Theology (the Prince of the Sciences): Eschatos: Revelation 13:1-10 revisited

The file wasn't available when I posted about it on Jan. 20th, 2009 (q.v.) but here is the sermon that I mentioned in that blog. I made a hyperlink under the word "text" for the text of the sermon, but I thought I would link the MP3 of the sermon here (at least until our church's website's space runs out).

W: LP: LG: VH: LM: part 3a

The next book in the part of Victor Hugo's novel called "Fantine" introduces the character, Fantine. The year is 1817, the scene is Paris. Fantine is a working girl who has gone to the big city to make her fortune or maybe just do a little better than she could have done in her small village. She is friends with three other girls of her class and the four of them came to be acquainted because they were the girl-friends of four young men who were friends together at the university. These men came from a slightly higher social class and enjoyed a life of profligacy in the city of lights. Victor Hugo describes in poetic terms a day of leisure on a Sunday (the only day off for the girls) for these four couples. There is description of the enjoyment of a summer's day, much like when many of us were young, going to the county fair, having a great dinner at the end of a long day that one wished would last forever.
The other girls are a little more experienced than Fantine and have had other boy-friends and they look at romance in this young stage of life as merely a fling. Fantine is a bit younger and this is her first love. This day of leisure together captures in a tableau a larger time of months of relationship and frivolity. The men have promised a surprise to the girls at the end of this great day, and at the end of supper they leave to provide the surprise and the surprise turns out to be their departure. They give lame excuses about how their families will be concerned about their choices of women and they must grow up and chose someone to fit their lives. The 'book' ends with Fantine broken-hearted and with a small child, a daughter. This is the introduction of Cosette.
Fantine is in a quandary, she loses her so-called friends and there is no family in Paris to help her. She decides to go back to her village, but she is concerned that being an unwed mother might give her some trouble. As she is on her way back to her village, she happens across a small inn where the innkeeper's wife is sitting out front with her two daughters at play. She thinks this woman looks like a good mother and she strikes up a conversation and it eventually comes about that Fantine negotiates with the innkeeper and his wife to take care of her daughter until she can get established in her home town. Presumably she would send for the girl when she were able.
Fantine returns to her village and no one remembers her and a new factory has been built by Jean Valjean who is living under another name. Fantine gets a good job even thought she is not very skilled and JV is a generous employer, taking good care of his employees. But more about him later. Unfortunately the people she has left her daughter with are the Thénardiers who are unscrupulous money grubbing wastrels who will not be taking very good care of her daughter. Her is a perfect description of these cretins from the book:

They belonged to that bastard class composed of rough people who have risen and intelligent people who have fallen, which lies between the so-called middle and lower classes and unites some of the faults of the latter with nearly all the vices of the former, without possessing the generous impulses of the worker or the respectability of the bourgeois.
They were among those dwarfish natures, which, if they happen to be heated by some sullen fire, easily become monstrous. The woman was at heart a brute, the man a blackguard, both in the highest degree capable of that hideous sort of progression that can be made toward evil. There are souls that, crablike, crawl continually toward darkness, going backward in life rather than advancing, using their experience to increase their deformity, growing continually worse, and becoming steeped more and more thoroughly in an intensifying viciousness. That was the case with this man and this woman.

VH goes on in great form and at the end you just despise these characters. The Thénardiers keep increasing the amount of money they are extorting from Fantine.
In the next book, Fantine falls on hard times by first losing her job due to the jealousy of the woman in charge of the women workers at the factory. Jean Valjean does not know that Fantine is let go unjustly and Fantine's reputation is ruined because the gossipers find out that she has a bastard child being cared for by the Thénardiers. Fantine does the best she can but the Thénardiers keep raising the amount she must send and her business of selling shirts suffers because prison labor used to make shirts drops the wages of everyone else. The Thénardiers finally lie about Cosette being ill to try to get more money out of Fantine. Fantine finally descends to selling her beautiful front teeth, lovely hair and finally her body to keep the money coming in.

