On the Roman Republic's Decline and U.S. Politics

While I was recently reading relatively new history of the Romans (B. Campbell, The Romans and Their World), I ran across a few passages that resonated as having more than superficial connection to the contemporary western, and especially American, political scene. What made them so vivid was that in the main these passages were quotations or paraphrases of ancient Roman historians themselves.  Let me briefly discuss three of them:  signs of a declining culture (Sallust), lust for personal political power (Florus), and moral descent and civic paralysis (Livy).

Lear: The "Abused Nature" "Of This Child-Changed Father"

One of the great pleasures in reading literature is to discover a few sentences or lines that are so rich with significance that they simultaneously do two things.  On the one hand, they deepen the narrative, play, or poem as it advances, and, on the other hand, radiate, and encapsulate, the work’s broader meaning and concerns.

In Shakespeare’s King Lear, Act 4, scene 7, lines 16-19, Lear’s youngest daughter Cordelia meets her father and becomes overwhelmed by his state of affairs:  his dementia and his abandonment -- more than that, his abuse and rejection -- by his other two elder daughters Goneril and Regan.  Cordelia interrupts her speech with an apostrophe to the “kind gods,” and she prays that Lear may be healed.

CORDELIA                                           O, you kind gods,
Cure this great breach in his abusèd nature!
Th’ untuned and jarring senses, O, wind up,
Of this child-changèd father!

-- King Lear, IV.vii.16-19

The short passage is pregnant with significance, especially double meanings.

First, “abused nature” refers most immediately to his madness (i.e., insanity).  Cordelia finds his unmooring from reality to be particularly pitied.  These are his “untuned and jarring senses.” At the same time, the “abused nature” signifies the natural relationship of father and daughter that Goneril and Regan have “abused” in not patiently caring for their aging, ailing father and in their acute hostility toward him. This is also, as much as the dementia, the “breach” in his natural constitution:  as a person of sound mind and as a father of (falsely) doting daughters.  Ironically, it was Cordelia who in Act 1 affirmed her love for Lear “as are right fit” (1.1.107) and “according to my [natural filial] bond” (1.1.102), yet whom Lear rejected, abused, by disowning and banishing from the kingdom. 

"Lear and Cordelia," Ford Madox Brown, 1848

Second, the other petition in Cordelia’s prayer is for the gods to “wind up,” or to mend or fix, the senses (the mental, perceptual, and emotional capacities) of this “child-changed father.”  The image may be one of a chiming clock, “untuned and jarring,” imprecise in reflection of reality (as a clock that needs to be wound) and jarring in the sound it makes as a result of its chiming at the wrong time. Lear himself variously lashes out and speaks nonsense because of the two factors that so plague him:  his failing mental capacities and his shattered family relationships with his children.  He is, both because of his own banishment of Cordelia and because of Goneril’s and Regan’s essential “banishment” of him, a “child-changed father.”

This passage, then, echoes succinctly a key, overarching, tragic irony of the play. Lear himself, because of his combined natural, hasty, manic disposition and his increasing dementia, rejects genuine affection where it was to be found (Cordelia) and is himself rejected by false affection where he chose, in his foolish pursuit of public professions, to believe it was true (Goneril and Regan).  Cordelia perceives and feels deeply the tragedy of Lear’s losing himself and his ties to his daughters, both of which are abuses to his nature.

The Economics of Empathy (and Thanksgiving)

In the United States, the Thanksgiving holiday is two weeks away.  For those who have experienced it, Thanksgiving can be a wonderful holiday.  Everyone across ethnic, political, and religious lines can equally participate.  Indeed, that was the purpose in President Lincoln's proclaiming it a national holiday in 1863, when the country was torn apart by Civil War.

