In Mala Fide

There are a great many people out there, including police officers unfortunately, who feel (not think) that the mere presence of a gun implies evil. In the case of the police--like this unfortunate meathead Idaho sheriff, who actually shot himself--the presence of a gun screams criminal!

What tosh.

The Idaho Supreme Court, in a case from 1909, includes this diamond of a quote among a long and rather dry analysis of an appeal before it:

A man may need a gun for a great many things other than that of shooting his neighbor. In fact, it should be presumed in the first instance that a man is going to use his gun for a lawful purpose and that he is not out gunning for his neighbor. [Emphasis mine.]

 Well there you go. Our system works on a presumption of innocence; even in the case of a clear-cut case against a violator with many witnesses, the burden of proving guilt lies with the prosecutor only.

It is the same way outside the courtroom as well. More people are pummelled to death by hands and feet than get shot by so-called assault rifles (AKA a black rifle) yet this doesn't make anyone afraid for their safety simply walking by a man equipped with those tools of destruction. One commences in life by placing good faith in their fellow citizen that they will not suffer battery at the hands (and feet) of passersby. In other words, unless and until you have good reason to believe you will be battered, proceed as usual.

Another quick example: chances are, you get into your car everyday and drive wherever you need to go. You do this without living in crippling fear that an oncoming vehicle's driver will swerve into your lane and take you out in a head on collision. Since you have no good reason to believe that the 2000 pound weapon under the control of your fellow citizen will be used with malice against you, you proceed as usual. (Need I point out that more people die in vehicle accidents a year than get shot?)

We presume that everyone around us will act in a lawful and peaceable manner.

Except, of course, if that person were carrying a firearm. In which case, small-minded, scaredy cat, safety-first-last-always folks will assign the worst motives.

Common sense ain't.

The Intelligence of Race

H'm:

It's a biological fact that there are innate differences in IQ among different races. If you can't deal with that, enjoy being a truther.
— Charles C. Johnson (@ChuckCJohnson) January 30, 2015

Set aside the fact that Charles Johnson is a soulless ginger (heh), let's talk about race and intelligence and this assertion he makes about a fact of biology. But more, let's talk about the consequences of his assertion about that fact of biology.

To start, I will declare outright some biases: (a) I fucking love science (ahem) (b) I am bi-racial; specifically, I'm half white boy, half black girl. That sounds weird, but there you have it. I have some skin (heh) in the game, so to speak. And (c) I am a Christian.

I was born in Cameroon, lived the first half of my life in Nigeria in the west of Africa and then moved around until I settled in Florida, which is as close to a melting pot as you will have anywhere else in the US, both in literal and metaphorical terms. What this means is that, as an average observer of humanity--certainly enough to know I don't like most humans--I can tell you that there are truths to be found in generalities about groups. Where things start to fray is in applying those averages, those generalities to individual members of those groups. It takes a steady mind to avoid bigotry, and we are all of us guilty of it regardless of skin color.

For example, the myriad problems in Nigeria have at their root the deep divides between Nigerian ethnic and attendant religious groups: the eastern Igbos, reputed to be more intelligent than the northern Hausas, don't like the western Yorubas, etc. And they each say things about each other in generalities: "Don't trust an Igbo trader, son. He's out to steal as much as he can. Learn to bargain!" And so on.

We are generalization engines. We categorize. We sort and classify. It's what has made us the dominant species on the planet. But it is also the bane of our existence. The source of much strife, of war, of violence, of evil. With this in mind, let's talk about genetics, of which I know just enough from High School & College biology (I was a Zoology major at a University in Nigeria, intending on going on to Medical School). It is a fact that certain attributes pass genetically from generation to generation. It is, truly, settled science if there ever was such a thing. Among black Americans, a doctor will say, high blood pressure is more common. Sickle Cell Anemia is prevalent among black Africans, etc.

Chances are, you inherited your father's thighs or your mother's breasts--which would really suck for you if you're a man. Chances are, you'll likely die from the same disease that killed one of your grandfathers, if medical science doesn't find a cure. Chances are, people will say you have your mother's green eyes, Chances are, you and your sisters share your grandmother's Roman nose. And the list goes on.

There's no valid reason why genetic inheritance of attributes should stop, by human fiat, at the neck and go no higher. Those calf muscles you got from your father, but no one knows why you both suck at mathematics. No idea. Nonsense. Intelligence and the attendant capability is heritable. I've seen it, you've seen it. I believe, based on the evidence, that this is a fact of life.

Well now, what about groups? Ah now there's where the road is not so easy to walk. The Nazis (you knew it was coming) used the "biological fact" of racial differences to send millions to the gas chambers. Does this, one wonders, therefore invalidate the study of racial differences? Of course not, because to do so is to commit a logical fallacy. Are there racial differences between peoples and are those differences genetic? I say yes. Race, like sex, is most certainly not a social "construct" and it is foolish to think otherwise.