In another book, the character, Javert is introduced. This man is an inspector of police and is the personification of all that is vicious in the law without mercy. Javert attempts to have Fantine thrown in prison after she attacks some young "gentleman" who had shoved some snow down her dress and made fun of her in public where she was trying to ply her last trade. Jean Valjean intercedes as he discovers that Fantine had been unjustly let go from his factory. Fantine's health declines and JV ends up caring for her at the hospital that he finances; she eventually dies and he agrees to care for Cosette.
Javert is the major antagonist of this story and VH has provided a perfect description (which I will quote in the next entry--stay tuned).

Cosmos: The new daguerreotype: Deus Ex Machina

Personal Update: Misc., computers, ORP, etc.

In addition to my internet surfing, blog reading, and various desultory entertainments (among which is a semi-obsession with Battlestar Galactica), I am continuing to read Les Misérables to Janie (I will posting a few more entries later), engaging in some Other Reading Projects (I am currently reading Philip K. Dick's & Roger Zelazny's "Deus Irae".), and playing unpaid IT support to family & friends.

Sam managed to infect his computer with some variation of the Conficker computer worm. Then a barely computer literate friend experienced the same thing and definitely didn't know what to do. In both cases I had to "wipe & reload"; anyone who uses MS Winblows will know what I mean. The problem with reformatting and a clean install is the enormous time (unless one has ghosted a clean install) that it requires to get the OS on the drive, load the drivers, configure, update, load the software, reload data, etc. etc. And I have the opportunity to do a new build for a guy at work but it drains more time, etc. I am still a computer hobbiest, but I am starting to reach the point in my life that I just want the darn thing to work. My whole family is convinced to convert to Apple; we just have to wait and save our shekels and then some day...

The novel, "Deus Irae", is another mind bender in the tradition of PKD's other novels. The story reminds me of PKD's novel, "Dr. Bloodmoney", in that it is a post-apocalyptic story, but in this case with strong religious overtones. I like that though the plot is simple and story is straight forward in a trippy way, there are other little incidental cultural fragments and philosophical ruminations that bring interest to the tale. I hope that I can some day write stories like this that entertain yet allow me to explore all sorts of ideas of human science, psychology, and culture.

There are some great moments of the sublime in Victor Hugo, but I'll reserve my comments for another entry.

Religious study continues apace as I get great spiritual steak dinners from Pastor Rayburn's sermons, and BSF forces me to stay in the bible some of the day. There is so much to learn in every area of human and divine knowledge that if I could somehow collect my paycheck without having to go to work, I would never be bored and I could study a thousand years. As the song from "Fiddler On The Roof" goes, "If I were a rich man..."
But there are spiritual riches to be had if only one had time.

I've been enjoying listening to Franz Schubert's Mass #2 in G and some of his other works, yet I still think that William Byrd has something "outer-space-like" (for want of a better word or phrase) about some of the Masses that he has written. But music seems to be like tools or books--you can never have enough. If only I had had an opportunity to study a musical instrument or had the almost infinite time to learn to sing properly... Sometimes I listen to a piece of music and it almost hurts in the enjoyment.

Ah the curse of having a brain barely alive and aware, and to not be able to do anything about it.

Social Philosophy: Obamanation: misc. 4

I spent far too many hours yesterday watching the historic inauguration of the One, and one of the refrains that I kept hearing over and over was, "I never thought that I would see it in my lifetime..." (This was in reference to a person of color ascending to the Presidency.)

