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Waves of Blossoming Trees

4/11/2019

Though it contains its fair share of rough winds to shake darling buds, spring is the loveliest season in this part of the world. Summer is also splendid, but the eye of heaven sometimes shines too hot in western Hungary. Spring, on the other hand, is more lovely and more temperate by comparison, but what makes springtime particularly enchanting over here are the flowering trees.

The trees flower in waves in Central Europe – one breaks on the shore, and as it slowly retreats another gathers force and rushes in to replace the void the withdrawing wave has left behind. Two weeks ago, it was the white tufts of wild plum blossoms erupting onto an otherwise stark and barren landscape. The plum blossoms have since fallen away, littering the earth with their fragrant, white teardrops. The moment the last plum blossom petal touched the ground, the sour cherry blossoms flowered, and they now reign in full bloom over an increasingly green landscape. In a few days’ time, they too shall fall away, and be replaced with apple blossoms. After that, the black locust and horse chestnut will take over and fleck the landscape with their own special shades of white and maroon.

The flowering ceases at about the same time the first cuckoos return, but by then the rapeseed fields surrounding my village will blaze the countryside in deep butter-yellow. The natives of this region rarely mention any of it. For them it is commonplace, but for someone like me - having grown up in a country where mid-April snow shoveling was routine and expected - these waves of blossoms and flowers in the early spring are nothing short of sublime.

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Revisiting Cringeworthy Posts

4/10/2019

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The other day I took a little time to revisit some of my earlier blog posts, and I encountered a few cringeworthy entries from previous years. As I read these regrettable posts, I experienced a strange blend of embarrassment and amusement. On a few occasions, I paused and asked myself what the heck I had been thinking when I had written them.

After I had read the third or fourth awkward post, I felt an impulse to delete them, but I resisted the urge. For better or for worse, I decided to leave them as they are. If nothing else, I believe they serve as testaments to the wrong turns I have taken and the errors in judgement I have made. Deleting these wrong turns and blatant errors in thinking might help me feel better about myself, but the purpose of this blog is not self-therapy, self-promotion, or ego aggrandizement, but truth-seeking, spiritual growth, and self-discovery. Any honest pursuit of truth, spirit, and discovery is bound to have its share of missteps and stumbles. Deleting regrettable posts might make me appear better and more consistent in readers' eyes, but it would also present them with a skewed and edited version of my thinking over the years. More importantly, deleting my awkward posts could alter my perception of my own thinking over the years and prevent me from learning valuable lessons from times I was wrong, mistaken, or misled.

Among the worst offenders by far are my posts lauding Jordan Peterson, but I have left all of these intact on the blog because I believe they provide valuable insights into the hows and whys of my errors regarding the Canadian psychologist.

My interest in Peterson began shortly after he had vehemently objected to Canada's gender pronoun legislation. At the time, he was still a relatively obscure university professor. Having lived in Canada's oppressive PC climate for many years, I viewed his opposition to the proposed pronoun bill as an immense act of courage. As time passed I also became intrigued by his Joseph Campbell-like philosophy of mythic and religious archetypes and his unorthodox interpretation of Christian tenets and symbols. My esteem for the professor was so high that at one point I wrote a post in which I declared my wish to have Peterson read my novel (I still cringe when I remember that post. Warning: it's a doozy).

The months passed and I asked a few bloggers I respected to provide their own opinions of Peterson. I was somewhat taken aback by the negative replies I received. Nevertheless, I took these opinions into consideration as I continued exploring Peterson's thought and ideas. During this time, Peterson began what can only be described as his meteoric rise to fame. Suddenly the obscure professor was popping up on everyone's radar. He stopped appearing on small, mostly right-leaning You Tube channels where he had found the majority of his small but sympathetic audience, and became a regular feature of large left-leaning You Tube channels and major media outlets. This immediately raised my suspicions, but I was still willing to grant him the benefit of the doubt.

Then Peterson started pushing his online psychology course, his forthcoming self-help book, and launched what I can only describe as a magical mystery tour. His suits became fancier, his opinions less acerbic, and his ideas more mainstream. I finally recognized his professed religiosity for what it truly was - repackaged materialism. When he joined a California-based talent agency and the New York Times branded him a member of what it called The Intellectual Dark Web, my interest in Peterson popped like a soap bubble, and I was finally able to see him for what he truly was - a shameless self-promoter and a master of the soft-sell whose main interests reside almost exclusively in the accumulation of fame, influence, and wealth.

As regrettable as my interest in Peterson seems now, I do not regret having gone through the process I described above for it taught me much about my own weak points and faulty judgement. I realized I had projected much of my own thinking and ideas onto Peterson rather than accepting his words at face value.

