Weekly Features Post
Issue XXIII
Michigan in May. It's possibly the prettiest month of the year. Everything is brilliant green, except for the newly-sprouting flowers and the large number of small trees that are blossoming in shades of red, pink, and white. The weather is warm, but not brutally hot, and the bugs aren't out yet, making front porch reading more alluring than a tall pilsner of cold beer on a hot day.
Unfortunately, it's also the time for kids' activities. Two kids in soccer and two in baseball: practices and games every night, punctuated with various school and church activities (First Communion, May Crowning, spring concerts, end-of-year parties). A guy is lucky to read a couple of Pascal's Pensees on a weekday evening. Santayana said married life means the surrender of the intellectual life. He no doubt was right. We're just happy to sniff its fumes once in awhile.
The Daily Eudemon did well last month. Over 4,300 Visitors and nearly 24,000 Hits. It keeps growing quickly. With the bigger numbers, we assume there are a lot of new readers out there, so it might be appropriate to explain the Weekly Features Post.
The WFP used to be the entire blog. Back in December, we named the blog The Wednesday Eudemon and posted one lengthy post a week. After two months, we started posting daily and changed the name to The Daily Eudemon.
The Weekly Features Post is a vestige of the first days. It's a miscellany of quotes and passages we pick up here and there during the week, mostly stuff that doesn't fit in the regular daily posting scheme. We continue to offer the WFP because we're told people enjoy it, and it's different.
Patriotism v. Nationalism
Don't call yourself a patriot when you're really a nationalist. And if you're a nationalist, you ought to shudder when you look in the mirror.
Patriotism (as George Orwell noted in one of the few extant essays about its distinction from nationalism) is defensive, while nationalism is aggressive; patriotism is rooted to the land, to a particular country, while nationalism is connected to the myth of a people, indeed to a majority; patriotism is traditionalist, nationalism is populist. Patriotism is not a substitute for religious faith, whereas nationalism often is; it may fill the emotional–at least superficially spiritual–needs of people. It may be combined with hatred. John Lukacs, Remembered Past (ISI Books, 2005), p. 107.
Stoic's Porch
"As long as you live, keep learning how to live." Seneca
American Frenzy
A reader writes:
I live in Europe (Poland) and living abroad has made me see that Americans are end-oriented people. We set goals, we accomplish goals, and then we move on to some other goal. I've noticed in myself and others that we Americans, thus, are not 'process' or experience-oriented people. We don't savor or enjoy or wish to prolong the process of doing something - from cooking dinner to raising children (or even, perhaps absurdly, dying) - so much as we look forward to the moment or the day when we have finished that 'task' and can get on with something else. Multi-tasking seems to have been invented for precisely this reason: because we can't bear the tedium of being 'in process' and not 'at goal,' we jam some other goals into the time when we're in process, to keep from 'wasting' the whole experience of being in the process of achieving a goal.
We think she's hit it on the head, but we fear it's in our blood. De Tocqueville saw much the same thing nearly 200 years ago. After describing frenzied American activity, he opined,
Their taste for physical gratifications must be regarded as the original source of that secret disquietude which the actions of the Americans betray and of that inconstancy of which they daily afford fresh examples. He who has set his heart exclusively upon the pursuit of worldly welfare is always in a hurry, for he has but a limited time at his disposal to reach, to grasp, and to enjoy it. Democracy in America, Second Book, Chp. XIII.
Strays
"Wisdom comes alone through suffering." Aeschylus
"Conquer yourself and the world lies at your feet." St. Augustine
"There are no persons capable of stooping so low as those who desire to rise in the world." Lady Marguerite Blessin
"I long to accomplish a great and noble task; but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble." Helen Keller
"The majority of us are for free speech when it deals with subjects concerning which we have no intense feelings." Edmund Chaffee
"The first destroyer of the liberties of a people is he who first gave them bounties and largess." Plutarch
The Last Word
Bogglish: uncertain, doubtful, skittish. "We're a bit bogglish about the new beer energy drinks."