I for one did expect to see this happen in my lifetime, I just didn't think it would have been a Democrat. I say this because historically, it was the Democrat Party that in the nineteenth century pushed for the continuance of slavery and when they finally could no longer get their way, especially in the South, forced the issue (co-mingling this institution with States' Rights) by seceding from the Union. After the Civil War (or War between the States) the South (mostly Democrat Party members, but others as well) eventually put into place our own system of Apartheid with Jim Crow laws and various other segregationist policies. And earlier in the nineteenth century, Andrew Jackson, a Democrat, whom I admire for his stance against the national bank (and its international banking string pullers), accelerated the genocide against Native Americans. Meanwhile back in the early twentieth century, the Wilson administration (Democrat Party) brought segregation to the National government after the previous administration (Teddy Roosevelt's, a republican) became the first to invite a black man to the White house as a guest rather than a servant. It was another Democrat administration (FDR's) that introduced the concentration camp to America via the internment of Japanese Americans, all while the blacks serving the nation in the military in World War II still had to endure Apartheid in the military. During the Civil Rights movement when the Civil Rights Act came before congress, many Democrats (mostly from the South, mind you) voted against this bill. During the Democrat administration of Johnson we had development of social engineering, the welfare state, brought into being which had the evil effect of undermining the family among the black community (not to mention, from a conspiracy p.o.v., the introduction of many debilitating drugs into the Black communities in America). So I am surprised that our first Black President came out of the Democrat Party.

Now, to be fair, the Republicans have had their black marks also. TR had the Brownsville incident and adventures in the Philippines, etc. The reconstructionism in the South after Lincoln was assassinated, the co-option of the Republican Party starting in the late nineteenth century by big business etc were all additional ways that the Republicans were derailed from their original ideals. And I won't even go into the insane "war on drugs" with all its concomitant civil liberties violations, started by Ronnie Reagan, or the largest growth in the Federal Government since FDR and Johnson brought about by George Bush 43.

One Chinese curse reads, "May you live in interesting times." Change for change's sake is not always desirable. My "hope" is that God so orders the heart of our new emperor that the change is to the good, but I have my doubts. As the Who sang, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss," and even though I am willing to give this new regime a chance, I fear this euphoria is misplaced and our government will continue to live up to its symbolization as The Beast (see last entry).

Theology (the Prince of the Sciences): Eschatos: Revelation 13:1-10

I won’t try to reproduce our minister’s sermon on Sunday from memory, since I hope to post the audio file or text here in this entry. It takes awhile for the sermon to get to my church’s website.

The reason I am mentioning it today on inauguration day is that when our pastor talked about his view of what the beast in John’s vision represents, I immediately thought about our own government and that we are about to swear into office another emperor type president. While I hold to the orthodox preterist view that the beast represents Nero and the office of Emperor of the Roman Empire, I also say that it is that and a representation of any human government which oversteps its bounds. Our pastor says that the beast is simply representative of all governments that overstep their bounds and arrogate to themselves powers and privileges that are God’s alone. And of course I believe that the government of the USA has overstepped its rightful place long ago, and while they are not currently (as of this entry) as bad as say, Nazi Germany, they do show a frightening trend toward autocracy and tyranny. When the sermon reaches cyber-land, I do encourage everyone to listen to it or read it.

ORP: KW Jeter's Blade Runner 3: Replicant Night

This series of books is getting really hard to find; why do publishers let good books go out of print? In this day and age of 'on demand' printing, I should think that all publishers would have their catalog of titles in their database for any customers that come along looking for a copy of a specific title.

This book was another good page turner and is better than the second book (q.v.). I won't do a plot spoiler as I am sure there is a page on the 'net among the trillions that goes through all that. I won't go into deep analysis of the text either as I don't have the time and reading the book was good for providing the necessary mind-candy and I need to spend my time on my various responsibilities etc.

On another note not directly relating to the topic of this post, and other than BSG finishing up its season, doesn't it seem like there is too much of a dearth of good SciFi shows to watch (and not very many good feature films either)?
It would be so nice if we could have a show like Firefly on or anything with a cohesive story arc and good individual episodes. Or some of these great SciFi books I have read over the years that could be faithfully translated to movies. Oh well.

Theology (the Prince of theSciences): Sanctity of Human Life Sunday

Today we had, in our silent prayer, a confession and then we had our confession of sin prayer and it is entirely appropos considering that unborn children are murdered at around the rate of 155 per hour. (About the number of people who were spared in the aircraft crash in the Hudson River recently.)

