Nietzsche and Shopping

I have just finished reading two books on the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche who I always thought was a weird guy, and from his pictures he looks scary, but now I have a different (mental) picture of him and his thought. He has influenced the 20th century as much as anything, perhaps along with Darwin, Marx and Freud. My earlier feelings about Nietzsche was from my Evangelical days when we were taught that he was an insane, immoral atheist who announced the Death of God. Well, he did declare God dead, but what he meant is open to much interpretation. He mostly meant that all unhealthy, negative, guilt-inducing concepts of God has to go. His legacy includes an existential approach to understanding life; the ideal of a strong, self-assertive individualism; a kind of relativism based on the fact that nobody knows everything; a new appreciation of our bodily, earthly existence; and an understanding of the arts (especially music) as a source of spirituality. I think a correct understanding of Nietzsche includes his affirmation of Life with all of its messiness and pain. He continually said YES to life, in spite of the fact that he suffered from health problems constantly. And yes, he did have syphilis which later led to mental problems and paralysis. Nietzsche has helped us look at the world with sharper insight about motives, hidden forces, and biases. Despite some saying so, he wasn't anti-Semitic, he didn't lead directly to the Nazi philosophy, he wasn't an immoral person; quite the opposite: he was polite, courteous, sympathetic, and merciful. Now I've moved on to an interest in coupons. There are many websites now where coupons can be printed, or even downloaded to your iPhone. I've read a fascinating book: How to Shop for Free (by Kathy Spencer). She is an amazingly assertive shopper (Nietzsche would be proud); and she shows how to keep a lot of groceries and other items for free. It's a matter of learning about where to get coupons, how to combine them in a timely fashion, and how to take advantage of occasional deals. She does buy a lot in bulk and stores items, which I can't do because we live in a small space. Nevertheless, there is much more to her methods. She literally goes into a grocery store and buys over $300 worth of stuff and ends up paying about $4.00. (and sometimes she pays nothing, or gets money back!). So, I am now studying the science of couponing. I don't have her chutzpah though; I'm kind of shy when it comes to asserting my shopping muscles. But I can learn and become more courageous as time goes on. Now, I need your help (if anyone actually reads this): I'm going to end this blog (Amazing Grays) and establish a new one soon. I've come up with some possible names. Perhaps you could tell me which one you like best....

Deep South Wonderings

Mr. Wayne’s Journal

At Home in Homewood

Alabama Ramblings

Shallow Thoughts in the Deep South

Fried Green Pensees

Fried Green Tomorrows

Fried Green Potatoes

Thru My Spectacles

Alabama Liberal

(Through My Window... and  Wayne's Journal are already taken)

Birmingham Bastard

Observations from Oxmoor Road

Fragments and Quotidiana

Igniting Cognition

Cogito Ergo I Stick

I await your wisdom.

My email: glorysdad@gmail.com

Rabbi Meir

When Rabbi Isaac Meir was still a boy, his mother took him with her to Kozienice. There someone turned to him and said, "Isaac Meir, I'll give you a guilder if you tell me where God is." Isaac answered, "I'll give you two if you tell me where He is not."


[from the Notebooks of poet, Anna Kamienska]

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$$100

I was at a discount book store recently.

I pulled about seven books off the shelves

and found myself a real soft chair to sit down in

and peruse my selections

to see if any were worth buying.

I chose a couple to actually buy.

When I got home I noticed that something

was missing from my front left pocket.

My money was gone!

About $100 in a big green clip was missing!

After a few minutes of anxious thought,

I called the book store and asked if anyone

had turned in some cash in a green clip.

Yes, they said, someone had.

I'll be right there, I said.

Would you believe that some honest person

had found $100 in cash

and had turned it in?

And would you believe that the store clerks

had not taken any out of the total

and were totally honest with me?

I got my $100 back.

Yes, there is evil in this world.

But there is also goodness.

History of White People

I got a book for Christmas called The History of White People. The author, Nell Irvin Painter, is Emerita Professor of History at Princeton University. She sets out to show in this book that the concept of ‘one white race’ is a recent historical invention.

Powerful people and institutions wrote history, anthropology, and science in such a way as to uphold their power based on the myth of a pure Anglo-Saxon race. Even my heroes Thomas Jefferson and Ralph Waldo Emerson had a hand in this devious scheme. Emerson looms large as an influence in this mythic white race movement.

