Library Notes: February 10th, 2022
A few articles held my attention this past week along with beginning two new books so here we go.
Why You’re Christian by David Perell
I’ve been following David Perell for a couple of years now and every so often I’ll find a gem like this one in the archives of his essays. The premise, dealing with Perell’s own upbringing in Judaism inside a Christian influenced nation, is not unlike the legions of people I’ve met throughout my own thirty something years of life.
As Perell reaches the pinnacle of his prose he so succinctly cites not only his, but effectively a majority of our generations worldview:
I don’t believe in the resurrection of Christ, but I passionately believe in human rights.
I’m reminded of a conversation I had with a cousin of mine this past year. Sitting in an exclusive rooftop bar in an upscale neighborhood in Mexico City on the eve of Dia Los Muertos, we discussed his now runaway successful business. Passion is the English word he chose to use to describe his feelings toward his work and I stopped him there. I rebuked him. For in Mexico, in Hispanic culture, it is a fools errand to be passionate about anything that isn’t a relationship for another person. Passion is what will get you killed and if you do it right, you’ll die the way you wish. As expensive Mescals and wines filled the table with more of our cousins and friends seated among us, the words sat in. I saw a man only a few years younger than myself learn the same lesson I was taught by our ancestors, but only came to internalize around the same time as he was in that moment.
Passionately believing in human rights would be what gets you killed and I don’t quite see how Perell is on a path of sacrifice for his beliefs. The science of his axiom proves the veracity of his first claim with the facade of the latter.
Passion requires sacrifice. Make no mistake about it. You can’t be passionate about your work, you aren’t sacrificing anything if its a trade. labor for money. That’s not sacrifice. That’s economics. Passion, and by its transitory nature sacrifice, is literally the act that defeats the debt we are all doomed to unless passion is real, sacrifice is real, and the truth of the resurrection life after death is as plain to see as winter to spring.
Make no mistake, I wish no ill will towards Perell who I am certain will be remembered as one of the great writers of my generation, but for the contorted falsehood that is the structure of his argument that has spread across our generation like wildfire that contemplated for a weekend by any and all would surely extinguish or at least be burned away from apathy to legitimate opposition.
Were Roman Slaveowners the first management theorists?
It’s something to consider that Rome fell hundreds of years after its last slave uprising. Consider this opening anecdote of the Emperor Augustus:
Vedius Pollio, a rich Roman, once invited his friend the emperor Augustus to dinner. The entertainment was interrupted when a slave broke a valuable crystal cup. Trying to impress with his toughness, Vedius ordered the slave boy be thrown to the huge moray eels in his fish pond.
But Augustus was not impressed. In fact, he was outraged at this novel form of cruelty. He ordered Vedius to free the slave boy and told the other slaves to bring all the crystal cups they could find and smash them in their master’s presence. He then told Vedius to fill in the fish pond and get rid of the moray eels.
Having seen enough gracelessness in the corporate world over my career, I’m not surprised by Vedius’ response. It is text book middle management mindset and it is what is currently one of the fuels of the so called great resignation of our time. As the old saying goes: they don’t quit jobs, they quit managers.
Augustus knew cruelty spurred enmity, even if vailed in compliance for a time. Two Thousand Years Later, still there’s nothing new under the sun. Yet a lesson for all, as at the end of the day we employ ourselves regardless of what type of tax form you receive, kindness is worth far more than toughness. After all what good is a broken set of cups and a filled in fish pond if it doesn’t teach you humanity is worth far more than any mans riches.
This week I started Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris and have already been enraptured by Roosevelts diplomacy in refusing the Pope and Protestants in his first visit to Italy after his presidency. While the 26th Presidents speech now known as Man in the Arena would go on to be his famous words from this voyage to Europe, I think there could be another moment worthy of rattling the ages:
…on 26 March, Roosevelt made a goodwill visit to Al-Azhar Mosque, the world’s oldest religious academy. He found nine thousand students, all male, squatting on classroom floors chanting in Arabic. To the amazement of the library staff he asked to see a school of the fourteenth-century Travels of Ibn Battuta, and proceeded with the aid of a translator, to locate and recite passages he had read in French, many years before. This so pleased this hosts that he left the mosque with a copy go the Koran under his arm. It was the first ever presented by Al-Azhar to an infidel.
Finally, I have also begun Grad School Essentials by Zachary Shore.
My Grandfather still tells me the stories of how schools in California would actively encourage Mexican’s to dropout of high school. By my moms generation a decade after the civil rights movement, opposition became apathy. My mom regularly reminding me no one ever mentioned college to her.
I thought maybe I would be that first generation university student in my family but it was not to be. Still, I never let not getting that opportunity stop me from trying to learn as best I could to be an educated person. Even if I was never conferred papers of prestige I would know in my person it wasn’t because of me.
If you are fortunate enough to have the means to pursue an education, this book is for you and if fortune failed to favor you, it will still do you well as it is doing for me.