Eleven Minutes

For I am the first and the last
I am the venerated and the despised
I am the prostitute and the saint
I am the wife and the virgin
I am the mother and the daughter
I am the arms of my mother
I am barren and my children are many
I am the married woman and the spinster
I am the woman who gives birth and she
who never procreated
I am the consolation for the pain of birth
I am the wife and the husband
And it was my man who created me
I am the mother of my father
I am the sister of my husband
And he is my rejected son
Always respect me
For I am the shameful and the magnificent one

Hymn to Isis, 3rd or 4th century B.C. discovered in Nag Hammadi

[passage]
When we meet someone and fall in love, we have a sense that the whole universe is on our side. I saw this happen today as the sun went down. And yet if something goes wrong, there is nothing left! No herons, no distant music, not even the taste of lips. How is it possible for the beauty that was there only minutes before to vanish so quickly?
Life moves very fast. IT rushes us from heaven to hell in a matter of seconds.
p 9


[passage]
I've realized that sometimes you get no second chance and that its best to accept the gifts the world offers you. Of course its risky, but is the risk any greater than the chance of the bus that took 48 hours to bring me here having an accident? If I must be faithful to someone or something, then I have, first of all, to be faithful to myself. If I'm looking for true love, I first have to get the mediocre loves out of my system. The little experience of life I've had has taught me that no one owns anything, that everything is an illusion - and that applies to material as well as spiritual things. Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever (as has happened often enough to me already) finally comes to realize that nothing really belongs to them.
And if nothing belongs to me, then there's no point wasting my time looking after things that aren't mine; its best to live as if today were the first or last day of my life.
pg 26

[passage]
And all for eleven minutes a day? It wasn't possible. After her experiences at the Copacabana she knew that she wasn't the only person who felt lonely. Human beings can withstand a week without water, two week without food, many years of homelessness, but not loneliness. It is the worst of all tortures, the worst of all sufferings. Like her, these men, and the many others who sought her company, were all tormented by that same destructive feeling, the sense that no one else on the planet cared about them.
pg 88

[passage]
That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it.
pg 90

[passage]
"I had a happy childhood, I studied at one of the best schools in Berne, then I came to work in Geneva, where i met and married the man I loved. I did everything for him and he did everything for me; time passed and he retired. When he was free to do exactly what he wanted with his time, his eyes grew sadder, because he had probably never really thought about himself all his life. We never had any serious arguments or any great excitements, he was never unfaithful to me and was never rude to me in public. We lived a very ordinary life, so much so that, without a job to do, he felt useless, unimportant, and, a year later he died of cancer."
pg 93

[passage]
But in order to do that, we need the other person,. The universe only makes sense when we have someone to share our feelings with.
pg 116

[passage]
Egypt, Rome, and Persia all shared the notion that a man can save his country and his world by sacrificing himself. Whenever there was a great natural disaster in CHina, the emperor was punished, because he was the divinity's Earthly representative. In ancient Greece, the finest Spartan warriors were whipped once a year, from morning till night, in homage to the goddess Artemis, while the crowd urged them on, calling on them to withstand the pain with dignity, for it was preparing them for world of war. At the end of the day, the priests would examine the wounds on the warriors' backs and use them to predict the city's future.
pg 187

[passage]
The pain seemed about to invade her soul now and undermine her spiritually, because its one thing to put on a bit of theater in a 5 star hotel, naked with vodka and caviar inside you and a whip between your legs, but its quite another to be cold and barefoot, with stones lacerating your feet. She was disoriented she couldn't think of a single thing to say to Ralf Hart; all that existed in her universe were those small, sharp stones that formed the path between the trees.
Then just when she thought she was about to give up, she was filled by a strange feeling: she had reached her limit and beyond it was an empty space, in which she seemed to float above herself, unaware of what she was feeling. Was this what the penitents had experienced? At the far extremity of pain, she had discovered a door into a different level of consciousness, and there was no room now for anything but implacable nature and her own invincible self.
Everything around her became a dream: ill-lit garden, the dark lake, the man walking beside her, saying nothing, the occasional couple out for a stroll, who failed to notice that she was barefoot and having difficulty walking. She didn't know if it was the cold or the pain, but she suddenly lost all sense of her own body and entered a state in which there was no desire and no fear, only a mysterious - how could describe it? a mysterious peace. The pain barrier was not a barrier for her; she could go beyond it.
She thought of all the people enduring unasked-for suffering and there she was, bringing suffering upon hersef, but that didn't matter anymore, she had crossed the frontiers of the body, and now there was only soul, "light", a kind of void, which someone, some day, called Paradise. There are certain sufferings which can only be forgotten once we have succeeded in floating above our own pain.
197

[passage]
"Does a solider go to war in order to kill the enemy? No, he goes in order to die for his country. Does a wife, want to show her husband how happy she is? No, she wants him to see how devoted she is, how she suffers in order to make him happy. Does the husband go to work thinking he will find personal fulfillment there? No, he is giving his sweat and tears for the good of the family. And so it goes on: sons give up their dreams to please their parents, parents give up their lives in order to please their children; pain and suffering are used to justify the one thing that should bring only joy: love."
201

[passage]
One day, a women saw this bird and fell in love with him. She watched his flight, her mouth wide in amazement, her heart pounding, her eyes shining with excitement. She invited the bird to fly with her, and the two travelled across the sky in perfect harmony. She admired and venerated and celebrated that bird.
But then she thought: He might want to visit far off mountains! ANd she was afraid that she would never feel the same way about any other bird. And she felt envy, envy for the bird's ability to fly.
And she felt alone.
And she thought: "I'm going to set a trap. THe next time the bird appears, he will never leave again."
The bird, who was also in love, returned the following day, fell into the trap and was put in a cage.
She looked at the bird every day. There he was, the object of her passion, and she showed him to her friends, who said: "Now you have everything you could possibly want." However, a strange transformation began to take place: now that she had the bird and no longer needed to woo him, she began to lose interest. The bird, unable to fly and express the true meaning of his life, began to waste away and his feathers to lose their gloss; he grew ugly; and the woman no longer paid him any attention, except by feeding him and cleaning out his cage.
One day, the bird died. The woman felt terribly sad and spent all her time thinking about him. But she did not remember the cage, she thought only of the day when she had seen him for the first time, flying contentedly amongst the clouds.
IF she had looked more deeply into herself, she would have realized that what had thrilled her about the bird was his freedom, the energy of his wings tin motion, not his physical body.
Without the bird, her life too lost all meaning, and Death came knocking at her door. "Why have you come?" she asked Death. "So that you can fly once more with him across the sky," Death replied. "If you had allowed him to come and go, you would have loved and admired him even more; alas, you now need me in order to find him again."
214

[passage]
I don't remember exactly when, but one Sunday recently, I decided to go to church to attend mass. After some time, I realized that i was in the wrong church - it was a Protestant church.
I was about to leave, but the vicar was just beginning his sermon, and I thought it would be rude to get up at that point, and it was a real blessing, because that day I heard things I very much needed to hear.
HE said something like:
"In all the languages of the world, there is the same proverb: 'What the eyes don't see, the heart doesn't grieve over.' Well, I say that there isn't an ounce of truth in it. The further off they are, the closer to the heart are all those feelings that we try to repress and forget. If we're in exile, we want to store away every tiny memory of our roots. If we're far from the person we love, everyone we pass in the street reminds us of them.
"The gospels and all the sacred texts of all religions were written in exile, in search of God's understanding, of the faith that moves whole peoples, of the pilgrimage of souls wandering the face of the Earth. Our ancestors did not know as we do not know what the Divinity expects from our lives - and it is out of that doubt that books are written, pictures painted, because we don't want to forget who we are - nor can we."
231

[passage]
"Do you find it normal that there are daily demonstrations by Kurds? THat women in love run away from their Prince Charming? That people dream about farms rather than love? That men and women sell their time, but can never buy it back again? ANd yet, all these things happen , so it really doesn't matter what I believe or don't believe; all these things are normal. Everything that goes against Nature, against our most intimate desires, is normal in our eyes, even though it's an aberration in God's eyes. We seek out our own inferno, we spend millennia building it, and after all that effort we are now able to live in the worst possible way."
239

[passage]
IN the beginning, everything was love and surrender. But then the serpent appeared and said to Eve: what you surrendered, you will lose. That is how it was with me - I was driven out of paradise when I was still at school, and ever since then, I have been trying to find a way of telling the serpent he was wrong, that living was more important than keeping things to yourself. But the serpent was right right and I was wrong.
pg 259

Euclid's Window

EUCLID'S WINDOW

LIST OF BOOKS TO READ THAT ARE REFERENCED:


Elements - Euclid
Arithmetica
Conic Sections
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - By Voltaire and Gibbons
Topographia Christiana - Concept that the World is Flat
Discourse by Renee Descartes

THE GOLDEN AGE - THE STORY OF EUCLID

Thales - predicted the first solar eclipse and stopped a war. Learned from the Egyptians and Babylonians about math. Told Pythagoras to go there, which he listened and spent many years of his life there.

Found by Pythagoras - One of the first natural laws of science discovered was that sound was directly related to the length of a string on a harp. Half notes relative to length of strings on a harp. compared to Jesus often. Walked on water, calmed the storms, thought to have been raised from the dead. Spent a lot of time on the mount.

Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Alexander the Great - Alexander encouraged interbreeding with nations not from Greece. This likely increased the gene pool and created smarter races (but perhaps questionable as this would have to occur over several generations to take full effect). Also he had envisioned to create a great educated metropolis and call it Alexandria. The city was eventually built and a great museum housed over 200,000 scrolls (no such thing as books at that time).

Euclid
Abraham Lincoln studied Euclid
Kant defended him
Spinoza praised him
Opened a school in Alexandria, scorned materialsim
Famous for works on Conics (Cone and a plane)
Lookup Conics again and Calculus
Newton had assumed that the orbit of Mercury stays constant forever. Some scientists later proved that it deviated a very small amount every 100 years. Einstein proved why. So Newtonian theory broke down. Similarly the logic proof asked to Bertrand Russell as it was stated in logic that if there is one fallacy then anyone can prove that 1 and 2 are equal. Once someone stated to him ok. Prove to me that you are the pope if 1 and 2 are equal. His response was after a few seconds.... the Pope and myself are 2. Therefore the pope and I are one.

