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All the Books I Will Never Read, And the Ones I "Will"

2/28/2019

Amazon apparently has over eight million books available for purchase through its website. When I noticed this, I tried my best to visualize what eight million books looked like. Within seconds, fictitious and sensationalistic, infomercial snippets flashed onto the screen of my mind. How many is eight million books, you ask? Why that’s enough to fill Madison Square Garden 14 times! Enough books to go to the moon and back – twice! If you converted the paper back into trees, you would have six Amazon rainforests! And so forth. Amusing as it was to conjure up this infomercial nonsense, it did little to help me picture the sheer volume eight million books must represent.

In any case, it's all quite irrelevant because I quickly figured out there was no way I could read more than a fraction of all the available books on Amazon anyway. Sure, I was a voracious reader when I was younger, averaging twenty or more books per month, but as I have grown older my appetite for books has gradually decreased. Much of this has to do with the scarcity of time; in the past seven or eight years, for example, I have averaged a pathetic four to five books annually. Annually! Granted, they weren’t slim volumes of short stories, but still! Four to five books? What is that? Half a book a month? Some barnyard animals probably read more than that. My inner English major fumes in frustration and cringes with shame.

Nevertheless, the pace of my reading has picked up since January of this year, but I am still only at about a book or two a month. Before going any further let me stress the following – I do not view reading as some sort of competition or game or belt-notching activity where you must read as much as humanly possible in order to amass the armory of witty banter and wit required to be a star at cocktail parties or artistic coffeehouses. I also don’t believe reading more books necessarily makes a person more intelligent. Sure, being well-read helps, but a few years around the wrong kind of books can actually cause serious brain damage. Don’t believe me? Go spend a few minutes in the company of a gender studies graduate student and you’ll instantly understand.

Amazon’s eight million books started me thinking about all the books I have read thus far and the books I could potentially read in the remainder of my life. I don’t know exactly how many books I have read, but if I look into the future and am lucky enough to live another thirty years or so, I estimate I could potentially read another 1,500 books in my lifetime (if I manage to read about fifty books a year over the next thirty years).

Yet when I pondered this number, I realized it was misleading. I have always been a quality reader rather than quantity reader; given the choice, I would rather read ten great books than a hundred mediocre ones. On top of that, I am an avid re-reader. Believing firmly in the principle that great books should not merely be read, but reread, it dawned on me that I would probably read no more than five hundred unfamiliar books in the remainder of my lifetime; the other thousand would be certainly factor in as rereads. Hence, I began to view the 1,500 number as book reads rather than books themselves.

Fifteen-hundred reads is both a little and a lot – I still have time to read and reread many great books, but the number of books I will manage to read in the time I have left is dwarfed by the number of books I will never read. This inevitably lead me to the question of what I should read.

After I had calculated the likely number of reads I had left before me, my first impulse was to punctiliously craft a list of all the books I absolutely had to read before my time was up, but I abandoned the thought as soon as it materialized. Though my blood is technically German, I have never cared much for regimented Prussian planning and meticulousness. Preplanning my reading over the next thirty years sounded about as much fun as prescheduling romantic interludes with my wife for the next three decades. The intrigue, romance, and spontaneity would vanish, and the task would eventually become a chore, which was the last thing I would ever want reading, or romance with my wife for that matter, to become.

In the end, I settled upon the following approach – I will let what William Arkle calls The Will decide what my 1,500 reads will be. Rather than impose my Will Power upon the act of reading, I will put faith in The Will to guide me toward the books I should and must read (and reread, of course). I believe it is the only possible approach to reading I can take; after all, Arkle’s description of The Will is exactly how his own A Geography of Consciousness found its way into my hands; and what a blessing that has been.

What about the 7,999,500 books on Amazon I most certainly will not have the time read in this lifetime? Well, maybe I’ll order a few tomorrow anyway – not to read, but simply to stack. With any luck, I might just reach the moon before my time draws to an end.

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Pugs, Wiener Dogs, and I Rejoice at the Coming of Spring

2/27/2019

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The forecast indicates it will be 18 degrees Celsius in this part of the world tomorrow, and the long-range weather forecast predicts no subzero temperatures for the next three weeks. I am not ruling out the chance of a cold snap or unexpected snow squall here and there, but for the time being, it appears winter's spine has been broken here in western Hungary.

