the abandoned school of life? anthropogogy?

probably?...possibly?...hopefully?... in spite of human ignorance and knowledge, despair and hope, triviality and nobility… “beneath”, “behind”, “above”, somewhere and -how “in” humans’ lives, societies… beliefs, religions, societies – ardently or indifferently, capably- or stupidly-held,… politics, classes… if somehow “in” the lives of the statistical “600,000,000” poor of India, or the reported more in China, and inside the luxurious lifestyles of the rich and famous in NY, London, Paris,…recently Moscow, more recently Beijing... and beyond the middling, middle-class lives and malls everywhere…there is some invisible, meaningful and ordered school system and anthropogogy ongoing, some invisible “school(ing) of life”… then where, when and how are the reported “teachers”, janitors and The Principal, in hiding – and why?!

“Twin Towers”, “Golgotha”, “Moscow’s ‘City’”…

the stories of New York’s “Twin Towers” and Jerusalem’s “Golgotha” – join the ruins of Rome(s), Carthage(s),…and all other cities, to remind that sic transit gloria mundi. and our cities’ buildings continue to bear a false sense of permanence in our lives and world.

it seems that Thomas à Kempis’ – who is believed to be the source of the idea of the expression, which was used in Papal coronation ceremonies – thought of some scholars who, once “important”, were then, as we say today, dead and gone. (presumably, though, he felt one life, an inimitable one, was not “a passing glory of this world”.)

Scipio Africanus in Carthage, remembering Troy, pre-cognizing the future “fate” of Rome (559 years before it occurred) is more true to the scale and depth we require today.

and Moscow’s “City” yet languishes from being a quickly-built, respectable, sky-scraping business area due to another financial crisis.

Goethe's Faust, Hesse's Steppenwolf...

Eckermann records for January 10, 1825 the visit of an English engineer officer during which Goethe heard that he had read Egmont and Torquato Tasso, but was quite amused to learn that he was reading Faust. “Really I would not have advised you to undertake Faust. It is mad stuff, and goes quite beyond ordinary feeling.”

Hesse in his 1961 author’s note to Steppenwolf described how it had been the most misunderstood of all his works, in part because it was read and understood by those who did not have the needed age, perspective and experience.

the “blogs” here – just recent pieces of nearly 40 years of journal notes – are written from a view similar to the experience of life and world of “Harry Haller”. there are those who call themselves Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, even, God(s) help us, New Agers…  I find myself to be a “Steppenwolf” -- a kin of Hesse’s “Harry Haller”. In my case: Stephenwolf.

the blogs here have all the “optimism” and angle on life and world as those with which “Harry Haller” saw the world.

a blond over Putin and Russian politics

the well-known correspondent was speaking with what I had presumed was some seriousness about Putin and Russian politics to three of us in the noisy café, when I suddenly noted by his eyes looking up at the entrance door (behind me) that he was clearly distracted by someone who had come just come into the café.

he just gradually stopped speaking, so distracted that he even apparently forgot that it was he who had been speaking to us, and he did not resume, or seem even to remember that he had been in mid-speech. he just smiled, not really realizing what had happened.

she was blond.

homo utopianus?

read the Epilogue to the Manuel’s Utopian Thought in the Western World [1979] – which said what I might have guessed, but nothing much more. I did note the short comments he made of the “communes” of the 60s/70s, which I myself glimpsed: “Stephen’s Farm”, “New Buffalo”, Lama ranch (Ram Dass), et al.

“Many of the rural communes that spring up in contemporary America, Great Britain, or New Zealand tend to eschew theory altogether and have no identifiable character. Their array of teachers and gurus have introduced no elements that were previously unknown, beyond perhaps the use of drugs as chemical agents heightening fraternal feelings among the members. Without a religious base these widespread experiments have a short life expectancy, about three years, the span of a serious love affair. 

They repeat the dismal experiences of nineteenth-century American utopian communities.

