This book spurs confessions: If I have any faith left at all, it is still steeped in pre-Vatican II incense. I met my first Jesuit teaching comparative religion in a Sacred Heart college. An authority, like all Jebbies, in pre-revolutionary New England based protestant religions, I enrolled in the course probably more to have a male lecturing before the mob of girls than the typical nun. He certainly did provoke respect for his erudition and as a byproduct, awe of the Order.
Now decades later, Jebbies have re-entered my daily life: my older son teaches at a fabulous preparatory high school where he teaches Latin and Greek, and hopefully makes male teenagers a tad more cultured. My step-son teaches accounting at a Jesuit university. Ah, there's the late 20th century tension investigated in this book: the Jesuits: The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church by Malachi Martin (himself an eminent theologian and ex-Jesuit).
My daughter-in-law loves to read the lives of the saints, and this book taught me all about Ignatius Loyola, his piety, his understanding of his own motives and the needs of the Church during the dawn of the Renaissance. His approach to a changing world was to personalize the need for a group of pious, intelligent and some-what militant men to battle in the eternal wars between the force of good, God as embodied in Christ, and Evil, the fallen archangel Lucifer, in order to help mankind enter the Kingdom.
After such lofty inspirations, Malachi tracks the erosion of this purpose, whereby Jesuits became social workers to the people of the church, in fact chose to become socialists whose main purpose was to battle capitalism as the main oppressor of the masses. Jesuit theologians rather than fighting the changes brought on by humanism and the theory that heaven on earth was meeting the material needs of the poor rather than providing spiritual elucidation. He arrays several events as contributing to this corruption of Ignatius' organization: Vatican 2, several Jesuit convocations, the personalities and weaknesses of Popes and heads of the Society
All is lost: vocations and actual numbers of Jesuit priests have plummeted, papal disobedience is taken for granted, the voices and opinions of everyone is of equal validity.
I wish this book made me more hopeful and more religious; instead it made my chronically nostalgic.
I talk often to friends about the wholesale abolition of the good old days: Latin masses (when asked for one for my mother's funeral mass, one of my priest classmates from high school said his bishop would not permit it) to be defiant, my son did the readings in not only Latin but Greek and we did get old Latin hymns worked in. the diminution of the ceremony to folk song jamborees, the absurdity of the congregation shaking hands to extend peace to a pew-mate.
I should have stopped reading after the sections on Ignatius. Maybe I found find more consolation in reading the lives of the saints. By not holding up ideals of behavior and faith, the flood of current political and psychological theories prevail to the ultimate loss of souls, respect, and tradition.
Sunday, April 19, 2020
A Couple of Books About NYC, Not in Chronological Order
With the local library closed, I have resorted to buying paperbacks on line. As usual, I try to stick with nonfiction and history and ordered two books about NYC. In reverse chronological order, let me write my impressions of Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad & Criminal in 19th Century New York by Stacy Horn.
To "alleviate" the crowded conditions at Bellevue, which served not only as a hospital but also was the location of the City's penitentiary, lunatic asylum, almshouse, workhouse and prison for people convicted of minor crimes, construction was begun on Blackwell Island, a two mile long island in the East River, of new buildings. Beginning in 1832, with a hospital for the poor and a second building, the penitentiary, and expanding in 1839 with a lunatic asylum, and again in 1848 with an almshouse and in 1852 with a workhouse. All were horrible: understaffed, abusive to patients and inmates alike, medical "treatment" typical of early 19th century "practices" and care of insane more barbaric than caring. Patients were used as nurses, inmates as workers.
The book cites practices off the island as well, in privately owned as orphanages, social trends of immigration and poverty as direct causes of ending up on the Island, incompetent and even cruel facility directors. It all brought back my six months of working in the Department of Mental Health (prior to its more correct new name). Six months was barely enough to introduce me to the problems still rampant in the 20th century and to conclude that there still was very little effective treatments. Then came deinstitutionalization.
All I conclude from this book is that the problems go back centuries and the treatments are still ineffective. Under the guise of philanthropy, people and organization capitalized on the problem to overcharge families and the State for meager services.
I left OMH, realizing that my assignment was quietly being performed as well several floors below our office, just as eternally and ineffectually. Too bad this book brought back all these memories.
To "alleviate" the crowded conditions at Bellevue, which served not only as a hospital but also was the location of the City's penitentiary, lunatic asylum, almshouse, workhouse and prison for people convicted of minor crimes, construction was begun on Blackwell Island, a two mile long island in the East River, of new buildings. Beginning in 1832, with a hospital for the poor and a second building, the penitentiary, and expanding in 1839 with a lunatic asylum, and again in 1848 with an almshouse and in 1852 with a workhouse. All were horrible: understaffed, abusive to patients and inmates alike, medical "treatment" typical of early 19th century "practices" and care of insane more barbaric than caring. Patients were used as nurses, inmates as workers.