In more recent times, Thanksgiving seems to be part of a double holiday, or at least a double tradition. Thanksgiving Thursday is followed by Black Friday, so named because it is the day when, traditionally, retail sales increase to the point that merchants begin to turn a profit for the year. That is, their books move into the black. The observance of Thanksgiving is completed by consumption. Let us not forget that the purpose is to pause and render gratitude for the blessings of one's life. From the outside, however, it could seem as though Americans are most thankful that they can hit stores at ridiculously early hours on Friday morning to spend money on largely frivolous things.

That is a cynical view of Thanksgiving.  It is one to which I am susceptible.  But there are, I believe (or would like to think), more sober observers of this holiday and the use of money.  Some people volunteer at soup kitchens for the homeless or the working poor.  Others donate money to these shelters or similar aid organizations so that they can operate to serve the needy.  Many of these volunteers and donors tear up at the thought of a child's going hungry on any day, but especially on a festive day that celebrates not just bounty but, most basically, shared life together in community.  These people recognize that although they may be celebrating life, others are fighting for it.

These benefactors, just ordinary people, are thinking not primarily of their own happiness:  watching football, enjoying tasty food, relaxing from daily labors, basking in the company of treasured friends and family.  They are trying to share the simple happiness that comes from food with others who lack it.

In a 10-minute TED talk given two years ago, Harvard professor Michael Norton takes up the question "how to buy happiness."  His research, both in the United States and abroad, confirms, perhaps unsurprisingly but still emphatically, that people report increased happiness when they spend money on others, not on themselves.  The amount of money spent does not matter.  What matters is the target.

 

http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_norton_how_to_buy_happiness.html

The short video is worth watching for the creative ways in which Norton and his colleagues test this hypothesis.  Some tests are even humorous.  And the results were not solely about personal happiness but, more generally, about the positive effects that accrue within groups who are charitable, empathetic, or just concerned about others.  There appears to be a multiplier effect that arises from demonstrating empathy:  the reward is greater than the investment when one invests in other people.

My sense is that this will also increase one's general sense of thanksgiving.  Spending money on others will foster an increased feeling of gratitude for one's current lot in life.  A huge part of this is through deepening personal connections.  Sometimes it comes from making the effort to establish them.

I am reminded of the Thanksgiving scene from the movie The Blind Side.  The video below does not adequately depict the scramble that the Tuohy family members have on Thanksgiving for the television where the day's American football games are being shown.  Thanksgiving in their world is about private consumption:  family members eating plates separately, watching multiple screens, and not really communing with one another.  They are alone together.  Their guest is alone by himself.  This is where the clip begins.

http://vimeo.com/67084873

Mrs. Tuohy discerns the difference, and she does something about it.  It was not enough, she realizes, to invite Michael into her home for the holiday because he had nowhere else to go.  She, and the rest of her family members, needed to make him part of their family.  And this meant that Mrs. Tuohy's family needed to act like one itself.  Disconnected viewing of television around a large room needed to give way to the connected holding of hands around the Thanksgiving table.

After all, what would have been the point of reproducing in their home the isolation that Michael already felt without one?

This is the economics of empathy:  greater rewards and personal happiness accrue when we invest in -- that is, spend time or money on -- other people.  First comes empathy, then happiness, because empathy establishes personal connection.  By it we embrace our common humanity.  This is the purpose.  But the effect is that by it also both giver and receiver become truly thankful.

The Fiction of Sexual Violence, pt. 3: Coetzee

In the previous two installments of this series on the fiction of sexual violence, I reflected, first, on the disabling dehumanization that is pictured in Toni Morrison's Beloved.  Next, I traced how sexual aggression creates dysfunctional and disfigured relationships in William Faulkner's Light in August.  In this post, I want to make some initial soundings into one instance of potential sexual assault in J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace.

This novel is the most complex of the three in its representations of sexual violence, and this is the reason I say "initial soundings."  I cannot here say everything I would like to say -- and that the novel invites, and deserves, to be said.

And I say "potential sexual assault," because the brilliance of Coetzee's narrative is the way in which he adroitly, and realistically, captures the ambiguities that attend instances of alleged date rape on college campuses.  Of course, David Lurie is Melanie Isaacs' professor, which adds moral entanglements to this coupling.

