Wednesday, April 29, 2015


The late Israeli poet Natan Alterman wrote this poem. long ago, and its poignancy continues to resonate:




אז אמר השטן:הנצור הזה
איך אוכל לו.
איתו האומץ וכשרון המעשה
וכלי מלחמה ותושיה עצה לו.

ואמר:לא אטול את כוחו
ולא מורך אביא בתוכו
ולא ידיו ארפה כמיקדם,
רק זאת אעשה: אכהה מוחו
ושכח שאיתו הצדק.
_ _ _

כך דיבר השטן וכמו
חורו שמים מאימה
בראותם אותו בקומו
לבצע המזימה.

Then Satan said: This beleaguered one --
How can I thwart him?
He's possessed of courage and skill
implements of war and astute counsel

And he said: I will neither take away his power
nor fill him with dread
nor undermine his strength
Only this shall I do:
I'll dull his mind
and he'll forget his righteous cause ...

____

Thus Satan spoke and 
heavens blanched in horror
watching him rise up
his treachery to perform

Saturday, April 25, 2015

"Critical thinking

 is possible only where the standpoints of all others are open to inspection. Hence, critical thinking, while still a solitary business, does not cut itself off from ‘all others.’ To be sure, it still goes on in isolation, but by the force of imagination it makes the others present and thus moves in a space that is potentially public, open to all sides; in other words, it adopts the position of Kant’s world citizen. To think with an enlarged mentality means that one trains one’s imagination to go visiting."

-- Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy

Sunday, April 19, 2015

 The Sycophants


Etymology of term:

The origin of the Ancient Greek word συκοφάντης (sykophántēs) disparages the unjustified accuser who has in some way perverted the legal system. The original etymology of the word (sukon/sykos/συκος fig, and phainein/fanēs/φανης to show) “revealer of figs”—has been the subject of extensive scholarly speculation and conjecture. Plutarch appears to be the first to have suggested that the source of the term was in laws forbidding the exportation of figs, and that those who leveled the accusation against another of illegally exporting figs were therefore called sycophants. Athenaeus provided a similar explanation. Blackstone's Commentaries repeats this story, but adds an additional take—that there were laws making it a capital offense to break into a garden and steal figs, and that the law was so odious that informers were given the name sycophants. A different explanation of the origin of the term by Shadwell was that the sycophant refers to the manner in which figs are harvested, by shaking the tree and revealing the fruit hidden among the leaves. The sycophant, by making false accusations, makes the accused yield up their fruit. The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition listed these and other explanations, including that the making of false accusations was an insult to the accused in the nature of "showing the fig", an "obscene gesture of phallic significance" or, alternatively that the false charges were often so insubstantial as to not amount to the worth of a fig. Generally, scholars have dismissed these explanations as inventions, long after the original meaning had been lost. Danielle Allen suggests that the term was "slightly obscene", connoting a kind of perversion, and may have had a web of meanings derived from the symbolism of figs in ancient Greek culture, ranging from the improper display of one’s “figs” by being overly aggressive in pursuing a prosecution, the unseemly revealing of the private matters of those accused of wrongdoing, to the inappropriate timing of harvesting figs when they are unripe.

 

SYCOPHANT Ambrose Bierce

—n.
One who approaches Greatness on his belly so that he may not be commanded to turn and be kicked. He is sometimes an editor.

  As the lean leech, its victim found, is pleased
  To fix itself upon a part diseased
  Till, its black hide distended with bad blood,
  It drops to die of surfeit in the mud,
  So the base sycophant with joy descries
  His neighbor's weak spot and his mouth applies,
  Gorges and prospers like the leech, although,
  Unlike that reptile, he will not let go.
  Gelasma, if it paid you to devote
  Your talent to the service of a goat,
  Showing by forceful logic that its beard
  Is more than Aaron's fit to be revered;
  If to the task of honoring its smell
  Profit had prompted you, and love as well,
  The world would benefit at last by you
  And wealthy malefactors weep anew —
  Your favor for a moment's space denied
  And to the nobler object turned aside.
  Is't not enough that thrifty millionaires
  Who loot in freight and spoliate in fares,
  Or, cursed with consciences that bid them fly
  To safer villainies of darker dye,
  Forswearing robbery and fain, instead,
  To steal (they call it "cornering") our bread
  May see you groveling their boots to lick
  And begging for the favor of a kick?
  Still must you follow to the bitter end
  Your sycophantic disposition's trend,
  And in your eagerness to please the rich
  Hunt hungry sinners to their final ditch?
  In Morgan's praise you smite the sounding wire,
  And sing hosannas to great Havemeyher!
  What's Satan done that him you should eschew?
  He too is reeking rich — deducting you.



Tuesday, April 07, 2015

  More cake than is good for them

Obama is a gambler and he bets on the likelihood that Iran, the quintessential leopard in the Middle East, will change its spots just because other animals treat it as if it were NOT a capable beast of prey. And anyway, if his gambit fails (as it's most likely to happen), it's other people's headache to deal with its detritus. Living in a vast continent flanked by two oceans and neighbors as belligerent as Canada, Obama can certainly afford to live with the consequences of his gambler's optimism.

What is Obama's thinking behind his strategy? Either he thinks that a better life for Iranians will induce the people to get rid of the ayatollah regime or that keeping the ayatollahs lubricated with candy will somehow keep them in check. Either way, he's mistaken, of course. People are unlikely to rebel when  the regime can tell them with some justification, how well it serves them. And as for the second conjecture, its premise is based on the indulgent-lazy-parent tactic so well captured in Jane Austen's novel "Persuasion":


Mrs. Musgrove took the first opportunity of being alone with Anne, to say, "Oh! Miss Anne, I cannot help wishing Mrs. Charles had a little of your method with those children. They are quite different creatures with you! But to be sure, in general they are so spoilt! It is a pity you cannot put your sister in the way of managing them. They are as fine healthy children as ever were seen, poor little dears, without partiality; but Mrs. Charles knows no more how they should be treated -- ! Bless me! how troublesome they are sometimes. I assure you, Miss Anne, it prevents my wishing to see them at our house so often as I otherwise should. I believe Mrs. Charles is not quite pleased with my not inviting them oftener; but you know it is very bad to have children with one, that one is obliged to be checking every moment, "don't do this, and don't do that;"; or that one can only keep in tolerable order by more cake than is good for them."

Monday, April 06, 2015

[last lines]

Reuven Malter: There is a story in the Talmud about a king who had a son who went astray. The son was told, 'Return to your father.' The son replied that he could not. The king then sent a messenger to the son with the message... 'Come back to me as far as you can, and I will meet you the rest of the way.