And if by extension, there are biological--including morphology--differences between the races, transferrable through the genes, and if, intelligence is likewise transferrable through the genes, it ought to follow that there are differences in intelligence between the races. As a half-black, half-white man, this makes sense to me; it does not make me uncomfortable in the least.

And this is why: I do not apply what I know to be true about groups to the individual members of that group. For two reasons: first because it's committing a logical fallacy to do otherwise and also because earlier I declared the bias that I am a Christian. What that means is that in the way I live my life and in my interactions with people, there are certain rules and regulations that govern and provide guidance to those interactions. I believe I am made in God's image (Imago Dei) and I also believe every human being on the planet is also made in God's image. This does not nullify the fact of our differences, of which there are many: racial, ideological, political, and so on. What is does do is require that I act accordingly for we are, all of us, God's children, brothers and sisters.

The problem is, we're humans. Fallible and fallen creatures that really suck generally. With evil in the heart, we seize on our differences to rationalize our evil actions against others. It is "harder" to shoot your son in the head than a stranger's. It is "easier" to kick a dog (Canis familiaris) than it is to kick a child (Homo sapiens). People and things that are different from us are easier to act against with malice. It is the stuff of which human history is made and all you have to do to convince yourself of this reality is to read a few history books.

So then, for argument's sake accept the fact of the matter that there are differences between the races. The question now is, so what? From which follows, no what? What are we to do with this information? As with most questions posed to humanity, it comes fraught with advantage and danger.

My doctor asks me for a family history so he can help me avoid "family-related" problems so I can live longer and healthier than my mother who died young. The racist down the street from me assumes because of my mother's skin color that I am unintelligent, if not outright stupid, and because of this, am two steps away from being violent. Well, in a way, he's right: I am steps away from being violent, but that requires he takes the first few steps first. :)

For good and for bad, there are differences between the races. For good, we can tailor health practices to ensure we all live longer. For bad, we can have Auschwitz. Personally, for you, as an individual, what should this bit of information do for you? Information, data, sitting there means nothing. You may as well have never known it--and I believe this is the path many take, to turn a blind eye. Does this mean that you will act in a certain way when you meet a black person? An Arab? A Jew? A Chinese man? Will it change the way you would have acted?

If it is shown that the intelligence of black Africans is lower than that of white Europeans, does this mean you now understand why black African countries are such hell holes? Does this remove the blinders, everything now clear? Does the relatively high intelligence of the Ashkenazi Jews now mean we should only have those Jews be scientists? Drawing only from that class of persons the doctors, engineers? Are you, as a white man, better than me, as a half-white man who is in turn better than a fully-black man? What does "better" mean in this situation?

As a government, do we start passing legislation barring certain groups from occupying certain posts in society based on genetics? Are we to segregate blacks in certain sections of our cities (which they already do on their own, by choice, it seems)? Japanese? Do we pass laws requiring that blacks cannot intermarry with Asians because the ensuing offspring will be "less capable" for society?

What do we do with this information, considering it's truth? Now, what? Considering how bad we are at statistics, replete through and through with cognitive bias after cognitive bias, now what.

To The Memory of Trim

An ode to a cat, by Matthew Flinders.

To the memory of Trim, the best and most illustrious of his Race,—the most affectionate of friends,—faithful of servants, and best of creatures.

He made the Tour of the Globe, and a voyage to Australia, which he circumnavigated; and was ever the delight and pleasure of his fellow voyagers. Returning to Europe in 1803, he was shipwrecked in the Great Equinoxial Ocean; This danger escaped, he sought refuge and assistance at the Isle of France, where he was made prisoner, contrary to the laws of Justice, of Humanity, and of French National Faith; and where, alas! he terminated his useful career by an untimely death, being devoured by the Catophagi of that island. Many a time have I beheld his little merriments with delight, and his superior intelligence with surprise: Never will his like be seen again!

Trim was born in the Southern Indian Ocean, in the year 1799, and perished as above at the Isle of France in 1804.

Peace be to his shade, and Honour to his memory.

 How lovely. RIP Trim.

 

 

 

 

The American’s Creed

I got a book yesterday, a 1948 edition of the Boy Scouts of America Handbook for Boys. I have a feeling there’s nothing about gay scoutmasters mentioned anywhere in it.
Here’s something I did find:

I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people; whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed; a democracy within a republic; a sovereign nation of many sovereign states; a perfect union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice and humanity, for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes.
I therefore believe it is my duty to my Country to love it, to support its constitution; to obey its laws; to respect its Flag, and to defend it against all enemies.