Here the confessions:

We beseech You, O God, to forgive those national sins which beset us: our heedlessness of those who come after us, if only we be served; our love of money, our contempt for small things and our worship of big thing; our neglect of backward peoples; our complacency; and our pride of life. For these wrongs done to our land and our heritage, as for right things left undone, forgive us, O Lord. Almighty God, give us grace to contend always for what is true and right, and to be ready if need be to suffer for it. Give us not over to fearfulness of soul, but lift us into that love which casts out fear, so that we may glorify and enjoy You now and for ever; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

O God our Father, on behalf of ourselves and our nation we come to You humbly confessing our sins. Be merciful to us, O Lord. Remember not the offenses of your people and of this nation; do not deal with us as out sins deserve, nor reward us according to our wickedness. We confess to you our blindness of heart, our love of ease, our failure to do what is good, our worldly pride, our boasting, our hypocrisies as a people. We confess too our covetousness, which is idolatry; the love of money, the hard bargaining and ruthless competition, the hatred, the impurity, and the selfishness, the cruelty, and the violence against others young and old which so dishonor our national life; our failure to take account of the needs of other nations, our living to ourselves alone, and our putting of our trust in our own strength when our trust should be in You. All of these sins of which our nation is so terribly guilty, O Lord, we, your people, find in out own hearts as well. Forgive us, O Merciful Father, for Jesus' sake. Grant us and our beloved country repentance from sin and a true and living faith in Jesus Christ, that we may hallow Your name, that we may seek first Your kingdom and Your righteousness, that we may love You and our neighbor with all our hearts, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

And for all those of the covenant (all true believers--the invisible church), we can hear/read/"grok" this:

He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His love for those who fear Him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.--Psalm 103:10-12 (NIV)

Social Philosophy: Civilization End Game: Here is the news.

A guy at work mentioned this website and it has it's entertainment value. For the average American this is entirely apropos. Come on have a good laugh, "you can do iht!".

Daguerreotype: Outside in the cold distance...

Two Riders were approaching...

And the wind began to howl...

Languages: testimonies & remnants of our civilization: 001

In this following poem written in medævil German, which I could not translate with the modern anti-babel online helps, is written:

Ich sih die liehte heide
in gruner varwe stan.
Dar süln wir alle gehen,
die sumerzit enphahen.

{Remember in German the "ss" is "s", the "s" is "z", and the "z" it "ts".}

Philip K. Dick and Roger Zelazny and myself think it means thus:

I see the light-stricken thicket
in green somehow it stands.
We will all soon go
and leave behind the summer time.

This speaks of the sun-struck woodland.
As PKD & RZ say, it was life and the leaving of life fused.

W: LP: LG: VH: LM: part 2

Book 2 of "Fantine"

After introducing the bishop in book one of “Fantine”, Victor Hugo brings into the story the main protagonist Jean Valjean. As a part of examining the tragic life of this character up to his introduction in the story, VH has an opportunity to criticize the French legal system. JV (Jean Valjean) enters the story after having been imprisoned (confinement at hard labor) for nineteen years. He arrives at the town of Digne where the bishop lives, and after he is rejected from two inns for being an ex-convict the writer flashes back in time to tell the story of how JV came to this predicament. His story begins thus:

Jean Valjean was born into a poor peasant family in Brie region. In his childhood he had not been taught to read. When he had come of age, he chose the occupation of a pruner at Faverolles.

And…

He had lost his parents when he was very young. His mother died of a poorly treated milkfever, his father, a pruner before him, was killed when he fell from a tree. Jean Valjean now had only one relative left, his older sister, a widow with seven children, girls and boys. This sister had brought up Jean Valjean, and as long as her husband lived, she had taken care of her younger brother. Her husband died, leaving the eldest of these children at eight, the youngest one year old. Jean Valjean was just twenty-five. Taking the father’s place, he supported the sister who had reared him. He did it naturally, as a duty, but with a trace of surliness. His youth was spent in rough and poorly paid labor; he was never known to have a sweetheart; he had no time to be in love.

