What moral imperative rules against procrastination?

Can we judge works of literature by our own personal values? Or must we judge them by the values of the characters or perhaps the original author in order to appreciate them in the way their originator intended? I posit that these questions are all questions that must be answered for oneself, that there is no true to value to the interpretation of literature, or in fact any art,

We encountered a cultural clash when reading Things Fall Apart. When Okonkwo kills his foster son and discusses the village practice of killing infant twins, we are inclined to judge him by our own values and say that these things are wrong. The same goes when he beats his wife and forlornly wishes that his able-ist daughter had been born his son. But while it is our natural inclination to feel this way, cultural relativism and years of literature-interpretation conditioning say that we ought only judge Okonkwo by his own culture. And in his own culture all these things were just or, failing that, forgivable. What would make him a villain in our culture merely makes him a man in his own.

According to James Rachels' “The Challenge of Cultural Relativism”, this cultural relativism is a widely held theory. He finds it to be logically flawed to follow cultural relativism to the conclusion that there is no inherent truths, but at the same time suggests that using its premises to question assumed moral truths would be wise. He says that just because there might be moral truths doesn't mean they necessarily lie with your culture and that it is always best to question such thins. He doesn't put any of this in the context of interpreting literature, but we all be so high minded in our contemplations, now can we?

I agree with Rachels' assertion that it is always good to question our own culture. I agree with him that there are facts – the world is certainly spherical and not flat. But I don't see how that carries on to the idea that there are true moral facts. I think at its heart morals are what they are because there isn't any sort of truth behind them besides a communal trust. If they were inherent truths that trust would not be needed and the power people put behind morals would be much diminished. But that is the real world: in literature I feel that I ought be able to interpret however I wish. So I pick and I choose and I look at books both ways. From the perspective of the characters, to get a feel for their values, and from my own perspective, to know where I draw the line. Some lines are drawn out quite clearly and others just inferred. Luckily there's no moral imperative against being indecisive.

Women and Flights of Reason

                Books, like all works of art, tend to reflect the era in which they were written.  One common element in some of more recent readings has been the tendency of women, especially young women, to go insane when confronted with difficult situations.  I believe that this tendency is reflective of the overall tendency of literature of that time period to show women as weak or inferior.

                This topic first came to mind when I was thinking about Hamlet.  In Hamlet, three young men lose a father.  One young woman loses her father.  Hamlet goes  a bit overboard in getting revenge, Fortinbras attempts to march an army across the country, Laertes wants to kill Hamlet.  Only Ophelia, when confronted with this tragedy, starts singing old songs, picking flowers out of midair, followed shortly by her dramatic suicide.  Furthermore, all of the characters treat her sudden and unforeshadowed decent into insanity with complete understanding.  She is a woman, there was a lot of stress and tragedy surrounding her, it is understandable that she went absolutely insane, they say.

                A similar tendency could be noted in Wuthering Heights.  Not that only the women are insane in that book.  Everyone in Wuthering Heights is insane.  But only Catherine’s insanity is the only insanity that leads directly to her death via sudden emotional hysteria.  Now you could take this as proof that in the Victorian era women were seen as weak and thus unstable and thus hysterical and thus crazy.  That would be a logical line of thought.  But putting that aside, what if Wuthering Heights were saying that everyone is crazy, but while men focus their anger outwards women focus it inwards?  That interpretation would also hold true for Hamlet.

                In the modern day, the new insanity, replacing the also-more-recent ‘vapors’ and fainting tendencies is depression.  Depression strikes women far more often than men, perhaps this is a continuation of the trend for women to internalize their problems at the expense of their mental health.  But while that sounds like a sound theory, gender studies is also supposed to tell us that men are more likely to internalize their feeling and women express those feelings to others.  So is there a male counterpart to these female foibles?  Back in the day, the crazy thing for men to do was to disappear off into the countryside and reappear months or years later, claiming to have no memory of the event.  In the time when Hamlet was written, the thing to be, if you were going to be a bit crazy and artistic, was melancholy.  It was manly, artistic and, coincidentally, inspired by the character of Hamlet and then emulated by several writers of that era.

