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Sam Harris: The Meaning of the Paris Attacks

16 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by jrbenjamin in Current Events, Essay, Politics, Religion

≈ Comments Off on Sam Harris: The Meaning of the Paris Attacks

Tags

Charlie Hebdo, civilization, Daesh, France, interview, ISIL, ISIS, Islam, Islamic State, Islamism, Jihadis, Jihadism, Lawrence O'Donnell, Maajid Nawaz, morality, Paris, Paris Attacks, Podcast, religion, Sam Harris, Still Sleepwalking Toward Armageddon, terror, Terrorism, The Last Word, violence

Paris Terror Attacks

“This is the big story of our time, and it is an incredibly boring one. Let the boredom of this just sink into your bones: realize that for the rest of your life, you’re going to be reading and hearing about, and otherwise witnessing, hopefully not firsthand, the lunacy and attendant atrocities of jihadists.

Please pay attention to the recurrent shrieks of Allahu Akbar. This is the cat call from the Middle Ages, or from Middle Earth, that we will have to live with for the rest of our lives. So this fight against jihadism — this is a generational fight. This is something we are doing for our children, ultimately, and for our children’s children.

We have a war of ideas that we have to wage, and win, and unfortunately we have to wage it and win it with ourselves first. And again, this requires an admission that there is such a war of ideas to be waged and won.

We have grown so effete as a civilization as to imagine that we have no enemies — or if we do, that they are only of our own making… It is not mere wartime propaganda that we will one day look back on with embarrassment to call ISIS a death cult. To call them barbarians. To call them savages. To use dehumanizing language.

They are scarcely human in their aspirations. The world they want to build entails the destruction of everything we value, and are right to value. And by “we” I mean civilized humanity, including all the Muslims who are just as horrified…

We have a project that’s universal, that transcends culture; that unites everyone who loves art and science and reason generally, who wants to cure disease, who wants to raise each new generation to be more educated than the last. And this common project is under assault…

And unfortunately, most of us have to keep convincing ourselves that evil exists, that not all people want the same things, and that some people are wrong in how they want to live and the world they want to build. And if we can’t convince ourselves of this once and for all, well then we’ll have to wait to be convinced by further acts of savagery of the sort we just saw in Paris. Why wait?”

__________

Comments from Sam Harris on the preface to his newly republished essay “Still Sleepwalking toward Armageddon”.

You’ll find more of Sam’s takes on these issues in his newest book, coauthored with Maajid Nawaz, Islam and the Future of Tolerance. I was lucky enough to meet Maajid two weeks ago in Washington and can enthusiastically recommend this quick, clarifying read. Watch Sam and Maajid talk about the roots of their conversation and the conclusions they’ve made in the following clip from The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell:


The photograph was taken this weekend as mourners gathered at The Place de la République in Paris.

More for the Francophiles:

  • The ultimate poem about the city of lights: “In Paris with You” by James Fenton
  • Meet Napoleon Bonaparte
  • A few of the best words from some indomitable Frenchmen: Jules Renard, Blaise Pascal, Edmond de Goncourt, Alexis de Tocqueville, Albert Camus

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The Brilliant, Unread Journal of Jules Renard (Part II)

01 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by jrbenjamin in Literature

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Burgundy, Chitry, Diary, France, French Literature, French Novelists, Journal, Journals, Jules Renard, Life, literature, Musings, Novels, Paris, Reflections, The Journal of Jules Renard, W. Somerset Maugham, Wisdom

Jules Renard

No one ever talks about the journal of Jules Renard.

That’s how I began my first post about this journal, and it’s regrettably true. Renard’s journal is rarely cited, nearly impossible to find even on the internet, and virtually unmentioned in lists of the greatest diaries in history. Still, those who are aware of this collection of witticisms and observations know how stunning it is. It floored W. Somerset Maugham when he first fanned through it and it’s flatly described on Wikipedia as, “a masterpiece of introspection, irony, humor and nostalgia.” I recommend you pick up your own copy of the text, which many scholars have suggested is unique in the annals of literary history, as it is the only private work that surpasses the entirety of its author’s published oeuvre. This post features highlights from its second half (1900-10).

