Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

While reading a volume of The Story of Civilization by Durant, I’ve spent the last few days reading about the life of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, perhaps the greatest poet of the eighteen and nineteenth century. I’ve found most of his writing quoted by Durant as fascinating as any I’ve read. And I also was taken with the following poem:

Let man be noble,

Helpful and good.

For that alone

Marks him off

From all beings

That we know. . . .

Quite unfeeling 

Is Nature:

The sun shines

Upon the base and the good;

And upon the lawbreaker

Gleam, as upon the best,

The moon and the stars.

Winds and streams,

Thunder and hail,

Roar on their way,

And snatch up

And sweep before them

One after another. . . .

By eternal, ironclad

Great laws

Must we all,

Of our existence,

Fulfill the round.

But man alone

Can do the impossible;

He distinguishes,

Chooses, and judges;

He can to the fleeting moment

Give duration.

He alone can

Reward the good,

Punish the bad,

Heal and save.

And to the erring and straying

Bring wise counsel.

Let the noble man

Be helpful and good.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

While reading a volume of The Story of Civilization by Durant, I’ve spent the last few days reading about the life of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, perhaps the greatest poet of the eighteen and nineteenth century. I’ve found most of his writing quoted by Durant as fascinating as any I’ve read.

At his death he left a confused mass of writings which were published as his Opus postumumin 1882-84. In one of these he described the “thing-in-itself”—the unknowable substratum behind phenomena and ideas—as “not a real thing . . . not an existing reality, but merely a principle . . . of the synthetic a priori knowledge of the manifold sense-intuition. He named it Gedankending, a thing existing only in our thoughts. And he applied the same skepticism to the idea of God:

God is not a substance existing outside me, but merely a moral relation within me. . . . The categorical imperative does not assume a substance issuing its commands from on hight, conceived therefore as outside me, but is a commandment or a prohibition of my own reason. . . . The categorical imperative represents human duties as divine commandments not in the historical sense, as if [a divine being] had given commands to men, but in the sense that reason . . . has power to command with the authority and in the guise of a divine person . . . The idea of such being, before whom all bend the knee, etc., arises out of the categorical imperative, and not vice versa. . . . The Ens Summum [Supreme Being] is an ens rationis [a creation of reason], . . . not a substance outside me.

The Inch-by-Inch Development of Humans

Human history may be viewed as a gradual education of mankind. Every religion was, and still is, a phase along that step-by-step path to illumination. Religion was not, as some have supposed, a scam imposed upon credulous people by self-seeking clergy; it was an evolutionary theory intended to civilize humanity by instilling virtue, decency, and social unity.  Some religions (the Old Testament for example) sought to make men virtuous by assuring them worldly riches in a long life. In another phase (the New Testament) it tried to overcome the disheartening discrepancy between virtue and earthly riches by promising rewards after death. In both cases the appeal was adjusted to the limited understanding of the people at the time. 

Supernatural religions, like Christianity and Islam, are only a phase of evolution of the human mind. A higher phase comes when humans learn to reason, and when men and women grow strong and clear enough to do what’s morally right because it is seen to be virtuous and reasonable, rather than for material or heavenly rewards. That phase has been reached by many individuals; it has not yet come to the race. But it will come as man’s education develops. Just as the average individual recapitulates in his growth the intellectual and moral development of the race, so the race slowly passes through the intellectual and moral development of progressive individuals. 

Religion has been an immense aid to morality, but it has also been the cause of much pain and suffering and death because it separates people into them vs. us. Who’s right and who’s wrong…. Hopefully, the human race can soon move beyond a system of dogmas demanding acceptance on pain of sin, punishment, and social obloquy, and become compassionate, moral beings simply because it is the moral way to live, and causes the least amount of suffering for everyone.  

Interesting Words From Frederick The Great

While reading about Frederick The Great’s reign over eighteenth century Prussia, I came across the following quote:

Superstition, self-interest, vengeance, treason, ingratitude, will produce bloody and tragic scenes until the end of time, because we are governed by passions and very rarely by reason. There will always be wars, lawsuits, devastations, plagues, earthquakes, bankruptcies. . . . Since this is so, I presume it must be necessary. . . . But it seems to me that if this universe had been made by a benevolent being, he should have made us happier than we are. . . . The human mind is weak; more than three fourths of mankind are made for subjection to the most absurd fanaticism. Fear of the Devil and of hell fascinates their eyes, and they detest the wise man who tries to enlighten them. . . . In vain do I seek in them that image of God which the theologians assert they bear upon them. Every man has a wild beast in him; few can restrain it; most men let loose the bridle when not restrained by terror of the law. 

