Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre
© 1847 Charlotte Bronte
525 pages

  Years ago an online quiz declared to me that of all the characters in English literature, I was most like…Jane Eyre. It may have been a quiz intended for women, but I had an awful lot of spare time on my hands in high school. Regardless, since that I’ve had a faint interest in reading Jane’s novel, and since I’ve instituted April as English Lit month, why not?   Jane Eyre is the story of a young orphan who must find her way in the world, overcoming both temptation and self-righteousness.  Jane is probably the most personable of the classics I’ve read, using as it does the first-person perspective and beginning not with a storied introduction, but with a seemingly mundane episode in Jane’s life that will set her on her own course.  Charlotte Bronte combines a happy talent for description with wisdom that is neither strident nor impotent.

Jane begins as a ward of her uncharitable aunt, a woman who bemoans the fact that she has been made the guardian of her niece. Rather than bringing Jane up as a member of the family, she instead attempts to reduce Jane to an abused servant.  This injustice so distresses Jane that she collapses in nervous sorrow, and on the advice of a doctor, is sent away to a boarding schools for indigent orphans, where she encounters a saintly young girl who  is an exemplar of virtuous patience and long-suffering.   The young girl perishes, as is the way of saintly mentors, and Jane quickly grows to become a teacher at the school herself.  The real story begins when she, craving something new, advertises for and lands a job as a governess. Her new home is a gloomy place with  an absent master and strange goings-on, some of which won’t be explained until very late in the novel, but presently the owner arrives and things grow steadily more agitated.  Though Jane has no money, no familial connections, and no great beauty, she develops feelings for this Mr. Rochester. Unknown to her,  but fairly obvious to the reader from his wide array of pet names,  Rochester also has feelings for Jane….but things aren’t quite that easy. Rochester isn’t the man he appears to be, and Jane must choose which she prefers: love or honor.

“I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad — as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth — so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am quite insane — quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot."

Mad though she may be with love,  since her friend ‘s death she has attempted to live rightly, and it is that habit of seeking the Good, not merely what feels good or can be rationalized, that keeps her beginning a new life with a mistake.  From there she flees into the country, with resources and again fixing for herself alone, winning friends and admiration for her character and kindness. She discovers long-lost relations and encounters a different kind of proposal before returning to where the story began, for a marvelous conclusion.

Readers today might praise Jane for being an independent woman in the Victorian age, but truth be told she is a remarkable character even in today’s age. She is independent, but not self-obsessed. From an early age she is aware of her own dignity, and respects that of the people who  antagonize her; even when she denies them, thwarts them, she is doing it as much for their sake as hers.  Thus we have independence, but not egotism.  Jane’s strength is her character, her compassion. Unlike Pip, another literary orphan, she is not possessed by her wealth;  it leads her to embrace and strengthen her bonds with those "who knew her when", not push them away in search of social status.  (She did have the advantage of having escaped her youth, I suppose. Pre-Helen, Jane might have made Pip's same mistakes.)

Jane Eyre was for me another happy surprise. I intended on reading A Classic. I found myself immediately attached to an admirable and lovely young friend in Jane.

A Renegade History of the United States

A Renegade History of the United States
 © 2010 Thaddaeus Russell
402 pages

"All of you, you think there's someone just gonna drop money on you? Money they could use? ...well, there ain't people like that! There's just people like me!"  (Jayne Cobb, Firefly )

In A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn delivered the hitherto-untold story of the common man, the poor and oppressed, fighting nobly for equality, liberty, and justice.  Chumps! Thaddaeus Russell's A Renegade History is a celebration of the unruly side of the common man, a tribute to those who just don't behave the way they oughta.  It's a prickly history, guaranteed to irritate to some degree just about everyone who reads it. At its best, it demonstrates how 'progress' is a subjective label, and something that happens herky-jerky, from a maelstrom of confusion and strife; at its worst, it hails man's cravenness as heroic.

The stage is set when, in the first chapter, Russell delights in how utterly depraved pre-revolutionary America was. There were more taverns than churches;  prostitution, drugs, and dancing abounded, and whatever appetites existed in man's nature could be fed. And then came the American Revolution, and there went freedom. With the war came sternness, moral discipline, and announcements that men must gird their loins not only for the martial fight against the Royal army, but for war against the sins of sloth, cowardice, and gluttony that would smother  liberty in its cradle.   After independence, the nation's leaders were not distant bureaucrats in London, turning an indulgent eye toward the shenanigans of their colonists, but influential scolds like John Adams, who strolled the harbors noting with pleasure the growing American navy, and ignoring with great dignity the whorehouses behind him. The American nation took another direction, a more disciplined one -- but ever since, there have been those who swam against the current, who attempted to turn the drums of a forward march into the beat of a ragtime dance.