The book cites practices off the island as well, in privately owned as orphanages, social trends of immigration and poverty as direct causes of ending up on the Island, incompetent and even cruel facility directors. It all brought back my six months of working in the Department of Mental Health (prior to its more correct new name). Six months was barely enough to introduce me to the problems still rampant in the 20th century and to conclude that there still was very little effective treatments. Then came deinstitutionalization.
All I conclude from this book is that the problems go back centuries and the treatments are still ineffective. Under the guise of philanthropy, people and organization capitalized on the problem to overcharge families and the State for meager services.
I left OMH, realizing that my assignment was quietly being performed as well several floors below our office, just as eternally and ineffectually. Too bad this book brought back all these memories.
Monday, April 6, 2020
OK A Book About Criminals: The Gangs of New York
Never saw the movie ... surprised to see that Herbert Asbury wrote the book in 1927!
The author begins the book in the early 1800s, emphasizing the Five Points tenements and gangs as the cradle of NYC violence. While it doesn't finish with West Side Story, it does document gangs and their leaders through the wars in Chinatown and especially the Civil War draft riots.
While my motive to reading about criminals was to find a commonality and individual flaws that predict violence, this book leads one to believe that all of the following contribute to crime: poverty, tenements, lack of education, lack of opportunity and no urge to climb the social ladder; numbers of people in similar situations; corrupt politicians and police.
I really didn't read this to figure out how individual men and women chose a life of crime, but rather to see how New York City dealt with and weathered the curse of violence.
As I mentioned earlier, I cannot get enthused about someone's choice to be violent and disregard not only the law, but most of the standards of human decency. As Darwin's book summarizes, certain human propensities are of course universal and to contrast that premise with Fox's, who is to say that there is a universal urge to correct this, as there are always the poor, uneducated, and people desiring money and fame.
How to minimize if not curtail mass violence? Asbury to identify contributing factors: crooked cops, politicians who used strong arm gang members to get out the vote; corporate leaders who paid thugs to break up unionization; judges who were paid to dismiss charges. Human weeds will grow; we need better gardeners.
The author begins the book in the early 1800s, emphasizing the Five Points tenements and gangs as the cradle of NYC violence. While it doesn't finish with West Side Story, it does document gangs and their leaders through the wars in Chinatown and especially the Civil War draft riots.
While my motive to reading about criminals was to find a commonality and individual flaws that predict violence, this book leads one to believe that all of the following contribute to crime: poverty, tenements, lack of education, lack of opportunity and no urge to climb the social ladder; numbers of people in similar situations; corrupt politicians and police.
I really didn't read this to figure out how individual men and women chose a life of crime, but rather to see how New York City dealt with and weathered the curse of violence.
As I mentioned earlier, I cannot get enthused about someone's choice to be violent and disregard not only the law, but most of the standards of human decency. As Darwin's book summarizes, certain human propensities are of course universal and to contrast that premise with Fox's, who is to say that there is a universal urge to correct this, as there are always the poor, uneducated, and people desiring money and fame.
How to minimize if not curtail mass violence? Asbury to identify contributing factors: crooked cops, politicians who used strong arm gang members to get out the vote; corporate leaders who paid thugs to break up unionization; judges who were paid to dismiss charges. Human weeds will grow; we need better gardeners.
Literary Luddites
The other book I bought in Texas was "Against the Machine" by Nicols Fox. I was reading this on the plane and many people commented on how interesting the book looked.
Sort of like Darwin's view of world interaction and the interplay between culture and economy as expressed in After Tamerlane, Fox overlays the anti-industrialization movement on to English romantic literature. As an English major, a couple of lectures on the "times" might have given some periodic base to the settings and stories.
Fox points out that the essence of Luddism is not violence, but a philosophy that respects tradition, intuition, spirituality, the senses, human relationships, the work of hands, and the disorderly and unpredictable nature of reality. It questions the domination of science and the elevation of efficiency to a superior value.
Fox advocates that, at the very least, the consequences of introducing a technology should be thoroughly understood so that trade-offs can be consciously considered.