Euclid wrote the book 'The Elements'
The idea of the parallel postulate. One line and one dot outside of the line. There only exists one parallel line that you can draw on that plane.
Ptolemy I, II and III built a huge museum in Alexandria that essentially became the center for all Greek thought going forward and acted as a library. Many scrolls were written here through forced labor (copies of the Old Testament).

Eratosthenes - 212 BC. Had estimated the circumference of the earth. By taking a location that casted no shadow (the summer solstice in Aswan) and compared that with the angle of the shadow. His student measured the distance between Aswan and Alexandria, the metropolis with the great museum. According to the laws that Euclid had found and the circumfernce of a circle he found the arc length to be 1/ 50 to that of the earth. And estimated that the circumference to be 25,000 miles, which was off by 4%.

Alexandria existed until 400 AD - The life of Hypatia coincided with the fall of Alexandria. She was likely the first successful female mathematician and was taught under her father Theon who was a student of the school in Alexandria. She surpassed him in knowledge it is claimed and became a knowledgeable philosopher regarding the works of Aristotle and Plato. A Roman became jealous of her power and started a rumor that she was which. She was eventually dragged and beaten from her chariot into a church; skinned alive and killed. Her body parts were dismembered and separated to various parts of Rome. Likely could have been the earliest feminist. Her works were destroyed along with the 200,000 scrolls that existed in that museum. Some works were passed down. Soclaphes was rumored to have written over 100 plays. 7 of which became published eventually. There was never a great mathemetician that came out of Rome and actually the work Topographia Christiana was put into publication by a Roman who had said the world was flat based on Christian beliefs not logic.

Voltaire and Edward Gibbon wrote a book called the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

THE STORY OF DESCARTES

Next great mathematicians wouldn't come until several centuries later. The concept of maps and cartography advanced mankind forward.

Nicole d'Oresme - invented the graph. Proved the Merton Rule. Speed vs. Time. The area of the graph under the curve is distance travelled. We eventually find out that the slope of any line is acceleration. But that a constant speed (rectangle) graphed against a constant acceleration (triangle) will equate if the half way point the two are going the same speed. Had first notion of relativity. A person standing a ship moving quite fast moves his arm up and down vertically. Anyone standing on the ship will see it move up and down vertically. Anyone standing on the dock will see a diagonal movement. Often called Galilean Relativity. He thought that the earth may rotate and move around the sun (like Galileo figured out), but later detached himself from this notion as he became more involved with the church. Psalm 93:1 was the verse he thought contracted the rotation of the earth. Never wrote but was famous for agreeing with Socrates that all he knew was that he knew nothing. His progress didn't go very far until Descartes.

Edward Tufte's 'Visual Display of Quantitative Information'

Rene Descartes - Created Cartesian coodinate system. Equation of circle x2+y2=r2 (r2 being a constant), thus he used algebra. He was agitated by the Greek's inefficient use of geometry or explanations. He thought there should be a better system. He met Isaac Beekman by accident by solving a public math problem quite easily. It wasn't necessarily the coordinate system that was interesting (as the idea was already made in maps during Ptolemy's time). It was his use of the co-ordinate system. Came up with ax + by + c = 0 (essentially y= mx + b). He was scared to publish anything because of the Catholic Church. First to explain the physics of the rainbow and the refraction of light. Galileo lived in the same era and published 'The Dialogue of Two Chief Systems'. The book was burned and he was forced to renounce it and he imprisoned indefinitely. This work delayed Descartes book Discourse until 1637. He was physically attacked for believing that reason and observation could determine truth. He believed that people could control nature and that all cures would eventually be found and that people would eventually find eternal life. Throughout his life he was famous for his lack of emotion. He did not marry but had an affair with a lady named Helen, whom they had a daughter together. She died of illness at 10 years of age and devastated Descartes. He had later been invited by the Queen of Sweden (23 years of age and very well educated); she promised him to that an academy would be dedicated in his name and that he must be a personal tutor to her when he arrived; 1649 was one of the coldest winters in Sweden and he caught pneumonia and died on February 11th, 1650. "It seems to me that men's thoughts freeze here in winter just like the water..."


THE STORY OF GAUSS

He had been the one that defied 2000 years of Greek geometry. Or rather Euclid's 5th rule; the parallel postulate. He had discovered curved spaces which would essentially result in Einstein's theory of relativity and his assumptions of curved space. Born 50 years after Newton died, Gauss considered one of the greatest mathemticians to have lived. From Germany born 1777. At the age of 2 or 3 could do mathematics and no one had taught him. (Father adding his payrolls and son found a mistake, father didn't know he was watching). Went to a very strict school where children were whipped; Gauss had easily excelled way past his classmates. He was asked to add all the numbers from 1 to 100, which he easily did in minutes and did not write anything down; the answer being 5050. His teacher was astonished but Gauss had used the logic of multiplying 50x101.... a short cut to a sum of a series; which was a password used in Pythagoras' days. His teacher found the most advanced textbook at the time and Gauss thought the math was too easy at the age of 9. His teacher felt he could teach him no more so passed him on to his grad student. As he became a teenager of age 12, he started to wonder if space was actually curved. and started criticizing the 2000 year old mathematical law of Euclid. His father was a farmer and mother uneducated but mother was very proud of him and when he was able to go to University, his father wanted him to be a farmer but his mother stood firm on Gauss going to further his education. Gauss' supporter was a duke that paid for his school and afterwards; the duke died because of Napoleonic wars. Ironically, Napoleon spared the city which Gauss was from because Napoleon did not want to destroy the city where the greatest mathematician lived. He fell in love with Johanna who brought him tremendous joy.

His quote when he fell in love: "For 3 days, that angel, almost too celestial for this earth, has been my fiancee. I am superabundantly happy... Her cardinal trait is a quiet devout soul without one drop of bitterness or sourness. Oh, she is much better than I .... I had never hoped for this bliss; I am not handsome, not gallant, I have nothing to offer except a candid heart full of devoted love; I despaired of ever finding love."

She died later after their 3rd child was born. Shortly after 2 of his children died. He remarried but never found the same joy ever again as his first love. His quote near death:
"Lonesome, I sneak about the happy people who surround me here. If for a few moments they make me forget my sorrow, it comes back with double force..... Even the bright sky makes me sadder...."

Huge leaps forward in Geometry; although would be very secretive of his work. Created a space called hyperbolic geometry. Gauss feared Kant and his followers the most, who died in 1804.

List of Philosophers

LIST OF PHILOSOPHERS

Book List:
Poem on Nature by Parminides
Elements
Meditations
Confessions
City of God
The Consolation of Philosophy
Summa Theolgica by St. Thomas Aquinas
The Last Days of Socrates
Prince
Discourses

PRESOCRATICS

620 BC Thales of Miletus - the first natural scientist in Western Intellectual History and first philosopher of ancient Greece. Fundamental nature of the world is water. First thinker to not use the Homeric gods to explain the nature of the world. Correctly predicted a solar eclipse in 585 BC. Was an entrepreneur and invested in oil presses before a heavy olive crop. Water was the first principle of life - 3 states of water and moisture was needed in all things. He predicted that the flat earth floated on water and had buoyancy much like a ship on water. Thought that earthquakes were a result of subterrainean waves similar to a ship being rocked at sea. Thought God was in all things and was the mind of the universe - how India, Buddhism work.

550 BC Pythagoras of Samos - X2 + Y2 = Z2 in a right angled triangle. Thought that Babylonians and Egyptians knew this formula as well. (Was thought that Pythagoras travelled here as a boy. His students documented his thoughts and never wrote anything himself. He was a mystic and considered sort of cult leader. Taught students not to eat beans. Preached reincarnation and transmigration of souls, much like Nostradamus. Thought that nature of reality is numbers. Music has a special power over the soul and that intervals of music can be expressed in ratios of 1 to 4. The tetractys become an object of worship for Pythagoreans. The number 10 and four by four by four triangle. Later 2 schools of thought after him into religious teachings and scientific/math teachings. Ratio of a diagonal through a square of its sides could not be a whole number. (From Euclid's Window - He had many parallels to Christ. Rumored he lived on a mount, he could walk on water, he rose from the dead (but later to have thought it was a trap door, calm the waters, control the winds, appear at 2 places at once. He may have came up with Descartes system if he had just used a variable instead of claiming that irrational numbers were evil).

570 BC Xenophanes of Colophon - If horses could draw they would draw their gods like horses. Disagreed with Pythagoras. Criticized the Homerian gods because they had all the same flaws as humans did. Challenged Pythagoras that of the transmigration of souls into other beings, but said there was one single entity that causes all things through thought of his mind and does not resemble humans. Thought the first principle was mud not water as Thales had proclaimed. Based his thoughts on observation. Had saw fossils and thought that the world had dried up life and then recreated life through a reversal of the process. Predating Socrates, he thought that we should use caution regarding certain knowledge because that philosophical certainties could not be had. Even if we had hit upon the truth there was no way of knowing that things are as we think they are for certain. (perfect ex is Newton vs Einstein on concepts of time). Father to Karl Popper in thought.

600 BC Heraclitus - nicknamed 'The Riddler' cuz he would not explain the source of his logic. Everything is in a state of flux, or change and war and strife between opposites is the eternal condition of the universe. Mirrors the Oriental concepts of Yin and Yang. Antagonist to all of the above. Said Homer should've been whipped in public. Thought the 3 basic elements were Earth, Fire and Water. First version of the periodic table. Watery elements result in sleep, stupidity and vice. Thought there was a cosmic fire within man and that the virtuous soul can survive death of its physical body and eventually rejoin the cosmic fire. "God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, fullness and hunger." Thought that universal tension was necessary in order for change to continue and universal tension was eternally necessary. Permanence does not exist in the universe. (similar to Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching). Sounds very cynical as he had clear contempt for those that cannot see what is clearly in front of them. READ HIM... his cynical quotes.