Russell's offensive is two-fold, first sneering at both great men and the dignified minorities fighting for rights,  and then Russell's chapter titles give away his delight in overturning expectations -- "The Freedom of Slavery", "How Gangsters Made America a Better Place",  and "How Juvenile Delinquents Won the Cold War".   Although the Founding Fathers might, in defining freedom, look back to the hoplite-citizens of Greece and wax poetic on freedom'z ennobling effect on the human character, for Russell freedom is the ability to gorge, drink, rut, and sleep.  Slaves, he writes, were often better off than free men. To be sure, they were beaten for misconduct, but their legal status as property meant owners were bound by self-interest. They couldn't dismiss a slave, or stop feeding him for slacking on the job:  they would forfeit every dime paid, every resource given before. Compare that to the northern factoryman, Russell urges, who worked long hours to the ruin of his body, who -- if he was injured, sick, or otherwise unable to continue -- was dismissed into the cold entirely. The apparent perversity continues throughout, as when Russell honors the Mafia; their fun habits of extortion, murder, and theft aside,  they saw profit in opening gay bars in the 1970s, so more power to them.  That they were doing this for selfish motives (a la  Adam Smith's butcher) is Russell's concealed point:  humans at their worst can create an environment where people are 'better off' in general.  The obscene becomes the respectable, as when First Ladies began sporting the makeup that once  belonged exclusively to Ladies of the Night.  'Better off' will be a point of contention, however, since Russell's idea of a good life is Pleasure Island from Pinocchio.

Civilization is the taming of human nature, the domestication of it -- perhaps even its suppression. If there is any hope in A Renegade History, it is that human nature is simply too wild to remain in fetters for long: regardless of the dystopian nightmares of Orwell and Huxley, or dreams of politicians to inflict their favored order on us,  humans are an unruly race. A Renegade History is infuriating, but I knew even as I held my nose going through, utterly unforgettable. Not only are there gems to be found shifting through the garbage of history -- startling facts, like that the FBI raid on the Stonewall Inn had more to do with its Mafia-owned status than a campaign of anti-gay persecution, or that Martin Luther King's success was predicated on being the alternative to the violence already sweeping American streets -- but there's some slight comfort in knowing how contrary we are. Russell's heroes aren't protestors; they don't whine. They retaliate. They kick over tables, throw up middle fingers,  and charge off. There's ferocious energy here, the energy of a riot. But while it was  a disorderly, drunken mob that initiated the violence of the American Revolution in Boston, the prosperity that sustained them came from the peaceful, disciplined farms of civilization. It's refreshing to take a draft of the human spirit here -- there's such a kick to it --  but   as always our best hope is the path of moderation -- a little work, a little play.

Related:
The Redneck Manifesto, Jim Goad

This week: war, war, war

This past week has been a quiet one, as I've been devotedly reading through Castles of Steel, an 800+ page history of the naval war between Britain and Germany during World War I.  I'm just starting Jutland, and after that it's essentially a staring contest, so the end is in sight. After that I'll revisit the American Revolution, since The Men Who Lost America is finally here. Sure, it's late for my July Fourth readings, but to us real Americans, every day is Independence Day.

I jest, of course.  Between the two for leisure I'll enjoy the second volume of The Eugenics War series by Greg Cox.  Khan has just attempted to unite his genetically engineered brethren, only to realize it's like herding saber-toothed cats.  Never invite one superman who is a Marxist revolutionary and another superman who is the leader of an American patriot militia fighting the government to dinner. It's awkward and neither of them appreciates good scotch.

I haven't yet commented on nor reviewed Antifragile nor Good-Natured, so before they get pushed so far on the back burner that they fall off into "Well, I'll re-read  and review them properly later" territory (terra incognita, where there be dragons and from whence few books emerge), lo! Comments.
 Antifragile, which like The Death and Life of Great American Cities shaped my thinking long before I finished it,  examines how certain systems can benefit from stress and unpredictability rather than be undone by them, or even merely survive them.  A quotation I shared the first time I started reading the book demonstrates how there is no field of human experience that its author does not wade in and throttle.  It's a powerful work, a pot of gold mixed with scorpions  -- no reader can stick his hand in without being stung by Taleb's bellicose energy, but the man practices what he preaches. Many of his examples are drawn from the world of business, and some chapters are technical enough that even he tells readers they can leave them alone --but I figured that was a challenge on his part.  His essential point is that surviving lots of little crises is better than preventing them and then being wiped out by a major crisis. Organic systems can be strengthened by stress in the right amount; this is as true of bodybuilders (Taleb's own bulk comes from a routine that consists of him attempting to out-lift himself once a week in a quick sessions, instead of engaging in repetitions) as of economies.  Too big to fail? That's fragile, and a national economy based on them is inviting death.

