No matter

It happens to the best of us..

a little culture.

Um, I apparently don't know how to do stanzas and so forth when copying poems. Sorry.

Despite my sometime objection to poems-as-commentary on these threads, I'd like to share one. It seems fitting, given the musings about philosophy, mythology, and human progress in the last few posts. Fortunately, the poem was not written by me.

Children picking up our bones

Will never know that these were once

As quick as foxes on the hill;

And that in autumn, when the grapes

Made sharp air sharper by their smell

These had a being, breathing frost;

And least will guess that with our bones

We left much more, left what still is

The look of things, left what we felt

At what we saw. The spring clouds blow

Above the shuttered mansion house,

Beyond our gate and the windy sky

Cries out a literate despair.

We knew for long the mansion's look

And what we said of it became

A part of what it is ... Children,

Still weaving budded aureoles,

Will speak our speech and never know,

Will say of the mansion that it seems

As if he that lived there left behind

A spirit storming in blank walls,

A dirty house in a gutted world,

A tatter of shadows peaked to white,

Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun.

--Wallace Stevens

"A Postcard From the Volcano"

How is that your seemingly somewhat simple words are oft times, and in many instances, are amazingly enough, the most sensible?

Interesting...

I don't despair Hobbes views I simply stated facts about his philosophy and how he lived, and a short comment on the era he lived, which shaded his reasoning. This is not despair, but simple facts. On the other hand, Hobbes was one of the great philosophers of the Enlightenment, that alone makes his writings a must. Obviously he important because we have built upon his philosophies (and others) and evolved into so much more. But I would say most people ought to be at least introduced to Hobbes, and the other philosophers of the Enlightenment. Yes at times we lose ground when it comes to progress, so at times we will lurch backward, but other times we progress sending us just slightly more forward than we were when we last lurched back. No one here would ever dispute that notion.

Yes RR seems to have been chased away. In the meantime, the Autumn sinks in, the woods are brown, and you might spot Dionysus or Persephone moving from one place to another.

Only paid subscribers should be permitted to post. This will discourage the same person from spamming the comments under different IDs. At the very least it should cost 35+ dollars per ID to hammer the comments as the trolls are now doing.

That done, PLEASE let us individually screen out the trolls. Let us flag them. Let them be removed from our individual sight. Otherwise, Salon's letter pages will remain worldnetdaily spam, and we will stop reading - and subscribing.

Yes, there is hope for progress. It's just that it seems to me that progress is not permanent. That sounds circular and defeatist, but I think history shows that it's true.

We make progress and then decline and come back to make progress again.

Something from Tacitus:

Or perhaps not the seasons but everything else, social history included, moves in cycles. Not, however, that earlier times were better than ours in every way - our own epoch too has produced moral and intellectual achievements for our descendants to copy. And such honorable rivalry with the past is a fine thing. (Annals of Imperial Rome)

Teresa despairs that Hobbes had a very dark philosophy and it is true it was dark. In some respects it's more wise to base governance on the darker view. As I see it, progress that is made slowly tends to last longer.

. . . by Dionysus? How do I get in on that action? Where is the line forming?

Appollodorus or Hesiod, Classicus bangs his head and Athena leaves Dionyus to slap him around a bit. It is from the head of Zeus comes Athena indeed.

Palin and Shakespeare, well that was a good one, we'd best ask our current President that question, no doubt he understands it better than he did before.

Uncle Fester's post brings up another point for RR to answer. It is very likely that more economic trouble is coming.

Ron Paul has some funny economic ideas, but he has the sober temperament Sarah Palin lacks. Politics and leadership often require some illusion. It's the basis of cult and kingship. In the military it's "the mask of command." Though we don't like to admit it, democracy has not lost the psychology that animates cult.

The Greeks, and especially the Romans, struggled with problems of inflation, debt, and over-extension. The calm demeanor of the archon or imperator could often stop a financial panic.

If you ever remember being in Calculus class wondering if mathematics actually exists, you've gone down the road to contemplating the reality or illusion of Plato's Forms. The value of money is something similar. Look too closely, and it may look as if nothing is there.

Sarah Palin's is a pretty face, but is it the right one? One wonders of her, how she would interpret the quote, "uneasy lies the head that wears the crown." (Henry IV, part II.)

(Uncle Fester, you told me once that I was still fighting the Vietnam War. It's not quite the story. So if a different chain comes along I'll try to address it - if it's germane to the subject.)

Inserted from

Most of human history was spent grubbing around on the ground wearing skins...if our past defines our future then there really is no hope for progress at all.

To say that:

liberals seem to lack the long historical view; particularly when it comes to the permanence of human conflict.

seems a judgement of a perceived weakness we have, and you base it on a lack of classical training. I've been pondering this for several minutes now, rolling it over in my mind, " the permanence of human conflict", it is difficult to get over the fact it is a stridently Hobbesian view of human interaction! Hobbes had more than a dark view of human interaction. But then Hobbes himself lived in a time of complete turmoil and human conflict seemed a way of life. But this is not a secret to you. Hobbes philosophy taken in entirety was very dark indeed, I certainly hope it won't get that dark for us. I do no think we can merely limit ourselves when we are developing our deeper beliefs by only thinking about those thinkers of earlier centuries.

It is fun once again to do what we did in college and think slightly more deeply about our subjects, a fun challenge. But it has derailed part III in my Real Housewife of Alaska story!