For context: when we left off at the end of 1899, Renard was a 36-year-old writer and budding politician, splitting his time between Paris, which he alternately romanticizes and loathes, and his country home in Chitry, a provincial town in Burgundy where he indulges his passion for nature and quiet reflection. A year and a half before, Renard’s father, François, had taken his own life at the peak of an excruciating chronic illness. Jules was the first on the scene, and that lacerating experience has stirred in his mind a latent fixation on mortal questions. In addition, this tragedy propels Jules into a fresh state of mind as the family’s new patriarch: he recommits himself to his political ambitions (he would be elected mayor of Chitry in 1904), while overseeing the workers of his country estate (including its noble foreman Philippe) and cherishing more and more the serene presence of his wife, Marie (whom he affectionately refers to as Marinette).

Beyond that, however, my impressions about the general significance and trends in Renard’s thinking are merely that – impressions, and I think you’ll have a more rewarding engagement with the words if you browse through them at your own pace and without preconceptions. Ultimately there are many adjectives to ascribe to these jottings, through perhaps the most apt word is also that most overused one: beautiful (It’s too heavy to be “pleasurable,” too airy to be “profound”). It’s a beautiful series of reflections which are the product of a patient but swift intelligence, sharp eye, and palpably human heart. I have bolded my personal favorites.

__________

1900

You think about death as long as you hope to escape from it.

The task of the writer is to learn how to write.

My imagination is my memory.

The bird feels nothing when you clip its wings, but it can no longer fly.

At the Exposition from Great Britain, Guitry shows me paintings by, I think, Reynolds. No need to explain myself: the beauty of these works reach to the bottom of the heart. It is painting for lovers. Images of children, little girls, women, leave us with the sadness of not being loved by them.

The best in us is incommunicable.

Time passed through the needle’s eye of the hours.

A dream is only life madly dilated.

To be content with little money is also a talent.

1901

There are places and moments in which one is so completely alone that one sees the world entire.

The poems of our dreams, upon which reason acts, on waking, as the sun acts upon the dew.

Love kills intelligence. The brain and the heart act upon each other in the manner of an hour-glass. One fills itself only to empty the other.

A great shiver of wind passes over the countryside.

It is hailing over the hills. A disaster! But, once the hail has melted, the peasant does not spend time being sorry for himself: he goes back to work.

God, so much mystery – it is cruel, it is unworthy of you.
Taciturn God, speak to us!

A walk through the fields. Each one of my steps raises a friendly ghost, who comes with me. The memory of my father, his smock blown by the wind.
Marinette appears, and the earth is gentler to the feet.

The wind that knows how to turn the pages, but does not know how to read.

At work, the difficult thing is to light the little lamp of the brain. After that, it burns by itself.

Keep going! Talent is like the soil. The life you observe will never cease producing. Plough your field each year; it will bear fruit each year.

I ought to have a tiny portable table, so that I could go out and work, like a painter, under the open sky.

1902

The theatre is the place where I am the most bored, and where I most enjoy being bored.

So long as thinkers cannot tell me what life and death are, I shall not give a good goddamn for their thoughts.

I have lived on all the planets: life is a joke on none.

Those unexplored expanses, always fallow, in even the best friendships.

Weep! But not one of your tears must reach the tip of your pen and mix itself with your ink.

Sarah’s attitudes: she can look intelligent when she is listening to things she does not understand.

I shall end by not being able to do without city life in Paris. I shall acquire an anxiety in solitude. After a day, not of work, but of study, a walk on the boulevards in the evening – those lights, those women, those people – takes the shape of a reward.

When I think of all the books still left for me to read, I am certain of further happiness.

It’s many days since I’ve felt ashamed of my vanity, or even tried to correct it. Of all my faults, it is the one that amuses me most.

Reverie is nothing but thought thinking of nothing.

Not the smallest charm of truth is that it scandalizes.

A cloud, for Philippe, is a threat of rain. He does not know that certain clouds have no function but to be beautiful.

Philippe does not like to dream: it tires him as much as to do the harvest.

Suddenly I stop in the middle of a field, and this question alights on me like a great black bird: ‘By whom were we created and why?’

Words must be nothing but the clothing, carefully made to measure, of thought.

1903

In my church, there is no vaulting between me and the sky.

When you rejoice over being young, and notice how well you feel, that is age.

Irony is an element of happiness.

A sentence must be so clear that it pleases at once, and that it is reread for the pleasure it gives.

Nature is never ugly.

Philippe. Fresh air and garlic will make him live a hundred years.

He who has not seen God has not seen anything.

If rest is not to some extent work, it quickly becomes boredom.

A butterfly got on the train at Clamecy and traveled with me.

There is nothing as meanly practical as religion.

The falling leaves tumble away on the ground what life is left to them. One of them has the honor of being pursued by my kitten.