Two months ago I read Good Natured, which as I feared blended in with the rest of de Waal's books. I've read them too closely together, I think.  The author uses years of observations at an expansive Dutch primate center alongside extended field reports from primatologists like Jane Goodall to examine the biological basis of moral behavior. Much of the book is taken up with de Waal presenting chimpanzees, bonobos, and monkeys of acting with respect to moral norms, and  the basis for these behaviors is that socially-healthy behaviors like morality are more evolutionary beneficial. He also addresses the delicate balance between individual actions and communal advancement, which occurs twice here -- both in behavior and in genes, as mutations always occur in individuals, but they're passed on within populations. Individuals do not evolve, groups so.  It's fascinating, and eye-opening, but I've read so much of de Waal it's like working in a cathedral or a park. The majesty becomes ordinary after too much regular exposure.

Well, off I go to big ships, baffled royals, and a book read in Ricardo Montalban's voice.

Daily Life in Early America

Daily Life in Early America
193 pages
© 1988 David Freeman Hawke

            Daily Life in Early America examines up-close the new world European colonists were discovering and recreating for themselves.  A social history, focused on daily life, the author begins first in England, reviewing quickly what work and social customs the colonists would have been accustomed to.  It begins and continues as a study in variety, for there was no ‘average’ English colonist; manners and means of living varied widely from county to county, even before they combined with German and Dutch settlers on the North American seaboard.   Although I read this as background for Independence Day readings,  early America well and truly means early.  Hawke tells the tale of men creating a civilization from the wilderness, often borrowing largely from the disease-vanquished native cultures which collapsed or retreated following exposure to European guns, germs, and steel. Although they attempted to recreate what they left behind in North America, creating a  New England on the model of the old,  the challenges and opportunities presented by the vast frontier spurred the evolution of a different culture. Covering everything from floor plans to the art of war, from superstition to politics, Daily Life in Early America delivers an abundance of information in lively style. This is definitely an author to look more into..  

Related:

Life in a Medieval Village,  Life in a Medieval City, Daily Life in a Medieval Castle, Marriage and Family in the Middle Ages;  Frances and Joseph Gies

DailyLife in Anglo-Saxon England, Sally Crawford

The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter

©  1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne

180 pages          

         In 18^th century Boston, a young woman stands upon the gallows in the center of town, facing down the contempt of the assembled mob. Having broken the laws of her adopted Puritan home, Hester Prynn must endure its punishment for her crime:  lifelong ignominy. Having conceived a child out of wedlock – and with a man not her absent husband – she will wear forever on her breast the  prominent letter “A”. The Scarlet Letter is a story of morality, persecution, and redemption;  an American classic whose readability belies its status as a classroom staple. 

        Though Nathaniel Hawthorne was writing in a setting a century before his, and including historic personalities like John Winthrope, The Scarlet Letter is less a gritty historical tale and more a legend – and, like all good myths, one with a point. Its heroine is a legend in her own time, a woman whose morality could not be contained by her community. Judged a sinner,  Prynn accepts the verdict of her community, knowing she has broken its rules. She wears the scarlet letter with quiet dignity, but her own skills as a seamstress and moral center give her a strength that carries her through the years, despite being an outcast.  She does not run away from her moral imperfections, nor their consequences, but embraces it,  making her life’s work the support of the poor and infirm -- combating passion with selflessness. Though she bears the titular mark of indiscretion, the piece’s true sinners are her husband and the local minister, both with secrets. The husband arrived in town just in time to see his near-abandoned wife on the scaffold. Perhaps it’s the months spent imprisoned by Indians, but hubby dear is a decidedly nasty sort who decides to adopt the false name Roger Chillingworth, and give himself the quest of finding out who cuckolded him and then destroying the man.   The Reverend John Dimmsdale, who – as you might guess is the third part of this little love triangle --  is equally responsible for Hester’s sin, but cowers from accepting it, fearful of the consequences. Though he professes an admirable concern for his congregation's welfare, his and Chillingsworth’s actions through the piece most decidedly are not, and by its end all actions have found their inevitable fruit. Prynn is redeemed, and the others…well, not so much.

        I expected dreariness of a novel set in the Puritan world, but Hawthorne's characters are highly spirited, especially Prynn and her little daughter, Pearl. Hawthorne writes in clear condemnation of the Puritans' severity, though  it is doubtful that he condemns their morality in general considering Prynn's decision to live in a spirit of penitence thereafter. Although the dialogue is purposely stilted (the Puritans seeming to take the KJV bible as their guide in speech), this is a novel filled with passion that roars along, with moral arguments along for the ride.  The Scarlet Letter is quite laudable. 

I'll Take My Stand

I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition

© 1930 various authors.

410 pages

 "There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called The Old South...Here in this pretty world Gallantry took its last bow...Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their ladies fair, of Master and of Slave.Look for it only in books for it is no more than a dream remembered. A Civilization gone with the wind.

