has been established through great sacrifice in the last battle (referring to the Second World War)."

"A decade ago young people en masse began calling themselves Yugoslavs. It was a form of rising Yugoslav nationalism, which was a reaction to brotherhood and unity and a feeling of belonging to our single socialist self-managing society. This pleased me greatly."

The following curious quotation illustrates my point that Tito was well aware that the concept of a Yugoslav nationality was extremely artificial. In referring to Bosnia-Herzegovina here, he must have been applying it broadly to all of Yugoslavia, as opposed to separate constituent ethnicities, as becomes clear from the text:

"Let that man be a Bosnian-Herzegovinian. Outside they do not call you by another name, except, simply: a Bosnian. Whether that be a Muslim, a Serb or a Croat. Everyone can be what they feel that they are and no one has a right to force a nationality (!!!) upon them."

Tito was a heroic wartime leader, fighting for the liberation of his country from foreign occupation, without any significant outside help from the Allies, and coming out gloriously victorious in the end. No wonder that, having virtually single-handedly wrestled independence from the might of a vastly superior enemy, he was in no hurry to surrender it either to the power of American Imperialism, or to the overlordship of Moscow. It is kind of pity, but an inevitable event anyway, that his ego had to clash with Stalin’s. As the greatest tribute to his genius, he was able to maintain his “third power” status in a fiercely bipolar coldwar world, even though, like with many other great leaders in history, his personal “empire” would not survive the man. Yet, nobody would deny greatness to Alexander or Charlemagne on that account, as none should deny it to Marshal Tito.

L’APRÈS-MIDI D’UN PHILOSOPHE

As I was growing up as a child, one of the great secrets of being a good thinker was bequeathed to me by my good mentors: Do not try to keep busy all the time. Busy-busy is not a virtue, but the undoing of a good thinker. Treasure every minute of your leisure, and always make time for it. Leisure is the time for reflection. Learning without reflection is like eating without digestion, a waste, and even a health hazard, leading to what Dr. J.T. Kent called “broken-down economy.”

Needless to say, learning is not a temporary period in life, like K-to-12, or even K-to-PhD. Learning lasts throughout the authentic person’s whole life, “ancora imparo,” as Michelangelo puts it.
That important lesson was later admirably summarized in my subsequent reading of the Hobbesian dictum that “leisure is the mother of philosophy.” Not that I needed any elucidation for my own understanding of leisure, but it was nice to hear a resonating string in the wisdom of the ages.

There are many such resonating strings in the harp of my head, and ever so often, even most unexpectedly and from some very unusual places, I suddenly feel a strange connection and hear the harmonious sounds, emanating from my mental harp, in response.
This is exactly what happened in the process of my minor reading of the Introduction to Marcus Aurelius’ Thoughts, by the English classical scholar George Long (1800-1879), who also made that 1862 translation of Marcus Aurelius. As a result of this connection, I became rather fond of George Long, and I even wrote a few comments on his comments, all scattered in several places in my book, which is something I might not have done under a different set of circumstances.
Long’s passage below, in tandem with Hobbes, and with my own conception of leisure, as a philosophical necessity, puts in sharp focus the distinction between a life of leisure, and leisure as a temporary respite, taking time for reflection amid the turbulences of life.

George Long: A man who leads a life of tranquility and reflection, who is not disturbed at home, and meddles not in the affairs of the world, may keep his mind at ease and his thought in one even course.

My Comment: If you ask me, here is a man at leisure, and, to repeat Hobbes' admirable wisdom, “leisure is the mother of philosophy.” So, how come that the next line, starting with “But…,” portrays leisure as inimical to philosophy, what is wrong here? I say, let us reexamine leisure, until we can harmonize the two statements, both of which make good sense. Perhaps, true leisure is not some philistine paradise, but a temporary quiet harbor in the middle of a stormy sea. Perhaps, philosophically speaking, Philosopher’s “leisure” is the eye of the storm?!

George Long: But such a man has not been tried.

My Comment: Perhaps, should the man possess leisure as his permanent state of mind, it is quite the opposite, that such a man has been tried, and failed? In other words, leisure is a respite from the conflicts of the turbulent world, and not a permanent condition of tranquility and reflection? This puts me in sharp conflict with the stoics and with all stoic philosophy… well, so be it! Perhaps, stoicism is not even a philosophy, but a psychology of positive thinking, which may be selfishly gratifying, but loses any moral value it might have had, as soon as it makes the logical next step, turning into indifference toward the sufferings of our fellow human beings?

