173. Augustine, not a Cynic

Previous - 172. George, the 3rd time

Link to Table of Contents

And I'm back after a week pause, Augustine took forever. My two upcoming greening events are short ones so shouldn't prevent my posting steadily at least through the end of The Road To Character. 

Berkeley 4th of July

The night before, I discovered the bus I've always taken to the Berkeley Marina no longer goes there. There is another bus that does get you there, but the official trip planner software can't give you a sensible trip plan, so I had to work out my own from the schedules and route maps. I ended up arriving an hour early because I wasn't confident in the information I was getting. 

The event itself was the same as ever, though the food area wasn't as busy as I remember and we had more staff than normal -- not ideal for me since I like to keep busy. Still, I did my thing and things were in good shape when I left at 8:30 before the fireworks started. I walked out all the way to San Pablo Ave, as I had planned, where I could catch a bus to downtown Oakland. This is where the evening took a turn for the Berkeley weird.

I turned the corner onto San Pablo and headed for the bus stop right past the corner, but then made a quick u-turn and waited at the corner because there was a very angry, ranting crazy woman pacing into the street from the bus stop. I probably waited five minutes for the bus, and the ride to Broadway in Oakland took about twenty minutes -- of course she got on my bus -- and she never stopped ranting. I was standing or sitting far enough away that I couldn't actually understand her words, but my favorite part of her presentation was when she, periodically, took off her long wig and waved it in the air at the person who was unfortunate enough to be her current audience.

Already tired from my eight hour (on my feet) shift followed by my long walk from the Marina, just listening to her endless ranting made me even more tired. I can't imagine what that would be like. I would not want to walk a mile in her shoes.

To my surprise, she didn't transfer to BART, so I rode into SF in peace. What I was actually looking forward to was finally taking advantage of my late night senior rate discount on the cable car up to my house. It's still $3 for a seven block ride, which is why I haven't done it, but at the end of a day like this it's worth every dollar. But the cable cars weren't running. Instead there were free shuttle buses. So I actually saved an extra $3, but still haven't managed to take advantage of my discount.

Augustine

p193 Brooks gives us an account of an incident in Milan when Augustine encounters a beggar who has just finished a good meal, had a few drinks, and is joking and joyful. Augustine finds himself envying the beggar who has such a satisfying and stress free life. This causes him to question his own entire way of life.

Now this incident with the satisfied beggar is puzzling. For one thing, if anything this should have turned him into a Cynic in the classical sense. What seems to have struck him here -- the beggar's satisfaction after a good meal and a few drinks compared to his own ceaseless striving for recognition and success -- was Diogenes's whole point. 

p195 Then there's the incident where, as a teenager, he steals some pears for the thrill of it, and later wonders about this and thinks it is a consequence of original sin: Dostoevsky would love this story but I fail to see the "originality" of the sin. What is more remarkable is the socialization by which most of us learn not to steal pears. That the "thrill" he felt at 16 is related to that socialization, the violation of it, I don't doubt. But the wonder is that we are usually able to control ourselves, not when we fail to do so. 

The ever vigilant, invisible sky fairy is one clever way to get children to not steal pears, but it certainly isn't the only way or even the best way. You can almost see evil (in this case the thrill of violating good) as a side effect, yet another unanticipated consequence, of the moral sense we are trying to inculcate in the young citizen. A feral child wandering in from the wild might pick and eat a pear or even pick a pear to throw at something, but could that feral child derive a thrill from picking someone else's pear? I don't see how.   

Next - 174. God's Presence