For most the Roaring Twenties were a celebration of the triumph of progress. The Great War in Europe was over, and its conclusion saw many of the old empires and forces of conservatism defeated by the liberal-democratic allies (or in Russia’s case, by soviet revolutionaries). In America, business was booming; the cities were swelling with people streaming in from the impoverished countryside, going to work in factories and celebrating American triumphs in war and peace by purchasing as many of the new gadgets that filled the stores as they could, and using credit to acquire those they couldn’t afford. But in the late 1920s, on the precipice of the Great Depression, twelve men of letters looked to the future and saw a vision of despair: the Old South’s final defeat by the forces of modernity, and with it the loss of genuine civilization.  I’ll Take My Stand collects essays defending both the South as an entity apart from the rest of the American nation, and the agrarian system of life that for so long was its defining characteristic. Nearly 85 years after its release, their  fears have been realized. Southrons are just as removed from farming as any other Americans, and the interstates  and cookie-cutter subdivisions have reduced the southern aesthetic into the same bland sprawl that plagues the rest of the nation.  Their call to arms urges a defense for a way of life that is now passed. I'll Take My Stand remains of value to modern readers, however, in offering  both an appreciation of the Old South's culture beyond stereotypes and a critique of the automatic cheering-on of anything called progress.

I first heard of the 'Southern Agrarians', the symposium gathered here, in Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind, and the books are of like temperament in promoting an measured conservative response to cultural change.  Both look for inspiration in tradition, both the rich intellectual, moral, and artistic traditions of the west, but are averse of the modern embrace of the conservative label with the forces of big business.  The gentlemen gathered here are most certainly not fans of business;  they are 'men of letters', intellectuals and artists, who share the old gentry's contempt for the naked materialism of business. A farm is a place to grow corn, not make money, one writes. The authors and those who they look to for inspiration, men like John C. Calhoun, believed in a 'graceful' life;  one supported by work, of course, but devoted not to profit but to the pleasures of a good life;  time with family, living out old traditions;  the art of conversation; music,  and art.  Where Kirk and the Agrarians differ is emphasis on farming;  the southerners see the South's agricultural basis as vital to maintaining civilization, which draws wisdom from the seasons to realize there are limits to everything, and a time and place for everything under the sun.  The north, with its towns and factories, long abandoned the settled wisdom of Europe, which then lived on in the South, wrote the authors; they were given way to madness, to pursuing phantasms.

All this sounds rather lovely, but  the appeal of their Southern Civilization is itself limited; although they look with fear and contempt upon the centralization of wealth in the north, they defend it in their own massive plantations. Farms function better at that large scale, one writes. The virtue of economics vanishes, however, when it threatens them, and the fact that a factory can produce goods more efficiently  than a homestead is dismissed as being beside the point.  That's not to say the agrarians are hypocrites; another praises the Gracchus brothers, the classical heroes of the left, who wanted to break up Rome's great plantations and restore the land to the common man. They are twelve individual authors of varying sentiments and approaches; most write conventional essays, but two tell stories that illustrate the points they intend to make. On the whole, however, they lean toward  'elitism'; this is not just implied given their praise of a life of culture and leisure practiced by very few (yeoman farmers given passing mention, but), but in their disdain for the masses.  One dismisses the people as superstitiously religious Anglo-Saxons who need guidance, as if the southern gentry were Norman lord. If they have that level of disdain for the Saxons, woe betide the Scots-Irish working poor! There's also the matter of race and slavery. Slavery is not quite defended, but blows against it are certainly cushioned as the institution is described as obscene more in theory rather in fact.

I'll Take my Stand is a difficult book, not so much for its writing (some pieces lean toward the abstruse, but not most)  or its arguments, but for those old biases. These are not twelve members of the gentry writing, but intellectuals, and even though some of them rose to culture from farming stock,  their vision of the past is more idealistic than an argument for restorative action can be based on. It's intellectual and cultural history with a little too much romance, rather like the opening of Gone with the Wind which is quoted at the lead.That farming has become the province of industrial corporations is a severe loss for the American people; that our cultural links to the past, in the form of tradition, has been shredded is likewise a tragedy;  we live in an age where home skills like sewing and canning are taught not by family elders, but by government bureaucracies. Yet these arguments will not take root in the modern readers' mind, accompanied as they are by noxious weeds like elitism.  It's a shame, too, because many of the ideas expressed here ought to be considered, especially the notion of a simple life versus one of acquisitive materialism. Given that such ideas are argued in other books, by less impeachable authors,  I'll Take My Stand's greatest enduring appeal is in the area of intellectual history, of understanding the southern mind as it attempted to find the best response to industrialism pushing its way under the Mason-Dixon  line.

Related:

• The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk
• Any of Wendell Berry's books on agriculture or economics, including: The Unsettling of America, The Gift of Good Land, What Are People For, and Home Economics. 