ELEATICS
510 BC Parmendines of Elea - wrote a poem 'On Nature' and only fragments of it are left. One of the first examples of reasoned argument and disagreed with Heraclitus. Thought that change was homogenous and that reality is singular. His first part of the poem is called 'The Way of Truth', which he says was revealed by meeting a Goddess. (perhaps the virgin, or the sacred female in a certain form... just as Melchizek is Christ in the old testament... look up where he is stated). Difference of what it means to exist in the mind or exist in the world. Anselm's argument 1500 years later started to delve into this subject (READ HIM). Difference between words, thoughts and things (Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, WV Quine, TOLLE). Thought that there is no change because anything that exists in the future must have been thought of by someone else in the past. Coming into being and passing away are illusory, change is illusory: everything is one, undivided, changeless and eternal.

490 BC Zeno of Elea - "Achilles can never catch the tortoise no matter how fast he runs". Thought any 3D object could be split into infinity: therefore continuous and not discrete.

ACADEMICS
470 to 399 BC Socrates - "The only thing i know is that i know nothing". Born in Athens, there was great political upheaval. How we ought to live. What a good life for man might be. Father of Ethics. Was accused of corrupting the minds of the young. The only thing he was sure of was his own ignorance. About 70 years old when he was brought to trial. Put to death by the drinking of hemlock. Documented by Plato's: Apology, Crito and Phaedo".

427 to 347 BC - Plato - Lived to be 80 years old. The safest characterization of Western Philosophy is that a of a series of footnotes to Plato. Founder of the Academy, the first university. The world of experience is illusory. Only that which is unchanging and eternal is real. Tolle speaks of this too (linked to Parmindes). Universal concepts such as beauty, justice, truth and mathematical concepts. Theory of Forms is in Plato's Republic: A utopian society led by an elite class of guardians who are trained from birth for the task of ruling. (My dream is it not). Much like communism (Russell had critiqued this idea), the individual would figure out how his talents could benefit society the best and go to work the best he could. Is Plato's utopia the same as Marx?

384 to 322 BC - Aristotle - He only lived 62 years on earth. More than just a philosopher, Aristotle was a scientist, astronomer and political theorist and inventor of symbolic or formal logic. His writings on justice are still required readings for law school in modern times. Was preserved through Islam and Syria, ignored by Christians until St. Thomas Aquinas reconciled it into Christian doctrine in the 13th century. Started education at Plato's Academy at age 17. He stayed here for 20 years until Plato's death. Founded his own institution called 'The Lyceum'. Used much data and observation in his studies. Father of empirical science and the scientific method. Everything has a purpose (look at the scientific method step 1). 'John goes to work to make money, John goes to school to get a job, a job exists to make money, money is needed for many purposes that john has'. Man's highest purpose is to reason.

ATOMISTS
460 to 370 BC Democritus - The fundamental nature of the universe consists of indivisible atoms in constant motion. Thought that the universe consists of indivisible atoms in constant motion and traveling in an infinite void. Every event in the universe is caused by some pre-determined event. Much like a billiard ball hitting another ball causes both to go into a different direction. Newton agreed with his theory of the infinite void and matter. Einstein disagreed and believed that space should be treated as matter

341 to 270 BC Epicurus - his ethics consisted of in the pursuit of happiness, conceived of as the elimination of pain. Believed that free will was the result of atoms being free to choose which way they should travel. The soul was just a bunch of atoms moving within the material body. However, he that that happiness was the elimination of mental and physical pain. Mental pain being worse as it can overcome physical pain. Wisdom was the greatest virtue because it allowed one to recognize the difference between pain and pleasure; happiness comes from being virtuous not because of being good, but because it resulted in pleasure and not pain.

CYNICS
400 to 325 BC Diogenes of Sinope - Nicknamed the dog for his vagrant lifestyle, Diogenes was described as 'a Socrates gone mad' (Plato described him this way). Happiness could only be achieved by living according to nature. Reviled metaphysics and pretensions of philosophers. He begged, refused to wear anything but simple cloth; once masturbated in front of a large crowd to show how easily and trivially sexual desires can be sated. Mastery of self, leads to both happiness and freedom but requires constant practice and training in the face of adversity. One should abandon all property, possessions, family ties, social values in order to minimize the distraction of illusory emotional and psychological attachments. This is almost anarchist. Was highly influential among stoic philosophers and had a counterpart in Buddhism and Taoism.

STOICS
106 to 43 BC Marcus Tullius Cicero - dialogues are principally a 'pick and mix' of the three leading Greek philosophical schools. Came up with the term ceterus paribas.

20 BC Philo of Alexandria - A Jew by birth and upbringing; remembered for for his philosophical commentaries on the scriptures. The mind belonged to God and is of God whereas the body belongs to the world. The rational and irrational are the 2 parts of the soul and are bound together by the spirit. The goal of man is to reach out to the divine and so return as far as possible to the divine source. Scriptures should not be taken literally but allegorically; contains hidden truths. Tried to take Plato's philosophy and apply it to the book of Moses. First influential Jewish / Greek philosopher.

4 BC to AD65 Lucius Annaeus Seneca - the heart of his philosophy was the belief in a simple life devoted to virtue and reason. Committed suicide and was imprisoned 3 times. Falsely accused of planning against Nero. We can attain happiness only by acting in accord with our own true nature, as revealed by our inner guide, and by being content with one's lot in life.

121 to 180 Marcus Aurelius - The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts. He wrote 'Meditations'. All ensouled beings strive towards self-preservation. Self-preservation leads a being to look for that which is in tune with its nature and appropriate to its own being. Man being endowed with reason, seeks not just food, warmth and shelter, but also that which is good for the intellect. Ultimately, reason allows us to choose that which is in tune with our true nature with greater accuracy than if we merely follow our animal instinct. Virtue includes the usual list of Greco-Roman excellences: wisdom, justice, courage and moderation. GLADIATOR???

SCEPTICS
10 to 200 Sextus Empiricus - The intention of scepticism is to bring about a kind of therapeutic apostasy. Because of the logical gap we cannot close because knowledge of reality is always mediated by the fallible bodily senses, there is no way in proving that things are really one way rather than another.A sceptic, by suspending all judgement of what is good or bad, right or wrong, true or false, neither pursues nor avoids anything with any passion or intensity. He remains indifferent to the vicissitudes of life, and hence achieves tranquillity. This is the heart of Buddha's teaching.

NEOPLANTONISTS
205 to 270 Plotinus - believed in a trio of divinities, these being the One, the Intellect and the Soul. The One is the ineffable mystical source of reality. The Intellect is the intuitive knowledge. Soul corresponds to rational or discursive thinking. Intellect is the higher part of the soul, Nature is the lower part of the soul which is materialism.

CHRISTIANS
354 to 430 St. Augustine of Hippo - Rational thought is the servant of faith: unless thou believe thou shalt not understand (last part in Isaiah). Wrote Confessions and City of God. Only through faith can wisdom be attained. He saw that philosophy and religion as quests for the same thing, namely truth, but with the former inferior to the latter in this pursuit. The philosopher without faith could never attain to the ultimate truth. In his youth he had renounced religion, finding the scriptures intellectually unsatisfying. After converting to Christianity in his early thirties, it became his aim to show how reason could prove the tenets of faith. All men are born in sin. Redemption is only possible by the grace of God regardless of our actions on earth. Adam by taking the apple had condemned himself by taking the apple. Confessions I. 8 - talks about how to read people through bodily language and expressions on their faces as a universal language.

480 to 524 Boethius - Those that do ill shall suffer more if they are not caught than those that are. Was executed by a gothic king, Theodoric. He wrote De Consolatione Philosophiae (or The Consolation of Philosophy), the most widely read and influential book after the Bible up to and throughout the Middle Ages. Boethius has a conversation with Philosophy alternately written in prose (his thoughts and reflections) and verse (wisdom and philosophy responds this way). Unlike Augustine he appeals to reason rather than faith; he delves into the problems of evil, free will, determinism, the nature of justice and of virtue. The substance of God consists of nothing but goodness; taken from Plato. God is a spectator rather than an intervening agent. 'Virtuous men are always powerful, and bad men always weak, for both desire the good but only the virtuous get it.' HIs work in The Consolation of Philosophy is compared to that of The Last Days of Socrates. Freewill vs. predestination argument.

SCHOLASTICS
1033 to 1109 St Anselm - 'The quality of perfection is an attribute only applicable to God'. His students challenged him to come up with an argument for the existence of God. He came up with the Ontological argument for the existence of God. God = something than which nothing greater can be thought of. It is a contradiction to say there is something than which nothing can greater can be thought and then doesn't exist. A God thought of that does not exist is surpassed by a God that can be thought of and does exist. So therefore suppose he exists, something than which nothing greater can be thought of must be something that exists. St. Thomas and Descartes had been proponents of this; whereas Kant was against it.

1225 to 1274 St Thomas Aquinas - If the hand does not move the stick, the stick will not move anything else. He believed that faith first was more important than reason and that reason could explain faith, faith was more powerful. Reconciled Aristotle with the Catholic church. Came up with the 5 ways to prove the existence of God in Summa Theologica: (1) Concept of change - We see and witness change and it continues on ad infinitum. It follows that there must have been a source of the change. The first mover must be God. (2) There are always causes to every series, but there must be a first cause of the series or there could not be a series at all. NOTE: both of these first two theories rely on the fact that a thing cannot cause itself. But he assumes that God can cause itself so a huge contradiction in logic. philosophers criticize this form of logic as the proposition that is concluded in the argument is the very same one being denied in the argument. (3) We observe that things come into being and then pass away, but clearly not everything can be like this for then there would have been a time when nothing existed. But something can't come from nothing. The first 3 arguments are called Cosmological arguments. (4) Things have a varying degree of quality good, hot, noble. These are affected by some perfect degree of quality; for example all hot things come from the perfect hot source, the sun. It follows there must be some other good thing that makes all other things good; meaning God. (5) Concept of Purpose - that all things have a greater purpose or goal (taken from Aristotle). The director of that is God. Catholic church still accepts his teachings; most modern philosophers reject all 5 teachings.

1266 to 1308 John Duns Scotus - is immortalized in the English language for giving his name to the term 'dunce'. (1) There are principles known by themselves (2) There are things known immediately by experience (3) There is knowledge of our own actions. He specifically was more famous for his argument as space and time being part of form. If we say form rather than matter is what makes a thing up. Form includes space and time rather then just matter. For if it was just matter then 2 genetically identical apples could be said to be the exact same thing when they are of course 2 separate things or objects. So the space and time that thing occupies also is part of the form that makes it up so if that becomes a necessary part of the object then of course both are separate entities. Large subject of debate in philosophy.

