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May 03, 2017
Working Well: Samuel Johnson on John Dryden.
The effects of a vigorous genius working upon large materials.
--Samuel Johnson, commenting on the life work of John Dryden (1631-1700), English poet, critic and playwright.
From The Indian Emperour
Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
May 02, 2017
Why Donald John Trump Freaks Out Half the Nation.
This morning I should be working solely on a project--interesting only to me and 5 other people on the legal earth--subtitled "Promissory Estoppel against the Government" but it may also have finally dawned on me why, in large part, so many people dislike Donald Trump and so many love him. And why that schism will continue. And why few issues will be argued on the merits or dispassionately for the next 4 years.
Donald Trump is the archetype of the roguish, reckless & in-your-face American Alpha Male who many of us--especially America's vast and varied population of moderate white liberals on the coasts and in big cities--thought we had killed off over the last 40 years. That archetype, or "those guys," were always with us in corporations, in an assortment of working class cultures, in rural areas and well virtually hiding just about everywhere but were quieter, drowned out or at least out of style for years. But they were always part of the larger and long-term culture of planet Earth. We heard their voices in the braggadocio masculinity of Beowulf, Homer, Mike Fink, Casey Jones and Davy Crockett. "This is who I am. This is who I conquered. What I did. You should know about me. There have been few men like me." These guys--and their instincts to dominate and strut around--have been around a long time.
About half of us were happy about the recent change in role models; about half missed the old school male.
Many of us raised our children to NOT be a Donald Trump; as new age parents, we raised kids to not only to respect women and all minorities but to affect an attitude at all times of inclusiveness, sensitivity and collaboration even with that conflicted with our own instincts about how selfish, warlike and unreasonable humans really are and have been for thousands of years. We Boomers asked ourselves and other generations to morally "evolve"--and evolve too quickly. You want an example? Here's one. "Empathy" in recent years has a desirable trait. The problem with that is that empathy has never been a "male trait" and we shouldn't act as if men and boys come by it that naturally. Because we don't. We are not as empathetic as women by nature. (Feel free to report me to NPR, Oberlin College and the Junior League.)
Donald Trump is in many respects merely, well (gulp), Male. No. He's no dinosaur. He's not a throwback. People who hate him and need to minimize or revile anything he does are missing something. Donald John Trump is merely an outsized and perhaps exaggerated example of what men and especially American men have been like for generations. We don't have to like it. But we do need to realize we never killed these Alpha Men off. There are lots more men like him than many thought. In recent years, they haven't been trendy; they've held back a lot.
These men--and of course many women as well--do have obvious strengths that many thought were outdated, e.g. combativeness, independence, decisiveness. Arguably, we could use those kinds of traits right now.
Posted by JD Hull at 01:41 PM | Comments (0)
May 01, 2017
May Day: Man's Eternal Spring Blowout.
May Day is a bit unique among the many old pagan holidays. For 2,200 years, at least in Europe, it's had a long and colorful run on its own, albeit in different forms. But unlike other pagan celebrations, May Day in Europe was never Christianized or abandoned as Christianity spread throughout Europe. It somehow managed to survive and flourish on its own. The first May Day holiday we know much about began in republican Rome about 250 BC. It was a one-day spring festival in honor of the goddess Flora, a fertility deity. Eventually the holiday grew to six days of special events and serious reveling, on April 28-May 3. Known as the Floralia in Roman religion for nearly 600 years, Rome's May Day was a "peoples" or plebeian holiday that took place at the Temple of Flora. (If you've been to Rome even once, you likely looked over the ground where the temple once stood. It's on the edge of the Aventine, a few hundred yards southwest of the Circus Maximus and Palatine Hill.) The Floralia featured drinking, mock gladiator games, animal sacrifices, "the pelting of the crowd" with vegetables (the first food fights?), dancing, nakedness, prostitutes (sex workers were specifically included and often featured), dancing naked prostitutes, theatre, colorful costumes and drinking. Below, one of the the greatest painters of the 1700s gives us a baroque take on the festival and its raw, fun and feral spirit.
"The Empire of Flora", 1744, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770). The scene is supposedly based on Ovid's description of The Floralia.
Posted by JD Hull at 04:06 AM | Comments (0)