That was by William Tyler Page. I wonder if this is in the newest edition of the BSA’s handbook, if they still publish a handbook. Absent a shared, organic culture, we need these kinds of coalescing creeds and stories that impart values to the children. That serve as a great Moral Compass for us as we wend our way, a nation of many different peoples.
For example, too many people don’t understand our system of government. People who have grown up here and supposedly been taught it at school. People who react with incredulity at the Electoral College and have no idea why it’s in place even though we’ve been electing Presidents that way for ever.
People who don’t understand the difference between a democracy and a republic and what type of government either one engenders. People who don’t understand that we elect democratically within a republic. People, in other words, who have never read or recited the above Creed.
Here’s the answer to the question “what’s the difference between a republic and a democracy” that I just this second read:

one is a form of government where at[sic] the other is a system is the real answer but democracy doesn't exist

The person who wrote this is 23-years-old. A native-born American. If this doesn’t shake what remains of your hope for America, what would I wonder.
A child reading this ex-classroom would be naturally inclined to ask what the line about a democracy within a republic meant and therein lies a teachable moment as the blowhards say. No one reads this kind of stuff anymore. And they all end up like the 23-year-old who thinks democracies don’t exist.

On Being Uncomfortable

Benjamin Franklin, on being asked to publish something with which he didn't agree:

I have perused your piece, and find it to be scurrilous and defamatory. To determine whether I should publish it or not, I went home in the evening, purchased a two penny loaf at the baker’s, and with water from the pump made my supper; I then wrapped myself up in my great coat, and laid down on the floor and slept till morning, when, on another loaf and a mug of water, I made my breakfast. From this regimen I feel no inconvenience whatever. Finding I can live in this manner, I have formed a determination never to prostitute my press to the purposes of corruption, and abuse of this kind, for the sake of gaining a more comfortable subsistence.

Would that I had even half the determination and wisdom. Alas …

Move Towards Pain

Another little ditty from Mastery.

When John Keats (1795-1821) was eight years old, his father died in a riding accident. His mother never quite got over the loss and died seven years later—essentially leaving John, his two brothers, and one sister orphaned and homeless in London. John, the eldest of the children, was taken out of school by the appointed trustee and guardian of the estate, and enrolled as an apprentice to a surgeon and apothecary—he would have to earn a living as quickly as possible, and this seemed the best career for that.

In his last few terms at school, Keats had developed a love for literature and reading. To continue his education, he would return to his school in his off hours and read as many books as he could in the library. Some time later, he had the desire to try his hand at writing poetry, but lacking any kind of instructor or literary circle he could frequent, the only way he know to teach himself to write was the read the works of all of the greatest poets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He then wrote his own poems using the poetic form and style of the particular writer he was trying to model himself after. He had a knack for imitation, and soon he was creating verses in dozens of different styles, always tweaking them a little with his own voice.

Several years into this process, Keats came to a fateful decision—he would devote his life to writing poetry. That was his calling in life and he would find a away to make a living at it. To complete the rigorous apprenticeship he had already put himself through, he decided that what he needed was to write a very long poem, precisely 4000 lines. The poem would revolve around the ancient Greek myth of Endymion. “Endymion,” he wrote a friend, “will be a test, a trial of my Powers of Imagination and chiefly of my invention …—by which I must make 4000 lines of some circumstances and fill them with Poetry.” He gave himself a rather impossible deadline—seven months—and a task of writing fifty lines a day, until he had a rough draft.

Three quarters of the way through, he came to thoroughly hate the poem he was writing. He would not quit, however, willing his way to the end, meeting the deadline he had set. What he did not like about Endymion was the flowery language, the over-writing. But it was only by means of this exercise that he could discover what worked for him. “In Endymion,” he later wrote, “I leaped headlong into the Sea and thereby became better acquainted with the Soundings, the quicksands and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore and … took tea and comfortable advice.”

In the aftermath of writing what he considered to be a mediocre poem, Keats took stock of all of the invaluable lessons he had learned. Never again would he suffer from writer’s block—he had trained himself to write past any obstacle. He had acquired now the habit of writing quickly, with intensity and focus—concentrating his work in a few hours. He could revise with equal speed. He had learned how to criticize himself and his overly romantic tendencies. He could look at his own work with a cold eye. He had learned that it was in the actual writing of the poem that the best ideas would often come to him, and that he had to boldly keep writing or he would miss such discoveries. Most important of all, as a counterexample of Endymion, he had hit upon a style that suited him—language as compact and dense with imagery as possible, with not a single wasted line.

