Arts & Letters

Self Reliance

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Emerson can lead to naval-gazing and even solipsism. Googling one of his aphorisms, I find powerpoints from assertiveness training and slick empowerment seminars. Sure, that is true; as I’ve gotten older I sometimes have less patience with that cheerful old group. Still, reviewing Robert Richardson’s Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind, I was struck by his summary of the ideas Thoreau found so congenial in Emerson. And it reminded me that felicity may be the most reliable and most important consequence of a restrained but dominant individualism (and its byproducts) – and the first victim of policies now being contested:

The danger in setting society at a higher value than the individual, the trouble with encouraging people to identify themselves primarily with some group, was that it then became easy to transfer the blame for one’s own shortcomings to that group. If one looked to society for one’s identity and one’s satisfactions, then surely society should be held accountable for one’s dissatisfactions, lack of identity, alienation. Emerson had already set himself against this view, and Thoreau was now thinking along the same line. (34)

Interviewed by Steven Pressfield

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Ahem…cough….hopefully Jonathan and the rest of the Chicago Boyz cast will not mind a brief moment of self-promotion.

In an unusual turn of events, I was the subject of an interview by novelist and historian Steven Pressfield, author of Gates of Fire and The War of Art. Pressfield was also a participant here last year in our Xenophon Roundtable .

Steve has an interview section on his newly redesigned site and I join a series of bloggers and authors like Instapundit Glenn Reynolds, Tim O’Brien and Seth Godin who have sat down, in a virtual sense, with Steve for a discussion about writing and creativity. Having done such interviews of others in the past, it was a good experience to be on the receiving end of questions, for which I thank Steve:

The Creative Process: Mark Safranski

SP: Mark, what is the ZenPundit philosophy? How do you decide which stories or posts (or even guest bloggers) you want to include? What criteria do you use?

MS: Good question. My philosophy is something I also try to impart in my teaching.

Marcus Aurelius said “Look beneath the surface; let not the several qualities of a thing nor its worth escape you.” Most phenomena have many dimensions, multiple causes and second and third order effects. To deal with all of this complexity, we simplify matters by looking at life through an organizing frame, which we might call a worldview, a schema, a paradigm or a discipline. Whatever we call our mental model, we tend to become wedded to it because it “works.” It helps us understand some of what we are looking at-and in getting good at applying our model, advances us professionally and brings prestige or material rewards. So we will defend it to the death, from all challengers!

That’s getting carried away. Our mental model is just a tool or, more precisely, a cognitive lens. We need to be less attached to our habitual and lazy ways of looking at the world, put down our magnifying glass and pick up a telescope. Or, bifocals. Or, a microscope. Stepping back and applying different perspectives to a problem or an issue will give us new information, help us extrapolate, identify unintended consequences or spot connections and opportunities. When I do analytical pieces, I try to take that approach….

Read the rest here.

Smugness – And Simplicity

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There’s reality-based and there’s smug-based. Today, I was defining terms used often by Americans around the founding. (Doing an on-line course has forced me to be more precise and less airy – perhaps bullshitty is the appropriate word – than on-site teaching.) Googling “human nature”, the Merriam-Webster definition, first used in the 1500’s arises: “the nature of humans; especially : the fundamental dispositions and traits of humans.” Good enough. It linked the lengthier Britannica definition. This begins with the simplified traditional question: is man intrinsically selfish and competitive – as Hobbes and Locke would argue – or intrinsically social and altruistic – as Durkheim and Marx would argue. So this is how some saw (see) the divisions – such stark simplicity! Ah, some care and love humans; others don’t. The scripts and asides in class and subtle accusations in arguments write themselves. So, I tartly framed this for my students, observing that those who see man as altruistic have certainly proved it by murdering a hundred million of them in the last century.