Professor Painter starts her history of white people by looking at ancient Greek and Roman history when the concept of ‘race’ did not exist. Not until the 18^th century did an obsession with ‘whiteness’ become important. The German invention of the idea of Caucasian beauty came out of the business of buying and selling ‘white’ slaves from the Caucasus region (the land separating the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea). Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s doctoral dissertation (On the Natural variety of Mankind, 1775) and his subsequent studies introduced in scientific language the notion of a beautiful, white Caucasian race.

Intellectuals like Madame de Stael and Thomas Carlyle spread a theory of the superiority of the ‘white race.’ Left out of this Anglo-Saxon ‘race’ were the Irish and Native Americans, and later the Italians, Jews, Slavs, and Chinese. Immigrants in America were categorized according to their lack of racial purity.

The measurement of skulls, the eugenics movement, and biased intelligence tests were used to differentiate Anglo-Saxons from other ‘races.’

This is a history of how the powerful not only write history, but establish scientific theories and invent cultural stereotypes. There is no such thing as a Caucasian race; nor is there a ‘white race.’ Skin color is a by-product of two kinds of melanin: red to yellow (pheomelanin) and dark brown to black (eumelanin). How much of which sort of melanin people have in their skin—and to what degree it is expressed—depends entirely over time on exposure to the sun’s ultraviolet radiation. Painter writes:

Our species originated in Africa some 1.2 million years ago, evolving from primates like chimpanzees. Chimpanzees, like most other animals, have light skin under dark hair. Shedding that thick coat of hair, humans quickly developed dark skin, and they stayed dark until leaving Africa for cloudier territory about 100,000 years ago, when residence in dark, wintry regions like northern Europe and northern Asia required another color change, this time from dark to light. Light-skinned Europeans and light-skinned Asians lost pigmentation through different genetic processes in Europe and Asia. (p. 395)

The History of White People covers a vast amount of history and science. And it deals with controversial matters. My own bias tends to accept the conclusions of this study. It certainly educated me concerning historical figures and movements that have influenced how we think and how we relate to other people.

It’s interesting that St. Paul tells the people of Athens that “we all come from one blood” (Acts 17). Now we know that our first parents were dark-skinned Africans. (When have you seen the mythical Adam and Eve portrayed as black Africans?) Would it be correct to say that we all started out black, and that some of us have lost our blackness and had to settle for whiteness? 

SO WHAT?

So much of the injustice in the world is caused by racism and fear of the Other—that is, those who are different than us. The solution to these causal factors has to do with being more educated about scientific facts surrounding questions of ‘race’; working toward more equality in terms of economics and social position; and simply getting to know people who are different from us on a personal basis. The ‘mixing’ of the ‘races’ is an important element in finding out that we are all essentially the same. 

Whoever does the defining does the confining.

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The Radical Enlightenment

I just finished reading Jonathan Israel’s book A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2010).

His thesis is that during the 18^th century, the philosophical movement we call the Enlightenment was divided by two schools of thought. The Moderate Enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire did not want to go as far as to say that monarchies should not remain in place. The Radical Enlightenment thinkers like Diderot, d’Holbach, and Helvetius advocated that Reason mandated the dissolution of all authoritative institutions that stand in the way of total inequality of all people.

The 17^th century thinker Baruch Spinoza gave impetus to the Radical side of the new, radical way of viewing reality, with implications for education, religion and politics. Spinoza said that reality is not material and spiritual; rather, everything is material. God is the world, and the world is God; there is nothing else. This is pantheism—a Natural theology. Ethics for Spinoza is all about what is beneficial for the common good. It all boils down to justice.

Jonathan Israel sums up the two schools of Enlightenment thought as Spinoza versus Voltaire; the Radical versus the Moderate. The Moderate thinkers were willing to leave powerful institutions in place and not shake up the status quo. The Radical philosophers wanted to go further.

SO WHAT?

The more I understand the forces that have shaped our world, the more I can understand the forces at work today. Ideas matter. Debate is good. The status quo is hard to budge. I saw this in church after church. To get people and institutions to change is almost impossible. But when peoples’ intellectual assumptions are shaken, change is possible. I wonder how much Enlightenment ideas drove the French Revolution and how much the people’s desperation and hunger influenced it. I suspect that the idea and belief that they had a ‘right’ to revolt gave the needed impetus to act on their hunger.

The belief in universal human rights is a powerful idea. It’s clearly stated in the Charter of the United Nations. That’s one reason the UN is a good institution to have around.

The basic belief in the equality of all people was driven by the Radical Enlightenment, not by the Church. There are times when atheists serve God better than Christians.

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