Though the warmer weather will sadly mark the end point of my cherished winter hobby - checking out the latest dog sweater trends the pugs and dachshunds of Sopron’s Déák Square are sporting - I nonetheless welcome the coming spring with open arms. I do not have anything against winter in particular because I do like snow, chilly air, and dog sweaters, but three months of gray and cold are usually enough to inspire an anticipatory yearning for change by the end of February.

Of all seasonal transitions, winter dissolving into spring is my favorite. Describing the beauty of spring is an exercise in triteness, yet the magic and magnificence of longer days, blossoming trees, blooming flowers, and nearly forgotten birdsong trills always rejunevate and refresh my spirit.

I look forward to putting my winter coat away for the year and embracing the season of rebirth. I am fairly certain the pugs and dachshunds of Déák Square feel likewise.

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The Red Star Has Not Died; It Has Merely Changed its Form

2/27/2019

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Since 2000, Hungary has made February 25 a day of commemoration for the victims of communism. I have mixed views about official commemorations, but I sympathize with the idea of remembering the victims of communism for the same reason I sympathize with the idea of remembering victims of genocides and war. On the one hand, these observances honor the memory of the victims; on the other hand, these remembrances remind of us the reality of organized evil, and as such serve as warnings to those who offer grand solutions to complex problems or who strive to create heaven on earth.

Victims of communism have not ranked very highly in the hierarchy of historical victims, but that appears to be changing, albeit slowly. In all honesty, I have never understood why communism has been let off so lightly in the West. From a body count perspective, communism was by far the most brutal and murderous of all ideological plagues (some estimates place the worldwide total deaths that can be attributed to communism to be as high as 100 million).

Let me rephrase my previous statement. I understand perfectly why communism has been let off so lightly; what I don’t understand is how others have not condemned those who have let communism off so lightly. Put bluntly, twentieth-century communism was just as horrifying as Nazism was, yet in the twenty-first century, communism is still treated as a viable, perhaps even desirable political option in the West.

I have written about communism many times on this blog; thus, I have no desire to delve into the irony of hip Che Guevara t-shirts or the blatant acceptability of communist symbols such as red stars and hammers and sickles again. Nevertheless, I would like stress the following – as unlikely as it may appear, the Red Star is still very much alive, and it resides comfortably in the heads of many among the liberal/leftist elite today.

Perhaps the most recent example of this was the speech given by the current President of the European Commission who happily attended a ceremony commemorating the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth. Once there, the EC president gave an impassioned speech defending Marx’s legacy by claiming the communist founder should not be judged for the crimes his followers committed decades after his death.

Mr. Junker also said, "One has to understand Karl Marx from the context of his time and not have prejudices based on hindsight, these judgments shouldn't exist."

At the ceremony, Junker went onto discuss Marx's influence on the European Union, saying that Marx's philosophy taught Europeans that it was the “task of our time” to improve social rights.

That the EC President attends a commemoration of Karl Marx where he went on to unveil a 14-foot statue of the founder of communism is troubling; that a commemoration of Karl Marx was even held at all should cause each of us to pause and reflect for a moment.

Following the event, MEPs from Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party wrote to Mr Juncker in protest of the visit, saying: "Marxist ideology led to the death of tens of millions and ruined the lives of hundreds of millions. The celebration of its founder is a mockery of their memory."

It is worth noting that Hungary was one of the few countries to condemn Junker’s visit to the Marx birthday party, which reveals yet another dividing line on the European continent – countries that suffered under communist rule versus those that did not. For all their flaws and underdevelopment, countries in the former Eastern Bloc have one distinct advantage over their richer Western counterparts – they have a keen understanding of communism and can recognize the Red Star whenever it appears in contemporary politics. Citizens of Western European countries have not had this kind of firsthand experience; hence, they are more susceptible to the insinuations of communist propaganda.

I have raised the event cited above to serve as an example of my previous claim that the Red Star is still alive today, and that it is comfortably lodged in the minds of the ruling elite. When the EC president speaks of improving social rights, he is essentially employing communist language and philosophy, which is perfectly fitting because, for all intents and purposes, a newer, modernized version of communism is all the European Union aspires to be.