? - 1347 William of Occam - Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity. Religious maverick and was in trouble with the Church quite often. Likely died of the plague. Why postulate two separate theories when one will do. A minimalist in theory. Also believed in singularity; no intervention from a supreme being but that it is still the source of all things. So believed in free will.

THE AGE OF SCIENCE
1473 to 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus - revived the idea that the earth and the planets revolve around the sun. Polish scientist. Inventor of modern astronomy he delayed his publication for fear of censure from the Church. Studied Greek philosophy, mathematics, medicine, astronomy, theology. Truly believed that his views and findings were consistent with his theology. Prior to Copernicus followed that the earth was the center of the universe; through Aristotle and Ptolemy. His theory was actually originally thought of in 340 BC. Earth does one full rotation every 24 hours and rotates around the sun every 364 days. Church vigorously resisted since it placed man at the centrepoint of the universe. Said his own work was hypothetical but the evidence was too enormous eventually from the scientists Galileo, Newton, Kepler. The heliocentric theory was eventually irrefutable but condemned by the Church. Copernicus was very careful and dedicated his work to the pope. Later the Church condemned the work as heretical. Copernicus was the turning point and the birth of the Scientific age and the fall of the power of the Church.

1467 to 1527 Niccolo Machiavelli - Never has the ends justify the means been more appropriate. Born in Florentine during the Italian Renaissance. If a ruler realizes that ends are worthwile, he considers how best to achieve his ends. 3 primary political goods: (1) National Security (2) National Independence (3) Strong constitution. One must pursue one's convictions with strength and courage if one is to be successful, employing whatever means necessary. The manipulation of others for power. It can often serve one's political ends to appear to be virtuous. (likely causal of most outrage). The Prince was written more extreme than his other more balanced work Discourses. Machiavelli ultimately believed in a society like Plato's republic run by Princes that was not run by tyranny, but it was how this was ultimately achieved was his concern. (likely speed to the ultimate objective was the issue at hand).

1466 to 1536 Desiderus Erasmus - religion is a confidence in human reason to know and worship God

1478 to 1535 Thomas More
1561 to 1626 Francis Bacon
1564 to 1642 Galileo Galilei
1588 to 1679 Thomas Hobbes
1642 to 1727 Sir Isaac Newton

RATIONALISTS
1596 to 1650 Rene Descartes
1612 to 1694 Antoine Arnauld
1638 to 1715 Nicolas Malebranche
1632 to 1677 Benedict de Spinoza
1646 to 1716 Gottried von Leibniz

EMPERICISTS
1632 to 1704 John Locke
1711 to 1776 David Hume
1710 to 1796 Thomas Reid
1694 to 1778 Voltaire (father of the Enlightenment period)
1712 to 1778 Jean-Jacques Rousseau
1713 to 1784 Denis Diderot

IDEALISTS
1685 to 1783 George Berkeley
1724 to 1804 Immanuel Kant
1759 to 1805 Johann Schiller
1775 to 1854 Fredereck Schelling
1770 to 1831 George Hegel
1788 to 1860 Arthur Schopenhauer

LIBERALS

1723 to 1790 Adam Smith - "unintended consequences of intended action will be to the benefit of society at large". Essentially the idea serving ones own interests one unintentionally serves the interests of the society as a whole. This occurs through the forces of market economyScottish philosopher of morals, politics and economics. Very close to Hume in his thoughts. His theories on thoughts and logic was published in the book titled "Theory of the Moral Sentiments" and political economics in the "The Wealth of Nations". Favored philosopher of Margaret Thatcher. Assumes the absence of a monopoly, which is naive. Unintended consequences are UK and brutal working conditions through exploitation. Some say currently this still occurs but is transferred from Developed to 3rd world nations. Don't think this is necessarily true though because you need a government or form of law that respects generally accepted rules of conduct for human rights.

1759 to 1797 Mary Wollstonecraft - suffrage movement taken seriously after this point forward. "The neglected education of my fellow-creatues is the grand source of misery I deplore." Died at the age of 38 giving birth to a child. Campaigned for the rights of women similar to Thomas Paine. She wrote "Vindication for the Rights of Women" and "Vindication for the Rights of Man". Claimed that British people had the right to remove a bad king and that slavery and the treatment of the poor at that time were immoral. Indeed, unlike some strands of the modern feminist movement she saw the rights of both men and women as mutual and inextricably linked. She was concerned that women's natural abilities were being suppressed through an education that emphasized those to flatter men rather then enhance their own natural abilities as people. Blamed education being written by men and stating that women are not of the same equality but rather treated as mistresses. To treat women as mere trifles encourages them to be cunning and sly, and is perpetuated in children. Advocate of the abolition of the monarchy and dissolution of the church as she saw these as oppressive regimes. If she had not died so early she may have pushed the rights of women much faster. The world had to wait 200 years later for Simone de Beauvoir to find an equal that just as much influence.

1737 to 1809 Thomas Paine - "The proceeds of land and property tax should be invested in a welfare system." English philospher and invented the term United States of America. He was forced to flee England. Came to the new world in the 1770s and wrote for the Pennsylvania Magazine calling for the abolition of slavery. Wrote the book "Common Sense". Also wrote and published "The Rights of Man". Also wrote the "Age of Reason". rejects organized religion and a vengeful God portrayed in the Old Testament. the original foundations of the USA were based on his philosophy. He is rarely mentioned.

1748 to 1832 Jeremy Bentham
1806 to 1873 John Stuart Mill
1798 to 1857 August Comte

EVOLUTIONISTS
1809 to 1892 Charles Darwin
1859 to 1941 Henri Louis Bergson
1861 to 1947 A. N. Whitehead

PRAGMATISTS
1838 to 1916 Ernst Mach
1839 to 1914 Charles Peirce
1842 to 1910 Williams James
1859 to 1952 John Dewey

MATERIALISTS
1818 to 1883 Karl Marx
1820 to 1895 Friedrich Engels
1870 to 1924 Vladimir Lenin
1856 to 1939 Sigmund Freud
1875 to 1961 Carl Jung
1883 to 1946 John Maynard Keynes

EXISTENTIALISTS
1813 to 1855 Soren Kierkegaard
1844 to 1900 Friedrich Nietzche
1858 to 1938 Edmund Husserl
1889 to 1976 Martin Heidegger
1905 to 1980 Jean-Paul Sartre
1913 to 1960 Albert Camus
1908 to 1986 Simone de Beauvoir

LINGUISTIC TURN
1848 to 1925 Gottlob Frege - father of the information age
1872 to 1970 Bertrand Russell
1889 to 1951 Ludwig Wittgenstein
1857 to 1913 Ferdinand de Saussure
1873 to 1958 George Edward Moore
1882 to 1936 Mortiz Schlick
1896 to 1934 Lev Vygotsky
1891 to 1970 Rudolph Carnap
1910 to 1989 A.J. Ayer
1902 to 1983 Alfred Tarski
1911 to 1960 J.L. Austin
1900 to 1976 Gilbert Ryle
1928 to current Noam Chomsky

POSTMODERNISTS
1908 to present Claude Levi-Strauss
1926 to 1984 Michel Foucault
1930 to 2004 Jacques Derrida

NEW SCIENTISTS
1858 to 1917 Emile Durkheim
1879 to 1955 Albert Einstein
1902 to 1994 Karl Popper
1906 to 1978 Kurt Godel
1912 to 1954 Alan Turing
1904 to 1990 B.F. Skinner
1922 to 1996 Thomas Kuhn
1924 to 1994 Paul Feyerabend

1908 to 2000 W.V.O Quine - Wrote the "Pursuit of Truth" in 1990 and was the ultimate empiricist against Kant. Also wrote an article called the "Two Dogmas of Empericism" in the year 1951 and "Word and Object" in 1960. He was born in Akron, Ohio and died Christmas day. Influential in mathematical logic. "Only science can tell us about the world: it is the final arbiter of truth." And the way we obtain our knowledge is through sensory perceptions.

By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept by Paulo Coelho

Try and visit the geography of these places when visiting Spain in the future:
Soria - the small town where Pilar, the main female character that speaks in first person in the book is from.
Zaragoza - where she listens to the lecture
Madrid - Plaza Cybel there is a fountain

Pilar was only 17 when they had first met.

Perhaps love makes us old before our time - or young if youth has passed. But how can i not recall those moments? That is why i write - to try to turn sadness into longing, solitude into remembrance. So that when i finish telling myself the story, I can toss it into the Piedra. That's what the woman who has givem shelter told me to do. Only the - in the words of the one of the saints - will the water extinguish what the flames have written. All love stories are the same. p 2

Men lived through movement, while we remained close to the womb of the Mother. This allowed us to see that seeds are turned into plants, and we told this to the men. We made the first bread, into plants and we fed our people. We shaped the first cup so that we could drink. And we came to understand the cycle of creation, because our bodies repeat the rhythm of the moon. p 14

Somehow I was sensing - although I couldn't quite understand it - that the moon was a reflection of my womanhood. - 15

No one can lie, no one can hide anything, when he looks directly into someone's eyes. And any woman with the least bit of sensitivity can read the eyes of a man in love. - 20

We have to listen to the child we once were, the child who still exists inside us. That child understands magic moments. We can stifle its cries, but we cannot silence its voice.
The child we once were is still there. Blessed are the children, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
If we are not reborn - if we cannot learn to look at life with the innocence and the enthusiasm of childhood - it makes no sense to go on living.
There are many ways to commit suicide. Those who try to kill the body violate God's law. Those who try to kill the soul also violate Gods law, even though their crime is less visible to others.
We have to pay attention to what the child in our heart tells us. We should not be embarrassed by this child. We must not allow this child to be scared because the child is alone and is almost never heard.
We must allow the child to take the reins of our lives. The child knows that each day is different from every other day.
We have to allow it to feel loved again. We must please this child - even if this means that we act in ways we are not used to, in ways that may seem foolish to others.
Remember that human wisdom is madness in the eyes of God. but if we listen to the child who lives in our soul, our eyes will grow bright. If we do not lose contact with that child, we will not lose contact with life. p 24

But love is much like a dam: if you all a tiny crack to form through which only a trickle of water can pass, that trickle will quickly bring down the whole structure, and soon no one will be able to control the force of the current.
For when those walls come down, then love takes over, and it no longer matters what is possible or impossible; it doesn't even matter whether we can keep the loved one at our side. To love is to lose control.
No, no, I cannot allow such a crack to form. No matter how small. p 31

"Never mind", he said.
But I knew what he was talking about.
"Don't kid yourself", I said. "We can talk about it if you like. You're mistaken about my feelings."
He stopped fooling with this glass and looked at me. "No I'm not mistaken. I know you don't love me"
This confused me even more.
"But I'm going to fight for your love", he continued. "There are some things in life that are worth fighting for to the end."
I was speechless.
"You are worth it", he said.