One can quickly discover if a poet has talent. In the case of prose writers, it takes a little longer.

1904 

The beggars know me. They lift their hats to me and inquire about my family.

As mayor, I am supposed to look after the maintenance of the rural roads; as a poet, I like them better neglected.

I no longer dare to say: “Tomorrow I shall work.”

The window pane has faults that double the stars.

Ah, yes!, the dream: To be a socialist and make a lot of money.

1905

The simple life. We need a servant to close the shutters, light a lamp, as though a decent man shouldn’t find pleasure in these little household chores.

I have an anti-clerical mind and the heart of a monk.

The cat asleep, well buttoned into its fur.

I am no longer capable of dying young.

In the taste of life, there is something of a fine liqueur.

Little Joseph, Philippe’s young son, died last night.

The sparrows say of us: “They build houses so that we can build our nests in their walls.”

I am very fond of looking at the faces of young women. It amuses me to try to guess what they will be like when they are older.

On Sunday evenings Philippe is bored. He replaces the strap on a wooden shoe and goes to plant potatoes. He walks the dog and weeps for little Joseph.

God is no solution. It doesn’t arrange anything. It makes nothing right.

To what good are mementoes, even photographs? It is comforting that things die, as well as men.

Without its bitterness, life would not be bearable.

If you desire popularity, do not try to be right.

The working man goes to political meetings, the bourgeois to lectures.

The joy of a finished work spoils the work you are about to begin: you now believe it is easy.

The peasant is perhaps the only man who does not like the country and never looks at it.

Old age does not exist. At least, we do not suffer from continuous old age at the end of our lives; like trees, we have, every year, our attack of age. We lose our leaves, our temper, our taste for life; then they come back.

It is enough to have a sumptuous taste of success: no need to stuff yourself with it.

Life is badly arranged. The poor and uneducated should be rich, and the intelligent man, poor.

1906

The clock marching, with its heavy, rhythmic tread – One, two! One, two! – while standing still.

Yes, God exists, but He knows no more about it than we do.

I do not know whether God exists, but it would be better, for His own credit, that He did not.

I have come to the age where I can understand how deeply I must have annoyed my teachers when I went to see them and never talked to them about themselves.

A cat, who sleeps twenty hours out of twenty-four, is perhaps God’s most successful creation.

Today, at last, I look at Paris.
Twenty years ago I did not see it. I had only my ambition. I only read books.
Now I stop in front of the Louvre, in front of a church, at a street corner, and I say: “What wonders!”

Perhaps genius is to talent what instinct is to reason.

An honorable man of talent is as rare as a man of genius.

The page you write on autumn must give as much pleasure as a walk through fallen leaves. 

Imagine life without death. Every day, you would try to kill yourself out of despair.

Laziness: the habit of resting before fatigue sets in.

I may be my age and a mayor: when I see a policeman I am uneasy.

“New poets.” Remember that term, for you will not hear from them again.

Walk in the little wood. Sniff the scent of mowed hay. On the road, a blackbird hops along in front of me as though inviting me to follow it.

God, in His modesty, does not dare brag of having created the world.

The profession of writing is, after all, the only one in which one can make no money without being thought ridiculous.

The sun rises before I do, but I go to bed after it does: we are even.

The beauty of new things, after all, is that they are clean.

What happens to all the tears we do not shed?

The friends one is very fond of and never thinks about.

In the evening, when Marinette, after a good day filled with work, listens to her children or other youth, looks at one, then at the other, never missing a thing, she is beautiful, she has something holy about her.
With a single glance, she takes in their entire life, of which she remembers every detail.

1907

As I age, I understand life less and less — and value it more and more.

To the young. I shall tell you a truth that you may not like, because you look forward to novelty. This truth is that one does not grow old. Where the heart is concerned, the fact is accepted, at least in matters of love. Well, it is the same with the mind. It always remains young. You do not understand life any more at forty than you did at twenty, but you are aware of this fact, and you admit it. To admit it is to remain young. 

A young man without talent is an old man.

We are in the world to laugh. In purgatory we shall no longer be able to do so. And in heaven it would not be proper.

It is more difficult to be an honorable man for eight days than a hero for fifteen minutes.

The fields of wheat in which partridges have their little streets.

Immense morning sky. Clouds will never be able to fill it.

One must write as one speaks, if one speaks well. 

I want to do things right, and have someone, anyone, take note of it.

I stopped in the middle of a field, like a man suddenly hearing beautiful, solemn music.