 

Daily Life in Anglo-Saxon England

Daily Life in Anglo-Saxon England
© 2008 Sally Crawford
224 pages

            Who were the Anglo-Saxons? For a people conquered in 1066, their culture seems strangely dominant;  the land the Normans conquered remains England, not Greater Normandy, and Norman French is only an influence on the more native English, never having displaced the old language.   Daily Life in Anglo-Saxon England examines the earthy details of the Anglo-Saxons’ lives; the construction of their homes, the styles of dress, the culture they practiced at home and in community with one another. Separate chapters address both the material, like tools and towns, and cultural (religion and governance).  While some sections are based on physical artifacts, other evidence is documentary, taken from older histories like Bede’s, or inferred from miscellaneous documents.  The assertion that the Anglo-Saxons valued family care is drawn both from the presence of an adult skeleton who was born missing an arm and various descriptions of personalities in histories and graves as doting kinsmen and the like.   The book has a somewhat slow start (save for readers who are utterly fascinated by the difference between sunken-earth homes and free-standing  houses as archaeological sites), but on the whole is quite engaging.  The main point of the author’s writing is to rescue the Saxons from the perception that they were filthy peasants, knuckle-dragging their way around mud huts until the arrival of Christianity and the Norman French.  Her survey of their social life certainly illustrates how rich a life their culture possessed, and how sympathetic they can be even to modern readers.

What's Wrong with the World

What's Wrong with the World
© 1910 G. K. Chesterton
200 pages

What’s wrong with the world? Too many people are proposing answers to the wrong questions.  What’s Wrong is a curious collection of thoughts, voiced at the turn of the 20^th century, in response to the merry hell industrialism was wrecking on traditional forms of human society as the fields became the province of machines, not people, and the cities swelled with displaced farmers. Such urban swelling led to mass movements – spectator sports, popular politics,  and the odd mob, and sociologists, economists, and the like began to view society as one great machine, with ordered parts.   Written in opposition, What’s Wrong is a defense for the human-ness of people,  which examines flaws in the way men, women, children,  education, and politics were being handled – and have been handled further, from our  viewpoint. 

What’s Wrong with the World is from the start an eccentric book, for its author was an eccentric man, a personality given to wandering around in a cape and swordstick. He is neither ‘conservative’ nor liberal, and not moderate;  unlike Russell Kirk-esque conservatives, he scorns practicality and preaches the values of ideals and the abstract. How can we change society, he writes, if we do not have a conception of what it is supposed to look like?  What is the picture of health for human society, and what prescription might be writ to achieve it?  Chesterton’s goal here is not prescription, however, but description, and in several sections he writes about  the mistakes we have made concerning man, woman, and child.  The arguments he builds are steeped in religion and tradition, and a kind of sexual psychology.  They probably do not credit his reputation today, for he writes in defense of traditional gender roles and against female suffrage, but to dismiss him as an mere traditionalist is to miss the point.  The question, he writes, is not whether women deserve the vote, but whether the vote deserves women.

The prevailing spirit of What’s Wrong is, as its title suggests, that there is something wrong with the world of progress the people of the West were creating in the 19^th century.  Civilization is a forced endeavor in specialization;  at least since the agricultural revolution, certain groups of men have had to make their life’s work a matter of doing one thing; one man is a farmer, another a potter.  This is sad, since the good life consists of a variety of experience, but required. What is not required is the way industrialism forced that monotask tendency to become so extreme that one man might spend his entire day doing the same simple movement over and over again. Such work is not fit for men, and the idea of  taking women from the home – where they are masters of many different tasks, from sewing to cleaning to teaching  -- and forcing them into the place of a machine-cog is beyond the pale.   The same applies to politics, and here Chesterton plays the anarchist as he criticizes all governance as being based on the use of coercion. It is bad enough that men have to participate in such foulness; they at least can enjoy the war-like antagonism of party politics, which allows them to bear it.   The solutions to societal problems have been in the main a case of more of the same, a case of eating the hair of the dog;  to counter the monopolization of property by big business trusts, people  propose letting it be monopolization by the state.   The issue is monopolization;  the bigness of society itself has to be addressed.

While Chesterton doesn’t go into any solution, he does address the ideal form that society ought to have: people need to be regarded as the image of God, not a mass to be managed; property must be distributed  more equally across the population so each man will have his Home. The home is enormously important to Chesterton; it is a sanctuary of natural law, of the order of ancient anarchy; it is where children ought to receive their education, to learn from their father and mother’s wisdom and trade;  public education is good for nothing more than becoming than little coglets. It is the accumulation of trivial information, grounded in neither tradition nor skills.   What’s Wrong with the World is thus considered one of the fountainheads of distributism, with its  emphasis on decentralization, locality, and widespread property ownership.