Honoring Karl Marx and promulgating Red Star visions and policies today not only makes a mockery of communism’s victims, it also makes a mockery of God because communism remains the most inherently anti-religious ideology ever developed. Declaring religion to be nothing more than opium for the masses, communism placed humanity at the center of its philosophy and paradoxically, but predictably, developed into the most anti-human system the world has ever known. Yet, in 2019 communism can still be viewed as an admirable, desirable, and attainable political objective.

Of course, contemporary Red Star acolytes know better than to unfurl the old flags of communism again; they are well aware that even the most ignorant among us would likely oppose this. The word communism is never used explicitly, and whenever it is, it is quickly declared as something that exists only in the dustbins of history. But don’t be fooled. Communism has not died; it has merely changed its form. No, there will be no worker marches or hammers-and-sickles this time around, thank you very much. Instead, communism is being fed to the masses in a different form, under the variegated guises of leftist/liberal policies implemented through two of the old Party’s favorite vehicles – bureaucracy and the media. And guess what? In many areas, it is working.

This does not mean the majority of people in the West are on the cusp of surrendering to communism yet, but the current version of communism we are all suffering under has achieved something the oppressive, totalitarian red regimes of the past could only dream of – they have succeeded in driving God farther away from the hearts of Men. Being a Christian in the Soviet Union in the 1950s was regarded a defiant act of insurrection; being a Christian in the contemporary West today is regarded as a pitiable act of insanity.

Regardless, communists know one thing extremely well – religion, Christianity in particular, is poison to the communist cause. A true Christian is essentially inoculated against the communist virus. Those who claim to be Christian and communist are not Christians at all because the two elements simply cannot co-exist. Anyone who claims they can understands neither communism nor Christianity.

Though I am sure they think otherwise, secular liberals, conservatives, and libertarians are not immune to the communist virus. To prove my point, I offer a quote from Bill Bryson the American travel writer who perfectly epitomizes the kind of liberal, mediocre, mid-wit mentality that currently prevails in the West. Of the collapse of communism, Mr. Bryson had the following to say:

“This was 1990 the year that communism died in Europe and it seemed strange to me that in all the words that were written about the fall of the iron curtain, nobody anywhere lamented that it was the end of a noble experiment. I know that communism never worked and I would have disliked living under it myself but none the less it seems that there was a kind of sadness in the thought that the only economic system that appeared to work was one based on self interest and greed.”

The end of a noble experiment! That Mr. Bryson would not want to live under the noble experiment is telling, yet he declares the experiment noble nonetheless. This kind of thinking is far more prevalent and ubiquitous than we dare to admit – and it is exactly the kind attitude that will lead us all back in the gulags if we are not careful.

The bulk of the annual commemoration for the victims of communism in Hungary takes place in a Budapest Museum called The Terror House, which is an apt name considering the museum focuses entirely on communist and Nazi atrocities. At the event this year, museum director Mária Schmidt, offered the following words,

“Communism should not be presented exclusively as something of the past as there are still people in Europe who want to change the world on the basis of its ideology.”

Truer words have rarely been spoken; perhaps we should take them as a warning . . . or a wake up call.

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When it Comes to Detail - Beware the Devil; Focus on God

2/26/2019

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I have heard the expression “the devil is in the detail” quite frequently over the past year or so, and I am certain most people are familiar enough with the idiom to be spared a detailed analysis of its definition. It is sufficient to state that the idiom is used exclusively to refer to a hidden catch or problem in something that, on the surface at least, appears quite simple and straightforward.

Perhaps I have heard the expression so much lately because it tellingly exemplifies the material world and the attitudes of many who dwell in it. In fact, I would posit that a great deal of the material world resides solely in the devil is in the detail realm.

So much of what happens today can be reduced to this – Truth has been eclipsed by the devil in the detail, the simple, straightforward concepts we foolishly accept as truth.

We accept the promise of the simple and straightforward truth only to discover it is infected with hidden complexities, unforeseen circumstances, blatant half-truths, outright lies, cunning deceptions, infuriating nuances, and mesmerizing rhetoric. Treaties, contracts, news, media, policies, education, and mission statements – they all speak the language of the details devil. Yet, we eagerly embrace it all and repeatedly wake up to mind-numbing surprises later.