Part of this has to do with Peterson's rather slippery mode of communication, but most of it had to do with my own inability to properly and precisely process the ideas and opinions he spouted. As insincere as Peterson is, it would be unfair of me to blame my error in judgement solely on his chimerical verbiage. No, the responsibility for the error was mine and mine alone. My desire to support a champion for the Good overrode my ability to recognize Jordan Peterson as little more than a champion for his own good. Leaving my Jordan Peterson posts intact on the blog helps remind me where I went wrong. They contain insights I can use to avoid falling into the same trap in the future.

Overall, I am satisfied with the posts I have written over the past four months. Most contain decent levels of clarity and insight. Some are duds and misfires, but in their entirety, I believe my 2019 posts reflect a more stable and sound line of thinking, exploration, and inquiry. Of course, when I revisit these posts in two-years' time I might find some of them lacking or peculiar, but I doubt they will make me cringe as much as some of pre-2019 posts do.

At least that is my hope.

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"Real" Reality Requires More Funding

4/9/2019

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A couple of days ago I wrote a post in which I explored the ironic notion of the transgender agenda eventually forcing non-transgender women out of women's sport. As I investigated the topic before writing the post, I come across the following quote that explained the advantages male athletes have over their female counterparts:

"Men do have advantages over women sport - but that has largely to do with the inequitable amount of investment in women's sport rather than male physiology."

How peculiar. The advantages men have over women in most sports have nothing to do with the higher muscle mass to body weight ratio, larger and longer bones, bigger lung capacity, and stronger hand grip, to list but a few physiological differences. No, according to the individual who spoke these words, the issue is not physiology, but discriminatory funding practices.

By this line of reasoning, women would perform at the same level as men if funding were less discriminatory and more equitable. In other words, the reality is women and men are physiologically equal, but this reality has not been allowed to manifest because of inequitable funding. Invest a gazillion dollars and five or ten years into a women's soccer team, and those female soccer players will be capable of giving Real Madrid a run for its money - guaranteed.

The imbecile who uttered the sentence above should be cause for alarm, yet we have reached the stage where our enlightened society no longer sees people who make such outlandish declarations as imbeciles, but rather as wise sages whose astute perception of reality helps us better understand ourselves and the world around us.

Our universities, corporations, and governments overflow with such people - people who espouse, support, fund, and forcibly implement policies based on the same principle expressed above. It is happening in education, entertainment, art, employment, government, and every other aspect of society. The people who push this funding myth do so because they wholeheartedly believe inequalities do not exist. For them Reality and its innate inequalities are human constructs. Since Reality is a human construct, humans can reconstruct it to fit whatever image they choose. The inequalities we see and experience are purely the result of discrimination, oppression, and prejudice. Nothing else. Full stop. End of story.

Our enlightened rulers and their ilk will not stop until their reality has completely eclipsed and supplanted Reality. Of course, their reality might not actually supplant Reality in any real sense, but the elite will safeguard their reality against anyone who dares to contradict it. The elite's version of reality will succeed well into the foreseeable future because it is already succeeding now. It is succeeding because very few us openly oppose it or want it to fail. Most people have no reason to oppose anything these days - they have given up Reality themselves.

The day will come when Reality reasserts itself, the way Reality tends to do, but if history is any guide, this could a take half-century or more to come to fruition. In the meantime, the chaos and stupidity will only intensify.

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Don't Allow the Universal Darkness to Bury You

4/8/2019

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Alexander Pope wrote several versions of his mock heroic satire, The Dunciad, culminating in the four book The New Dunciad, which appeared in 1743. The literary satire honors the goddess Dulness and her accomplices who succeed in unleashing disintegration, absurdity, vulgarity, and corruption upon Great Britain. The poem is darkly amusing and those unfamiliar with its dates of appearance could mistakenly believe Pope is describing the insanity our own contemporary world.

It's been decades since I read The Dunciad or the The New Dunciad (which means it might be time for a reread), but the poem's final stanza has imprinted itself on my memory regardless. To date, it remains one of my favorite stanzas of verse despite the despair it communicates.

Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,
And unawares Morality expires.
Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine;
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!
Lo! thy dread empire Chaos! is restored:
Light dies before thy uncreating word;
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall,
And universal darkness buries all.

I memorized the stanza above twenty-five years ago because I was struck by how accurately it reflected the ills of the contemporary world. Read through the stanza slowly yourself. Take a moment to contemplate each line, and then ask yourself if the words do not indeed depict our spiritually decayed modern world. In my opinion they do, meted out in memorable iambic pentameter

Pope wrote the final stanza of his Dunciad nearly three centuries ago, yet it is as valid today as it had been in the 1700s. The timelessness of the stanza above could be partly attributed to Pope's understanding of how the devastating changes he had experienced in his lifetime would extend into the future. Pope captured the beginning of something in The Dunciad, the process of which appears to be in its terminal stage in our time.