Although some of its points are moot now (women’s suffrage is not a political issue these days),  What’s Wrong still has lingering relevance; we are more specialized these days than the 19^th century, not less; the gulf between the propertied and the poor is wider, not diminished;  education is wholly institutionalized, and considering how much time adults spend at work and children in school, even if parents knew a great deal about anything in particular they haven’t the time to teach it.  We are even less the image of Chesterton’s god;  even more ants on the anthill he predicted with such dread.  The book has its varied flaws; Chesterton’s opposition to evolution is on ideological grounds, for instance, as he abhors anything that looks on people as a mass, even as a biological ‘population’. His enthusiasm for writing about something he clearly does not understand (his perception of evolution resembles Lamarkianism, with the rich breeding bow-legged stable boys and such)  casts doubt on other criticisms, but he did live in the age of the insidious dream of eugenics, so his intentions were not terrible.  Discussion of actual evolution would have out of place in a work like this, loaded with literary references, chatty social critiques, and aphorisms aplenty. (This is the source of his “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has  been found difficult and not tried.”)  

What’s Wrong with the World is a peculiar book, dated but relevant, hopelessly old-fashioned but in an endearing way. The author’s convivial contrariness makes considering his arguments possible,   as does the fact that he is seemingly against modern work and modern politicking in general, not just women doing them. But in his day,  the political and labor arguments were a lost cause as far as men went, at least barring the distributive revolution, but the women and children can or could still be saved.  I think he is serious in his criticism, but I am predisposed to like him given my own contempt for inhumane work and corporatism. Readers will find Chesterton odd, but personable and thought-provoking, even if they have objection against his ideas. It’s not the easiest read, but considering his chattiness  the work isn’t difficult, either; just look out for the flourishing sword-stick and  spectacular prose.

The Gift of Good Land

The Gift of Good Land
© 1981 Wendell Berry
281 pages

Wendell Berry is a philosopher, poet, and more, but before all else he is a farmer. He is a faithful son of Kentucky devoted to the land, to the stewardship of the Earth, to the obedience to the first commandment given in his religious tradition: to dress and keep the garden. Berry has produced other collections of essays that focused primarily on agriculture, but this is the first I've read, and while I haven't set foot on a proper farm since elementary school, Berry's crafted hand makes a man ache to experience the gift of land he writes on here.  Although these essays primarily address farming, life is the subject; when Berry writes on the virtues of mowing with scythes, the essay is on man's relation with his tools. Does he use them to his intended ends or is he compelled to use them toward theirs?  A piece on the role of horses addresses the need for appropriate solutions, for sensible and sustainable approaches to the cultivation of food. A few essays simply reflect on the thoughts a farm naturally brings to mind, like those of motherhood when Berry is helping deliver a calf; he is profoundly grateful, not annoyed, to have been able to play a part in bringing the new life into the world.  Berry is an author who radiates wisdom; he notes, in considering the discovery of the New World, that we, like our ancestors come "with visions, but not with sight. We did not see or understand where we were or what was there, but we destroyed what was there for the sake of what we desired."  The partial purpose of these essays is to generate an understanding, not of what we know, but of how little we know.  As Berry muses on the patterns of nature, and attempts to teach readers how to discern and plan within those patterns -- to solve agricultural problems through agricultural means, for instance -- his study reveals how painfully arrogant we have been in the 20th century, to simply decide life was a machine that could be engineered to produce whatever outputs we wanted. Life remains stubbornly organic, temperamental even,  and responding to it requires the watchful eye, gentle hand, and sharp mind of a careful husband of the flock, a steward of the land; a farmer.

Related:
Folks, This Ain't Normal, Joel Salatin

The Bonobo and the Atheist

The Bonobo and the Atheist: in Search of Humanism Among the Primates 
© 2013 Frans de Waal
313 pages

 Frans de Waal has written extensively on moral instincts within the great apes, in books like Good natured and Primates and Philosophers. In The Bonobo and the Atheist, he reviews his experience with chimpanzees and bonobos over several decades with an eye for what they might teach us about human morality. His express purpose is to find hope for building a moral human society outside the bounds of authoritarian, belief-dependent religion, but he’s more interested in examining the basis of natural morality than in condemning religion. Taking a cue from Alain de Botton’s Religion for Atheists, he acknowledges that religion and human culture have thus far been inextricably bound. His studies of chimp and bonobo behavior, and studies of human behavior, indicate to him that there is more to morality than simple genetic-biased altruism;  we are bound to our communities, kin or no, through deep social instincts, and it is these that are the basis of our morality.

Throughout the book, de Waal explores moral impulses revealed in the behavior of chimpanzees and bonobos. Although chimpanzees have a reputation for violence,  even they discipline one another for failing to practice self-restraint: a challenger for an alpha position can't bite with impunity, nor can adults bully the young who have not yet learned appropriate behavior; violators of these norms and others, like stealing or cheating, are punished with a round of shrieking and beating.  Their morality isn't limited to instinct; it is also informed by their intelligence. As mentioned, youngsters are 'taught' appropriate behavior, indirectly;  chimp youths can chase females in estrus, but as they start to become 'teenagers', they're regarded as potential challengers by the reigning males and taught their place, even if they're not yet  capable of reproduction.  Other cases demonstrate that chimpanzees can take stock of what they've done and remember it later; a chimpanzee who bit a trainer's finger off was later visibly ashamed, isolating itself and covering its eyes; when the human saw him again, the chimp recognized him and attempted to examine the hand.