Turning to those who sold us the promise of the simple truth, we are greeted with gleaming toothpaste white smiles and condescending looks of scorn. “The devil is in the detail,” they callously inform us. “You should have read the fine print. Hired a lawyer. Did you really believe it could be that straightforward? That simple? That easy? Did you think it would all be on the house? No price to pay? No complications to consider?”

We anticipated simple gifts and instead received Pandora’s boxes. Such is the world when the devil is in the detail.

Investigating the origin of the idiom I came across a rather surprising fact. “The devil is in the detail” originates from the earlier phrase “God is in the detail”, which expresses the notion that whatever one commits to doing should be done thoroughly and well. In other words, when it comes to doing a good job, details are important.

Oddly enough, I cannot remember ever hearing “God is in the detail” before. I certainly have not come across it lately. It seems the only entity that resides in details these days is the Devil. Perhaps this is because so few are interested in doing things thoroughly and well.

It is worth noting the God in the detail idiom came first, which is proper, and the devil in the detail idiom perverted itself into existence from the foundation of the God idiom, which seems fitting. The crux of both sayings is, of course, the crucial significance of finer elements and attributes.

Perhaps detail is where our battle lines must be drawn; perhaps this is new philosophy we must speak.

For the Devil, details are covert weapons. They are the subtle, surreptitious fine points that work to conceal Reality, for Reality must be stashed away to make the apparent gift of simple truth seem straightforward. The Devil hides the complexity of evil in backstairs, holes in the corner, and under-the-table places. Evil is crammed into the details, compressed and pressurized. Yet, this cloak-and-dagger tactic the devil uses in the detail game is often short lived. Before long, the surface of his false truth cracks and the evil contained in the details emerges. We stare aghast while the detail devils dance in the chaos they have unleashed.

We must become aware of the Devil and details, and be wary of simple solutions to complex problems, but we must not abandon detail itself. Rather, we must make detail our new focal point, the thing with which we counter the detail devils.

The Devil uses details to conceal; we must use detail to reveal.

Once we have recognized and accepted the Truth, the real Promise of simplicity, the hope that God is in the detail, we must focus on details and dedicate ourselves to crafting them in a manner that all will recognize. We must commit to the Truth by living it out thoroughly and well, and this can only be achieved by focusing on our own individual details contained in our own lived experiences.

If done properly and well, the devil in the detail will become powerless, and the God in the detail will emerge and become visible.

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Highway For No One

2/26/2019

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Last year I read a report that ranked Toronto as the worst city in North America for commuting, and the fourth worst commuter city in the world. As anyone who has ever lived or still lives in Toronto will tell you, this is hardly surprising. I spent over twenty years in the Greater Toronto Area – one of the main reasons I finally left was the horrendous daily insanity people euphemistically refer to as “the commute.”

I spent, on average, between two-to-four hours a day behind the wheel when I lived in Toronto, mostly coming and going from work and taking care of daily business such as running errands or shopping. This added up to roughly 20 hours a week, or 840 hours per year, which equaled 35 days over the course of year.

Think about that for a moment.

The year has twelve months; I was in effect spending more than one of those months behind the wheel navigating the daily hell known as Toronto’s commute.

“What did I do in January, you ask? Well, I drove, non-stop. Every. Single. Day. Of. The. Month.”

Of course, this is all natural and acceptable when you live in a city like Toronto. No one in Hogtown raises an eyebrow over daily commutes spanning several hours each day. Spending twenty to thirty percent of your waking day entombed in an automobile and snarled in traffic is just something you have to do. It’s all par for the course. Just a part of life. No point in complaining about it, eh?

For years, I did my best to remain stoic when it came to the commute, but with each passing year, getting around in Toronto became increasingly difficult, and my stoicism began to crack. I finally moved away from Toronto in 2000 and divided the next eleven years living in the following places: Budapest; Sarasota, Florida; and New York City.

I did not drive in Budapest and New York as both cities have excellent public transportation systems. Though not always pleasant, I found riding a subway or bus preferable to driving because I could at least read a book or relax on my way to work. I drove in Sarasota, but the traffic was never anything like it was in Toronto; thus, it was still depressing, but a little more bearable.

In 2011, my wife and I decided, rather unwisely, to return to Toronto to be close to family before my son was born. After a decade-long absence, I was back on Toronto’s highways. The soul-destroying feeling returned the moment I was back on Toronto’s 401, 404, and 407 highways. Two years later, I had a revelation. Stuck in a jam on Highway 404 where I spent 90 minutes mindlessly staring at the transport truck idling before me, I glanced at the snaking procession of cars in the rearview mirror and declared, “I’m not doing this anymore. I simply refuse to live like this.”

Within three months, we moved away. We made a point of staying clear of any big city with horrible traffic issues. Our first stop was Morpeth, Northumberland where we spent eight months in the English countryside while I fulfilled a temporary teaching contract. My commute to work was a thirty-minute bus ride. The bus was never crowded and I used the time to read or observe the Northumberland landscape. My mood and health improved dramatically during this time.

When we moved to Hungary, we bought a house about twenty-five kilometers outside of Sopron where I work. Though I could drive, I choose instead to take the commuter train, which brings me to within 100 meters of my workplace in a mere twenty minutes. Once again, I use the time to read or watch the passing scenery.

Long story short, I noticed an immediate and marked improvement in the quality of my life every time I eliminated car commuting from my daily schedule and kept my travel times to under one hour a day in total. Conversely, I experienced an instant and significant deterioration of life quality every time I had to spend more than one hour a day driving around some nightmarish urban/suburban landscape.

Now I am sure there are many for whom commuting by car is no big deal. There must be people who simply love to drive, or who use time stuck in traffic to listen to audiobooks, or some other constructive activity, but for most people commuting is a killer. Literally.

Countless studies outlining the negative physical and psychological effects of commuting have been published over the years; despite this, commuting times and distances continue to increase all the same. I certainly experienced the negatives associated with commuting when I drove to work. Driving more than one hour a day took time away from my family, raised my stress levels, lowered my physical fitness, and made me feel generally exhausted and depressed.

During the years I spent commuting in and around Toronto, I spent a considerable amount of time contemplating the inefficient design of most modern cities. The urban sprawl. The soulless subdivisions. The poor public transportation systems that forced nearly everyone into an automobile for even the most trivial of errands. The vast distances between places. The expansive parking lots. The rows of ugly, utilitarian strip plazas.

For all of its talk of building human-centered societies, the progressive authorities in the West are doing a stellar job creating physical environments in which the human dimension is, essentially, an afterthought.

The word soulless tends to pop up whenever subdivisions and strip malls marring contemporary urban and suburban cityscapes are described. To be honest, I cannot think of a better word with which to describe the bland, uniform, non-descript, sterile moonscapes most Westerners call home.

In many ways, it seems the exterior very much reflects the interior. All material needs are basically met. Base pleasures are attainable. Yet, something is missing. There is no soul.

Very little community exists within the communities. Most people have no clue who their third or fourth neighbor down the street might be, and nearly all modern city dwellers offer up at least one month a year to commuting god who, in return, blesses his worshippers by increasing debt loads, raising taxes, and making employment prospects scarcer and untenable.

So, which is it? Are our modern cities and towns and the grinding commutes one must make to subside in them a symptom of a cause, or the cause of a symptom?

Sometimes I think it is all accidental, the result of slipshod planning, obsessive efficiency, and corner cutting. Other times, I get to thinking it is all purposeful – that the ruling classes and their planners know exactly what they are doing and the results their modern, urban planning will create.

One thing seems certain, at least to me – the physical advantages we have gained over the past two centuries have come with a hefty spiritual price tag. In my own personal case, I have decided that I am no longer willing to pay the price, and I have molded my life in the physical realm accordingly.

The month I used to waste on commuting, I now spend with my family, or reading, or writing, or thinking. Though I have spent vast stretches of my life living in soulless conditions, I pay very close attention to ensuring my life in the physical realm is as soul-full as possible now. Eliminating hours-long commutes from my day has certainly played a role in that.

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All is Not Quiet on the Eastern Front

2/25/2019

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The European Union has steadily been turning up the heat on Hungary as the European parliamentary elections draw nearer. Not to be outdone, the Hungarian government has launched a volley of its own by plastering the country with posters such as the one depicted above.

The poster states "You have the right to know what Brussels is up to!" and then goes on to add a few sentences decrying the EUs continuing effort to legalize mass migration into Europe.

The EU has condemned the posters as fake news. Some newspapers have dismissed Soros' migrant plans as a 'conspiracy.' Read what Soros said himself in 2015 here and decide for yourself.

In any event, I have a feeling the Eastern Front is going to get fairly noisy over the next three months. I try not to think about it too much, but I am keeping my eyes and ears open to the deeper implications of what may transpire over the spring.

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The World Will Go On When You Are Gone

2/24/2019

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Two weeks ago my wife and I awoke to discover my son had a temperature of 39 degrees. The bulk of January and February have not been kind to my little guy. He contracted a throat infection in late January, then chickenpox in early February. My wife took two weeks of sick leave from work to care for him.

When the chickenpox faded, my boy returned to school and everything seemed fine, but by the end of the week he was displaying symptoms of influenza. The high fever hit early Monday morning, and my wife promptly informed me she could not take any more time off work.

It was my turn to stay home. I took my son the doctor later that morning, and she advised he stay home the entire week. Upon returning to the house, I made some phone calls and wrote a few emails to the university; classes and meetings were canceled, advisory sessions were rescheduled, and deadlines were pushed back. Once that was all taken care of, I settled down to nursing my little one back to health.

Somewhere during the course of that week, I had a series of thoughts related to my absence from work. My job at the university is a multifaceted one, and my work affects many people – students, professors, corporate clients, researchers, and editors. As the days went by, I thought about how my absence had likely inconvenienced them all. I did not brood too much on the matter because my son is my chief priority, and I knew I would make up for my missed work when I returned the following week.

All the same, thinking about these things brought a saying to my mind, the one about cemeteries being filled with indispensable people, and I thought about this in relation to my own life.

Of course, we are all indispensable in a sense, for each of us is a unique creation of God, and each of our lives touches others in ways we cannot even begin to fathom. In addition, we all have responsibilities, and some of these help make the world function, for better or for worse. So it comes as no surprise that most of us believe the world cannot go on without us, that the universe will fall apart if we do not get up in the morning and do our part. This in itself is a good attitude to have – what each of us do every day is of immense importance. Nevertheless, as difficult as it is to conceive, the truth is the world will go on without us, regardless of who we are in life.

Take my situation for example. As I mentioned, my role at the university is a rather multifaceted one, and I occupy what could be classified a specialist role. In other words, I would not be easy to replace. If my time came tomorrow, it would cause a tremendous inconvenience to many. Yet, I imagine a replacement could be found after a month or two, and if none were found, perhaps the university would simply arrange things in such a way that my absence posed no problem to their continued functioning. One way or other, my colleagues and students would learn to live without me.

The same holds true for my family. Obviously, my death would cause a considerable amount of sorrow and perhaps some hardship, but my wife and son would adjust and continue on without me in the best way they could. I would be gone, but the world would continue in some form or other despite my absence from it.

Though many consider such thoughts morbid, I have realized coming to grips with the notion that the world will go on once I am gone is not only vital to understanding the nature of my mortal life, but an essential reminder of where my true focus should lie while I am here on this Earth.

Acknowledging the world will go on once I am gone allows me to focus on how I will go on once I am gone from the world. Naturally I am doing everything in my power to ensure my loved ones can manage and perhaps even prosper in the physical world in the event of my death, but that is not my sole concern.

Every day I ask myself this question: The world will go on after I am gone, but how will I go on once I am gone from the world?

Thankfully, my son recovered from his influenza and will shortly return to school. After I went back to work, I kept the question above in the forefront of my mind and remind myself of it constantly.

After all, this is not a matter of if, but how. We will all go on – the only question is how. The answer to that question lies in this life. We must remember that.

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Hills Like White Elephants; Two Ways of Life

2/23/2019

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Twice a month, I drive over the border into Austria where I hold a part-time position at a university of applied science. My route takes me past the Schneeberg, the highest mountain in Lower Austria and the easternmost mountain of the Alps. On clear days like today, it looms over the foothills in the foreground, its majesty framed by clouds and the azure sky. The Schneeberg is always beautiful to behold, especially in late winter when it maintains its cloak of pure, white snow. As I drove past it today, I could not help but think it looked somewhat like a white elephant, which inevitably conjured up the Ernest Hemingway’s brilliant short story, Hills Like Elephants.