With these lessons in hand, in the years 1818 to 1819, before he became gravely ill, Keats would produce some of the most memorable poems in the English language, including all of his greatest odes. This added up to perhaps the most productive two years of writing in the history of Western literature—all of it set up by the rigorous self-apprenticeship he had put himself through.

***

By nature, we humans shirk from anything that seems possibly painful or overtly difficult. We bring this natural tendency to our practice of any skill. Once we grow adept at some aspect of this skill, generally one that comes more easily to us, we prefer to practice this element over and over. Our skill becomes lopsided as we avoid our weaknesses. Knowing that in our practice we can let down our guard, since we are not being watched or under pressure to perform, we bring to this a kind of dispersed attention. We tend to also be quite conventional in our practice routines. We generally follow what others have done, performing the accepted exercises for those skills.

This is the path of amateurs. To attain mastery, you must adopt what we shall call Resistance of Practice. The principle is simple—you go in the opposite direction of all of your natural tendencies when it comes to practice. First you resist the temptation to be nice to yourself. You become your own worst critic; you see your work as if through the eyes of others. You recognize your weaknesses, precisely the elements you are not good at. Those are the aspects you give precedence to in your practice. You find a kind of perverse pleasure in moving past the pain this might bring. Second, you resist the lure of easing up on your focus. You train yourself to concentrate in practice with double the intensity, as if it were the real thing times two. In devising your own routines, you become as creative as possible. You invent exercises that work upon your weaknesses. You give yourself arbitrary deadlines to meet certain standards, constantly pushing yourself past perceived limits. In this way, you develop your own standards for excellence, generally higher than those of others.

In the end, your five hours of intense, focused work are the equivalent of ten for most people. Soon enough you will see the results of such practice, and others will marvel at the apparent ease in which you accomplish your deeds.

Sallow Lincoln Was Shallow

Abraham Lincoln liked pretty women—for which he deserves to burn in hell, I'm certain of it. I learned today that one of our greatest Presidents may have been, in addition to the Great Emancipator, the Great Objectifier.
Mary Owens, a lady mayhap lacking a level of pulchritude befitting what the Great Man expected was objectified thusly:

“… when I beheld her, I could not for my life avoid thinking of my mother; and this, not from withered features, for her skin was too full of fat to permit of its contracting into wrinkles, but from her want of teeth, weather-beaten appearance in general, and from a kind of notion that ran in my head that nothing could have commenced at the size of infancy and reached her present bulk in less than thirty-five or forty years ; and, in short, I was not at all pleased with her.”

When the Klieg lights of such a man's opinions are trained on such a slow target, it burns! It burns!
As if in punishment, Lincoln moved on to Mary Todd, reputed to be a beauty and learned the eternal lesson: hot chicks are crazy.
Read the rest and gaze upon the visage of the weather-beaten she here.

A Little Something

‘For, when Rome was freed of the fear of Carthage, and her rival in empire was out of her way, the path of virtue was abandoned for that of corruption, not gradually, but in headlong course. The older discipline was discarded to give place to the new. The state passed from vigilance to slumber, from the pursuit of arms to the pursuit of pleasure, from activity to idleness.’

– Velleius Paterculus, early first century AD.

Do They Care It’s Christmas?

The black and white television started glowing after the click of its on knob was turned. Shadowy figures of white people started filling in the screen as the generator 15 feet away filled the air with a fetid cocktail of noxious gases and a steady ‘k-k-k-k-k-k-k’ sound.

My stomach was empty and had been for the last three days, but these few minutes of watching TV was the highlight of my day and took my mind off the gnawing hunger in my distended Kwashiorkor ravaged belly.  The flies buzzing about looked quite succulent, feeding as they were on the generalized human misery and waste in our refugee camp. We were too weak to chase these insect fighter jets though so we allowed them free access to the numerous sores on our faces, arms, and legs, a privilege they undertook with not a little gusto.

My mother had died a few days ago and I didn’t care. I didn’t know who my father was, although I remembered a man with a very large gun who would stop into the hut where my seven brothers and sisters eked out an existence in the place I’d been told was Ethiopia. He would always bring food and other gifts for my mother, but he would leave again after one night. I think he was my father. Nine months after every night, my mother gave birth to another one of my brothers and sisters.

But she was dead and along with her, two of my sisters and one of my brothers. Never mind that now, tonight I was going to watch the UN-provided TV that brought shows from far away places for us to watch as long as there was fuel in the generator. Children from all over the camp would be allowed to sit near the TV in a rare show of courtesy by the emaciated Big People. Normally they treated the children like slower flies, swatting at us as we wandered the camp and throwing stones and evil words at us. I think the White People whose TV it was made the adults behave a bit better, but I can’t be sure.