He was the first avowedly agnostic ruler of modern times, but he made no public attack on religion. He felt that the uneducated, unenlightened masses need the yoke of religion to keep them in their place.

Frederick also concluded that to allow governments to be dominated by the majority would be disastrous. A democracy, to survive, must be, like other governments, a minority persuading a majority to let itself be led by a minority. Frederick thought like Napoleon that “among nations and in revolutions aristocracy always exists.” He believed that an hereditary aristocracy would gevelop a sense of honor and loyalty, and a willingness to serve the state at great personal cost, which could not be expected of bourgeois geniuses formed in the race for wealth. Indeed, Frederick liked to picture himself as the servant of the state and the people, and he lived up to that claim. The state for him became the Supreme Being, to which he would sacrifice himself and others.

Words to Live by From Catherine The Great

While reading about Catherine The Great’s reign over eighteenth century Russia, I came across a list of her resolutions, written by her shortly after taking power. With ideas like these, the world can hardly doubt her good intentions in the early years of her sovereignty. She wrote:

Study mankind, lean to use men without surrendering to them unreservedly. Search for true merit, be it at the other end of the world, for usually it is modest and retiring. 

Do not allow yourself to become the prey of flatterers; make them understand that you care neither for praise nor for obsequiousness. Have confidence in those who have the courage to contradict you, . . . and who place more value on your reputation than on your favor. 

Be polite, humane, accessible, compassionate, and liberal-minded. Do not let your grandeur prevent you from condescending with kindness toward the small, and putting yourself in their place. See that this kindness, however, does not weaken your authority nor diminish their respect. . . . Reject all artificiality.

Do not allow the world to contaminate you to the point of making you lose the ancient principles of honor and virtue. . . . 

I swear by Providence to stamp these words into my heart.

What a world we would enjoy if the politicians of all nations would stamp these ideas onto their hearts and live every day by them.

My Aim in Life

Deprived of the comfort of religion by my ability to form ideas and opinions based on my experiences rather than folklore, I have struggled to find something to fill that void. Along the way, so many decades, I tested everything from Tolstoy’s nihilism to Voltaire’s cosmic laugh, to my parent’s sad version of Christianity, to Buddhism, to Transcendental Meditation, to New Age philosophies. I found them all wanting.

In the end, only my art, my storytelling, consoles me.  My aim in life is to write stories that express what I feel is my truth, which I freely admit is a moving target. And write those stories as well as I can. I no longer care so much if they get published or not. My reward is in their creation, in the day by day, word by word crafting of ideas into actions and characters and emotions.

At the end of my life, I hope to pass away not hoping for some divine intervention, but looking back with love and tender regret, thinking, “Oh, the story I could have written about this!”

RIP Anthony Bourdain

Last week the world lost another celebrity to suicide. Normally I don’t pay too much attention to celebrity deaths but this one is different. For years Anthony Bourdain has been my role model. My guru.

He often said he traveled the world on his belly, meaning he traveled to one exotic place after another and indulged in the local fare. He only ate local foods, only ate at local eateries, only ate with local people, and was always fascinated by how and why people cooked their native dishes. He experienced the best and worst of each location, placing a high premium on experiencing its authentic cuisine—whether that was dining on Peking Duck in a Michelin star Beijing restaurant or scarfing down a bowl of noodles from a Bangkok street vendor. And that’s the way I travel.

“Move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. Walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food. Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.” -Anthony Bourdain.

I both love and emulate his low-key traveling persona, willing to experience out of the way places, dirty places, places tourists don’t go. To him and to me, you don’t experience a place by taking in the postcard monuments and museums. And you don’t travel to a location in order to have fun. Traveling is not about seeing the top sites and having fun. It’s about merging with a different culture, and the more different the better. Travel is about learning about humanity in all its many varied forms. Travel is an eye-opening, live-changing, curiosity-appeasing quest. 

“Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you... You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.” — Anthony Bourdain

I travel from four to six months per year. Most of my destinations are outside the U.S. I’ve visited over sixty countries over the last twenty-five years. I dare say there were few places Anthony Bourdain showcased on his travel show that Herman and I have not visited, which gave us both a feeling of connection with Mr. Bourdain. We shall continue to travel in the style that he epitomized, but from now on we will travel with a slight sense of loss.