And…

In the pruning season he earned eighteen sous {not quite a franc} a day; after that he hired out as a reaper, a workman, teamster, or laborer. He did whatever he could find to do. His sister worked also, but what could she do with seven little children? It was a sad group, gradually held tighter and tighter in the grip of misery. One very severe winter, Jean had no work, the family had no bread. Literally no bread and seven children.

VH goes on to describe how JV breaks the baker’s window at night and takes one loaf of bread. JV was caught of course and…

Jean Valjean was found guilty: The terms of the penal code were explicit. In our civilization there are fearful times when the criminal law wrecks a man. How mournful the moment when society draws back and permits the irreparable loss of a sentient being. Jean Valjean was sentenced to five years in prison.

And…

Sitting on the ground like the rest, he seemed to take in nothing of his position, except its horror. Probably with the vague ideas of a poor ignorant man, there was also a notion of something excessive in the penalty. While they were riveting the bolt of his iron collar behind his head with heavy hammer strokes, he wept. The tears choked his words, and he only managed to say from time to time, “I was a pruner at Faverolles.” Then still sobbing, he raised his right hand and lowered it seven times, as if touching seven heads of unequal height and from this gesture one could guess that whatever he had done had been to feed and clothe seven little children.

And…

He was no longer Jean Valjean; he was Number 24,601. What became of the sister? What became of the seven children? Who worried about that? What becomes of the handful of leaves of the young tree when it is felled?

The story goes on with only a brief mention of his sister working in Paris with only the youngest boy; all the other children were scattered to the four winds. In the fourth year of JV’s sentence, he tries to escape and is free for 36 hours before he is recaptured. He gets another three years for this attempt and in the sixth year he tries again to escape and fails. In this case he tries to resist so he gets another five years (two with a double chain). In the tenth year he tries and fails again and gets an additional three years, and in the sixteenth year he tries one more time and gets another three years—in this attempt, he is only free for four hours before recapture. Here is the summary:

Nineteen years. In October, 1815, he was freed; he had entered in 1796 for having broken a pane of glass and taken a loaf of bread.

And to get a real feel for the plight of this man check out this passage:

He talked little and never laughed. Only some extreme emotion would draw from him, once or twice a year, that mournful laugh of the convict, like the echo of a devil’s cackle. He seemed continually absorbed in looking at something terrible.
In fact he was absorbed.
Through the sick perceptions of an incomplete nature and a vanquished intelligence, he vaguely felt a monstrous weight was on him. In that wan half light where he crouched, whenever he turned his head and tried to raise his eyes, he would see, with mingled rage and terror, forming, massing, rising out of view above him with horrible ramparts, a frightening accumulation of laws, prejudices, men, and acts, whose outlines escaped him, whose weight appalled him—it was that prodigious pyramid we call civilization. Here and there in that shapeless, seething mass, sometimes near, sometimes far, or at inaccessible heights, he could make out some group, some vivid detail, here the jailer with his cudgel, here the gendarme with his sword, there the mitered archbishop, and high up, in a blaze of glory, the emperor crowned and resplendent. It seemed to him that these distant splendors, far from dissipating his night, made it blacker, deathlier. All this—laws, intolerance, actions, men, things—came and went above him, according to the complicated, mysterious movement God imposes on civilization, walking over him and crushing him with an indescribably serene cruelty, an inexorable indifference. Souls sunk to deepest misfortune, unfortunate men lost in the depths of limbo where they are no longer visible, the rejects of the law, feeling on their heads the whole weight of human society, so formidable to those outside it, so terrible to those beneath it.
From his position, Jean Valjean meditated. What sort of reflections could they be?
If a millet seed under a millstone had thoughts, undoubtedly it would think as Jean Valjean did.

Into this living death of only law, shone the light of grace, for when everyone in the town of Digne gave not a place to Jean Valjean to even sleep or eat, the bishop invited him in and warmed him by the fire and fed him and gave him a clean bed to sleep in. When JV ate his dinner on silver (the only treasure the bishop had), the hardness in his heart crept in, and after sleeping for some time he arose and stole away with the silver. When the gendarmes brought him back, the bishop bade him be released and he chided him for not taking the silver candlesticks as well. The bishop tells him that he has bought his soul and that he should go forth in repentance. This bright light of grace blinded him and it took awhile for it to sink in and when it did, he wept for the first time in nineteen years.

Social Philosophy: Civilization End Game update

Mark Horne has helpfully linked to a great article describing our latest socio-economic woes for 2009. I like this paragraph from the article:

As for the republican form of government, the American people have progressively repudiated it almost from the time they won their independence from the British Empire, and during the past century, they have increasingly favored a form of electoral dictatorship cum empire in which, every four years, the people cast ballots for one of the candidates put forward by the two wings of the one-party political apparatus. This system, vigorously promoted by the imperial running dogs known as the mainstream news media, brings great delight to the masses, who love a good horse race, even if it has been fixed. They are also kept contentedly semi-comatose by the bread and circuses their masters provide in the form of the welfare-nanny-therapeutic state and its Hollywood adjuncts. The few who object strenuously are tased or shot dead by the police, who are ever ready to serve and protect the state that employs them.

W: LP: LG: VH: LM: part 1

Book One of "Fantine"

In the first part of Les Misérables, called “Fantine”, in book one, we have more than fifty pages given to introduce the Bishop of Digne, M. Myriel. Since Victor Hugo (VH) is a bit of a Romantic, we see an idealized version of the “good priest”, and some today may sneer at this too perfect person, but even in this character and his interactions with other characters, we see the sublime and beautiful. The bishop is orthodox, but not doctrinaire, as in this passage:

Being, as he smilingly described himself, an ex-sinner, he had none of the inaccessibility of a rigid moralist, and would boldly profess without the raised eyebrows of the ferociously virtuous, a doctrine that might be summarized as follows:
“Man has a body that is both his burden and his temptation. He drags it along and gives in to it.
“He ought to watch over it, keep it in bounds, repress it, and obey it only as a last resort. It may be wrong to obey even then, but if so, the fault is venial. It is a fall, but a fall onto the knees, which may end in prayer.
“To be a saint is the exception; to be upright is the rule. Err, falter, sin, but be upright.
“To commit the least possible sin is the law for man. To live entirely without sin is the dream of an angel. Everything on this earth is subject to sin . Sin is like gravity.”

(Obviously the view related above comes from the RC p.o.v., but it is an interesting way to try to live with the reality of our fallen-ness as we strive for holiness.)

M. Myriel cares for the poor and his reaction to the misery of life is to succor the poor and downtrodden. Here is a passage that gives a picture of this attitude:

He was indulgent toward women and the poor, upon whom the weight of society falls most heavily.

The bishop lives what others only talk about, and although he is mild mannered and not given to offense he does have a biting sense of sarcasm to point out the bankruptcy of false viewpoints. Here are a few passages that demonstrate this:

There was a wealthy retired merchant at the service, somewhat inclined to usury, a M. Géborand, who had accumulated an estate of two million from manufacturing coarse cloth and woolens. Never in all his life had M. Géborand given alms to the unfortunate; but from the day of this sermon {preached by a young priest about the dangers of hell and the desirability of heaven} it was noticed that regularly every Sunday he gave a penny to the old beggar women at the door of the cathedral. There were six of them to share it. One day the bishop, seeing him perform this act of charity, said to his sister with a smile, “There’s Monsieur Géborand, buying a pennyworth of paradise.”