The White People smelled of sweat, cigarette smoke, and patchouli. They were very nice, always trying to help us. There were even some White People doctors who would arrive once in a while and treat the worst wounds on the women and children, but they would leave again just as suddenly as they showed up, like Angels returning home to heaven. The wounds would get pretty bad again within a day or two so people soon stopped going to see the White People doctors when they showed up. They either lived with the pus, odor and the ever-present flies or would pack the sores over with mud if the flies got unbearable. Every so often, the legs would have to be cut off and more often lately, the people just died and their bodies were taken away. That seemed to clear the air for a bit afterwards.

The White People’s TV could only run once a week, because of the scarcity of gasoline for the generator but tonight was the designated TV-watching night! I looked around me and saw a mass of coal black children, men and women. Slack-jawed and listless, the only sign of life was the light in their eyes reflected back from the TV in the inky night. As long as there’s life, there’s hope is what I’ve heard people in our camp say again and again, but now that people were dying at an ever faster rate, I had started to doubt whether this saying was totally true.

I was interrupted by the sound from the television set. On the flickering screen, a thin white man with wild, bushy hair led other strange-looking white people—although if I squinted, I could make out one or two other people who were black like me—in a song about Christmas. The White People later told me this was a very, very, special thing we had seen on the TV. The thin white man with wild hair was a good and wise man named Bob Geldof. The other strange white people singing to the accompaniment of bells and drums were singing to make our lives better because of Christmas. I didn’t know what Christmas was and I didn’t understand how a song about it could make our lives better, but I had long ago stopped thinking too hard about what White People did, so we all just nodded and hoped they had some grain for us coming soon, a thought which kick-started the hunger pangs afresh.

With tears in their eyes, the camp’s White People wanted to make sure we understood that Bob Geldof and the others were really going to change our situation for the better now that the whole world knew about us and what was happening to us. The listed all the people who were singing, saying these were very important singers; I kept hearing them talk about a man named Sting, but as I knew no one was stupid enough to be named for the dangerous end of a TseTse fly, I decided I had heard wrong. It seemed these White People had called their group Band Aid, and the camp’s White People looked at us with a knowing smile dancing on their faces, as if they expected us to understand what Band Aid meant. After some adults said they did not understand what the Band Aid was, the White People explained that it was something white people put on cuts and scrapes. I looked down at the two-inch wide, half-inch deep sore on my right foot and, swatting away feeding flies, tried to imagine how big a band aid would need to be to cover it.

I wondered if, now that Band Aid had sung about Christmas, we would receive a bowl of millet once a day instead of once a week. I wondered if they would send in fresh water so that I did not have to drink water from the well in the camp. I tried not to drink that water because, as if on a timer, within five minutes of taking one sip, I would have to drop the cloth around my waist and start pissing out of my anus. I tried very hard not to drink that water.

For five months we waited for Band Aid to come out of the white aeroplanes that landed on the hardened red earth two miles from the camp. I wanted to see if Bob Geldof looked anything like the wild haired, goat-looking man on the TV. I thought maybe I could ask if Sting was his real name. But after two months, I began to get a feeling they would not arrive and by month four, turned by attention elsewhere. By this time, the only food I ate were bits of raw wheat on the floor of my shanty. The wound on my foot was now covering almost my entire foot so I couldn’t run to get the millet the White People brought in and I couldn’t go see the white doctor when she came to the camp a few weeks after that.

The night I died was cold, I remembered. The hunger had settled in now and was like an ever-present companion, the puppy dog I had always wanted. That’s what I called it—my puppy dog—because it growled and growled. The wound on my foot had stopped throbbing and all at once, I got nice and warm—which was weird, I thought because it was so cold. Out in the center of the camp, the old TV must have been turned on because I heard the now-familiar “bong, bong” of the opening bars, Band Aid was about to Feed The World. Ah, what a nice song. It was the only White People’s song I had ever heard in my life and it had grown on me. Now that I could understand some of the words, they were comforting:

It's Christmas time
There's no need to be afraid
At Christmas time
We let in light and we banish shade
And in our world of plenty
We can spread a smile of joy
Throw your arms around the world
At Christmas time

Ah, such nice words from such nice people. I pushed my mother’s sleeping cloth back down, I was so warm. Then I went to sleep.