George Long: All his ethical philosophy and passive virtue might turn out to be idle words, if he were once exposed to the rude reality of human existence.

My Comment: Not to be exposed in this manner, suggests some hopeless case of terminal mental blindness, rather than being sheltered by others from the rude reality of existence, which even in the tightest case of sheltering, has to be a cooperative effort on both sides. At any rate, blind men cannot be expected to paint a vivid picture of a colorful landscape. By the same token, a blind mind is supremely incapable of making any kind of philosophical representation of the reality.

George Long: Fine thoughts and moral dissertations from men, who have not worked and suffered, may be read, but they will be forgotten. No religion, no ethical philosophy is worth anything, if the teacher has not lived the life of an apostle, and has not been ready to die the death of a martyr.

My Comment: The concluding lines of the Long quotation dispense with the vices of “a life of tranquility and reflection,” and now portray our great philosopher as a willing martyr, which, of course, represents the opposite extreme. But, once again, most extremes are only matters of biased opinions and of inaccurate definitions, and should we, for once, look at them properly, the differences between many of them may be found non-existent.

THE COURAGE TO BE WRONG

To properly introduce this entry, I insist that the true value of philosophical thinking consists not in being right, as opposed to wrong, but in developing new patterns of thinking, which can be used not only for further “abstract” thinking, but, most importantly, for infinitely useful specific applications. No advances in modern technology, for instance, could ever have been possible without prior advances in thinking about seemingly useless and demonstrably non-existent subjects, even if those “advancers” themselves have been proven wrong on all counts. I am developing this thought in several entries throughout this book.

Philosophers have been subjected to constant ridicule. "There is no statement so absurd that no philosopher will make it," says Cicero, in De Divinatione, and Hobbes echoes him in Leviathan, v., commenting on “the privilege of absurdity, to which no living creature is subject, but men, and of men, those most that profess philosophy.” Apparently, such critics use philosophy as a bad word, and do not consider themselves in that category.
By far the most succinct way of stating the underlying problem here belongs to Nietzsche: “You know that no philosopher so far has been proved right.” (Jenseits 25). Nietzsche’s so far is a not-so-subtle indication that with him appearing on the world-historical stage, the situation may finally change.

How come, we might ask, the philosopher, that is the epitome of wisdom incarnate, has been in the wrong throughout the ages, and if not he, then who has ever been right, if at all?
So that we ourselves do not ride into the swamp of absurdity on our impetuous warhorse of ridicule, let us not perpetrate that grave logical folly of taking a specific claim, and generalizing it! Indeed, the charge of intellectual ineptitude ascribed to philosophers is akin to the inspired sophistry of Zeno the Eleatic, who is famous for proving beyond reasonable doubt that Achilles would never overtake the tortoise, except that it lacks Zeno’s syllogistic depth and far-reaching scientific implications.
The truth of Nietzsche’s elegant statement above is consistent with my own reflection that the value of the great philosophers has always been in asking good questions, but not in answering them. Every attempt on their part to come up with a general theory of some sort, the so-called positive contribution, has resulted in failure. This is exactly what Nietzsche is saying here, and any attempt to overstate this limited “failure” of all general philosophical theories or to expand its true boundaries would be an even greater absurdity than the most absurd among these theories.
In order to avoid the accusation of absurdity, many philosophers have preferred to make their contribution epigrammatic. Montaigne, Pascal, La Bruyère, Lichtenberg left us nothing, except scattered pearls of their cautious wisdom (collecting them all in one place does not make them less scattered). Dèscartes attempted to immunize himself with the caveat of idiosyncrasy. And so on, and so forth.
But there is a precious intrinsic worth in the philosophers’ general theories, be that of Plato or Spinoza, of Kant or Hegel. Whether oblivious of their ‘general theory’ folly, or quite consciously accepting the ridicule of their contemporaries and of the future generations, in which case they deserve the highest credit for the courage to be wrong, these general theorists have created, to a far larger extent than their aphoristic-only brethren, each, a vast philosophical kingdom with open borders, where all intruders are welcome, to come and partake of its macrocosmic wealth.
Bearing this in mind, there is a reassuring dependability for the defender of the wisdom of being wrong in such seemingly disparaging observations, as Pascal’s  paradoxical “To ridicule philosophy is to be a real philosopher,” (Pensées, vii) and Montaigne’s “A philosopher is one who doubts” (Essais, ii, written in 1580, that is long before Dèscartes!!!). The relativity of right and wrong is clearly established here, and Devil’s advocacy here is elevated to a philosophical principle, beyond right and wrong.
It is in this light that the following marvelous passage from Dèscartes’ Method ought to be read:

“…Of Philosophy I will say nothing, except that when I saw that it had been cultivated, for many ages, by the most distinguished men, and that yet, there is not a single matter within its sphere, which is not still in dispute, and nothing, therefore, that is above doubt, I did not presume to anticipate that my success would be greater in it than that of others; and furthermore when I considered the number of conflicting opinions touching a single matter that may be upheld by learned men, while there can be only one true, I reckoned as well-nigh false all that was only probable.” (Method, Book I)

The above passage raises an interesting array of subjects. In my criticism of Hobbes (see the entry Reason and Passion), who is taking for granted the infallibility of mathematics, as opposed to the fallaciousness of most philosophical (dogmatic) premises, I stated that the former may be called infallible only insofar as it is all fiction, while the latter’s truthfulness or falsity must be dismissed as a valid criterion, as long as philosophy recognizes its proper place and its significant limitations, and no general theory lays claim to an absolute wisdom.
Another important point is that, while Dèscartes can be justified in making this comment, this is true only to a point. Generally speaking, he is wrong in proposing that ‘when I considered the number of conflicting opinions touching a single matter that may be upheld by learned men, there can be but one true.’
The example of Euclid-Lobachevsky ostensibly irreconcilable, but in fact wonderfully symbiotic difference of two conflicting truths is only one specific case where Dèscartes can be forcefully disproved. But, generally speaking, if we change our view of philosophy and science, from seeing them as true by virtue of fact to seeing them as true by virtue of fiction, then his idea loses much of its luster of smartness, but nevertheless retains its value in the different, general sense which I already had a chance to speak about.

RANDOM AS A BLESSING

Here is another variation on the "Importance of Being Random." I have similar observations all throughout the relevant sections of this book, and for a good reason, as intellectual spontaneity is an incomparable philosophical asset. I would not go to the extreme of altogether banning consistency from the philosopher’s hereditary kingdom, but there is nothing like a forceful overkill in bringing a controversial point home.
This is a general comment on philosophy, which starts with Nietzsche. I have already noted his tendency to be random, self-contradictory, upholding opposite positions, cheerfully ready to pour ridicule on a view, and call its proponents all sorts of bad names, even though he had just recently expressed this view as his own. Yes, Nietzsche is, in many ways, like the Bible: you can find all sorts of opposites here, but do not be too hasty to criticize such randomness. Our views are too often so closely attached to their contexts that if you only try to take them out and place them side-by-side, there goes a walking and talking contradiction, right away!
This point is easy to illustrate by a reference to proverbs. These have always, and deservedly, been seen as priceless gems of popular wisdom. Yet they are all so utterly mutually contradictory, that should we single out any of them at random, we will find its advice countered by opposite advice in another familiar adage. Silence is golden, but even this wisdom could not possibly be imparted in silence. Patience is a virtue, but inaction, passing itself off as patience, is a vice. Sleep on it, but never put off till tomorrow, what you can do today.
The main reason why proverbs are always getting away with this consistent inconsistency is that each one of them is routinely taken in isolation from the rest, as it suits the particular occasion, on account of which it has been recalled. Ironically, such consistent inconsistency could rather be ascribed to the circumstances than to the realm of the proverb, which is deemed sacrosanct.
In other words, human life itself is consistently inconsistent, and its course can be accurately characterized as unpredictable, which is but another word for random. The whole point of predetermination is that it is not for us to figure it out. Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi. What is predictable and consistent to our Creator, is unpredictable and seemingly inconsistent to us.
But never mind the inconsistency of human life. It makes life interesting. I see inconsistency as preferable to consistency most of the time. It is splendidly intuitive, and often stumbles onto the right path, and then becomes synonymous with flexibility. Consistency, on the other hand, usually boils down to persistence in error. It is boring, and a sign of the average mind. Brilliance is always inconsistent and… random!
Thus, Nietzsche’s randomness, like all inspired randomness, is a philosophical blessing. Its great value to me, as it should be to anybody who has the audacity to call himself a philosopher, is that it so often elicits that magic click in us, which I have already talked about in several other places, the stimulator of thought, the esoteric secret of perfect conversation!