Previous - 113. Books For Living
"We hold these truths...
...to be self-evident: that all men are created equal...." The last time I quoted this I was interested in slaves and Native Americans -- the individuals who were not "self-evidently" equal at the time of the American Revolution. Now I'm interested in the "supers."Super heroes, super stars, super models. All the individuals our culture places not below the "equal" but above. This train of thought left the station as I was riding the elliptical this morning at the gym. (The inclusion of "at the gym" there hints at my fantasy of some day having an elliptical machine in my apartment. This would be after I discover the extra room I never realized I had.)
Film and TV are currently obsessed with super heroes. The DC 'verse has Superman and Supergirl and "Metas" who are humans but with special powers -- I can't really explain "metas," because DC. The Marvel 'verse, my home, has mutants who are also humans with special powers. Then there's my other home, the Whedon 'verse.
Buffy also falls into the superhero category since she is mostly human but part demon -- as we learn late in the series. Season four of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (BtVS) is one of the weakest, but one of the few things that season I liked was when Buffy tries to team up with a secret government anti-demon force called The Initiative. They are para-military with fancy weapons and technology. But Buffy is in another league. We, the fans, know she is special just as the fans of the Harry Potter films knew he was special. Buffy thrives (to the extent that she does thrive) because of her relationships with her merely human friends, just as Harry thrives, in part, due to his mudblood friends. But "we" understand that in the end Buffy and Harry are the "special" ones.
The Lord of the Rings, especially The Return of the King, and countless other books and popular movies, extend this superness to nobility of blood. Even Neo in The Matrix is "The One."
Sports is all about superstars, those rare individuals who excel at some particular activity. (If only Barry Bonds had been bitten by a radioactive spider instead of doing whatever he did to "augment" his natural abilities, we wouldn't be having a debate about his belonging in the baseball Hall of Fame.) Joe Montana is still just shy of a god here because he excelled at activities, and in situations, that even other superstars struggle in. You'd think people would pull for the more average guy, but it's the thrill of seeing the exceptional person soar above the rest that draws people to these events. Mediocrity isn't that interesting to see.
I suppose the gods were the original superheroes and you have to wonder if the same desire wasn't, at least in part, behind their creation. Inventing powers we wish we had, or at least that we would like to see.
Bringing this around to government, you could say, in favor of Napoleon, that at least he was exceptionally good at something, and so more deserving of imperium than the average Bourbon. (Though I would insist on making Berthier co-Emperor if we're going to base this on his military reputation.) Of course democracy is (or should be) more about compromise than excellence. But, then again, LBJ should have been the perfect leader -- and maybe would have been, except for the Vietnam War.
BRT
If you go to Google Earth and search on "Van Ness Avenue" you will probably still see a street with a median lined with large and small trees, but not for long. All the trees around the intersection with Sutter Street are already cut down, with more trees now destined for destruction.Not only is this bad news for the trees -- and those of us who breath oxygen -- but this would seem to be an unfortunate time to cut the trees as I imagine birds have already built nests in some of these trees in anticipation of spring. And all of this is to make way for Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lanes that I really doubt will make that much of a difference. I do hope I'm wrong about this.
Cantigo
These books are giving me surprisingly little to work with. My favorite thing so far in Candide is a quote from Voltaire in a footnote right after we learn that the Old Woman is the daughter of a Pope Urban the Tenth and a Princess, "Note the extreme discretion of the author; hitherto there has never been a pope named Urban X; he avoided attributing a bastard to a known pope. What circumspection! what an exquisite conscience!" Though Voltaire may seem to have been less discreet in the future as, after our current Urban IX clears the stage, it will be rather awkward for another cardinal to assume the name Urban. Either the current pope is Urban the Last, or the next Urban will be, or at least might be seen to be, a rake.Vertigo p104 ...In this little booklet [Der Beredte Italiener], which had belonged to a maternal great-uncle of mine, who spent some time working as an office clerk in northern Italy toward the end of the last century, everything seemed arranged in the best of all possible ways... even the greatest of horrors were safely banished, as if to each dark side there were a redeeming counterpart, to every evil its good, to every pain its pleasure, and to every lie a measure of truth....
This is an overwhelmingly odd novel. I'm 116 pages in and have no idea what it's about. We just had what I would take to be a plot device, except that so far the course of the book has seemed more random than plotted. While staying in Limone sul Garda (not clear why) the protagonist's passport goes missing and has presumably been given to another departing German by mistake. He then goes to Milan to get a new passport from the German Consulate there. OK, but wouldn't you assume that Herr Doll would notice -- and probably quite soon -- that he also lacked his proper passport and would desire to retrieve it? Wouldn't the rational thing be to stay where you were for at least a day or so and see if your passport would return to you? That's what I would do.
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