Feed the world
Feed the world
Feed the world
Let them know it's Christmas time again
Feed the world
Let them know it's Christmas time again

Man, Animal

The BBC and Richard Attenborough do it again. This is not only fascinating, it's exquisitely shot and narrated. The message is rather incredible. To me, this belongs in the pantheon of heroic human deeds, next to--but perhaps somewhat less than--the battle at Thermopylae:

Sclerosis

As Mark Steyn ably—and so humorously, as usual—points out, even the revolution isn't revolutionary:

America is seizing up before our eyes: The decrepit airports, the underwater property market, the education racket, the hyper-regulated business environment. Yet, curiously, the best example of this sclerosis is the alleged "revolutionary" movement itself. It's the voice of youth, yet everything about it is cobwebbed. It's more like an open-mike karaoke night of a revolution than the real thing. I don't mean just the placards with the same old portable quotes by Lenin et al, but also, say, the photograph in Forbes of Rachel, a 20-year-old "unemployed cosmetologist" with remarkably uncosmetological complexion, dressed in pink hair and nose ring as if it's London, 1977, and she's killing time at Camden Lock before the Pistols gig. Except that that's three-and-a-half decades ago, so it would be like the Sex Pistols dressing like the Andrews Sisters. Are America's revolting youth so totally pathetically moribund they can't even invent their own hideous fashion statements?

Heave a sigh and try to enjoy the decline, folks.

Panorama

I don't see ‘Heathen.’

[Hat tip: Redeemed Mind]

Where Are These Men?

Barcelona, it seems.

A long, long, long time ago.

The Difference

Between a conservative and liberal “protests,” in a paragraph:

Just remember that when conservatives organize into grassroots movements, it’s almost always about protecting their own property and individual liberty.  When leftists decide to start grassroots movements, like OccupyWallStreet or Barr’s example of leftist populism, it almost always involves seizure of property, threats of violence, and eventually re-education camps and the guillotine.

They can’t help it:

Where The “Black” Ends

I watched an episode [video] of the NBC program, Who Do You Think You Are, last week. As usual, it was fascinating to watch this exploration of American history as encapsulated through one man’s search for ancestry, even if that man is the famous Lionel Richie (Mama-say mama-sah ma-ma-coo-sah!)

I dropped in a few minutes in as Richie had identified his Great Grandfather who had married, at age 50, a 15-year-old girl only to get divorced about seven years later due to abandoning the now 22-year-old with child. This revelation didn’t sit too well with Lionel even after he’d been told this was the norm in the 1800s. Sigh. More on this …

Nevertheless, he continues the search into this particular man’s life and times. He discovers the guy, John Louis Brown, was a leader in a Tennessee fraternal organization known as the Knights of Wise Men. It seems this organization was an inchoate insurance company for black people, providing life insurance at a time when the recently-freed black people weren’t accepted in southern white society after Emancipation and the Civil War.

This part of the story seemed to sit better with Richie, especially when the consulting expert couched this organization in the magical terms of being an early Civil Rights organization. Suddenly the rake who’d married then abandoned a 15-year-old bride was recast as a leader in the black “community,” a most inauspicious role.

Sadly, Great Grandpa Brown seems to have come out a bit worse because in the end, the treasurer of the Knights of Wise Men turned out not to be so wise after all and made off with its treasury, effectively bankrupting the Knights and Brown. We find Great Grandpapa ending his life in an unidentified grave in the pauper’s section of the black cemetery he’d tended for a living toward the end.

One of the documents unearthed by the historians for the show pointed to the fact that Great Granddad may have been a slave owned by a man named Morgan Brown. In addition and rather shockingly, Great Granddads’ father is listed as Morgan W. Brown. Lionel’s happy feet stopped “dancing on the ceiling” by this bit of news, even though he “expected” something like it. Sigh.

Tracing back further, he finds that indeed Great Grandpapa Brown had started life as the slave son of a slave woman (wonderfully named Mariah) both belonging to a prominent TN doctor named Morgan Brown. In a diary entry, Dr. Brown recorded the birth to Mariah of a son named John. The historian assured us that this was highly unusual especially when it was also discovered that Dr. Brown decreed in his will, written sometime during Mariah’s pregnancy, that she and her son be freed upon his death. In addition, Dr. Brown stipulated that the baby boy be given an education, an anathema in pre-Emancipation America.

This Dr. Morgan Brown was the father of Morgan W. Brown and so either Brown (pere) was Richie’s Great Great Granddad or Brown (fils) was, and considering Brown (pere) was 80-years-old at the time, it was more likely that Brown (fils), 39 at the time, was the cock-on-the walk responsible.

So then, it turns out that Lionel Richie, mega-rich musician had slaves in his ancestry and that one of those ancestors was a white dude who’d impregnated a black slave woman. Not at all surprising of course, but here are some observations.

Lionel Richie obviously has white genes in his bloodline, looking at him. If you go back long enough in America as a black man, you will find slave ancestors. Black slave ancestors with white genes didn’t get them by laboratory experimentation as far as we know; “massa” and slave woman had some chickaboom chickaboom and out popped baby.

Further, the fact John Louis Brown’s mother was freed and that he was educated seems to point to a tender benevolence on the part of the slave holders or at least, to the absence of malevolence toward Mariah and John.