The book progresses to align Blake, Paine, Pitt, and the romantic poets with the Industrial Revolution in England, concluding that they chafed against the confines of eighteenth century ways of thinking -- especially the preoccupation with order and form that was characteristic of Bacon, Newton, and Locke, where the world was being sorted, ordered, prioritized and planned in a way that began to define progress but was really about control
Fox concludes that man finds himself enticed by progress, automation, industrialization within a perpetual pull of opposites. Caution tugs at curiosity as impulse teases aversion. Fear taunts courage; willpower struggles with appetite. But for all the stimulation of the new, there remains the powerful comfort and security of the known; finally stating "one impulse in particular seems to have weak competition or none at all: the appeal of ease or the less-taxing option is unquestioned. He parallels this nostalgia with the lure of profit,
It was a good time for me to reopen this book before I pass it on to the used book barrel. COV-19 has in a sense pulled the plug on convenience. While we still get more news from the television rather than a newspaper editorial or a book, time has slowed ... surroundings have more appeal now that our exploration is curtailed by the distance we can walk or bike, Conveniences are lost as store shelves stock out; leisure options are not pre-presented by theaters, concert halls, even spas. Somewhat more alone with our surroundings now, we are vesting simple pleasures with their historic place. Raking leaves, planting bulbs, walking dogs, writing to friends have reemerged as worthwhile time fillers.
I used to refer to myself as a Luddite whenever I had to rely on a younger person to show me how to work a computer spreadsheet or process a paperless transaction across organizations. I still have no desire to learn all the functionalities of my new phone or even my old computer. Maybe I'm just old. Hope there are younger Luddites out there.
Finally, this book is fun to contrast against Darwin's After Tamerlane. Globalizationalists are Luddites.
Sort of like Darwin's view of world interaction and the interplay between culture and economy as expressed in After Tamerlane, Fox overlays the anti-industrialization movement on to English romantic literature. As an English major, a couple of lectures on the "times" might have given some periodic base to the settings and stories.
Fox points out that the essence of Luddism is not violence, but a philosophy that respects tradition, intuition, spirituality, the senses, human relationships, the work of hands, and the disorderly and unpredictable nature of reality. It questions the domination of science and the elevation of efficiency to a superior value.
Fox advocates that, at the very least, the consequences of introducing a technology should be thoroughly understood so that trade-offs can be consciously considered.
The book progresses to align Blake, Paine, Pitt, and the romantic poets with the Industrial Revolution in England, concluding that they chafed against the confines of eighteenth century ways of thinking -- especially the preoccupation with order and form that was characteristic of Bacon, Newton, and Locke, where the world was being sorted, ordered, prioritized and planned in a way that began to define progress but was really about control
Fox concludes that man finds himself enticed by progress, automation, industrialization within a perpetual pull of opposites. Caution tugs at curiosity as impulse teases aversion. Fear taunts courage; willpower struggles with appetite. But for all the stimulation of the new, there remains the powerful comfort and security of the known; finally stating "one impulse in particular seems to have weak competition or none at all: the appeal of ease or the less-taxing option is unquestioned. He parallels this nostalgia with the lure of profit,
It was a good time for me to reopen this book before I pass it on to the used book barrel. COV-19 has in a sense pulled the plug on convenience. While we still get more news from the television rather than a newspaper editorial or a book, time has slowed ... surroundings have more appeal now that our exploration is curtailed by the distance we can walk or bike, Conveniences are lost as store shelves stock out; leisure options are not pre-presented by theaters, concert halls, even spas. Somewhat more alone with our surroundings now, we are vesting simple pleasures with their historic place. Raking leaves, planting bulbs, walking dogs, writing to friends have reemerged as worthwhile time fillers.
I used to refer to myself as a Luddite whenever I had to rely on a younger person to show me how to work a computer spreadsheet or process a paperless transaction across organizations. I still have no desire to learn all the functionalities of my new phone or even my old computer. Maybe I'm just old. Hope there are younger Luddites out there.
Finally, this book is fun to contrast against Darwin's After Tamerlane. Globalizationalists are Luddites.
Giving Up on the 2020 Criminal Mind Theme
Poor choice this year ... I quickly discovered that I really didn't care why criminals commit crimes. So when I went to Texas early in January, I went to the half off price book store and picked up two "history" books.
From reading the 2019 spy books based in the Middle East, I came to acknowledge my lack of knowledge about that part of the world; so, I picked up After Tamerlane by John Darwin. Too bad I did not "accentuate the first two "syllables." This was a 506 page volume about all empires POST Tamerlane. In the first "orientation" chapter of the book, Darwin says Tamerlane's was the "last real attempt to challenge the partition of Eurasia between the states of the Far West, Islamic Eurasia and Confuscian East Asia ... and revealed that power had begun to shift back from the nomad empires to the settled states."