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The Arrival of the Great Caravan, Medinah, 1852

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But how describe’ the utter confusion in the crowding, the bustling, and the vast variety and volume of sound? Huge white Syrian dromedaries, compared with which those of El-Hejaz appeared mere pony-camels, jingling large bells, and bearing Shugdufs (litters) like miniature green tents, swaying and tossing upon their backs; gorgeous Takhtrawan, or litters carried between camels or mules, with scarlet and brass trappings; Bedawin bestriding naked-backed “Daluls” (dromedaries), and clinging like apes to the hairy humps; Arnaut, Kurd, and Turkish Irregular Cavalry, fiercer looking in their mirth than Roman peasants in their rage; fainting Persian pilgrims, forcing their stubborn camels to kneel, or dismounted grumbling from jaded donkeys; Kahwajis, sherbet sellers, and ambulant tobacconists crying their goods; countrypeople driving flocks of sheep and goats with infinite clamor through lines of horses fiercely snorting and biting and kicking and rearing; towns-people seeking their friends; returned travellers exchanging affectionate salutes; devout Hajis jostling one another, running under the legs of camels, and tumbling over the tents’ ropes in their hurry to reach the Haram; cannon roaring from the citadel; shopmen, water-carriers, and fruit vendors fighting over their bargains; boys bullying heretics with loud screams; a well-mounted party of fine old Arab Shaykhs of the Hamidah clan, preceded by their varlets, performing the Arzah or war dance, —compared with which the Pyrenean bear’s performance is grace itself,—firing their duck-guns upwards, or blowing the powder into the calves of those before them, brandishing their swords, leaping frantically the while, with their bright-colored rags floating in the wind, tossing their long spears tufted with ostrich feathers high in the air, reckless where they fall; servants seeking their masters, and masters their tents, with vain cries of Ya Mohammed ;l grandees riding mules or stalking on foot, preceded by their crowd-beaters, shouting to clear the way; here the loud shrieks of women and children, whose litters are bumping and rasping against one another; there the low moaning of some poor wretch that is seeking a shady corner to die in : add a thick dust which blurs the outlines like a London fog, with a flaming sun that draws sparkles of fire from the burnished weapons of the crowd, and the brass balls of tent and litter; and—I doubt, gentle reader, that even the length, the jar, and the confusion of this description is adequate to its subject, or that any ” wordpainting” of mine can convey a just idea of the scene.

Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Meccah and Medinah, Sir Richard Francis Burton

Review of Senator’s Son: An Iraq War Novel

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“The sergeant kept the lower half of his body still and raised his flashlight attached under his rifle barrel. He cautiously squeezed the handle grip shining light at his feet. Sure enough, he stood on what the Marines called a burrito wrap. The insurgents quickly planted these IEDs by throwing them out in the street.”

Senator’s Son: An Iraq War Novel by Luke S. Larson

Some months ago, the author (Luke Larson served as a Marine infantry officer and saw action in two tours to Ar Ramadi, Iraq in 2005 and then again in 2007) left a comment on my blog asking me to review Senator’s Son. After I agreed to review the book, he e-mailed me a few sample chapters. Based on what I read, I ordered a copy of the novel.

I finished the book by reading a page here and a page there, late at night, after long days at the hospital. I kept circling back over what I’d previously read, underlining passages and writing in margins, engrossed by the written word:

Golf mobile one pushed to Ramadi Med with the senior corporal and two other badly injured corporals. Rogue and Doc V rounded the corner of the gun truck heading back towards the seven-ton. The only Marine still in constant consciousness was the burned private. The private in his combat boots and boxers wandered in a daze talking to himself. The Marine stared at the lieutenant. His eyes pleaded to him. “Sir, you have to get me out of here.”

It’s a high-wire act of tense action mixed in with hesitant calls home to family, doctrinal discussions on counterinsurgency, stories of suffering Iraqis – told with real empathy, and the absurd teasing humor of young Marines far from home. One mini-monologue by a “been there, done that,” character named Rock had me rolling. Very funny.

The novel does have some problems: the prose can be confusing, there are unnecessary flashbacks, and a framing device that just plain doesn’t work. None of this matters, really. The heart of the book is a page turner, a story well told, and most importantly, an education for the reader.

As Zenpundit says in his review, “As an explanation of COIN, I think the book is a must read for anyone unfamiliar with the subject and the nuanced complexities that COIN entails. The gritty, unforgiving, human suffering and moments of triumph of soldiers waging “pop-centric” COIN that gets lost in powerpoint slides, in the dry abstractions of journal articles and blogospheric arguments far removed from the ground is present in ample measure in Senator’s Son.”

It’s an education I think more people should be eager to undertake – like keeping a kind of faith. The least you can do is read the stories, right?

I encourage you to read this novel. (Thanks for the link Instapundit!)