Las tardecitas de Buenos Aires tienen este no se...
Que se yo?
Viste, sali de tu casa, por Arenales....
OR Why sing the nights of Beunos Aires, when we were in Bilbao? I didn't live on a street called Arenales. What had gotten into him? p 43

"Because i don't think that's important anymore. There was a time when religion was a part of my life, but that time has passed." p 47

Man Runs into an old friend who had somehow never been able to make it in life. "I should give him some money," he things. But instead he learns that his old friend has grown rich and is actually seeking him out to repay the debts he head run up over the years.
They go to a bar they used to frequent together, and the friend buys drinks for everyone there. When they ask him how he became so successful, he answers that until only a few days ago, he had been living the role of the "Other"
"What is the Other?" they ask.
"The Other is the one who taught me what I should be like, be not what I am. The Other believes that it is our obligation to spend our entire life thinking about how to get our hands on as much money as possible so that we will not die of hunger when we are old. So we think so much about money and our plans for acquiring it that we discover we are alive only when our days on earth are practically done. And then its too late."
"And you? Who are you?"
"I am just like everyone else who listens to their heart: a person who is enchanted by the mystery of life. Who is open to miracles, who experiences joy and enthusiasm for what they do. It's just that the Other, afraid of disappointment, kept me from taking action."
"But there is suffering in life," one of the listeners said.
"And there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it's better to lose some of the battles in the struggle for your dreams than to be defeated without ever even knowing what you're fighting for."
"That's it?" another listener asked.
"Yes, that's it. When I learned this, I resolved to become the person I had always wanted to be. The Other stood there in the corner of my room, watching me, but i will never let the Other into myself again - even though it has already tried to frighten me, warning me that it's risky not to think about the future.
"From the moment that I ousted the Other from my life, the Divine Energy began to perform its miracles."
p 51

Mary, the Schechinah, the Great Mother, Isis, Sofia, slave and mistress - is present in every religion on the face of the earth. She has been forgotten, prohibited, and disguised, but Her cult has continued from millennium to millennium and continues to survive today. p 60

"Why is water the symbol of the feminine face of God?"
"I don't know. But She normally chooses that medium to manifest Herself. Maybe because She is the source of life: we are generated in water, and for nine months we live in it. Water is the symbol of the power of woman, the power that no man - no matter how enlightened or perfect he may be - can capture."
He paused for a moment and then began again.
"In every religion and in every tradition, She manifests Herself in one form or another - She always manifests Herself. Since I am a Catholic, I perceive Her as the Virgin Mary." p 60

He went straight to sleep, but I was awake for a long time, thinking about the fog, the wine, and our conversation. I read the manuscript he gave me, and what was in it thrilled me: God - if God really existed - was both Father and Mother.
Later, I turned out the light and lay there thinking. When we were quiet with each other, I was able to see how close I felt to him.
Neither of us had said anything. Love doesn't need to be discussed; it has its own voice and speaks for itself. That night, by the well, the silence had allowed our hearts to approach each other and get to know each other better. My heart had listened closely to what his said, and now it was content. p 68

But love is always new. Regardless of whether we love once, twice, or a dozen times in our life, we always face a brand-new situation. Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere. We simply have to accept it, because it is what nourishes our existence. If we reject it, we die of hunger, because we lack the courage to stretch out a hand and pluck the fruit from the branches of the tree of life. We have to take love where we find it, even if that means hours, days, weeks of disappointment and sadness.
The moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek us.
And save us.
p 70

I also knew that from this moment on i was going to experience heaven and hell, joy and pain, dreams and hopelessness; that I would no longer be capable of containing the winds that blew from the hidden corners of my soul. I knew that from this moment on love would be my guide - and that it had waited to lead me ever since childhood, when I had felt love for the first time. The truth is, I had never forgotten love, even when it had deemed me unworthy of fighting for it. But love had been difficult, and I had been reluctant to cross its frontiers.
p 72

"And God created man and woman," he quoted from Genesis, "because that was his image and simulacrum: man and woman."
p 74

"About vampires. Those creatures of the night, locked inside themselves, desperately seeking company. Incapable of loving."
"That's why legend has it that only a stake through the heart can kill them; when that happens, the heart bursts, freeing the energy of love and destroying evil."
p 75

"I had already lived some pretty wild years," he said, not guessing my thoughts this time. "I got to see other peoples and other lands. I had already looked for God in the four corners of the earth. I had fallen in love with other women and worked in a number of different jobs."
Another stab. I would have to be careful that the Other didn't return. I kept my gaze on the Virgin's smile.
"The mysteries of life fascinated me, and I wanted to understand them better. I looked for signs that would tell me that someone knew something. I went to India and to Egypt. I sat with the masters of magic and of meditation. And finally I discovered what I was looking for: that truth resides where there is faith."
p 79

For the first time since I had abandoned the path of faith, I felt a strong desire to pray. Although I was seated in a pew, my soul was kneeling at the feet of the Lady before me, the women who had said,

"Yes,"

when She could have said "no". The angel would have sought out someone else, and there would have been no sin in the eyes of the Lord, because God knows His children's weakness.
But She had said,

"Thy will be done,"

even though She sense that She was receiving, along with the words of the angel, all the pain and suffering of Her destiny; even though Her heart's eyes could see Her beloved son leaving the house, could see the people who would follow Him and then deny Him; but

"Thy will be done,"

even when, at the sacred moment in a woman's life, She had to lie down with the animals in a stable to give birth, because that was what the Scriptures required'

"Thy will be done,"

even when, in agony, She looked through the streets for Her son and found Him at the temple. And He asked that She not interfere because He had other obligations and tasks to perform;

"Thy will be done",

even when She knew that She would search for Him for the rest of Her days, Her heart filled with pain, fearing every moment for His life, knowing that He was being persecuted and threatened;

"Thy will be done,"

even when finding Him in the crowd, She was unable to draw near Him;

"Thy will be done,"

even when She asked someone to tell Him that She was there and the son sent back the response, "My mother and my brothers are those who are here with me";

"Thy will be done,"

even when at the end, after everyone had fled, only She, another woman, and one of them stood at the foot of the cross, bearing the laughter of His enemies and the cowardice of His friends;

"Thy will be done."

p 86


"You already know. I entered the seminary. During the first year, I asked that God help me to transform my love for you into a love for all people. In the second year, I sense that God had heard me. By the third year, even though my longing for you was still strong, I became certain that my love was turning toward charity, prayer, and helping the needy."
p 90


I went on singing mechanically - but little by little, i began to feel the music taking hold of me, as if it had a life of its own. It was hypnotizing. The cold seemed less bitter, and the rain no longer bothered me. The music made me feel better. It transported me back to a time when God had felt closer to me and had helped me.
p 98

"Yes I did. And I found happiness again. Fate is strange; almost no one I know married the first love of their lives. Those who did are always telling me that they missed something important, that they didn't experience all that they might have."
p112

The padre laughed. "You've had an excellent Catholic education," he said. "But I'm not asking you about Catholicism. I'm asking about the spiritual life."
I didn't respond for a moment. "I'm not sure. There are people who leave everything behind and go in search of God."
"And do they find Him?"
"Well, you would know the answer to that , Padre. I have no idea."
The padre notice that I was beginning to gasp with exertion and he slowed his pace.
"You had that wrong," he said. "A person who goes in search of God is wasting his time. He can walk a thousand roads and join many religion and sects - but he'll never find God that way. God is here, right now, at our side. We can see Him in this mist, in the ground we're walking on, even in my shoes. His angels keep watch while we sleep and help us in our work. In order to find God, you have only to look around. But meeting him is not easy. The more God asks us to participate in His mysteries, the more disoriented we become, because He asks us constantly to follow our dreams and our hearts. And that's difficult to do when we're used to living in a different way. Finally we discover to our surprise, that God wants us to be happy, because He is the father."
p 120

"Because God came to earth to demonstrate His power to us. We are a part of His dream, and He wants His dream to be a happy one. Thus, if we acknowledge that God created us for happiness, then we have to assume that everything that leads to sadness and defeat is our own doing. That's the reason we always kill God, whether on the cross, by fire, through exile, or simply in our hearts."
p121

"We all perform miracles," he said. "Jesus said, 'If our faith is the size of a mustard seed, we will say to the mountain, "Move!" And it will move."
p 128

"And the, one day, when a certain number of monkeys had learned to wash their bananas, the monkeys on all the other islands in the archipelago to do the same thing. What was most surprising, though, was that the other monkeys learned to do so without having had any contact with the island where the experiment had been conducted."
He stopped. "Do you understand?"
"No," I answered.
"There are several similar scientific studies. The most common explanation is that when a certain number of people evolve, the entire human race begins to evolve. We don't know how many people are needed - but we know that's how it works."
p 128

"In the visitations at Lourdes, the phrases uttered by Our Lady wouldn't fill half a page of a notebook, but one of the things the Virgin said clearly to the girl was 'I do not promise you happiness in this world'. Why ddi she warn Bernadette? Because she knew the pain that awaited Bernadette if she accepted her mission."
p 133

"Well, can't it?"
"Yes, it can. But it conquers at the right time - after the celestial battles have ended."
"But I love him. I don't have to wait for the celestial battles to end for my love to win out."
He gazed into the distance.
"On the banks of the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and wept," he said, as if talking to himself. "On the willows there, we hung up our harps".
"How sad," I answered.
"Those are the first lines of one of the psalms. It tells of exile and of those who want to return to the promised land but cannot. And that exile is still going to last for a long time. What can I do to try to prevent the suffering of someone who wants to return to paradise before it is time to do so?"
"Nothing, Padre. Absolutely nothing."
p135

"Christ learned about his mission while he was cutting wood and making chairs, beds and cabinets. He came as a carpenter to show us that - no matter what we do - everything can lead us to the experience of God's love."
p 145
DK - reminded me of the Gospel of Thomas the split of piece of wood verse. Likely why Christ used this analogy.