By focusing on a scene early in the story, I suggest that Coetzee narrates a fiction of sexual violence:  one the one hand, a story about a questionable rape; on the other hand, the alleged assault also creates deathly distance between the characters.  The relationship between Lurie and Melanie is not a given; it is made.  It is, in this sense, a fiction.  Of what the relationship is made is precisely the question that carries through a major strain of the story's conflict.

Moral Ambiguities in Prévost, pt. 1: Examples

When we say that someone is a moral example, what exactly do we mean?  How skilled are we at discerning the supposed moral virtue to be emulated?  These are questions that I was prompted to consider recently while reading some European fiction and that I think are of abiding relevance. 

In the Foreward to his delightful novel Manon Lescaut (rev. 1753; orig. 1731), Abbé Prévost describes “the subject of the picture I will present” as “an ambiguous character, a mixture of virtues and vices, a perpetual contrast between good impulses and bad actions.”  Prévost envisions the narrative “as an aid to moral instruction.” Specifically, one “will see, in Des Grieux’s conduct, a terrible example of the power of passions…” (Manon Lescaut, 3, although Prévost’s sincerity here is questionable given the text’s history of censorship).  What remains narratively ambiguous is the nature, or content, of the moral instruction supposedly intended.  Is it traditional or unusual?  Without resolving that question, it seems to me that in seeking empathy from other characters Des Grieux highlights how feelings influence, and usually soften, moral judgment.

Narcissism on the Rise: Notable and Quotable

From D. G. Myers, Social Psychology (11^th ed.; New York:  McGraw-Hill, 2012), 54.

After tracking self-importance across the past several decades, psychologist Jean Twenge (2006; Twenge and others, 2008) reports that today’s young generation – Generation Me, she calls it -- express more narcissism (by agreeing with statements such as “If I ruled the world, it would be a better place” or “I think I am a special person”).  Narcissism scores rose over time on college campuses from Alabama to Maryland to California (Stewart & Bernhardt, 2010; Twenge & Foster, 2008, 2010).  Narcissism correlates with materialism, the desire to be famous, inflated expectations, fewer committed relationships and more “hooking up,” more gambling, and more cheating, all of which have also risen as narcissism has increased.  Narcissism is also linked to a lack of empathy -- the ability to take someone else’s perspective and be concerned about their [sic] problems -- and empathy has dropped precipitously among college students (Konrath & others, 2011).  The researchers speculate that today’s generation may be so wrapped up in online interaction that their in-person interaction skills have atrophied.  Or, they say, empathy might have declined because young people today are “feeling too busy on their paths to success,” single-mindedly concentrating on their own achievement because the world is now so competitive.  Yet, ironically, those high in narcissism and low in empathy are less -- not more – successful in the long run, making lower grades in college and performing poorly at work (Judge & others, 2006; Robins & Beer, 2001).

But what about a different version of that last ironic phenomenon (high narcissists with low empathy who are lower performing academically and professionally but nevertheless are long-term successful)?  That phenomenon which is familiar to many of us in our everyday experience has a technical explanation attached to it:  promote the jerk and make him someone else’s problem.

There actually is a social scientific explanation more nuanced than the (accurate) one that I just gave.  It is that “even if overconfidence produces subpar results, others still perceive it positively.” Therefore, a jerk, sub-par performer is elevated in an attempt to pair appropriately his status with his perceived attitude.  The thought might be something like, “Well, I find him gratingly obnoxious, but he must be the type of person who gets ahead, because he displays similar traits of authority, power, and exceptionality.” 

We may not be able to control the behavior of narcissistic jerks, but we can be more mindful not to perceive them as better than they are.  And we can take more self-conscious care to check our first psychological impression and not put them on a pedestal.

Of course, sometimes narcissists are at the top simply because they own the place.