We truly do live in a time when universal darkness threatens to bury all. I would go as far as to claim this universal darkness has buried most, but it has not succeeded in buring everyone, and it need not succeed in burying you.

This is easy to claim and difficult to demonstrate, but I wholeheartedly believe we are only halfway through Pope's apocalyptic stanza. Religion truly has hidden her sacred fires as nearly all forms of organized Christianity have been corrupted. Morality has been successfully inverted and our contemporary world teeters on the edge of becoming a Dostoevskian nightmare where everything is permitted. The public flame in the West is but a ghostly wisp of curling smoke rising from the end of a candle wick. The few who still nurture dwindling flames have become timid and fearful. Barely any of them speak, let alone dare to shine.

All of this has come to pass, but I do not believe we have gone past the fourth line in the stanza yet. Despite all evidence to the contrary, I have faith the human spark still lingers in some, and I firmly hold these human sparks still catch glimpses of the divine. If you can discover the human spark within yourself, you stand a chance at catching a glimpse of the divine. Once the glimpse is caught, the decaying process might be halted and a reversal may begin.

At least for you. The light may continue to die all around you, but if it does not die in you then Chaos cannot be completely restored. Your word cannot be uncreating for you will have approached the realm of creation through love.

The universal darkness may bury many, but if it does not bury you, it cannot bury all.

And in the end, that might make all the difference . . . at least for you.

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You've Come Far Enough, Baby

4/7/2019

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"You've come a long way, baby" was a popular marketing slogan created to promote Virginia Slims, an American cigarette brand created and designed in the late 1960s as a female-oriented fashion brand specifically targeting younger women in the 18 to 35 age bracket. I remember seeing the ads in magazines, stores, and billboards throughout my childhood and well into early adulthood before bans on public cigarette advertising came into effect.

The ads tapped into many of the prevailing feminist women's liberation themes of the sixties, seventies, and eighties and tended to depict young glamorous, independent, liberated, slim, and attractive women smiling gleefully while elegantly pinching a long, slender Virginia Slims between their fingers. The tobacco company producing Virginia Slims made no bones about linking their brand to feminist ideas about emancipation, empowerment, independence, and liberation as they developed their niche brand aimed specifically at women. They even came up with a term for their marketing practice - femvertising.

Many of the ads of the sixties and seventies featured anecdotes and staged photos depicting scenes from earlier in the century in the background. These showed women slaving away at household drudgery or being punished for smoking by their husbands or other representatives of the oppressive Western patriarchy. In the foreground, a glamorous fashion model posed smiling next to the slogan, "You've come a long way, baby." The ads equated a woman's right to smoke with other rights women had been denied in the past such as the right to vote and the right to gain employment access to male-dominated professions.

Though the ads depicted only the positive aspects of the women's liberation and women's rights movements, there is no denying women did indeed come a long way from the sixties to the nineties. By the time I was in my late teens in the eighties, the women's rights movement had succeeded in liberating women from most of their conventional roles. Anti-discrimination laws were expanded and updated. Divorce laws loosened. More women were working and independent. From a women's rights perspective, women had advanced their position in Western society to degree women in earlier decades could have barely imagined.

Interestingly enough, some credit Virginia Slims for the growth, acceptance, and success of women's tennis in the 1970s, which led to a spillover effect into the growth and success of other women's sports. Virginia Slims sponsored the Women's Tennis Association from 1971 to 1978 and the Virginia Slims Circuit, which eventually formed the basis of the WTA Tour. As they had in other areas, women began carving out a place for themselves in areas previously dominated almost exclusively by men.

One of the players featured in the poster above is none other than Martina Navratilova, considered the one of the greatest female tennis players of all time and certainly the greatest female tennis player from 1975 to 2005. Originally from communist Czechoslovakia, Navratilova was a women's liberation promotor's dream come true. Not only had she escaped the oppression of communism, but she thumbed one in the eye of the patriarchy when she professed to be bisexual in 1981 and later, a full-fledged lesbian.

More importantly, Navratilova was an incredible tennis player. To say she dominated the sport from the seventies to the nineties is sheer understatement. She was so good she inspired an entire slew of jock strap jokes that took a swipe at her femininity. The implication was simple - only a man could play with the strength and skill Navratilova demonstrated. Despite snide jokes to the contrary, Navratilova is a woman, and during those decades, she was women's tennis. Her amazing playing helped garner and generate an unprecedented interest in the sport.

