The magnificent thirteen

Wu practices moral perfection every day.

As mentioned in earlier posts this week, the intrepid Benjamin Franklin set for himself the task of attaining moral perfection. (El Cabrero is far to modest to say in passing that I accomplished this long ago.)

In his methodical way, he came up with a list of virtues, along with a brief maxim for each. He then set about working on one virtue per week until he ran through the list and then started over, even making a chart to note his progress. Here's the list:

1. TEMPERANCE
Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.


2. SILENCE
Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.


3. ORDER
Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.


4. RESOLUTION
Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.


5. FRUGALITY
Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself, i.e., waste nothing.


6. INDUSTRY
Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.


7. SINCERITY
Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.


8. JUSTICE
Wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.


9. MODERATION
Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.


10. CLEANLINESS
Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.


11. TRANQUILITY
Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.


12. CHASTITY
Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another's peace or reputation.

13. HUMILITY
Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

I don't know where to start with a list like that. I think things like industry, moderation, resolution and sincerity are OK, in moderation. But half the fun of speech is trifling conversation. As a cradle Episcopalian, I have some serious problems with including temperance on the list. And don't even mention order. Finally, since this is a family blog, I will leave venery to the Gentle Reader's imagination.

While I find the quest for moral perfection amusing in the highest, I do agree with Ben on this: one virtue at a time is plenty. Maybe even too much.

A LITTLE FRUGALITY when it comes to military contracting might not be a bad idea.

BATTLE OF THE BUDGET. The federal budget proposed by President Obama will be the first stage of the struggle for universal health care.

UNIONS AND UNEMPLOYMENT. Economist Dean Baker takes on misinformation about the Employee Free Choice Act.

WV ITEMS. A collective bargaining bill for public employees has been introduced in the state senate. Mountaintop removal opponents are pushing the Obama administration to take steps to ban it.

ANIMAL MAGNETISM. Stop the presses! Cows tend to line up along a north/south axis.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Make new friends but keep the old

This may be a bronze of the ancient Greek bard Hesiod. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

It is the immemorial custom at this blog (for the last couple years anyway) to reserve the last week or so of the year to discussing items from the Goat Rope book shelf. This involves giving a shout out to some of this year's best reading material, although little if any of it was written in 2008.

(Note: While El Cabrero is pleased to discuss selected books, I cannot divulge the total number of books consumed this year lest my employer realize what a slacker I am.)

This first installment consists of classics, many of which have been revisited after years since the previous perusal.

So here goes, starting with the ancients. The ancient Greek bard Hesiod was no Homer, but he had his moments. I started 2008 with another run through the Theogony, his account of the origin of gods, the universe and everything. As he put it,

In the beginning there was chaos.

Come to think of it, there still is.

Then came another look at Plato's Symposium, a dialogue on the nature of love. For some reason, I liked it better the last time I read it. Followers of this blog will not be surprised that the Odyssey of Homer got another look, since I spent a couple of months taking the long way home with its hero.

I also took another look at Rome's answer to the Homeric epics, the Aeneid of Virgil. Virgil was a more elegant writer than Homer although I prefer the latter. One difference between the work of Homer (whoever he was/they were) and Virgil is that the Homeric epics grew while Virgil's was self-consciously written. Good though.

I love these lines from Aeneas' visit to the underworld (which make a great mission statement):

...your arts are to be these:
To pacify, to impose the rule of law,
To spare the conquered, battle down the proud.

That works for me...

On the borderline between ancient and medieval literature lies Boethius' Consolations of Philosophy, a wonderful book by a man who was unjustly accused by the Powers that Were and which was composed while he prepared for a particularly nasty death. His musings on the nature of Fortune inspired this year's series on luck and randomness. It's definitely worth a look.

HEARTS OF DARKNESS, then and now, form the subject of this elegant rant by Chris Hedges. El Cabrero is a sucker for Joseph Conrad references.

LOOKING FOR A PLACE TO CUT SPENDING? There is quite a bit of indefensible "defense" spending which is really just corporate welfare.

EVERYBODY HURTS, but we hurt more if we think people are deliberately inflicting it.

PARLEZ USTED PAJARO? Here's an item on deciphering the songs of birds.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

JESUS!

A while back, El Cabrero received a challenge from WV blogger Juanuchis to write about five things I most admire about Jesus.

It took me a long time to get around to that, mostly because I can't think of anything I don't like about Jesus. For the record, El Cabrero has no complaints about Jesus (however, I'm not sure that the converse is the case.)

It's also a little hard to answer that challenge because there have been so many different and conflicting images of and ideas about Jesus. As the English poet and mystic William Blake wrote,

THE VISION OF CHRIST that thou dost see
Is my vision’s greatest enemy...
Both read the Bible day and night,
But thou read’st black where I read white.

Still, most believers and secular scholars would agree about the basic outlines of his life that can be gleaned from early Christian, Jewish, and pagan sources. Here are the main points of agreement:

*Jesus was a Jew from the lower social classes who grew up in the region of Galilee and was probably born around the time of the death of Herod the Great (more accurately Herod the Extremely Nasty) in 4 BC.

*He was influenced by the preachings of John the Baptizer and was baptized by him in the Jordan.