These behaviors may be safely assumed to be evolutionary boons to a social species, helping mitigate physical damage caused by struggles for power, or preventing competition within the group from destroying it. Moral instincts and acculturation allow a tribe to work better together, and the same holds true for humans. Once our morality would have been guided by the same measures: our every indiscretion would be noticed by the people we lived among, and remembered; we could be directly accountable for our behavior. Once human populations became too large for these tribe-level measures to handle, however, religion became useful, and for that reason not a single human culture today is without it.  Even in the modern era, increasingly secular, we are forging a new path in the form of a civic culture that attempts to foster healthy behavior without the necessity of believing in elaborate creeds.  It is de Waal's hope that the humanist approach, of practicing a moral culture for the sake of human needs, informed by human experience,  will prove workable, though presently its most vocal proponents are men who have limited their advocacy to merely attacking religion, which is fruitless and makes as much sense as 'sleeping furiously'.  Still, he is hopeful that natural morality will prevail eventually; it does have the advantage of being instinctual. Humanity has as much hope of purging itself of its conscience as it does of  becoming asexual.

Although most of de Waal's own experience comes from observing bonobos in an artificial environment, a spacious exhibit in Arnhem Zoo that prevents some pertinent aspects of behavior from manifesting themselves, he couples it with the studies of other populations in the wild.  The Bonobo and the Atheist, like its title, is an interesting discussion that combines primate behavior and the evolution of religion. What is missing, I think, is any mention of Natural Law, which  would have given his mention of civic culture considerable heft. Humans have been attempting to discern moral convention from nature since Aristotle, both inside religion and out of it. A comparison between declared belief in the Rights of Man according to constitutions and charters and the inferred rights in religious texts ("Thou shalt not kill" inferring a right to life, for instance) would have been most interesting. Both in de Waal's view would be expressions of humanity's inherent moral instincts, but civic belief has the quality of being open to change when necessary; a humanistic moral culture would not be limited by dogma. Simply creating a healthy moral culture won't make religious domination a thing of the past -- it has other virtues, other contributions that must also be made good for -- but it would be a start in creating a world more concerned with the needs of people than power, priests, and convention, and less dependent on something as volatile as beautifully dangerous religion.

de Waal's observations and insight prove again remarkable.

Related:

• The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt  (whom he quotes from)
• Religion for Atheists, Alain de Botton (mentioned)
• Chimpanzee Politics, The Age of Empathy, Primates and Philosophers, Our Inner Ape, etc. Frans de Waal 

The New Faithful

The New Faithful: Why Young Adults are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy
© 2002 Colleen Caroll
320 pages

 Every action produces its reaction, and to Colleen Carroll decades of religious liberalism have born their fruit in the form of young people flocking back to conservative religious traditions, complete with smells and bells. One of the new faithful herself,  Caroll’s own views mingle with those of the Generation Xers she interviews:.  Raised in broken families, they are resacralizing marriage; burned out by one night stands and shallow relationships, they are embracing chastity;  frustrated by Pontius Pilate’s question, ‘what is truth’, they are sneering at relativism and declaring: the truth is whatever the Bible says.  The Youth Faithful mixes anecdotes and statistics, and despite being part of her subject matter, Carroll tries valiantly to be objective: some conducted interviews are with theologians and intellectuals critical of this trend ,and see it  merely as a reflection of the age-old defiance of the reigning generation by the young.

But what if that's not the only motive? Even considering that the now-historic trend commented on here (this book is nearly twelve years old) may be being reversed (considering the surge  of people reporting as Nonreligious),what if these young people have motives which can open our eyes to the fact that society-as-usual isn't providing something they want or need? No one here offers a real reason for  re-adopting old dogmas, beyond deferring to St. Augustine or C.S. Lewis, but the prevailing idea that all of reality is subjective is no doubt frustrating. Even if you believe it, who wants to? It rails against every instinct: something must be true.  Part of this conservative morality seems linked to the resurgence of the religious right in general in the 1980s, rather than being connected to a return to Orthodoxy.  The historic appeal of orthodoxy is touched on --- there's a sense of security in associating with long-established traditions --   as is the sense of order and peace that comes from daily rituals.  More importantly are the practical reasons for the reversal: Generation X grew up after a series of profound, society-changing movements had started to take effect. They grew up in an era of skyrocketing divorces and sexual license. They were the children whose homes fell apart, whose adolescent peers' lives were ruined by the rise of STDs and early pregnancy.  They are the generation who first experienced these effects, and they are rallying against the cause of them - "liberalism", used generically . More than anything, the people interviewed in this book are yearning for stability -- stability in beliefs, in practice. They want a faith that can be counted on to guide them through the hard times. It's worth pointing out, though Carroll doesn't, that her 'young adults' are not so young: while there are college students here, many more are thirty-somethings with young families, and thus a heightened appreciation for morality and security are not too surprising.  It's a lot easier to want to set the world on fire with change when you don't have children of your own who can be burned.