The story is a simple one. An American man and a young woman indirectly discuss “an operation” while they wait for a train to Madrid. What happens, or doesn’t happen, at that train station in the valley of the Ebro with its long, white hills and two lines of rails in the sun is an expressive microcosm of the inevitable choice between two ways of life.
The man and the woman are at a crossroads. They are burdened with a white elephant. Not the clever simile the girl draws as she gazes at the snow-covered hills in the distance, but the other kind of metaphorical white elephant – the burden of an unwanted, unvalued, and useless thing. Confronted with this dilemma, the American man and the girl must make a choice and decide which train they will board – the one that continues down the line of perpetual, aimless hedonism, or the one that will take them toward responsibility and participation in full, natural life.

The American speaks with cool assurance about how it is all very simple and how they will only let the air in, but the girl is reluctant and unpersuaded. She is tired of a life of merely looking at things and having drinks and lugging around bags with labels from all the hotels in which they had spent nights. The man explains how everything will be fine. He insists they can still have the whole world after the operation is completed, but the girl knows otherwise. The girl knows things. She understands the world is not theirs anymore. The man's attitude to all if offends the girl. The conversation ends after the woman asks the man to stop talking, and even threatens to scream if he continues.

This brief and rather disjointed summary trickled through my mind as I drove past the Schneeberg. The mountain disappeared from view after I rounded the bend and drew closer to the border. Once I had crossed over into Austria, I recalled my first reading of Hills Like White Elephants, and how I had assumed the American had convinced the girl to go through with it – that the life of aimless hedonism had emerged victorious, which made the story a depressing one for me, even back then.

Yet as I crossed over into Austria, I recalled subsequent readings had left me with a different take. Toward the end of the story, the girl smiles – once at the man and once at the waitress. And there is the whole bit about the man moving the bags to the other tracks. What did other tracks really mean? Did he move them because they were going to travel along a different line, or did he move them because the bags were merely in the wrong place for the arriving train?

Critics have been debating this one for decades, and Hemingway gives no solid clues. It is left up the reader to decide which train the American man and the girl finally board and, ultimately, which way of life won out in the end. Being an optimistic sort, I now believe the girl won. There would be no simple thing or air or any of that. The man would not be given the opportunity to be sensible like the others in the bar waiting for the train. He would have to take responsibility, and by doing so, he would at last fully participate in natural life.

Pulling into the university’s parking lot ten minutes later, I reflected on all the things I had once considered white elephants in my life, and the choices I had made regarding these. Like the American man in the story, I usually felt compelled to carry my bags over to the other tracks as well; and that has often made all the difference.

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Hungary's Malicious Attempt to Birth a Generation of Orbánjugend

2/22/2019

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The Hungarian government is currently undertaking massive efforts to address the country’s sub-replacement fertility by financing programs meant to boost Hungary’s shrinking population and rather abysmal birth rate.

Of course, the champions of the Left see nothing good in this, as exemplified by some recent tweets from Sweden’s social affairs minister.

“What is happening in Hungary is alarming. Now, Orban wants more 'genuine' Hungarian children to be born,” she wrote on social media. “This policy reeks of the 30s and as right-wing populists, they need to create smoke-screens for what this kind of politics does to the independence that women have been fighting for.”

According to the esteemed politician in question, Orbán’s policies amount to nothing more than a fascist shell game whose true objective is to enslave women and turn them into baby-making machines with the obvious end goal of creating a burgeoning generation of Orbánjugend.

I won’t bother addressing the issue of why the Swedish minister in question feels it her duty to issue scathing commentary on the domestic affairs of another nation, but that she sees nothing, absolutely nothing good in the actions Hungary is taking to tackle its demographic troubles is rather telling.

Man, I am glad I don’t live in Sweden.

For a truly lucid analysis and understanding of the motivations that fuel the Leftist pathology the Swedish minister above espouses, please read Bruce Charlton’s recent post Leftist motivation - how resentment and self-hatred are combined, and how theoretical long-termist group-sacrifice justifies short-term selfishness. I cannot recommend it enough.

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Does Hungary's Pro-Family Agenda Contain a Metaphysical Dimension?

2/21/2019

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Eleven days ago Hungary outlined a new seven step program it had created in an effort to halt its demographic decline by offering incentives to young people to marry and start families and by giving lifetime income tax exemptions to women who birth four or more children. The latest program adds to many existing schemes including initiatives such as housing grants, low interest loans, tax credits, and increased workplace family support.

Whether or not these Hungarian initiatives bear fruit remains to be seen, but one thing is certain – at a purely material level, the current Hungarian government understands that the country’s future rests entirely on the stability and fertility of its families. Hungary realizes strong families must be encouraged and supported, and mass immigration from other regions of the world must be discouraged and opposed if the small country Hungarians call home is to be preserved.

Both Orbán and the Global Establishment opposing him are acutely aware of the importance of family and its role in social stability. Both sides also recognize that cultures and societies that do not endorse the primacy of family and child rearing eventually fail and collapse. In his essay, The Patriarchal Family in History, English-Catholic historian Christopher Dawson outlines historical examples of this phenomenon:

A civilization like that of China, in which the patriarchal family remained the cornerstone of society and the foundation of religion and ethics, has preserved its cultural traditions for more than 2,000 years without losing its vitality. In the classical cultures of the Mediterranean world, however, this was not the case.

Here the patriarchal family failed to adapt itself to the urban conditions of the Hellenistic civilization, and consequently the whole culture lost its stability. Conditions of life both in the Greek city state and in the Roman Empire favoured the man without a family who could devote his whole energies to the duties and pleasures of public life.

Late marriages and small families became the rule, and men satisfied their sexual instincts by homosexuality or by relations with slaves and prostitutes. This aversion to marriage and the deliberate restriction of the family by the practice of infanticide and abortion was undoubtedly the main cause of the decline of ancient Greece, as Polybius pointed out in the second century B.C.[5]

And the same factors were equally powerful in the society of the Empire, where the citizen class even in the provinces was extraordinarily sterile and was recruited not by natural increase, but by the constant introduction of alien elements, above all from the servile class. Thus the ancient world lost its roots alike in the family and in the land and became prematurely withered . . .

If, however, questions of population should give rise to war in the future, there can be no doubt that it is nations with wide possessions and a dwindling population who will be most likely to provoke an attack. But it is much more likely that the process will be a peaceful one. The peoples who allow the natural bases of society to be destroyed by the artificial conditions of the new urban civilization will gradually disappear and their place will be taken by those populations which live under simpler conditions and preserve the traditional forms of the family.

Orbán and the Global Establishment both recognize the symptoms of societal collapse Dawson notes above. Orbán and Hungary are working to prevent the manifestation of the physical collapse Dawson describes while the Leftist politicians of the EU and the West are actively endeavoring to bring it about.

As crucial as the material implications of family are for a culture and society, they pale in comparison to the spiritual significance of the family. I am certain the EU Leftists understand this thoroughly, which explains their vehement opposition to Orbán and his initiatives.

How important are the spiritual/metaphysical dimensions of family?

According to William Arkle, family marks the foundation upon which all spiritual growth and learning is built. The following is an excerpt from Letter from a Father, which Arkle writes from God’s viewpoint

One of the most important ways I have chosen for you to learn what is vital for your understanding is to find yourself a part of a family situation on earth, for here you are able to go through the experience in one single lifetime, and with unbroken continuity, the experience of being a child, a mature individual and a parent.

In this situation, if you will only learn to pay close attention to it, are all the mysteries of the universe that matter to you.

If you take the trouble to stand apart and observe closely all the relationships that exist in your family situations, you will be able to observe as completely as you will how the problems of life arise, why they arise and how they are solved.

The family situation is a very special gift to you and one day you will be surprised that you took it so for granted.

Whether Orbán, his government, and other pro-family governments within the EU comprehend the metaphysical dimension of family is debatable, but the actions these governments have taken reveal at least a subconscious understanding that family is about more than just numbers.

Conversely, the Establishment is well aware of the metaphysical significance of family, which explains why they work so hard to destroy it.

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