Navratilova profited immensely from tennis both in terms of prize money and sponsorships, but her career also helped advance the cause of women's sport and help lay the foundation for future female athletes to make careers for themselves. In many ways, Navratilova was the epitome of the Virginia Slims slogan - living proof of a woman who had indeed "come a long way" and was helping other women go a long way as well.

In the 1990's, Virginian Slims changed its slogan from "You've come a long way, baby" to "It's a woman thing." Perhaps this coincided with the acceptance that women had won their rights or liberties. Or perhaps it was a painful acknowledgement of certain limits. Sport once again became a focal point. As exciting and engaging as women's tennis was, it paled in comparison to the power and speed inherent in men's tennis matches. Nevertheless, feminists at the time were advocating for society to accept men and women as equals in every way, going as far as to claim there was no difference at all between the sexes. Though these declarations sounded noble to most, in the realm of sport, the notion crumbled to dust.

It was relatively easy to claim female doctors to be as competent as a male doctors. It was quite another thing to claim a female boxer was as powerful and quick as a male boxer. The best female athletes could, on occasion, beat mediocre male opponents in some sports, but when the best women in any given sport were pitted against the best men, there was no contest. The men dominated every single time.

More often than not, the best female athletes struggled even against average males, as demonstrated by the 7-0 trouncing the Australian Women's National Soccer team suffered from the Newcastle Jets, a team made up of 15-year-old boys. It is estimated the top-ranked woman tennis player in the world would land somewhere between 1700 to 2000 on the men's ranking list. This real, physiological difference between men and women drives feminists and other leftists crazy because it is an affront to their deluded philosophies. In addition, it marked an obstacle grounded in reality - one no ideology had any success in hurdling or averting. No matter what feminists claimed about women and men, in sport, women had come a long way, but it's a woman thing - and there are limits.

In the 2000s, Virginia Slims changed its slogan from "It's a woman thing" to "Find your voice." During this time, Martina Navratilova retired from professional tennis in 2006 and, accepting the latest Virginia Slims slogan, wasted little time finding her voice. Like so many other famous athletes, musicians, actors, and celebrities, she dedicated herself to activism. A quick glance at her Twitter scroll reveals she resides firmly within the tank of leftist group think, and models herself as a champion of gay rights and women's rights. The header banner on her Twitter reads "Stand up. Speak up. Fight back" and to her credit, she did just that when she recognized the insanity of the current transgender agenda, which, among other things, allows people born as males to compete as women in women's sporting events.

In a recent op-ed, Navratilova caused quite a stir by writing the following objection to the inclusion of transgender women in women's sports,

"A man can decide to be female, take hormones if required, win everything in sight, earn a small fortune, and then reverse his decision. It's insane. It's cheating. I am happy to address a transgender in whatever form she prefers, but I would not be happy to compete against her. It would not be fair."

LGBT sporting organizations and transgender activists were quick to deal with this rather blunt assessment of reality on Navratilova's part. Naturally, they labelled her comments "transphobic" and "problematic." In addition, her words promulgated "hateful stereotypes" and revealed her to be a bigot. Navratilova's critics even declared the former tennis star had "a false understanding of science and data."

The purpose of this post is not to deride Navratilova or her politics, but to highlight that the former women's tennis champion had, despite her dedication to leftism, done the right thing by opposing transgender women in women's sport. She must have remembered the Virginia Slims ads and how she and other women had "come a long way." She must have also recalled that women's tennis is women's tennis because it is "a woman thing." She must have understood this was now being threatened by, of all things, men, the very obstacle women had struggled against all throughout the twentieth century. So staying true to the marketing ideology of Virginia Slims, Navratilova "found her voice" and objected to this latest push for inclusion. Adhering to the passion of her Twitter banner, she stood up and spoke up.

Sadly, she failed to stick to the third point in her Twitter-banner declaration. When the leftist mob descended upon her, Navratilova did not "fight back" and chose instead to apologize and explain her way out of the controversy she had caused by having the audacity to speak the truth.

And why not? Navratilova stated she would not be happy to play against a transgender woman because she knew it would not be fair, but she knows she does not have to play against a transgender woman because she is retired. She has had her success, has made her money, and has paved the way for other women in sport. What did it matter to her in the end if she threw all current, future, and upcoming Virginia Slims women to the mercy of their testicular sisters?

In my mind, Navratilova's retreat essentially marks the end to the Virginia Slims saga. The eternal struggle against the patriarchy has come full circle. For over a century, women have fought for their rights and liberation and to be on equal footing with men. In 2019, women have finally achieved that for which they have always longed. They will have the opportunity to be viewed as equal to their male counterparts and, as Navratilova correctly recognized, they will lose to them and, ultimately, be oppressed by them.