*At some point thereafter, he began a short but very different public ministry, which could have lasted anywhere from less than a year to three years. This consisted of calling for repentance, proclaiming God's Kingdom, teaching, and performing acts of compassion such as healings and exorcisms. Most of this ministry took place in rural Galilee.

*Around 30 BC, when Pontius Pilate was procurator of Judea, he went to Jerusalem where he engaged in controversies and acts that were seen as a threat to the ruling social order. As a result he was crucified, a Roman punishment reserved for rebellious slaves and for those who threatened the social order.

*After his death, his followers continued to experience him as a living reality. They proclaimed this as his resurrection and vindication by God.

Here's the first item on my list: it is truly amazing that Jesus had such a huge impact on religion, history, and culture given that his public activity was so brief and that much of it occurred in what many of his influential contemporaries would have been considered to be an insignificant corner of the world. Moreover, most of his activity took place among the most marginalized people of a marginalized place.

By contrast, other religious and cultural leaders who gained influence had much longer to promote their teachings. Muhammad lived nearly 20 years after he began to preach the tenets of Islam and was a political ruler as well as a religious figure. Little is known for certain about Confucius, but he is likely to have taught for decades even though he never gained a political post of great influence. Gautama Buddha taught for 45 years after his enlightenment experience at the age of 35 and was celebrated by the rulers of his time and place.

The short life of Jesus and the events at the end of it were like an explosion that we're still feeling the shocks from after all these years.

WWTRJD? (WHAT WOULD THE REAL JESUS DO?). From yesterday's Sunday Gazette-Mail:

Low-income West Virginia families who depend on child support to make ends meet could be forced onto welfare if federal budget cuts go through as planned this October.

The cuts were passed by the previous Congress in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (which didn't reduce the deficit). That legislation cut social programs like child support and Medicaid by $40 billion and included $70 billion in tax cuts aimed mostly at the wealthy. Of WV's delegation, only Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito supported the DRA. New leaders in congress have expressed interest in restoring funding.

EVERY MOUNTAIN SHALL BE BROUGHT DOWN. Here's another take on the Bush administration's recent love offering to coal companies that eased restrictions on mountaintop removal mining. And here's an editorial from today's NY Times.

THE CAMEL AND THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE. Professor Allan Ornstein warns that America needs to fix the growing gap between the very rich and everyone else if it wants a decent future.

EVERYTHING SECRET SHALL BE MADE KNOWN. Blowing the whistle on contractor corruption in Iraq can claim a high price according to this AP report.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

ANIMAL DREAMS

Caption: Seamus McGoogle thinks he's worth it.

The political economy of pets in the US today is staggering (see also yesterday's post). According to Business Week,

Americans now spend $41 billion a year on their pets—more than the gross domestic product of all but 64 countries in the world. That's double the amount shelled out on pets a decade ago, with annual spending expected to hit $52 billion in the next two years, according to Packaged Facts, a consumer research company based in Rockville, Md. That puts the yearly cost of buying, feeding, and caring for pets in excess of what Americans spend on the movies ($10.8 billion), playing video games ($11.6 billion), and listening to recorded music ($10.6 billion) combined...

It's starting to get kind of weird.

"People are no longer satisfied to reward their pet in pet terms," argues Bob Vetere, president of the American Pet Products Manufacturers Assn. (APPMA). "They want to reward their pet in human terms." That means hotels instead of kennels, braces to fix crooked teeth, and frilly canine ball gowns. Pet owners are becoming increasingly demanding consumers who won't put up with substandard products, unstimulating environments, or shoddy service for their animals. But the escalating volume and cost of services, especially in the realm of animal medicine, raises ethical issues about how far all this loving should go.

I need to talk to the goats about this...when they get back from the spa.

SQUIRREL STYLE KUNG FU. I've heard of tiger, crane, leopard and other styles, but here's a new one on the fuzzy tailed art of self defense:

University of California, Davis researchers used an infrared camera to film squirrels as they confronted predatory rattlesnakes.

The squirrels, they saw, actually heated up their tails, then waved them at the snakes... The rattlers, which rely on infrared sensors to detect their prey, were ostensibly confused by the animal equivalent of having a flaming torch waved in your face.

Why didn't I think of that?

A researcher was quoted as saying about the research that "It taught us to focus on the perceptual world of the animal we’re studying” rather than on how it looks to human observers.

Sun Tzu, ancient Chinese author of The Art of War, would not be surprised. He said "All warfare is based upon deception."

WHO REALLY GETS WELFARE? Here's economist Dean Baker on corporate welfare and other public subsidies for the well-to-do:

In the days before welfare reform, single mothers could collect five or six hundred dollars a month without working. That was what welfare looked like before 1996. In the Internet Age, welfare is about having the government do everything it can to make the rich absolutely as rich as possible. As F. Scott Fitzgerald said many years ago, the rich are not like you or me: They need the government’s assistance to get by. There are all sorts of ways in which the government helps those who have the most.

COSTS OF WAR. El Cabrero will be joining some companeros today for a press conference on the costs of the war in Iraq. Here's a good one on the huge private army of contractors waging war for a profit.

WARNING SIGNS of serious safety concerns at the Crandall Canyon mine in Utah have been around for some time, according to this source.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED