Mother's Rule of Life

I am as in need of scheduling advice as the next person, and so last Mother's Day when my own mom sent me A Mother's Rule of Life I thought that perhaps this would be a useful tool for getting my home and life into a more scheduled routine. The subtitle is "How to Bring Order to Your Home and Peace to your Soul", and though my soul is already peaceful, my house could certainly use a little order.

Unfortunately, my first reading of it left a distinctly bad taste in my mouth. I wedged it into a bookshelf and left it there until last week, when the organizational urge struck again. Maybe I'd been too hasty with my first impressions and so overlooked some good advice. After re-reading it, I can say, upon careful consideration: Nah.

I just can't take this book seriously. My first presentiment of trouble came from the first page of the first chapter, in which the author recounts how she was pounding the table and issuing her husband ultimatums about schooling, the house, and yelling about how she just couldn't take it anymore. I could tell at that moment that the author and I had already diverged wildly in terms of personality and coping mechanisms for stress, but hey! the Lord works in mysterious ways, and if He had revealed the secret of organization to this woman then who was I to naysay?

Unfortunately, the rest of the book bore out my initial impressions. The book was more about the author's transformation than about the practicalities of creating and following a rule of life, and I simply couldn't get over her personal problems, emotional neediness, and relationship struggles. Merely discovering that using some common sense and a bit of stepping into the other's shoes will make a relationship a lot less stressful isn't going to fly with me as wisdom from on high -- I already knew at 18 what she was discovering at 30. I found myself irritated and bemused by her insistence that God was calling her to take every other Saturday "off" from her family. I felt sorry for her husband.

Also, it's no news to me that I need a schedule; this book didn't tell me anything I didn't know already. My problem is one of motivation, and for that I find books on housewifery almost useless. It strikes me that A Mother's Rule of Life is a book that will be of greatest assistance to women who are from the same mold as the author. However, if emotional displays annoy you and a lack of common sense vexes you, go straight to the source and pull your inspiration from the Rule of St. Benedict. At least he won't burden you with chapters of irrelevant personal details.

Gene Expression Questions Philosopher

Over on Gene Expression Classic, Razib has up another in his 10 Questions series of interviews, this one with philosopher Matthew Stewart. I confess to not knowing enough about writers of general consumption philosophy books to have any opinion or knowledge of Stewart's work, but I'm charmed by the opening of a recent Atlantic Monthly (full text only available to subscribers or in the library) article he wrote:

During the seven years that I worked as a management consultant, I spent a lot of time trying to look older than I was. I became pretty good at furrowing my brow and putting on somber expressions. Those who saw through my disguise assumed I made up for my youth with a fabulous education in management. They were wrong about that. I don’t have an M.B.A. I have a doctoral degree in philosophy—nineteenth-century German philosophy, to be precise. Before I took a job telling managers of large corporations things that they arguably should have known already, my work experience was limited to part-time gigs tutoring surly undergraduates in the ways of Hegel and Nietzsche and to a handful of summer jobs, mostly in the less appetizing ends of the fast-food industry.

The strange thing about my utter lack of education in management was that it didn’t seem to matter. As a principal and founding partner of a consulting firm that eventually grew to 600 employees, I interviewed, hired, and worked alongside hundreds of business-school graduates, and the impression I formed of the M.B.A. experience was that it involved taking two years out of your life and going deeply into debt, all for the sake of learning how to keep a straight face while using phrases like "out-of-the-box thinking," "win-win situation," and "core competencies." When it came to picking teammates, I generally held out higher hopes for those individuals who had used their university years to learn about something other than business administration.

Seems to jibe pretty well with my own experience dealing with MBAs. I certainly haven't found studying Classics rather than Marketing, Business or Computer Science to have slowed me down at all in working as a marketing/data analyst and web programmer. Though I would say it often takes a a few years for your earning power to equal that of someone with a technical degree, even if you end up doing about the same work.

Requiscat in Pace

Fellow blogger and occasional commenter John Farrell's father, David J. Farrell, died quietly on Friday morning. Our prayers go out for the repose of his soul, and for the Farrell family during this times. And thanks to St. Joseph, patron of the good death, is doubtless in order. Few of us could do better than to die quietly and at home, surrounded by our families.

Book Meme Redux, or Me Too

Darwin got in first and took all the good answers, so my list is a bit lighter.

1. One book that changed your life: Lewis's The Four Loves. I read it at 17, and it had a profound influence on my thoughts about love and friendship, making me susceptible to the intellectual wiles of the freshman Darwin.