In confirmation of this, the UN recently chimed in on the transgender agenda by stating it regarded the current testosterone tests used on transgender female athletes to be a human rights violation. This lays the groundwork for the very real possibility of men competing in women's sports without having undergone any hormonal treatments whatsoever. Prepare yourself for the circus spectacle women's sports are likely to become as bonafide men crush women's skulls in MMA fights and finish bicycle races thirty minutes ahead of their bonafide female counterparts. In a decade or two there may not be any women left in women's sports. Such is the beauty of an inclusive world and the logic of leftism.

Women, who have celebrated coming a long way, making it a woman's thing, and finding their voices, must now face the reality of what might very well become the Virginia Slims cigarette brand's latest and last femvertising slogan -

"You've come far enough, baby! Time to head back!"

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The Upside of Being an Obscure Writer

4/5/2019

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(Clickety-clack)

What? What's this? Aw, no not again. Please tell me you're not writing another novel and thinking of self-publishing it again. Boy, are you a sucker for punishment! What's the point? Barely anyone read your first one. What's that? You say at least you can get your work out there and what happens to your work once it is out there is anyone's guess. Come on man, be honest - your chances won't be any better the second time around.

Unless of course you drop your pretensions and become a mercenary hack churning out gay romance novels or epic tales of lovelorn vampires incomprehensibly infatuated with vacuous teen-aged girls. If you do that, then you might stand a chance out there, but you won't be the only one chasing that rabbit, my friend, so you'd better have some new angle or bend - something to separate your schlock from the other cobbled tales of lycanthropic lusting and sybaritic swooning.

What do you mean you aren't interested in that? You're lying if you claim you aren't interested in fame or money. Johnson said no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money, and the last time I checked, your fridge was half-empty and your driveway, Porsche-free. So why bother? What good is your work out there if it brings no return on investment, no passive income, and no compounded yields?

You hear that, sunshine? That's Johnson mocking you from the beyond with a loud, ponderous, jowelly laugh. So loud, poor Boswell is going to include it in the biography - even in the beyond. So, what's the deal blockhead? Why are you wasting your time? The work you put out there is a baitless hook; an empty tin cup in the quivering hand of an invisible beggar; a mere grain of sand on a vast expanse of beach; the faintest, barely-perceptible star in the starry ocean above.

What's that? Out there is better than in here? How do you figure? Don't go pulling all that mystical stuff on me again now, talking about higher things and consciousness. That's just defensive gibberish on your part, blockhead. Trying to justify the unjustifiable with noble visions of ascension, but who do you think you're kidding? You can't pay the power bill with consciousness!

Like it or not, this is show business, pal, and if you're not giving the people what they want, they won't give you what you want. It ain't rocket science, cupcake. So drop the noble artist schtick. That only works in here. No one gives a rat's ass out there.

Reality? That's what I'm trying to talk to you about, genius. Thinking? Creativity? Transcendence? Aw, give it a rest already. Hanging around you with you is getting embarrassing. You're cramping my style. I'm trying to do what's good for you - what's good for us. There's a whole world out there, damn it! Cut it with the metaphysical and get back into the physical. Oh, that's what you're doing, you say? What's that? Transcribing the metaphysical into the physical? Is that what it comes down to for you, Skippy? Some kind of spiritual alignment gimmick? No, you say? It's just a small part of it? Big or small, that's all it is, you know. A gimmick. A lie. A pipe dream extraordinaire. You're deluding yourself if you think otherwise.

Well, I got news for you, Shakespeare. I'm not putting it up with your delusions any longer. If you want to waste your life on wisps and shadows, that's your prerogative. Me? I got better things, to do. So here's the deal, friendo. You stop clickety-clacking on that computer right now or I swear, I'll get up and go. I ain't kidding this time. You see, I got my suitcases all packed and everything. Are you listening to me?

Voice? What voice? The voice is telling you to do it? Listen here, buddy. I'm the only voice that counts around here! Hearing any voice besides mine qualifies you as insane, you know. Don't pretend to ignore me! I mean it this time. You stop that typing or, so help me, I'm out of here. For good, too! Last chance! I'll count to three. One. Two.

Aw, that's it! I'm blowing out of this candy stand. You hear that? That's the cab I called. Once I walk out that door, I'm never looking back. You won't turn me into a pillar of salt with your pious creativity and wasted efforts. Well, I guess that's it then, huh? I'd like to say it was fun, but I can't. Yeah, go on ignore me. All those years, and this is the thanks I get. You no good bum! I hope the flesh falls from your fingers! Squandering your life away by dipping your quill into nothing but tears and blood. I'm better off without you, you selfish bastard. Heaven have mercy on your soul if I ever catch a glimpse of you out there.