Review of Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Entry date: March 31st, 2009
- This book was published in 1936 and written from 1934 to 1935.
- George Orwell only lived 46 and a half years (5 June, 1903 – 21 January, 1950).
- An English author and considered one of England's best chroniclers of the 20th century.
- His gravestone bore the simple epitaph: "Here lies Eric Arthur Blair, born 25 June 1903, died 21 January 1950"; no mention is made on the gravestone of his more famous pen-name.
- Buried in Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire in All Saints' Churchyard
Note to self: something to visit when visiting England in the future: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutton_Courtenay

------> DK's note: What a great intro to a book......... meant to prick at your emotions and agitate you by replacing a positive connatation with a negative one (or what most people would consider negative); and especially rearranging words from a holy book that says you will have eternal damnation if you manipulate words within it. Speaking of course of the disciple John's words in Revelation 21:19 - "And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book".... if this is truly the case though then one could likely find 90% of all the greatest authors somewhere between the 7th and 9th circles of Dante's black burning abyss, which would be such a ridiculous notion if there is indeed a God, since these writers were probably some of the most honest men and women that ever walked the planet. So saying this is the absolute truth would obviously be obsurd, unless (assuming there is a god) that God himself is a sadistic asshole. In any case, the words that Orwell has exchanged are genius and have pure truth in them in a capitalist regime:

"Though I speak with the tongue of men and of angels, and have not money, I am become a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though i have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that i could remove mountains, and have not money, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor and though i give my body to be burned, and have not money, it profiteth me nothing. Money suffereth long, and is kind; money envieth not; money vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave unseemingly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.... And now abideth faith, hope money, these three; but the greatest of these is money. "
1 Corinthians 13 (adapted version)

------> DK's note: Background of when i read this for future reference for myself - Have not read any of George Orwell's works for a very long time and the only other book I've read from him was 'Animal Farm'. Apparently he was strongly against any form of regime involving totaliltarianism even though he was closely confidentially observed by British Intelligence as a potential Communist. This book in particular i found in a used bookstore in Peurto Natales where one can exchange any used book for another + 1000 Chilean pesos. The bookstore was called 'Cafe Book' and was 1 block from Baquadano near the central Plaza (was given instructions to find it from Kate, a friendly Canadian volunteer from Ontario at the Hostal Patagonia who just finished her 2 month volunteer program at the Torres del Paines). After looking at literally every title of all the used books they had in the store, I decided on this one because it was the only author worth reading. All the other books were Danielle Steele and other equivalent shit of that nature. I think if one burned all of her books on earth then then world would incrementally be a better place. The other 2 that i had found earlier that week were the Pullitzer Prize winning fiction novel Lonesome Dove and the classic Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne, but both disappeared off the shelf by the time i was ready to exchange. Similar to A Farewell to Arms (which I exchanged for this one), this novel was written in between the two World Wars. The interesting commonalities one finds when reading literature during this period, especially from the greats, is that there is a consistent theme when comparing various authors who are completely unrelated. They always focus around the topic of Socialism/Communism vs. Capitialism. And it is also very interesting to see that it is always the same outcome. The 'good-natured' characters and 'naturally-caring' characters always somehow take it up the ass in the end because obviously they are on the Socialist side of things within a Capitalist regime; which history has told us that the resultant absolute truism is that it leads to a useless existence if you follow it down to its extreme. To anyone whom rejects this notion, let the empirical evidence that has unveiled itself over the last 2000 years be the proof of this notion to see if it stands on its own merits. Pure socialists should reject the concept of money because that should never be the incentive in the first place if they truly believe in the nature of mankind to always be in the act of serving another without any compensate in return except to expect and almost know that another will give the same in return. How naive Communism was and is. Marx was a great man and probably extremely well natured and probably very giving.... but good in theory, of course. He would've likely regretted his Manifesto if he realized how many instances of useless existence it caused in the end (although its not the end yet). Perhaps this entire debate of humanity will always go on; through literature, movies, government, media, religion......It reminds me of Magneto vs. Professor X, Black vs. white in chess which is of course the greatest game of truth on earth, Klingons vs. the Starfleet, The Empire vs. the Rebel fleet, Galileo vs. the Church, philanthropy vs. private business, US vs. Russia, the NFLs system of revenue sharing vs. the MLB's system of representation by population. Communism is euphoria. But it obviously does not coincide with the laws of humanity. Again the proof of this is every single regime has fallen under it. Also, of course.... which is why im even writing these stupid ideas.... is that this was Orwell's point in his book.... In capitalism, ignoring money in its absolute extreme leads down a very dark path.... useless existence and eventually human destruction. One other note; this book reminded me very much of Rand's works except that Orwell follows the single path of 1 useless individual in society who is extremely idealistic, where Rand, through Roark, focuses on almost the exact opposite. Both lead to the exact same conclusion and the authors were correct.... which is why they continue to live on and deserved to be remembered. Through merit.

DK's SUMMARY: Gordon Comstock wishes above everything else to be able to become a poet by not 'selling out' his soul and treasured goal to the money-god. His parents' generation had a total of 10 siblings on the father's-Comstock side of the family, although not a single one had any offspring with the exception of his father, who bore 2 children; himself and his sister Julia. They were all raised just below the middle class, so enough to get by but never to be wealthy enough to be considered successful. Julia, because she was kindly and good-natured supported her brother when their parents passed away and she was so poor that she was unable to get married and was now to old to do so. Gordon was able to get a 'decent' education but not at a school like Oxford or Cambridge. With his education he desired to write and be able to make a living off his poems. He had one published called 'Mice', which he had gotten excited over for nothing because it eventually went nowhere. He intentionally did not take high paying jobs because he did not want to focus on money; he actually ends up quiting a job as a copyright at a prestigious advertising company called the New Albion. He could barely afford food, after he paid rent in his miserable filthy little apartment. Before he quit the New Albion he had started courting a girl named Rosemary. He was always extremely self-conscious about not having enough money and was constantly thinking about how little he had. He was paranoid that the entire world was against him and that Rosemary didn't love him enough to sleep with him because he had no money, which initially one could argue was true because she was worrying about whether she could marry him and raise a child with him. He owns an apidistra which apparently is extremely difficult to kill and an unattractive plant. This imagery parallels his own life as he looks at himself as a weed, but he thinks he can outlast the plant by holding out against money longer than the plant can outlive him. He works at a bookstore on a very small wage upon his own request after resigning from the New Albion. He continues to court Rosemary and remains very insecure about letting her pay for anything. After finally receiving a check from an American company for one of the poems that he submitted he spends all of it on one night without any control because he is so happy. He takes out his best friend Ravelston and Rosemary to an exquisite dinner at the Madigliani with expensive wine. He then becomes drunk and tries to pressure Rosemary to sleep with him. She is very offended and runs off home. He then continues that night to drink more and then eventually takes 2 prostitutes to a hotel room later that night. He can't perform because of his drunken state and the girls take his money. He wanders out on the street and gets arrested after punching a police sergeant in the face. Bailed out the next day by Ravelston, he gets evicted and fired from his job. He stays on Ravelston's couch hating his existence and hating money and hating that he has to 'sponge' off Ravelston with no choice. He tries to find a job but is unsuccessful and really at this point he doesnt care if he finds one or not. Rosemary sees him from time to time and tries to convince him to back to the New Albion, but he refuses to try because he thinks its against everything he believes in. When she realizes how offended he gets over the subject she doesnt discuss it with him anymore to respect his beliefs. He eventually leaves Ravelston's place and finds another lower paying job at another bookstore and then moves out to a filthier place with shared bathrooms and litter everywhere. Gordon now doesnt care about writing anymore and just wants to go down deeper and sink into 'the mud' until there is no existence. She cries constantly around him and he becomes indifferent to her crying. She says she cant follow down his path and says she must leave him. He says and thinks because its because he has no money. She obviously thinks this is unfair for him to behave and think this way. She leaves. Later she comes back in the week and says she can't leave him because she loves him too much and then decides to sleep with him and loses her virginity that night in the filthy apartment, she essentially held out for the entire book until the last 20 pages. She becomes pregnant in this act and then Gordon realizes she either needs to go through an abortion or he needs to marry her and find a good paying job, likely go back to the New Albion. He decides after researching at the library what happens in the state of pregnancy and that he has no choice but to care for the baby and Rosemary so he chooses on the latter and goes back to become a writer for advertisements and becomes somewhat successful; much of this is because of his strong grasp for words since this is all he focussed on through his poetry. He also can't stand the thought of having an abortion; it disgusts him. Advertisements are essentially just words at the end of the day so he becomes talented at coming up with slogans and shows signs of promise. He becomes very happy when he starts earning and being able to afford his own place and furniture for himself, Rosemary and for the baby and he realizes that money is great and that at the end of the day allows him to have and experience all that matters in life. They choose, after much discussion and arguing, to have a apidistra in the living room.