The bishop’s response to a certain Monsieur le Comte’s extensive verbiage at dinner one night about his own philosophy of the virtue of selfishness goes like this:

The bishop clapped his hands.
“That’s the idea,” he exclaimed. “Materialism is excellent, truly marvelous; reject it at your risk. Ah! Once you have it, you’re no one’s fool; you don’t stupidly allow yourself to be exiled like Cato or stoned like Stephen or burned alive like Joan of Arc. Those who have acquired this admirable materialism have all the joy of feeling irresponsible, of thinking they can calmly devour everything – high positions, sinecures, honors, power rightly or wrongly acquired, lucrative retractions, useful betrayals, delectable lapses of conscience – and that they will enter their graves with it all totally digested. How nice! I’m not referring to you, my dear Senator. Nevertheless, I must congratulate you. You great lords have, as you say, your very own philosophy – exquisite, refined, accessible to the rich alone, good for all occasions, admirably seasoning the pleasures of life. This philosophy comes form great depths, unearthed by specialists. But you are good princes, and you are quite willing to let belief in the good Lord be the philosophy of the people, much as a goose with onions is the turkey with truffles of the poor.”

And just when one would think that the bishop is too perfect, we have the incident where the bishop meets an old man who was a revolutionary and finds in him a greater sense of justice than he had himself. The bishop, a royalist, has some difficulty at first in conversing with this man. But the man makes himself clear that he did not vote for the execution of the king, but he goes on to point out that the many people who suffered under the aristocracy were no better or worse than the aristocracy who suffered under the revolution. I like this passage of the opening of these characters’ conversation:

“I congratulate you,” he said, in a tone of reprimand. “At least you did not vote for the king’s execution.”
The conventionist did not seem to notice the bitter emphasis placed on the words “at least.” The smile vanished from his face. “Do not congratulate me too much, Monsieur; I did vote for the destruction of the tyrant.”
And the tone of austerity confronted the tone of severity.
“What do you mean?” asked the bishop.
“I mean that man has one tyrant, Ignorance. I voted for the abolition of that tyrant. That tyrant fathered royalty, which is authority springing from the False, whereas science is authority springing from the True. Man should be governed by science.”
“And conscience,” added the bishop.
“They are the same: Conscience is science.”
Monsieur Bienvenu {another name for the bishop} listened with some amazement to this language, as it was new to him.

The passage goes on, but I recommend reading the whole of chapter ten of book one. After this encounter the bishop is even more diligent in his charitable works. Because he did not seek earthly glory, but gave himself as a humble, poor, private person, he did not have any followers like many of the other more influential bishops. So, as we leave the bishop to talk about the next major character to be introduced, I will leave you with this passage about the average human’s desire for self aggrandizement:

Monseigneur Bienvenu, a humble, poor, private person, was not counted among the rich miters. This was plain from the complete absence of young priests around him. We have seen that in Paris he did not fit in. No glorious future dreamed of alighting upon this solitary old man. No budding ambition was foolish enough to ripen in his shadow. His canons and his grand vicars were good old men, rather common like himself, and like him immured in that diocese from which there was no road to promotion, and they resembled their bishop, with this difference, that they were finished, and he was perfected. The impossibility of getting ahead under Monseigneur Bienvenu was so plain that fresh from the seminary, the young men ordained by him procured recommendations to the Archbishop of Aix or of Auch, and left immediately. For after all, we repeat, men like advancement. A saint addicted to abnegation is a dangerous neighbor; he is very likely to infect you with an incurable poverty, a stiffening of the articulations necessary to advancement, and, in fact, more renunciation than you would like; and men flee from this contagious virtue. Hence the isolation of Monseigneur Bienvenu. We live in a sad society. Succeed -- that is the advice which falls drop by drop from the overhanging corruption.