Idyllic, pastoral, anarchistic, universalistic, syncretistic utopias may regularly possess young persons coming out into the world of science and technology and find it wanting. Their latest creation, the utopia of the counterculture is a potpourri of outworn conceptions – a bit of transcendentalism, body mysticism, sexual freedom, the abolition of work, the end of alienation.” [p. 808]

certainly I had no idea – and I suspect this was common – of the prior history of communes, nor of the prior stories of the ideas in which we youth were swimming in those times.

the Manuels’ apparent view of utopian thought à la Freud, does not detract from the many insights they provide on the history of utopia(n)s. and there are so many historical personalities in this story whose ideas show the “escapist”, the fantastic aspect of the human mind. many – if not most of these utopias – can not be taken seriously, but the fact that these many “utopians”, over some 25 centuries, in many times, climes, cultures, countries  and minds, did so themselves, and firmly believed they were serious as utopias and “utopians” (even if the word had not yet been created, or they rejected or neglected it) is to be seriously understood as a reflection of the human being. I prefer to believe these dream(er)s source in some lost transcendent anthropology – but that may in fact only be my wishful thinking.

recent (un)Platonic prisoners

malls are the latest visions on the cave wall.

"old" in NY, London, Paris,...new in Moscow, and soon coming everywhere to a city near you.

true nowheres to Steppenwolves.

the world is flat, inside

years ago I conceived: 'Columbus helped make the world round -- McDonald's to make it flat again.'
today: 'to make the world flat again, it had to be conquered inside the human being.'

War Horse hooey

inwardly escaping the mundane once a week or so seems healthful and needed for me, but going to view "War Horse" was a waste of time, mind and money. it was about as engaging and unpredictable as the newly-refurbished "Pioner" movie theatre in Moscow hall where it was shown to perhaps 12 -- the red seats were nice and clean, and almost had lower back support in the correct location.

probably the film was addressed to simple teens, like its main hero, for it showed no developments that were not -- after I realized the level of the film -- expectable. I almost left earlier than half way through, and finally got up and left when I could not take another wholly implausible scene of formulaic emotions. it wasn't Saving Private Joey (the horses name for those who have not given their money to Spielberg and friends), but it was a lot of hooey.

the no wheres of Comte, Rousseau, Marx

reading more in the Manuels’ 800-page tome Utopian Thought of the “utopian ideas” of e.g. Comte, Rousseau, Karl Marx...their ideas of man, society and some variant of the best, true, ideal and/or perfect way of life…it is clear that realistically they could be applied no place.

Steppenwolf -- sub specie aeternitatis

one reason Hesse's figure Steppenwolf ("Harry Haller") could not have lived in academia, to which his studies might have lent him, is that he did not live -- by fate, choice, or need -- sub specie scientiae.
i.e. to try to apply it to life: whether one thinks inside the university or the universe, and whether one worries life and world as per their respective regents.

here were monsters

"By the 18th century a reader could be expected to regard skeptically a traveler returned with tales of monsters and natural prodigies after the manner of the medieval voyages to the East; but he could readily be convinced that somewhere among the gentle people living in a state of nature or in a simple state of civility there was an ideally happy society."

p. 435, F. E. and F. P Manuel, Utopian Thought in the Western World.

deep amnesia in 2012

there is a kind of deep amnesia present in our world's mass culture and societies today: living in the "21st century" without knowing or caring much to know about the prior 20-30 "chapters", and living by a calendar year ("2012") in which few people even care whether they believe or not, including where anno domini gave life and society order and meaning to at least temporal life for centuries, even if in a earlier kind of sleep.

let's go shopping!

a dying breed in the Moscow Metro wagon?: intelligentsia

a I sat down in the new metro wagon last night heading to my apartment from  the first evening of an Environmental Film Festival in the House of Journalists, I noted that an older woman to my left was gazing openly on me, like perhaps on a lover, or a painting, with admiration. it was clear in her eyes, and she looked directly, with a tilt to her head.

after some moments fully aware of being observed, I could not avoid at least returning her look, as she was continued unashamedly looking at me, and with a smile.

she said, of course in Russian, ‘I know it is impolite, but my children are artists.’

when the man between us left, she started talking to me…of her life, her self, her family, and with questions to me.

I quickly realized she was not some nutty old woman, but of the old (Russian/Soviet) intelligentsia… Studied at the Preparatory School to the Conservatory, then in the Conservatory. her parents had studied or worked with Stanislavski himself...

where was I from?

impossible! Americans have closed faces, not often with “character” like yours. they are even banal.

what is your “nationality” she asked again, meaning not what we in the West mean, as I had already told her; but what culture, what people, did I come from. French and Scottish-English clearly confirmed her point .

she spoke of China and India as coming world powers, and what did I think of China being dangerous in future…

it is reported that in his last years Beethoven’s clothes – unaware to him it seemed -- were unclean, and that he they even stank. my passing Russian companion was a woman, so it was not nearly so bad, and probably she didn’t notice the scent herself either. (I imagine it might not have been so in the latter Soviet years.)

in the USSR such people were noted and noticed in public. respected. turned to for guidance in life. now…? it was not clear the young people across the wagon were even listening to her, to us, to her animated and insightful thoughts and ideas…sadly become rare in Russia these days. sspecially for a Steppenwolf

I remembered the years when I first came to Russia, in what came to be the last years of the USSR. such conversations, such meetings, such persons were not so rare.

the outer desert?

after one has journeyed -- or worse, not -- through natural and social scenes romanticized by one self, then the terra and socio cognita leaves one barren, and perhaps longing and searching for nobler days.

raison d'être

writing as an assertion of meaning, at least hoped-for, and in some personal control.

invisible golden nuggets?

whether the costly gold, silver and jeweled creations of ancient bazaars or modern malls are much more than the oft-condemned 'passing earthly desires and joys of fools', the metaphorical "nuggets" of insights, of understanding, of knowledge which I have found in decades of individual nights and days of studied search and discovery in the matters of human history, religions, philosophies -- what I have come to call "anthropography", the intellectual biography of mankind (noography?) -- have most all disappeared...as my memory cannot hold so many fresh in-sight in my diurnal human mind. (many life-inspiring "Eurekas!" -- like yesterday's in Manual's Utopian Thought in the Western World -- are now often long gone and forgotten.)

so, unless, as is rumored, such are preserved invisibly, knowledgeably elsewhere (~forgotten, but not lost)...then I suppose I have been much like a child -- really no more than "a risen ape"? -- putting new, shiny toys in his pocket, as other toys fall out the hole at the bottom.

this is much more than a question of "memory capacity".

(he who dies without the most toys wins?)

here be no monsters -- terra cognito

here be no monsters.

(journal extract from February 6, 2012)

listening making lunch to CRI (China Radio International) about life in China, and listening to the 30-something Canadian “Beijing Hour” program host (Paul James), and reflecting on his mentality and ideas – I note the mundanity in which he and so many live, move and have their being. Berdyayev had an essay on this: "The Bourgeois Mind". Hesse also described it in Steppenwolf. it is the dominant mentality – the mental, cultural, social milieu of the “Westernized” world – though that is too vague and inaccurate and malleable an idea to be fully adequate to my meaning. (and I too was on a mystical journey in my quixotic mind of my 20s to 40s.)

it is the tendency of the average mind to unreflectively, untroubledly, live inside of this world, life experience that feels like inner dissolution to me. I can’t say I want the experience surrogated by “extreme sports”, eg going into a war zone, or chumming-up to some of the Caucasian rose-sellers I see outside the shopping mall in order to learn about their life, but I will have, and do have, a reflective life which I am trying to keep worth living, or worth having lived.

the majorities everywhere I have been seem quite content to exist in their mundane, “bourgeois” life, and mind. As Hesse wrote about, or by, “Harry Haller” – they do not want any heroic deeds on my part.

and since any kind of “higher” or transcendent “Meaning” is apparently not really needed, or sought, by most people I meet, be they in eg Russia, America, Egypt, Britain, Germany, it is not easy at my post-Romantic/idealist age and experience of the world, to carry alone a sense that for example even this is not “just another day”, and now more special than later. “here be no monsters”; terra cognito.

but reading in , of such figures as Thomas Müntzer, or the maelstrom of whirling world-views in the English Civil War…probably shopping as a raison d’être is an earthly blessing.