The Young Faithful is a thought-provoking book, if grating by the end as a result of the casual use of 'liberal' as an attack word, which damages the general sense of professionalism conveyed by Carroll's writing.  It is out of place in a more serious work like this.  Considering that current religious growth is in fact in 'conservative' branches of Christianity like Catholicism, the Church of Latter-Day Saints, Pentecostals, and the like, as opposed to the more liberal mainline denominations,  The Youth Faithful remains of interest despite its increasing datedness, if not wholly appealing.


Related:
Crunchy Cons, Rob Dreher. Dreher is a Gen-Xer who left the Baptists for Eastern Orthodoxy.

Crabgrass Frontier

Crabgrass Frontier:  The Suburbanization of the United States
© 1985 Kenneth Jackson
432 pages

For thousands of years, people lived in either the country or the city, but with the coming of the industrial revolution that changed, and especially in America.   Seemingly as soon as they were able, the wealthy and later the middle class abandoned the cities in favor of neighborhoods set in the country, first commuting into the city and then commuting to other areas outside it once jobs followed the wealth out of town. Why was the traditional urban form abandoned for the suburbs to the degree that it was in the United States, and not in Europe? In Crabgrass Frontier, Kenneth Jackson chronicles urban flight and the making of the 'burbs,  establishing that Americans have an historic cultural distaste for cities,  inherited through England,  and have been trying to have the best of both worlds, city and country, at least since the end of the 18th century.  Wealth and technology first allowed a prosperous minority to establish separate country residences, and later government policy made ex-urban living the easiest choice to make, resulting in it becoming the cultural norm. Jackon begins detached and eventually waxes passionate as the suburbs' success prove to be at the expense of the cities, but he's never caustic.

The Revolutionary War was scarcely over before suburbs appeared on the American scene; even before horsecars, trolley lines, and the automobile, wealthy citizens of New York established their residences on the Brooklyn Heights nearby, and commuted by ferry.  While the borders of cities have historically been slums, home to necessary but despised industries like leather tanneries, in the United States cities came to be ringed by affluence.  Reasons for the wealthy leaving were varied, but a desire to get away from the city's "problems" -- the noise of industry and the presence of common working folk -- ranked high. The simplest explanation, however, is that they could. The United States had more land than it knew what to do with. At first, living outside the city and commuting to it to work was the domain of the very wealthy, but the arrival of railroads allowed moderately wealthy persons to join in.  The trolley and the introduction of balloon-frame homebuilding made suburban living affordable for more people, and saw a manifold increase in the number of these communities. This was not the beginning of sprawl, however: even as they multiplied,  suburban communities remained distinct, walkable places.

It was the automobile which allowed suburbia to truly transform the urban landscape, extending the ease of complete mobility to the entire middle class. At the same time, government policies promoted suburban expansion, directly and indirectly, by promoting home ownership through subsidized loans and highways. Having lost the wealthy and middle classes, their tax base, cities deteriorated further, prompting even more flight. At the same time, home loan and insurance policies favored the suburbs heavily, stifling attempts by those in the city to improve or protect their buildings. These policies were at times openly racist, denying coverage or loans to whole blocks if a Jewish or black family were to move in.

Motivated by a cultural preference for country homes over city living, enabled by the widespread availability of open land --and technological innovations like the rail line and automobile which used that land as a broad canvas to draw an entirely new kind of urban landscape - and further encouraged by government support, the Americans thus became suburbanized.  The work, which Jackson introduces as an extended essay, ends with a reflection on where the suburbs are taking the American people. Built on cheap land, connected by cheap transport, and occupied by cheap buildings,  Jackson believes contemporary sprawl to be not worth much in comparison to the city, and points to trends in the 1980s which might signal a turning point.

Thirty years after the fact, we know that sprawl recovered from those hiccoughs, only for its tide to slow and reverse in the later years of the 21st century's opening decade,  influenced by the financial crisis and the new normal of  high gasoline prices.  The Millennial generation has displayed a sharp preference for city living over the burbs, and car ownership is on the decline. As Americans begin to rebuild their cities and the civilization which they foster, this look back at what caused their disintegration will prove most helpful. This comprehensive history of suburbia not only establishes why American suburbs are so different from those from across the world, but delves into the full range of factors that led to their creation: cultural, technological, economic, and political.  Those wanting to understand the development of suburbia will find it a worthy guide,  especially for its less strident tone as compared to an author like Jim Kunstler.

Related:
The Geography of Nowhere, James Howard Kunstler
Suburban Nation, Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Jeff Speck
Asphalt Nation,  Jane Holtz Keay