In passing, we might say that success is a hideous thing. Its false similarity to merit deceives men. To the masses, success has almost the same appearance as supremacy. Success, that pretender to talent, has a dupe--history. Juvenal and Tacitus only reject it. In our day, an almost official philosophy has entered into its service, wears its livery, and waits in its antechamber. Success: That is the theory. Prosperity supposes capacity. Win in the lottery, and you are an able man. The victor is venerated. To be born with a caul is everything. Have luck alone and you will have the rest; be happy, and you will be thought great. Beyond the five or six great exceptions, the wonders of their age, contemporary admiration is nothing but shortsightedness. Gilt is gold. To be a chance comer is no drawback, provided you have improved your chances. The common herd is an old Narcissus, who adores himself and applauds the common. That mighty genius, by which one becomes a Moses, an Aeschylus, a Dante, a Michelangelo, or a Napoleon, the multitude attributes at once and by acclamation to whoever succeeds in his object, whatever it may be. Let a notary rise to be a deputy; let a sham Corneille write Tiridate; let a eunuch come into the possession of a harem; let a military Prudhomme accidentally win the decisive battle of an era; let a pharmacist invent cardboard soles for army shoes and put aside, by selling this cardboard as leather for the army of the Sambre-et-Meuse, four hundred thousand livres in income; let a peddler marry usury and have her bear seven or eight million, of which he is the father and she the mother; let a preacher become a bishop by talking platitudes; let the steward of a good house become so rich that on leaving service he is made Minister of Finance – men call that Genius, just as they call the face of Mousqueton, Beauty, and the bearing of Claude, Majesty. They confuse heaven’s radiant stars with a duck’s footprint left in the mud.

A little like our own age, eh?

W: LP: LG: VH: LM: Introduction

Our literary group has taken a break from Dostoevsky, but we have stayed in the nineteenth century by turning to a French writer.

We have selected Victor Hugo's Les Misérables. We collectively agreed to this great work but I got to pick out the particular edition; I went with Signet Classics' unabridged edition of the novel (ISBN 0-451-52526-4). This book has 1,463 pages of reading (the text and introduction), and it is in paperback form to save everyone money. The translation is a new unabridged work by Lee Fahnestock and Norman MacAfee, based on the classic C.E. Wilbur translation.

The length of this novel may seem formidable and by today's standards, a bit excessive. Of course there are still exceptions in today's standards, since Neal Stephenson seems to be able to get away with really long novels (like his Baroque series and recently "Anathem"). Regardless of today's standards, I think the length is necessary to apprehend the context of the novel. The great length allows a great breadth of setting and depth of the characters, and the many digressions and side notes give us structural background and if you will, a snapshot of the philosophical mindset of the people living in France in the early to mid-19th century. This gives us the historical and cultural context for all of us who are living in the early 21st century.

More importantly than the historical and cultural value of reading this novel, we will find in this story timeless ideals and universal truths about life and humanity. We will see things like justice, grace, forgiveness, kindness, and the evils of mankind like exploitation, isolation, desolation, the imperial law, the unforgiveness of the mob mentality of society, etc. This novel will plumb the depths of the human experience.

Even if the novel has it's roots in Romanticism, we will see the realism in how many of the characters treat others. There will be the great tragedy of the grinding misery of existence also found in Dostoevsky. But, because of the Romantic streak we can expect to see ideals and the sublime shining through in the texture of the story.

Philosophy, General: Misc., Thought for the day.

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers."

by Thomas Pynchon.

ORP: KW Jeter's Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human

I am back to work through the New Year calender click-over, so I don't have time to write up a decent analysis of this novel. But I had to quote a line from about 84% into the book:

Just my luck, he thought glumly. When things started going bad for you, they went on that way for a long time. That was the real nature of the universe.

Though I am glad to have a job in our declining economy (and if I keep it, more so, as unenjoyment levels reach 10% by the end of '09), and to quote the well known song,

I can't complain, but sometimes I still do.

, I had a difficult week. First Sam (my son) pulls a real boner, legally speaking, (which I won't divulge in the event that some future corporate employer for him does a background check including all blogs and biographical related data). Then I have challenges at work every night this week that leave me exhausted. One day everything is going relatively well and then the next day you awake to find that (metaphorically speaking) everything "turns to s#*t". And then it keeps on going and you wish that you hadn't slid over into another "f"ed up parallel universe. So the quote above shows me that I am, at least, not the only one to experience this phenomena.