(Angry stomping followed by door slamming.)

(Silence, followed by a sigh of relief.)

(Clickety-clack.)

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Voices in Dark Skies - S.K. Orr

4/5/2019

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S.K. Orr is an American writer, poet, and former marine who maintains Steeple Tea, a well-written and thought-provoking blog filled with stories, poems, and reflections. I became aware of S.K after he left a comment on my blog a few months ago. Since then, I have become a regular reader of what he refers to as his obscure little blog. I am particularly fond of Orr's reflective pieces, which often contain penetrating and poignant insights into life, religion, and human nature.

In an excerpt from his most recent post, Voices in Dark Skies, a low-flying mallard inspires S.K. to examine why most people rarely take the time to think before they speak:
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For some years now, I have been hyper-aware of how few people take the time to truly think about things before they try to formulate opinions. If you stand in a group and ask a question out of nowhere — “Why do you suppose women with red hair really do seem to be more gregarious? — the answers will come quickly and in battalions. But when the question is of more weight and substance than hair color — “Can we know that our sufferings have meaning, even aside from the pat answers we’ve been taught?” — the responses are no less swift and no less numerous.

But have the people tossing out the answers really stopped to think about these things? I do not believe they have. I believe people in this age have become convinced that to be unable or unwilling to articulate an instantaneous and reasonable-sounding response is a gross sin. It doesn’t matter that most snap-back answers are verbal Cool Whip. To be without a quick answer is much worse than simply offering a stupid response with boldness.

When is the last time you heard a person, after being asked an out-of-the-blue question, answer, “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about that?”

I deliberately answer in just this way when I am asked a question that catches me off-guard, and I can attest that the people doing the asking do not like it. Not one bit. To deflect a question with a stated intention to ponder carefully what the other person has asked is to say, “I’m going to slow things down, and I’m going to dissect what you asked, and why you asked, and I’m going to draw my own conclusions.” Oh, no…they’re not going to have any of that.
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Read the whole thing here.

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Resistance or Collaboration?

4/4/2019

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Imagine you are a sixteen-year-old aspiring painter living in communist Hungary in the early sixties. You are talented, ambitious, and yearn to have your art recognized and celebrated.

What are your options?

You could attempt to escape the country.
Or you could abandon your ambitions or just create art privately.
Or you could pursue your ambition within the communist system.

The first option would be dangerous, perhaps deadly.
The second will not fulfill your ambitions and perhaps make you miserable.
The third would amount to collaboration, but what other choice do you have? Communism is the only system open to you, and it controls everything including education and the art world.

And would it be genuine collaboration if you secretly resisted the ideology in your own mind and thoughts?

Are those who quietly resist merely deluding themselves or is resistance, regardless of how subtle, an act of immense spiritual courage?

I explored these ideas in a brief scene I have excerpted from my novel below. I invite you to read it if you feel so inclined.
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Under the watchful eye of Ms. Kálmán, Reinhardt spent several months slaving over paintings and drawings for the portfolio he would submit as part of his application to the University of Fine Arts in Budapest.

“The essence of socialism must permeate every last detail,” Ms. Kálmán said. She withdrew a large book from her desk and propped it open. Examples of socialist-realist art decorated the pages. “You see here,” she said pointing to an unnatural and idealized painting of a field with mountains in the background. “You see the pent up energy beneath the surface? The principals of socialism should be evident even in the composition of landscapes.”

Reinhardt took the book home and studied it meticulously. He absorbed the basic rules of socialist art and began sketching out some rough ideas of his own.

“What are these monstrosities?” Gertrude asked after Reinhardt had filled the table with sketch after sketch of robust, angular figures striding through fields of grain or striking grand poses before factories, shipyards, and train stations.

“Ms. Kálmán said I should idealize the human form and make every person I draw or paint should look like they had eaten communism for dinner.”

“Communism for dinner?” Gertrude said incredulously. She picked up a sketch of a masculine woman wielding a pitchfork. “In the morning, I bet this one shits nothing but red stars.”

A strange blend of shock and amusement overcame Reinhardt; it was the first time in his life he had heard his mother curse.

“I don’t approve of any of this,” she said as she placed the sketch back on the table. “It’s all lies.”

“It’s just a style of art.”

“It’s nonsense. If they accept you into this school, they’ll have you churning out this rubbish day and night until they turn your brain inside out and make you believe all of it is true.”

“I don’t believe any of this,” Reinhardt offered, his voice calm as he gingerly countered his mother’s objections. “I’m drawing these so I can get into the school.”