He goes on further to cite Max Weber's explanation of "modern capitalism" that requires "an activist, rationalizing mentality, Chinese Confucianism (rational but inactive), Islam (active but irrational), and Hinduism (inactive and irrational) ..." And so his book goes on to integrate colonial history, underlined by basic assumptions, such as:
Rejecting the idea of a linear change in the course of modern world history, in which Europe progressively rise to pre-eminence, then fell and rose again. Instead to think in terms of conjunctures, periods of time when general conditions in other parts of the world coincided to encourage or check the enlargement of trade, the expansion of empires, the exchange of ideas or the movement of people,
Seeing Europe's age of expansion firmly in its Eurasian context, for example contrasting naval power with the invention and expansion of railroads.
He concludes that given the propensity of humans to accumulate power on an extensive scale is countered by the ethnic basis and gravitational pull of culture, making this tension the default mode of political organization throughout most of history.
I continue to emphasize Darwin's underlining perspectives; he sees modernity as a very slippery idea: its convention meaning is based on a scale of achievement; in political terms its key attributes are an organized nation state, with definite boundaries, an orderly government with a loyal bureaucracy ti carry out its commands; an effective means to represent public opinion; a code of rights to protect ordinary citizens and encourage the growth of civil society. Economically, it means the attainment of rapid, accumulation economic growth through industrial capitalism; the entrenchment of individual property rights, and the systemic exploitation of science-based knowledge. Culturally, the separation of religion and the supernatural from the mainstream of thought (by secularization and disenchantment of knowledge and social behavior; the diffusion of literacy and a sense of common origins and identity.
Most of the above have been typed from Darwin's opening pages (so don't think either that I write like this or came up with these clear ideas on my own). After reading the rise and fall of several "nations" and their attempts at empire building, and then overlaying the concept of economic globalization, I have to pull back and ponder on what is different of special about America and where other human aggregates are on the scale of becoming a "nation." So much for the arrogance of "nation building" by force, occupation or holding up one model as one size fits all.
Like the book 1492, the best parts of this book align different parts of the world at several points of time to assess what was simultaneously happening within an area to impact the rest. This is not a reprise of what was taught as "world history" in schools decades ago.
From reading the 2019 spy books based in the Middle East, I came to acknowledge my lack of knowledge about that part of the world; so, I picked up After Tamerlane by John Darwin. Too bad I did not "accentuate the first two "syllables." This was a 506 page volume about all empires POST Tamerlane. In the first "orientation" chapter of the book, Darwin says Tamerlane's was the "last real attempt to challenge the partition of Eurasia between the states of the Far West, Islamic Eurasia and Confuscian East Asia ... and revealed that power had begun to shift back from the nomad empires to the settled states."
He goes on further to cite Max Weber's explanation of "modern capitalism" that requires "an activist, rationalizing mentality, Chinese Confucianism (rational but inactive), Islam (active but irrational), and Hinduism (inactive and irrational) ..." And so his book goes on to integrate colonial history, underlined by basic assumptions, such as:
Rejecting the idea of a linear change in the course of modern world history, in which Europe progressively rise to pre-eminence, then fell and rose again. Instead to think in terms of conjunctures, periods of time when general conditions in other parts of the world coincided to encourage or check the enlargement of trade, the expansion of empires, the exchange of ideas or the movement of people,
Seeing Europe's age of expansion firmly in its Eurasian context, for example contrasting naval power with the invention and expansion of railroads.
He concludes that given the propensity of humans to accumulate power on an extensive scale is countered by the ethnic basis and gravitational pull of culture, making this tension the default mode of political organization throughout most of history.
I continue to emphasize Darwin's underlining perspectives; he sees modernity as a very slippery idea: its convention meaning is based on a scale of achievement; in political terms its key attributes are an organized nation state, with definite boundaries, an orderly government with a loyal bureaucracy ti carry out its commands; an effective means to represent public opinion; a code of rights to protect ordinary citizens and encourage the growth of civil society. Economically, it means the attainment of rapid, accumulation economic growth through industrial capitalism; the entrenchment of individual property rights, and the systemic exploitation of science-based knowledge. Culturally, the separation of religion and the supernatural from the mainstream of thought (by secularization and disenchantment of knowledge and social behavior; the diffusion of literacy and a sense of common origins and identity.
Most of the above have been typed from Darwin's opening pages (so don't think either that I write like this or came up with these clear ideas on my own). After reading the rise and fall of several "nations" and their attempts at empire building, and then overlaying the concept of economic globalization, I have to pull back and ponder on what is different of special about America and where other human aggregates are on the scale of becoming a "nation." So much for the arrogance of "nation building" by force, occupation or holding up one model as one size fits all.
Like the book 1492, the best parts of this book align different parts of the world at several points of time to assess what was simultaneously happening within an area to impact the rest. This is not a reprise of what was taught as "world history" in schools decades ago.
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