Knowing this, what surprises me is how Richie ends the ancestry search right there, where the “black” ends. It seems he’s simply not interested in knowing anything about Great Great Granddad and anyone else before in spite of the fact these men don’t fit the abusive slave owner role. “Why not,” seems a good question, one that only Richie can answer. But in my opinion, it’s rather ridiculous to stop your search for ancestors simply because the “black” ends.

The other observation I have is that of realizing just how uneducated modern (American) man is about history. It violates our modern sensibilities when we hear of men having children with 15-year-old girls and we reel from all the implications.

When the entire length of recorded human history is examined, such occurrences are indeed the norm. If an alien landed on earth to peruse and study our history as a race, he would deem our present-day society as an aberration vis-à-vis our past. We have been the way we are only for a very short time, and try as hard as we may, those drives  and attitudes don’t simply vanish from our gene pool.

Plato’s Leaders

“Therefore we must elect as ruler and guardian of the city him who as boy and youth and man has been tested and has come out without strain, and render him honours in life and after death, giving him the highest rewards of public burial and other memorials. The others we must reject.” —Plato

What I find interesting is that in Plato’s opinion, we must actively reject the ‘others,’ and not, say, simply ignore them. I wonder if that’s got any deeper meaning?

The 1960s (spit), Men's Style and History

I left this as a comment on a post which suggested you, as a man, allow your girl to dress you:

It's been since the 60s or thereabouts when the full swing of the Peacock Revolution was in its heyday that men stopped caring about what they wore. This led to the horrendous 70s and everything's been downhill from there.

60s men who grew up then rejected not only their 30s and 40s fathers' political ideologies, but also their conservative (read: traditional) fashion style. The basics of what a Western man looks good in, unlike women's, really doesn't change and hasn't ever since Beau Brummell decided to set his own pace.

The problem is that 80% of men and boys today didn't learn from their fathers about fashion, the classic kind worn by such men as the Duke of Windsor, Cary Grant, Larry Niven and any of the movie stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood. I don't blame them because their fathers never did either.

This has caused something of a problem for the modern man: unless one takes a markedly dogged position on the issue and LEARNS what makes a man look good and gets it (thus obviating the need for any woman to think him badly dressed), they let their women do the picking.
Men didn't use to be fashion accessories for women, they dressed themselves (as would be expected of any adult).

It's only been quite recently that women have taken yet another position not traditionally theirs and started outfitting their dummies, er men. To be sure, I don't blame the women either. Just as it is necessary to provide a locus of manhood as she does of womanhood, when men relinquish this locus, the ladettes only too readily--but unhappily--take over the vacuum.

No, I suggest every man simply learns about classic, timeless male fashion (one of the better books on the subject are any by Alan Flusser; Russell Smith's Men's Style; askandyaboutclothes.com; The Suit by Antongiovanni though it is rather a pill).

Imagine my horror to find I'd (once again) mistaken Larry Niven with David Niven. Larry's a SciFi writer of some not—weird, I don't read SciFi, but I can't get his freaking name out of my head. David is, of course, the ever so sharply dressed movie star.

H. G. Wells On Humanity

Sink me, I’ve taken to Twitter and abandoned ye olde blog. Sorry about that, but I know no one reads this darn thing anyway.

Tough Questions Answered’s Bill Pratt wrote about H. G. Wells’ conversion from naïve humanist to shell-shocked realist. In his book, A Short History of the World from 1937, Wells wrote:

Can we doubt that presently our race will more than realize our boldest imaginations, that it will achieve unity and peace, and that our children will live in a world made more splendid and lovely than any palace or garden that we know, going on from strength to strength in an ever-widening circle of achievement? What man has done, the little triumphs of his present state…form but the prelude to the things that man has yet to do.

To be followed by this after World War II, from A World at the End of Its Tether:

The cold-blooded massacres of the defenseless, the return of deliberate and organized torture, mental torment, and fear to a world from which such things had seemed well nigh banished—has come near to breaking my spirit altogether…“Homo Sapiens,” as he has been pleased to call himself, is played out.

Pratt’s point is one that should—but doesn’t and never will—resonate with too many: Mankind cannot pull itself out of the quicksand, we need a supernatural hand up. Our very natures are immensely flawed and as such, you cannot save yourself.

Live with it or die with it.