“This is a bad idea. I don’t know why I agreed to it. What will happen to you once you get up there?” Gertrude asked. She turned her back on Reinhardt and looked at the embroidered cloth containing the old town emblem. “Do you think they’re going to just let you do whatever your heart desires?”

“They’re going to teach me how to be an artist.”

“They’re going to teach you how to become one of them.”

“I won’t let them do that.”

“It is easy to say that now, but once you get up there they’ll figure out a way to put a red star in your head the same way the Germans who came to the village during the war succeeded in putting the crooked cross in the heads of so many. And what good did that do? Within a few months they rounded up the Jews in Pécs. Later, it was our turn.”

“I’ll pretend I have a red star in my head. I’ll play along so I can get what I need, the same way you do, the same way everyone does.” He paused for a second; Gertrude did not appear to be assuaged. “What other choice do I have? We all have to make compromises. And it’s not as bad as it used to be. You’ve said so yourself.”

“Will you be able to sleep at night knowing you’ve created nothing but lies and absurdities?”

“Will I be able to sleep at night if I don’t become an artist?” Reinhardt cried. “What will I do if I turn this down? Become a bricklayer and build garish eyesores for party members or the proletariat? It doesn’t matter because in the end I’d still be working for them, building up the world the way they want it built. You’re no different. Every morning you go out into the fields that used to be ours and you toil to fill the stomachs and fuel the hearts of true-believers and party members and Russian soldiers.” Reinhardt paused to regain his composure. He continued, in a softer voice, “Don’t you see, Mother? We like to think we’re not a part of it and that hanging a white stag on the wall and keeping our Swabian names somehow puts us above it all, but it doesn’t. We are all accomplices. Every last one of us.”

Gertrude became pale as she stared at the white stag in the old town emblem. Reinhardt shook his head and tried to refocus on his work. It took him less than a minute to realize he would be unable to do anymore that day. He dropped his pencil and grabbed his coat.

“I’m going for a walk,” he called back to his mother. “I need to clear my head.”

12 Comments

Today's Special is Lost in Translation Because of Cut Corners

4/3/2019

6 Comments

When I visited Hungary thirty years ago, the only places I encountered English were hotels, tourist attractions, and the airport. A great deal has changed since then. English is ubiquitous in Hungary now and, together with German, could be considered one of the country's unofficial languages. You hear it on the streets and in the schools, and see it on street signs and restaurant menus.

Thirty years ago, English translations in Hungary were mostly awkward and amusing; today they are mostly accurate and effective. The country's development since the fall of the Iron Curtain and the rapid advancements in computer technology are the primary reasons behind the improvement in quality. Though Hungarian-to-English translation has progressed significantly since the 1990s, you can still encounter some baffling examples of mistranslated text from time to time.

Unskilled translators are the reason behind some of the bad translations, but more often than not, mistranslated or ludicrously worded translations are the direct result of corner-cutting in an effort to save money. Bigger companies and well-to-do business people can afford the high cost of professional translation services, but spending several hundred or perhaps thousands of euros to translate texts and websites is beyond the reach of many smaller businesses, particularly family-run enterprises.

Consequently, many small enterprises forgo professional translators and take matters into their own hands by uploading their business texts into online translators like Google Translate. This is a fine strategy provided the translation Google provides is then checked over by a native speaker or someone with good proofreading skills in the target language. I am not a tech expert, but to my knowledge programs like Google Translate are based on statistical machine translation. Essentially, Google Translate gathers a great deal of text, as much as it can find that seems to be parallel between the source and target languages, and then reduces this data statistically and uses algorithms to find the probability of matching words and phrases. Put bluntly, it is statistical rather than a rule-based translation, which opens up the possibility for a considerable amount of misinterpretation.

Case in point, a small restaurant in Hungary uploaded their entire menu into Google Translate and printed out the resulting translation without getting a proofreader to check it first. Needless to say, the end product contained the rather perplexing menu selection shown below:

The original Hungarian haltál két fő részére simply means fish platter for two. Yet, Google Translate somehow interpreted it to mean dead for two people - an unsavory menu selection to say the least. I thought about this for a little while and quickly realized the problem was with the first word. Google Translate likely disregarded the Hungarian word for fish platter because it was statistically underrepresented when compared to similar sounding words like meghaltál (you died) and halál (death). Hence, its algorithms chose dead over fish as the best possible match.

Now, I have not written this to mock the restaurateurs who created this menu. My family was in the restaurant business for years, so I understand how tight money can be in that industry. Nor am I merely poking fun at the mistakes people make in writing, translating, and editing, which are difficult tasks in any language. When it comes to language, errors are rather common and usually forgivable. For example, my blog posts sometimes contain errors and typos (maybe this one does, too) - not because I am ignorant of the rules, but because I am human.