Favorite passages:

In all bookshops there goes a savage Darwinian struggle in which the works of living men gravitate to eye level and the works of dead men go up or down - down to Gehenna or up to the throne, but always away from any position where they will be noticed. Down in the bottom shelves the 'classics', the extinct monsters of the Victorian age, were quietly rotting. p12

Religion always sells provided it is sloppy enough. p12

That noxious horn-spectacled refinement! And the money that such refinement means! For after all, what is there behind it, except money? Money for the right kind of education, money for influential friends, money for leisure and peace of mind, money for trips to Italy. Money writes books, money sells them. Give me not righteousness, O Lord, give me money, only money. p 13

Shall we ever again get a writer worth reading? p 17

As Gordon threw away the match his eye fell upon the aspidistra in its grass green pot. It was a peculiarly mangy specimen. It had only seven leaves and never seemed to put forth any new ones. Gordon had a sort of secret fued with the aspidistra. Many a time he had furtively attempted to kill it - starving it of water, grinding hot cigarette-ends against its stem, even mixing salt with its earth. But the beastly things are practically immortal. In almost any circumstances they can preserve a wilting, diseased existence. Gordon stood up and deliberately wiped his kerosiny fingers on the apidistra leaves. p 33

None of the boys had proper professions, because Gran'pa Comstock had been at the greatest pains to drive all of them into professions for which they were totally unsuited. Only one of them - John, Gordon's father - had even braved Gran'pa Comstock to the extent of getting married during the latter's lifetime. It was impossible to imagine any of them making any sort of mark in the world, or creating anything, or destroying anything, or being happy, or vividly unhappy, or fully alive, or even earning a decent income. They just drifted along in an atmosphere of semi-genteel failure. They were one of those depressing families, so common among the middle-middle classes, in which NOTHING EVER HAPPENS. p 43

Since the Comstocks were genteel as well as shabby, it was considered necessary to waste huge sums on Gordon's education. What a fearful thing it is, this incubus of 'education'! It means that in order to send his son to the right kind of school (that is a public school or an imitation of one) a middle-class man is obliged to live for years on end in a style that would be scorned by a jobbing plumber. p46

Gordon, in those days still a believer, used actually to pray that his parents wouldn't come down to school. His father, especially, was the kind of father you couldn't help being ashamed of; a cadaverous, despondent man, with a bad stoop, his clothes dismally shabby and hopelessly out of date. He carried about with him an atmosphere of failure, worry, and boredom. And he had such a dreadful habit, when he was saying good-bye, of tipping Gordon half a crown right in front of the other boys, so that everyone could see that it was only half a crown and not, as it ought to have been, ten bob! Even twenty years afterwards the memory of that school made Gordon shudder.
The first effect of all this was to give him a crawling reverence for money. In those days he actually hated his poverty sticken-relatives - his father and mother, Julia, everybody. He hated them for their dingy homes, their dowdiness, their joyless attitude to life, their endless worrying and groaning over threepences and sixpences. By far the commonest phrase in the Comstock household was, 'We can't afford it'. In those days he longed for money as only a child can long. Why shouldn't one have decent clothes and plenty of sweets and go to the pictures as often as one wanted to? He blamed his parents for their poverty as though they had been poor on purpose. Why couldn't they be like other boys' parents? They PREFERRED being poor, it seemed to him. That is how a child's mind works. p47

It was great fun. Every intelligent boy of sixeteen is a Socialist. At that age one does not see the hook sticking out of the rather stodgy bait. p48

Gordon thought it all out, in the naive selfish manner of a boy. There are two ways to live, he decided. You can be rich, or you can deliberately refuse to be rich. You can possess money, or you can despise money; the one fatal thing is to worship money and fail to get it. He took it for granted that he himself would never be able to make money. It hardly even occured to him that he might have talents which chould be turned to account. That was twhat his schoolmasters had done for him; they had rubbed it into him that he was a seditious little nuisance and not likely to 'succeed' in life. He accepted this. Very well, then, he would refuse the whole business of 'succeeding'; he would make it his especial purpose not to 'succeed'. Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven; better to serve in hell than serve in heaven, for that matter. Already, at sixteen, he knew which side he was on. He was against the money-god and all his swinish priesthood. He had declared war on money; but secretly, of course. p 50

He could put up with this meaningless office-life, because he never for an instant thought of it as permanent. Somehow, sometime, God knew how or when, he was going to break free of it. After all, there was always his 'writing'. Some day, perhaps, he might be able to make a living of sorts by 'writing'; and you'd feel you were free of the money-stink if you were a 'writer', would you not? The types he saw all round him, especially the older men, made him squirm. That was what it meant to worship the money-god! To settle down, to Make Good, to sell your soul for a villa and an aspidistra! To turn into the typical little bowler-hatted sneak- Strube's 'little man' - the little docile cit who slips home by six-fifteen to a supper of a cottage pie and stewed tinned pears, half an hour's listening-in to the BBC Symphony Concert p 53

*** POWERFUL PASSAGE.....
The next seven months were devastating. They scared him and almost broke his spirit. He learned what it means to live for weeks on end on bread and margarine, to try to write when you are half starved, to pawn your clothes, to sneak trembling up the stairs when you owe three weeks' rent and your landlady is listening to you. Moreover, in those seven months he wrote practically nothing. The first effect of poverty is that it kills thought. 55
------> DK's note: and it should for someone so stupid as to think you can exist as a pure socialist.

It is in the brain and the soul that lack of money damages you. Mental deadness, spiritual squalor - they seem to descend upon you inescapbly when your income drops below a certain point. Faith, hope, money - only a saint could have the first two without having the third. p63
------> DK's note: if this is not true, give me all your money and everything you will own and earn in the future and see how you live. you will eventualy come to agreement with this statement.

Possibly there were some other, more distantly related Comstocks, for Gran'pa Comstock had been one of a family of twelve. But if any survived they had grown rich and lost touch with their poor relations; for money is thicker than blood. As for Gordon's branch of the family, the combined income of the five of them, allowing for the lump sum that had been paid down when Aunt Charlotte entered the Mental Home, might have been six hundred a year. Their combined ages were two hundred and sixty-three years. None of them had ever been out of England, fought in a war, been in prison, ridden a horse, travelled in an aeroplane, got married, or given birth to a child. There seemed no reason why they should not continue in the same style until they died. Year in, year out, NOTHING EVER HAPPENED, in the Comstock family. p 67
------> DK's note: reminds me of the lameness, indifference, passionless existence of Calgary.
=)


No matter. What do they think? Money, money! Rent, rates, taxes, school bills, season tickets, boots for the children. And the life insurance policy and the skivvy's wages. And, my God, suppose the wife gets in the family way again! And did I laugh loud enough when the boss made that joke yestserday? And the next instalment on the vaccuum cleaner. p71
------> DK's note: isn´t this what we still go through in the year 2009; the same mindless waste of existence amongst everyone... the same repetitive shit day in and day out even 75 years later after this book was written the thoughts of humans are still the same inside one's head.

In the deadly glare of the Neon lights the pavements were densely crowded. Gordon threaded his way, a small shabby figure, with a pale face and unkempt hair. The crowd slid past him; he avoided and was avoided. There is something horrible about London at night; the coldness, the anonymity, the aloofness. Seven million people, sliding to and fro, avoiding contact, barely aware of one another's existence, like fish in an aquarium tank. p 77
------> DK's note: reminds one of NYC at times. Perhaps every major metropolitan area is the same.

How many girls alive wouldn't be manless sooner than take a man who's moneyless. p78
------> DK's note:: Kanye West makes the exact same point 70 years later??

His eyes fell upon the apidistra. Two years he had inhabited this vile room; two mortal years in which nothing had been accomplished. Seven hundred wasted days, all ending in the lonely bed. Snubs, failures, insults, all of them unavenged. Money, money, all is money! Because he had no money the Dorings snubbed him, because he had no money the Primrose had turned down his poem, because he had no money Rosemary wouldn't sleep with him. Social failure, artistic failure, sexual failure - they are all the same. And lack of money is at the bottom of it all. p84

"I didn't mean that". I meant the poems themselves are dead. There's no life in them. Everything i write is like that. Lifeless, gutless. Not necessarily ugly or vulgar; but dead - just dead". The word 'dead' reechoed in his mind, setting up its own train of thought. He added: "My poems are dead because I'm dead. You're dead. We're all dead. Dead people in a dead world". p90
------> DK's note: this is the end result of a purely idealistic socialist in a capitalist regime.


"God knows. All we know is what we don't want. That's what's wrong with us nowadays. We're stuck, like Buridan's donkey. Only there are three alternatives instead of two, and all three of them make us spew. Socials-s only one of them."
"And what are the other two?"
"Oh, i suppose suicide and the Catholic Church". p95
------> DK's note: Buridan's ass is a figurative description of a man of indecision. It refers to a paradoxical situation wherein an ass, placed exactly in the middle between two stacks of hay of equal size and quality, will starve to death since it cannot make any rational decision to start eating one rather than the other. The paradox is named after the 14th century French philosopher Jean Buridan.

Ravelston rubbed his noese reflectively. "It seems to me tha's only another form of suicide".
"In a way. But so's Socialism. At least it's a counsel of despair. But I couldn't commit suiicde, real suicide. It's too meek and mild. I'm not going to give up my share of earth to anyone else. I'd want to do in a few of my enemies first". p 96

Gordon didn't listen. "What rot it is to talk about Socialism or any other ism when women are what they are! The only thing a women ever wants is money; money for a house of her own and two babies and Drage furniture and an apidistra. The only sin they can imagine is not wanting to grab money. No woman ever judges a man by anything except his income. Of course she doesn't put it to herself like that. She says he's such a nice man ' meaning that he's got plenty of money. And if you haven't got money you aren't nice. You're dishonoured, somehow. You've sinned. Sinned against the apidistra." p 101

This woman business! What a bore it is! What a pity we can't cut it right out, or at least be like the animals ' minutes of ferocious lust and months of icy chastity. Take a cock pheasant, for example. He jumps on the hens' backs without so much as a with your leave or by your leave. And no sooner is it over than the whole subject is out of his mind. He hardly even notices his hens any longer; he ignores them, or simply pecks them if they come too near his food. He is not called upon to support his offspring, either. Lucky pheasant! How different from the lord of creation, always on teh hop between his memory and his conscience! p 110
------> DK's note: found this passage hilarious

This woman business! Perhaps you'd feel differently about it if you were married? But he had taken an oath against marriage long ago. Marriage is only a trap set for you by the money-god. You grab the bait; snap goes the trap; and there you are, chained by the leg to some 'good' job till they cart you to Kensal Green. And what a life! p122

"Women! What nonsense they make of all our ideas! Because one can't keep free of women, and every women makes one pay the same price. 'Chuck away your decency and make more money' - thats what women say. 'Chuck away your decency, suck the blacking off the boss's boots, and buy me a better fur coat than the woman next door.' Every man you can see has got some blasted woman hanging round his neck like a mermaid, dragging him down and down - down to some beastly leittle semi-detatched villa in Putney, with hire-purchase furniture and a portable radio and an aspidistra in the window. It's women who make all progress impossible. Not that i believe in progress," he hadded rather unsatisfactorily. p 122
------> DK's note: the idiocy of one who does not believe in progress and a medium for exchange.