2. One book that you've read more than once: Declare by Tim Powers. An excellent mix of historical speculation, suspense, action, love across time, and the supernatural, set against the backdrop of the Cold War.

3. One book you'd want on a desert island: Well, Darwin already took The Divine Comedy (thought I came up with it independently) so I might have to grab The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. That's pretty meaty stuff for an island sojourn. Or maybe I'd have to find a copy of Bad Twin.

4. One book that made you laugh: My Home Sweet Home by Giovanni Guareschi. Family doesn't get funnier than Margharita, the Passionaria, and Alberto.

5. One book that made you cry: I read Jane Eyre when I was 13 or 14, and found myself snuffling at Jane's stirring declaration that she was not an automaton, Mr. Rochester. It's possible that something more recent has made me tear up, but nothing springs immediately to mind -- I'm not much for crying.

6. One book that you wish had been written: The Complete User's Manual to Eleanor, Julia, and Isabel. Boy, would that make my life easier!

7. One book that you wish had never been written: Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This is the book responsible for numerous heinous theories of child and human development by perpetrating the myth of the tabula rasa -- thus rejecting the notion of original sin.

8. One book you're currently reading: A Mother's Rule of Life. I'm reading it, but I'm not liking it.

9. One book you've been meaning to read: The Death of Achilles by Boris Akunin -- fourth in the series of Erast Fandorin mysteries. These are excellent reads for anyone who loves classic mysteries, and are uber-stylish to boot.

AND I'm back, having just remembered that I wanted to tag a few people: Rick and Rhonda Lugari and BarbfromCincy in the combox, and Amber and CMinor -- time permitting for all, of course.

Book Meme

Well, it had to happen some time. I've been tagged by Zippy with the book meme that's been going around. No I have to figure out what book changed my life other than Lord of the Rings and the Bible if I'm to not blend in with everyone else.

1. One book that changed your life: Plato's Dialogues -- My father very wisely put the basic dialogues of Plato in my way at age 14, which must be the height of what Sayers calls the "pert age". I'm far from being a complete Platonist, but hitting me as they did at just the right age, some of Plato's basic ideas like the relation of "the Good" to the gods (Euthephro) have become very deeply ingrained in my thinking.

2. One book that you've read more than once: Brideshead Revisited -- I've probably read Brideshead more times than Lord of the Rings, which is impressive since I started reading it three or four years later than LotR.

3. One book you'd want on a desert island: Dante's Divine Comedy -- At a practical level, I'd pick the bible first, but since so many other people had picked that, I figured I'd pick a runner-up. The Comedia rolls religion, philosophy, beautiful poetry and memorable characters into one package. If I had to read only one piece of literature for the rest of my life, that would be it.

4. One book that made you laugh: Three Men In A Boat -- Need one say more?

5. One book that made you cry: The Smith of Wooten Major by Tolkien -- a quiet but incredibly powerful little book which always leaves me misty-eyed.

6. One book that you wish had been written: The Return of the Shadow -- Some years after finishing Lord of the Rings, Tolkien started work on a sequel to be title The Return of the Shadow, which was to be "a supernatural thriller" dealing with an "orc cult" springing up among the men of Numenor a generation or two after the War of the Ring. He abandoned the project after writing a couple chapters.

7. One book that you wish had never been written: The Koran -- It may be un-ecumenical to say so, but if there's one book which has resulted in more blood and loss of souls from the Church, I can't think of it. Eat your hearts out, Freud and Marx.

8. One book you're currently reading: I'll cheat and list two, I'm actively reading A War Like No Other by Victor Davis Hanson (about the Peloponnesian War) in my spare time, but I've also been working (very slowly) through the 12 books of Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time for just over five years, since MrsDarwin and I got married. (My Dad gave me the set as a wedding present.) One of the best sets of novels from the post-war period, Dance to the Music of Time spans some forty years of story time and is in some ways like an English Remembrance of Things Past, which makes it a perfect work to read on and off over a long period.

9. One book you've been meaning to read: Again, I'll cheat and mention two: Modern Physics and Ancient Faith by Stephen M. Barr and also Worlds Apart, A Journey to the Great Living Monasteries of Europe by Tudor Edwards.

Tagging: The ATP, the Opinionated Homeschooler, and the LogEyed Roman. And since the "two shall become one" I shouldn't be surprised if MrsDarwin followed up with her own picks.

Seal-ing his fate

Help out a local boy attain his dreams of B-movie stardom!

I'm sure by now everyone has heard the hype of this summer's soon to be released blockbuster…Snakes on a Plane.