Verily, Verily

My Amazon review of Verily, Verily by Jon Sweeney:

For many Christians and non-Christians alike, the King James Version of the Bible--also known as the Authorized Version for reasons you'll find outlined in good detail--is a work of art, a work of immense social and cultural influence and, not least, a work of beauty.
So says author Jon Sweeney in Verily, Verily and I believe he does a convincing job of it. In fact, so convinced was I that it was only after a few chapters that I ventured out to my local used bookstore to find a copy. This was a step I'd never taken before because, like many, I didn't grow up reading that particular translation, preferring instead the modern--more understandable--ones like the New International Version among others. Like Sweeney, I now this is a mistake and, also like Sweeney, I urge others so inclined to get one and see again (or maybe for the first time) what an astounding piece of work was the KJV.
After opening with a sad tale of this translation's neglect, the reader gets introduced to what I've come to understand is the unseen hand of the KJV influencing everyday language ("in the twinkling of an eye" comes from 1 Corinthians 15:52; "seek and ye shall find" Matthew 7:7) and, in its role as a religious book of course, we see it influencing the law, politics, science, and philosophy.
So why isn't the KJV read more these days? Sweeney believes that it is because slowness is required, just as in the reading of poetry, yet another discarded staple of yesteryear. "Our time and attention is splintered in ways that Benjamin Franklin never could have imagined possible. As a result, few of us practice the discipline of reading slowly, and the KJV demands the slowest, most careful reading of any translation."
After a chapter detailing the history of the process by which the KJV became both the King James Version and the Authorized Version, in itself a resoundingly fascinating tale of Kings James and Henry, and the English Civil war, the reader begins to understand the travails a lot of devout people went through to bring this translation of the Bible to us. If Henry VIII hadn't wanted out of the Catholic church, it isn't a lie to say that the Latin Vulgate Bible, which only the most educated (among which were priests) would have been able to read much less understand, would have been the only Bible for millennia.
In essence, and ironically since it was authorized by a King, the KJV is the symptom of a democratization of religion, bringing God to the common people as it were. Sweeney continues on to show how the KJV affected the work of literary luminaries such as Charles Dickens and Emily Dickinson, but also people like Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr. and even "African-American" spirituals.
It was right around here that I began to sense a slightly defeatist tone to Sweeney: he starts alluding to the Bible's generally "difficult past" with respect to its seeming condolence of slavery and "the contradictions of the Bible on matters of justice" which "have been evident ..." While he does make some attempts at explaining and justifying certain parts of the Bible, I felt he could have done a bit more scholarship. Paul Copan's new book, Is God a Moral Monster?: Making Sense of the Old Testament God is the type of work that tackles and resolves a lot of what Jon Sweeney was to ready to throw up his hands on. I suggest those interested pick that up.
Such illustrious atheists as Christopher Hitchens will readily admit that the King James Version is a masterpiece of English literature (irrespective of its content, of course, in Hitchens' case) and more care should be allotted to its study. Sweeney responds in chapters seven and eight by quoting and explaning at length different verses from the KJV. He recounts that one of the aims of the translation committee was to translate in such a way as to provide an easy oratory: the King James Version was meant to be read aloud and these verses show that up to good effect.
If you enjoy history, language, or British history for that matter, or are a curious and studious Christian, "Verily, Verily" will draw you in and thoroughly entertain. I recommend this despite some misgivings about strictly, overly pedantic theological matters. Let's not let this wonderful book die out; after all, it has provided four centuries of tutelage and wonder to humanity.

Hope you get it, it’s a great read.

Oh, You Want Reasons?

Reading Verily, Verily, a book which recounts the circumstances around which the translation of the Bible into “vulgar” English that became the King James Version is a true delight for any number of reasons. If you’re a historian, it’s a careful study of the conditions which precipitated the translation, and if you’re a lover of language, there’s a smorgasbord of delights in it.

Here’s an excerpt I just finished this morning, thought enough of it to copy here:

Translation into the vernacular is necessary, they [the translation committee] conclude despite any possible objections. “But how shall men meditate in that which they cannot understand?” they plead. Even if a person reads and understands Hebrew, Greek, or Latin, that person must understand that the vast majority of Christian people cannot. Beautifully, the translators continue their case; it’s easy to see how there were a few poets on the committees:

Translation it is that openeth the window, to let in the light; that breaketh the shell, that we may eat the kernel; that putteth aside the curtain, that we may look into the most holy place; that removeth the cover of the well, that we may come by the water; even as Jacob rolled away the stone from the mouth of the well, by which means the flocks of Laban were watered. Indeed without translation into the vulgar tongue, the unlearned are but like children at Jacob’s well (which was deep) without a bucket or something to draw with; or as that person mentioned by Isaiah, to whom when a sealed book was delivered with this motion, “Read this, I pray thee,” he was fain to make this answer, “I cannot, for it is sealed.”

Pretty good, aye what?

By the way, the title of this post is uttered by none other than Samuel (don’t forget the L.) Jackson in Jackie Brown. A good Saturday to ye!