She looked up at him an instant longer, and then buried her face in his breast as suddenly as though ducking from a blow. It was because she had burst into tears. She wept against his breast, angry with him, hating him, and yet clinging to him like a child. It was the childish way in which she clung to him, as a mere male breast to weep on that hurt him most. With a sort of self-hatred he remembered the other women who in just this same way had cried against his breast. It seemed the only thing he could do with women, make them cry. p 128
------> DK's note: somehow i can relate frighteningly well to this passage.

It's not easy to make love in a cold climate when you have no money. The 'never the time and the place' motif is not made enough of in novels. p131
------> DK's note: can do nothing but pity this character at this point in the book

But in the end he let himself be persuaded. He had known that he would let himself be persuaded. He stayed onat the flat, and allowed Ravelston to go round to Willowbed Road and pay his rent and recover his two cardboard suitcases; he even allowed Ravelston to 'lend' him a further two pounds for current expenses. His heart sickened while he did it. He was living on Ravelston - sponging on Ravelson. How could there ever be real frendship between them again? Besides, in his heart he didn't want to be helped. He only wanted to be left alone. He was headed for the gutter; better to reach the gutter quickly and get it over. Yet for the time being he stayed, simply because he lacked the courage to do otherwise. p 204

"Will you go back to the New Albion?"
So that was it! Of course he had foreseen it. She was going to start nagging at him like all the others. She was going to add herself to the band of peoplewho worried him and badgered him to 'get on'. But what else could you expect? It was what any women would say. The marvel was that she had never said it before. Go back to the New Albion! It had been the sole significant action of his life, leaving the New Albion. It was his religion, you might say, to keep out of that filthy money-world. Yet at this moment he could not remember with any clarity the motives for which he had left the New Albion. All he knew was that he would never go back, not if the skies fell, and that the argument he foresaw bored him in advance. p207

There were further argements. It was the first time she had eer spoken to him like this. Once again the tears came into her eyes, and once again she fought them back. She had come here swearing to herself that she would not cry. The dreadful thing was that her tears, instead of distresssing him, merely bored him. It was as though he could not care, and yet his very centre there was an inner heart that cared because he could not care. If only she would leave him alone! Alone! Alone! Free from the nagging consciousness of his failure; free to sink, as she had said, down, down into the quiet worlds where money and effort and moral obligation did not exist. Finally he got away from her and went back to the spare bedroom. It was definitely a quarrel - the first really deadly quarrel they had ever had. Whether it was to be final he did not know. Nor did he care, at this moment. He locked the door behind him and lay on the bed smoking a cigarette. He must get out of this place, and quickly! Tomororrow morning he would clear out. No more sponging on Ravelston! No more blackmail to the gods of decency! Down, down, into the mud - down to the street, the workhouse and the jail. It was only there that he could be at peace. p209

But of course, in his inmost heart, he didn't really like having Gordon there. How should he? it was an impossible situation. There was a tension between them all the time. It is always so when one person is living on another. However delicately disguised, charity is still horrible; there is malaise, almost a secret hatred, between the giver and te receiver. Gordeon knew that his friendship with Ravelston would never be the same again. Whatever happened afterwards, the memory of this evil time would be between them. The feeling of his dependent position, of being in the way, unwanted, a nuisance, was with him night and day. p211

Gordon accepted promptly. Mr. Cheeseeman was perhaps faintly disappointed. He had expected an argument, and would have enjoyed crushing Gordon by reminding him that beggars can't be choosers. But Gordon was satisfied. The job would do. There was no trouble about a job like this; no room for ambition, no effort, no hope. Ten bob less - ten bob nearer the mud. It was what he wanted. p215

Yet it was not death, actual physical death, that he wished for. It was a queer feeling that he had. It had been with him ever since that morning when he had woken up in the police cell. The evil, mutinous mood that comes after drunkennes seemed to have set into a habit. That drunken night had marked a period in his life. It had dragged him downward with straeg suddenness. Before, he had fought against the money-code, and yet he had clung to his wretched remnant of decency. But now it was precisely from decency that he wanted to escape. He wanted to go down deep down, into some world where decency no longer mattered; to cut the strings of his self-respect, to submerge himself - to sink, as Rosemary had said. It was all bound up in his mind with the thought of being underground. He liked to think about the lost people, the underground people, tramps, beggars, criminals, prostitutes. It is a good world that they inhabi, down there in their frowzy kips and spikes. p217

To sink! How easy it ought to be, since there are so few competitors! But the strange thing is that often it is harder to sink than to rise. There is always something that drags one upwards. After all, one is never quite alone; there are always friends, lovers, relatives . Everyone Gordonn knew seemed to be writing him letters, pitying him or bullying him. Aunt Angela had written, Uncle Walter had written, Rossemany had written over and over again, Ravelston had wrtten, Julia had written. Even Flaxman had sent a line to wish him luck. p223
------> DK's note: had never really thought of life in this manner. But suppose this is true. That your support system will always try and keep you afloat if you attempt to consciously make a decision to sink your life deeper and deeper into a hellhole.

"The mistake you make, don't you see, is in thinking one can live in a corrupt society without being corrupt oneself. After all, what do you achieve by refusing to make money? You're trying to behave as though one could stand right outside our economic system. But one can't. One's got to change the system, or one changes nothing. One ca0t put things right in a hole-and-corner way, if you take my meaning". p225 by Ravelston

It was a curious fact - rather a shameful fact from a Socialist's point of view - that the thought of Gordon, who had brains and was of gentle birth, lurking in that vile plaec and that almost menial job, worried him more than the thought ten thousand unemplyed in Middlesbrough. Several times, in hope of cheering Gordon up, he wrote asking him to send contribrutions to Antichrist. Gordon never answered. Their friendship was at an end, it seemed to him. The evil time when he had lived on Ravelston had spoiled everything. Charity kills friendship. p 227

"We shall have to get married, I suppose," he said flatly.
"Well, shall we? That's what i came here to ask you."
"But I suppose you want me to marry you, don't you?"
"Not unless YOU want to. I'm not going to tie you down. I know its against your ideas to marry. You must decide for yourself."
"But we've no alternative - if you're really going to have this baby."
"Not necessarily. That's what you've got to decide. Because after all there is another way."
"What way?"
"Oh, you know. A girl at the studio gave me an address. A friend of hers had it done for only five pounds." p 241

He knew it was a dreadful thing they were contemplating - a blasphemy, if that word had any meaning. Yet if it had been put otherwise he might not have recoiled from it. It was the squalid detail of the five pounds that brought it home.
"No fear!," he said. "Whatever happens we're not going to do that. It's disgusting."
"I know it is. But I can't have the baby without being married." p 242

"Of course, you´d like me to go back to the New Albion," he said.
"No, I wouldn't. Not if you don'twant to."
"Yes, you would. After all, it's natural. You want to see me earning a decent income again. In a GOOD job, with four pounds a week and an aspidistra in the window. Wouln't you, now? Own up."
"All right then, yes, I would. But it's only something I'd like to see happening; I'm not going to make you do it. I'd just hate you t o do it if you didn't really want to. I want you to feel free."
"Really and truly free?"
"Yes." p244

Yes, war is coming soon. You can't doubt it when you see the Bovex ads. The electric drills in our streets presage the rattle of the machine guns. Only a little while before the aeroplanes come. Zoom - bang! A few tons of TNT to send our civiliation back to hell where it belongs.
He crossed the road and walked on, southward. A curious thought had struck him. He did not any longer want that war to happen. It was the first time in months - years, perhaps - that he had thought of it and not wanted it. p246

But what about Rosemary? He thought of the kind of life she would live at home, in her parents' house, with a baby and no money; and of the news running through that monstrous family that Rosemary had married some aweful rotter who couldn't even keep her. She ould have the whole lot of them nagging at her together. Besides, there was the baby to think about. The money-god is so cunning. If he only baited his traps with yachts and race-horses, tarts and champagne, how easy it would be to dodge him. It is when he gets at you through your sense of decency that he finds you helpless. p 246

But perhaps it had not been going on quite so long as that. He turned back a page or two and found a print of a six weeks' foetus. A really dreadful thing this time - a thing he could hardly even bear to look at. Strange that our beginnings and endings are so ugly - the unborn as ugly as the dead. This thing looked as if it were dead already. p 249

*** POWERFUL PASSAGE...finally he sees the LIGHT!
He seemed to be walkin faster than usual. There was a peculiar sensation, an actual physical sensation, in his heart, in his limbs, all over his limbs, all over him. What was it? Shame, misery, despair? Rage at being back in the clutch of money? Boredom when he thought of the deadly future? He dragged the sensation forth, faced it, examined it. It was relief.
Yes, that was the truth of it. Now that the thing was done he felt nothing but relife; relief that now at last he head finsihed with dirt, cold, hunger, and loneliness and could get back to decent, fully human life. His resolutions, now that he had broken them, seemed nothing but a frightful weight that he had cast off. Moreoer, he was aware that he was only fulfilling his destiny. In some corner of his mind he had always known that this would happen. He thought of the day when he head given them notice at the New Albion; and Mr Erskine's kind, red, beefish face, gently counselling him not to chuck up a 'good' job for nothing. How bitterly he had sworn, then, that he was done with 'good' jobs for nothing. How bitterly he had sworn, then, that he was done with 'good' job for nothing. How bitterly he had sworn, then, that he was done with 'good' jobs for ever! Yet it was foredoomed that he should come back, and he had known it even then. And it was not merely becase of Rosemary and the baby that he had done it. That was the obvious cause, the precipitating cause, but even without it the end would have been the same; if there had been no baby to think about, something else would have forced his hand. For it was what, in his secret heart, he had desired.
After all he did not lack vitality, and that moneyless existence to which he had condemned himself thrust him ruthlessly out of the stream of life. He looked back over the last two frightful years. He had blasphemed against money, rebelled against money, tried to live like anchorite outside the money-world; and it had brought him not only misery, bt also a frightful emptiness, an inescapable sense of futility. To abjure money is to abjure life. Be not reighteous over much; why shouldst thou die before thy time? Now he was back in the money-world, or soon would be.