                Personally, I would chalk all of this up to different social expectations – for women and men and for people of different eras.  People have always had, and probably will always have problems.  Those problems will continue to present themselves in ways that society expects as long as society expects it.  I don’t profess to know why 2 women have depression for every one man that does, but I’m will to bet its not because women are inherently weak minded.  Their brains are built of the same stuff (or so we think?).

One More Link on the Chain

                Is revenge something to be revered or idolized?  This was a question that cropped up in the reading of Beowulf, in the fights between Beowulf and Grendel’s mother and then again between him and the dragon.  Because whilst the first battle scene in Beowulf was shown as being a fight between good and evil, those that followed were simply a natural consequence of character’s action.  So, while revenge was the natural and perhaps only course to follow for ancient Vikings, is it still something that we can or should ever hold in esteem?

                We see the theme in Beowulf that revenge is not only noble but inevitable.  It was inevitable that the tribes now making alliances and wedding pacts would eventually return to fighting and backstabbing, a tragic but inevitable fate.  When Beowulf killed Grendel it was reasonable and perhaps right in their eyes that Grendel’s mother came to exact her revenge.  There is a fight and Beowulf wins, but not over evil.  He simply wins over Grendel’s mother, cutting off the chain of revenge with Grendel’s head and last living relative.  The dragon too was fighting for revenge over a slight to his horde.  And here too the dragon is treated as being within its nature, within the bonds of tradition.  It is right that Beowulf must fight him to defend his kingdom, but it is also right that the dragon must protect his treasure.  The story is no longer about the contest between good and bad and now about the contest between protagonists and antagonists.

                This theme can also be seen in the work of Wuthering Heights.  Revenge motivates nearly every action taken by Hindley and Heathcliff in the first half of the book – Hindley’s treatment of Heathcliff, Heathcliff moving back in.  And then Heathcliff starts in on Catherine for abandoning him and Linton for stealing his friend, going to the extreme of marrying Isabella to rob Linton of her.  Now this book does not attempt to expound (of yet) that these actions were right or just, but they illustrate in a manner similar to Beowulf how one cycle of revenge begets another.  The pattern of hatred, once begun, is difficult to stop and merely escalates out of control – just as the wars between the neighboring tribes became all consuming and tragic.

                This connection here reminded me of a radio story I heard the other day (a rerun of RadioLab, actually).  They talked to a neuroscientist, investigating whether violence was an inborn condition stemming from our ancestors or merely a difficult cycle to break.  He spends his summers studying baboons in the Serengeti, for some other brain-stress research.  But in the course of these studies, he came in contact with one troop of baboons that lost a huge number of males due to infection.  When he returned years later (the reduced population wasn’t suitable for study any more) the new males that had immigrated in had lost their supposedly inborn combativeness and hostile attitude – since there were no hostile males to ingratiate them to that culture, the culture did not exist.  Instead it became a calmer, female run troop.  A very interesting aberration from supposedly inborn behavior.  As we are descended from related beings, by common secular account, perhaps we too are simply trapped in a cycle of violence and we, as much as they, could break free from it given the right stimuli.

                I will admit that the reason I chose this issue is that I am developing plans for a new novel and revenge is one of the main motivators of my protagonist.  More than that, I believe revenge might be the only thing keeping Nils moving forward – not the justice in destroying this organization but the pleasure of being the one to do it.  I’m not sure what to make of this bloodthirsty motivation, or whether I can support Nils in it.  I think that I can – because what is right and just in literature is not what is right and just in real life.  In some ways literature is simply the base code of how  life could be, or more importantly how it is not.  It allows moral codes of various eras and peoples to collide and interact in a controlled environment while we wait outside with a warm cat and a cup of tea.  Not really – you can hold a cup of tea, a cat or a book but never all three.  But anyways, literature is escapism in that we allow it to contain the very things we fight against and are repulsed by in real life.  Such is revenge.  A noble act of literature with less realism or basis in modern society, a senseless call to violence in real life and literature that attempts to mirror such.  But I wouldn’t think to rob Nils of his, because what’s a decent protagonist without some serious moral faults?

Works Cited

Abumrad, Jad and Robert Krulwich.  “New Baboon”  Radiolab.  WNYC Radio.  19 October, 2009.  Web.  30 October, 2012.