Walks. The body advances in a straight line, while the mind flutters around it like a bird.

1908

A window on the street is as good as a stage.

If my books bore painters as much as their paintings bore me, I forgive them.

A cloud sails along as though it knew where it was going.

My life gives the impression of being in harmony with itself, and yet I have done almost nothing of what I wanted to do.

Collectivism — ridiculous! Talent can be nothing but individual.

My ignorance and my admission of ignorance – these constitute the best part of my originality.

Silence. I hear my ear.

When the defects of others are perceived with so much clarity, it is because one possesses them oneself.

What most surprises me is this heart which keeps on beating.

You sit down to work. For a long time, nothing. You don’t even try. All at once, a sort of breath passes, and the fire catches.

1909

One shouldn’t run down friends: they are still the best thing we have.

Writing is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none.

There is false modesty, but there is no false pride.

The Luxembourg gardens are nothing but a dome of leaves under which people dream.

Life is neither long nor short: it merely has drawn-out moments.

__________

Jules Renard suddenly succumbed to arteriosclerosis in April of the following year. You can read the highlights from the first half of the journal here, or buy your own copy of the real thing.

Jules Renard

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“In Paris with You” by James Fenton

10 Monday Dec 2012

Posted by jrbenjamin in Poetry

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

Ian McEwan, In Paris with You, James Fenton, Love, Paris, Poem, poetry

Eiffel Tower

Don’t talk to me of love. I’ve had an earful
And I get tearful when I’ve downed a drink or two.
I’m one of your talking wounded.
I’m a hostage. I’m maroonded.
But I’m in Paris with you.

Yes I’m angry at the way I’ve been bamboozled
And resentful at the mess I’ve been through.
I admit I’m on the rebound
And I don’t care where are we bound.
I’m in Paris with you.

Do you mind if we do not go to the Louvre
If we say sod off to sodding Notre Dame,
If we skip the Champs Elysées
And remain here in this sleazy
Old hotel room
Doing this and that
To what and whom
Learning who you are,
Learning what I am.

Don’t talk to me of love. Let’s talk of Paris,
The little bit of Paris in our view.
There’s that crack across the ceiling
And the hotel walls are peeling
And I’m in Paris with you.

Don’t talk to me of love. Let’s talk of Paris.
I’m in Paris with the slightest thing you do.
I’m in Paris with your eyes, your mouth,
I’m in Paris with… all points south.
Am I embarrassing you?
I’m in Paris with you.

__________

“In Paris with You” by James Fenton, which you can find in his Selected Poems.

Also worth reading: Ian McEwan, a longtime friend of Fenton’s, discussing life, literature, and reading (with a nod to “In Paris with You”) in yesterday’s New York Times Sunday Book Review:

Do you read poetry?

We have many shelves of poetry at home, but still, it takes an effort to step out of the daily narrative of existence, draw that neglected cloak of stillness around you — and concentrate, if only for three or four minutes. Perhaps the greatest reading pleasure has an element of self-annihilation. To be so engrossed that you barely know you exist. I last felt that in relation to a poem while in the sitting room of Elizabeth Bishop’s old home in rural Brazil. I stood in a corner, apart from the general conversation, and read “Under the Window: Ouro Preto.” The street outside was once an obscure thoroughfare for donkeys and peasants. Bishop reports overheard lines as people pass by her window, including the beautifully noted “When my mother combs my hair it hurts.” That same street now is filled with thunderous traffic — it fairly shakes the house. When I finished the poem I found that my friends and our hosts had left the room. What is it precisely, that feeling of “returning” from a poem? Something is lighter, softer, larger — then it fades, but never completely.

If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be? 

I wouldn’t trouble the president with advice, or with one more transient treatise on America’s supposed terminal decline. For the sake of the general good, I’d have him absorbed in poetry. What would suit him well, I believe, is the work of James Fenton. His “Selected” would be fine. The range of subject matter and tone is immense. The long, wise reflections on conflict (“Those whom geography condemns to war”) would be instructive to a commander in chief, and the imaginative frenzy of “The Ballad of the Shrieking Man” would give him the best available measure of the irrational human heart. There are poems of mischief and wild misrule. A lovely consolatory poem about death is there, “For Andrew Wood.” (“And there might be a pact between/ Dead friends and living friends.”) And there are the love poems — love songs really, filled with a sweet, teasing, wistful lyricism… “Am I embarrassing you?” one such poem asks in its penultimate line.

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