To celebrate the release the Alamo Drafthouse is holding the 'Blanks on a Blank' filmmaking challenge in which teams are randomly assigned an animal and a vehicle and then given the task of creating a disaster movie with only one rule - incorporate the line that Samuel L. Jackson will never live down (earmuffs if you're watching with the kids).

So the cast and crew of 'Seals on a Scooter' needs your support and here's what you can do to help us out…this will take some time as all films are roughly 5 minutes. If you are short on time then just view and vote '100' for 'Seals on a Scooter'.

1. Direct your web browser of choice to www.blankonablank.com
2. Enter the site and click the "Create an account" link
3. Get yourself registered
4. Then click the 'Films' link at the top of the page.
5. The list of films will then display - click on the 'View Film' link for a particular film and watch away.
6. After the film completes assign it a score and then click the small 'Return to Films List' link at the bottom of the page.

7. It would be most helpful if you assigned a score of '100' to Seals on a Scooter and '0' to all others.
8. And no the Alamo couldn't have made this process any more difficult.

Thanks for your assistance…
The winning team gets to send 2 members to the L.A. premiere of 'Snakes on a Plane'…
Please help make a young seal's dream of walking the red carpet and appearing in US Weekly come true.

Yours,
M.F. Seal

I might have preferred "Yaks on a Humvee", but that's just me.

Off the face of the earth

I've found it easy to resist the surge of commentary about Mel Gibson's drunken remarks about Jews, mainly because I'm not particularly a fan of Gibson's. I thought The Passion was definitely one of the more interesting attempts at serious religious art in the film medium, but aside from that I've thought every movie that he's directed was just terrible.

But I was amused by this opening paragraph in an editorial in this morning's WSJ:

So Mel Gibson, arrested in Malibu, Calif., for drunk driving, tells a police officer that "the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." Pity the actor for not substituting the word "Israelis" for "Jews." The latter apparently confirms his long-suspected anti-Semitism. The former would have made him a darling of right-thinking progressives the world over, especially at this moment of Middle East stress.

That had kind of been my own thought as well, to be honest.

Of course, Israel represents a rather interesting question in regards to the whole idea of Just War. I tend to support Israel for something of the same reason that John Derbyshire once gave: Because in a generally oppressive and uncivilized area of the world they are one of the few fairly just and egalitarian democracies. (Ironically, the runner up in that category is arguably Lebanon.)

However, there is another half of conservatism that is much less sanguine about Israel. Some say this is because of anti-Semitism (and there is some of that in certain paleo-conservative circles from what I can see) but I think it is also because Israel represents something of a puzzle in that it is so new. Fifty years ago there was no state of Israel, and 100 years ago there was not a Jewish majority population in that area. Israel is an example of a phenomenon which has become very rare in the modern world, though it happened often in the 'Dark Ages', of a people moving into a previously populated area and securing political control over it essentially by force.

The Normans did this to England in 1066, and before them the Danes did much the same to parts of central England in the 700s to 900s. Before that, the Saxons did the same thing to the Celts and Roman Britains when they invaded. By comparison, the Israelis took a fairly peaceful route: moving into the area while it was under Turkish and then under British control, and building up to where they represented a sizeable percentage of the population before demanding political control. And yet, there is a sense in which the local Arab population can rightly see Israel as an invading population.

Much of just war doctrine centers around whether or not a war is defensive in nature. If your country is invaded, it's generally considered just to defend it. Going off and invading someone else's country requires much more work to justify -- some maintain that it can't be justified at all.

And yet, pretty much all the territory on this earth is conquered territory many times over. Which raises the question: at what point is one required to admit that no matter what you think about how the current owners acquired their territory, their right to it should now be respected? People have long memories. In Northern Ireland the IRA and the Orange Men are still fighting it out over the wrongs committed by Cromwell and William III, as well as the much more recent oppression of the Irish Catholic population. In the Balkans grudges stretch back 1000 years or more.

Israel is new by comparison -- unless you count the country established in 1948 as possessing true historical continuity with the Israelite kingdom that was dispersed in 70AD. And yet, looking at the map of the world, a goodly portion of them did not reach their current form until after 1948. I don't think there's any period of time one can lay out which makes a new country "established" rather than "invading".

Israel has stood the test of time for more than a generation, and it offers its Muslim citizens as much freedom and more opportunity, in many ways, than most of the surrounding Muslim countries do. It seems to me that at this point in history, all reasonable observers must acknowledge it as a country that is here to stay (not an invading population) and that with that status comes a need to proportionately defend itself from attack. Not that anyone has ever accused Hamas and Hezbollah of being reasonable...