A Problem of Economy - My Take on A Modest Proposal

                A problem pressing heavily upon the minds of Americans, which can be seen in so many innocent minds being hurt or crushed beyond the point of use or recognition, rendering political talk gentle and insipid and all forms of art and discourse as artless as they were at the founding of America, is our present loss of jobs to countries that err in their spelling, not having begun with the word “United”, nor ending in the word “States”, nor containing any of the other obligatory syllabic elements that ought to be sandwiched between these metaphorical  bookends.  I see this burden and I seek to offer relief to a country in the throes of a terrible headache, which, if these simple steps could only be carried out, might finally find that bottle of aspirin it thought lost and entirely used up.

                We, as a country, have lost jobs in three ways.  Through exporting manufacturing, in search of workers for whom money is less dear or demanded in smaller quantities.  Through the importation of similar immigrants to do building and farming in this county, once again for a lesser quantity of currency than American workers might request.  And finally through mechanization, which has increased efficiency, output, regularity of product, reduced costs and robbed innocent Americans of their rightfully deserved jobs.  All three of these losses are unacceptable, and the danger must be fought on all of these fronts.

                Let us make it our goal to eliminate these past follies and to wipe the slate clean.  The first problem we ought to seek to overcome, and the one most odious to the average American, would be the trouble of shipping manufacturing oversees.  Putting aside those who claim that this saves companies little money due to the costs of shipping, intermittent electricity and manufacturing irregularities, protecting trade secrets and the intransience of manufacturing costs – for to try and prove these facts to multinationals would be a waste of time and effort.  And putting aside also those that say the trouble is not the export of jobs but the lack of job regulations to ensure a decent quality of life in those foreigners involved in manufacturing – for if we can’t keep half the world as servants we shall surely make up all the lost jobs in the increased demand for psychologists to counter the blow to our self esteem.  So the obvious solution is to put up a military blockade, removing us from world affairs and forcibly preventing any trading ships to enter our ports.  It is the only way to be completely sure.  Unfortunately a wall, or perhaps a military defensive line, will need to be put up between us and Canada and Mexico as well, to ensure that no goods are snuck in through this way.  That may be offensive to our neighbor countries, who might even overreact so much as to claim it a renunciation of former treaties or an act of war.  Luckily, once we’ve removed ourselves from world affairs that will no longer be an issue.  Many people will be able to get jobs checking all passenger transport allowed past the blockades for any items of foreign manufacture.

                Also troubling is the importation of foreigners to work in agriculture, building and low paying summer jobs along the coasts.  Luckily, our blockade will be able to prevent the majority of them from making their way in easily, and coupled with a cessation of the issuance of work visas we should be able to cover the majority of this problem with no major or drastic action.  However, the lack of direct, drastic action is what got us into this mess in the first place.  Therefore, we should be thorough and take steps to remove the areas of the economy these pilfered jobs tend to cluster around.  All orchards and other labor intensive agricultural crops will be blocked off by military blockade.  All construction projects should be immediately halted until a council can be formed to form a council to manage the ways in which we ought regulate employment in this field.  And all coastal resorts and other areas that draw in foreign workers will have to be closed, burned and sanitized to prevent their being rebuilt in the same location.  By which, of course, I mean that we must bomb those areas of our coastline out of existence.  But the relocation work to find new homes and build them for the dislocated residents of that coast will create a huge number of jobs.  Unfortunately the halt on construction will put a damper on that, but exceptions might be made in times of extreme need.

                The third and most insidious threat we face as a country is the mechanization of our lives, our work and our manufacturing, which as greatly reduced the amount of work that requires doing in this country.  The only obvious way to thwart this mechanization that springs to mind would be to cease the production of electricity in this country, except that which provides for the military blockade and other necessary job producing measures.  Without electricity the factories will no longer be able to run in their mechanized, insidious ways.  Like a more successful band of English cottagers, we will rid ourselves of the machines that have stolen our jobs and make again the world through the honest labor of Americans, a country founded upon a strong puritan work ethic and the forced slavery of millions.

                Let the good work begin, my friends.

*  Warning:  This is a work of satire.  Please do not bomb our coastline, destroy our economy, blockade our oceans or take life too seriously.  Thank you for your time.  *