The overall intent of this post is to draw attention to the unforeseen negative consequences of corner-cutting and compromises. The restaurateurs who Google Translated their menu likely did so to save money, and they succeeded in this regard. Nevertheless, the corner they cut has probably cost them dearly as I cannot imagine any foreign diner ever ordered the dead for two people. In addition, the menu faux pas brought the restaurant in question a considerable amount of negative publicity. Bad press can sometimes bring unexpected benefits, but somehow I can't imagine the negative publicity did anything more than make a laughing stock of the people who run this little eatery.

All the same, I empathize with the people who own the restaurant featuring the dead for two people dish because I have been in similar situations myself. When I finished writing my novel in 2012, I did not have the money to hire a professional editor or proofreader, so I completed the work myself.

After I published the book, I was appalled by all the errors and typos I had left in it. A few early reviews mention the many errors the text contained. Embarrassed, I gave the book to a few friends who helped proofread it. Our efforts improved the novel immensely and subsequent reviews make no mention of grammatical or typographical errors. Nonetheless, the current version of the book still contains the odd error here and there.

At one level, I am untroubled by this because you can find typos and errors in professionally edited and published books as well. Yet at another level, I know the first error-filled edition of the novel I had put on the market was entirely the fault of cut corners. I had compromised somewhere I should not have. If I had hired an editor/proofreader, I could have avoided all the trouble and the lingering doubts I still have concerning the quality of the finished product.

We do not always have a choice when it comes to getting things done. In certain circumstances, we simply must make due with certain constraints and console ourselves with the notion that poorly done is better than not done at all. At the same time, allowing for the possibility of poorly done when the means for well done are available seems both risky and foolish.

This is the cruel crux of the cut corner. In essence, it is corruption - and it is bound to have negative consequences in the end.

I wonder if the restaurateurs who created the menu above experienced the same flash of revelation once they finally understood why no Russian, German, or English-speaking guest ever ordered the delicious fish platter for two.

6 Comments

Ordinary People as Collaborators

4/2/2019

4 Comments

The question of how and why ordinary citizens allowed evil to manifest on such a grand scale is a common and recurring one in the study of totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Bookshelves and databases abound with psychological studies, sociological hypotheses, cultural conjectures, and historical documents dedicated to answering the question of how and why decent, ordinary, everyday people could permit the development of oppressive political and economic systems that culminated in the horrific mass murder of the death camps and gulags.

A great deal of the horror we experience when examining the development of murderous regimes comes from knowing that ordinary citizens from all walks of life were, to varying degrees, in on it. It does not take a doctorate in history to recognize the totalitarian regimes in question could not have succeeded if a certain percentage of the population had not, at bare minimum, indirectly supported or endorsed the noxious ideologies or succumbed to the poisonous propaganda the regimes in question spewed.

Yet, what of the people who did not support these regimes in any way shape or form? Why did they not rise up and challenge the evil en masse? A cursory look at history reveals some did, indeed, resist, but these were dealt with ruthlessly. As for the rest, they either ducked their heads in fear or remained passive as the revolting developments unfolded before them.

Analyzing the expansion of political and social evil in retrospect warps our perspective. To begin with, we tend to look back at the Nazi and Soviet regimes from what I would classify as, for lack of a better phrase, a privileged position. As citizens of the contemporary West, we feel we have evolved above and beyond the kind of evil the Nazis and Soviets epitomized. We have learned from our history and have built a civilization in which such atrocities simply could not develop or occur. We are better people possessing higher virtues, ethics, and morals. Thus, when we analyze the terrible past, we do so with considerable condescension and mild scorn.

There must have been something innately evil in them all, we conclude. Otherwise, how could it have happened? How could they have supported it? Collaborated with it? Allowed it?

As mentioned above, the answers to these questions are extremely complex, but I am going to go out on a limb and simplify the matter knowing full well that this generalized simplification does not address nor do justice to the totality of the questions raised.

As far as I can tell, the answer to the question of how and why ordinary citizens allowed or supported the strategic evil inherent in Nazism and Communism can essentially reduced to the following - they had forgotten God; they believed they were doing good.

Most modern people imagine they would have acted differently had they been alive in Hitler's Germany or Lenin and Stalin's Soviet Union. They imagine they would have recognized the ominous signs well in advance and would have resisted immediately even under the threat of possible death. Perhaps a few of them would have, but I imagine most modern people who nurse these delusions would have acted as badly or worse than the ordinary German or Russian living under the Nazis or the Soviets.

On what do I base this conjecture? On a simple premise, one encapsulated by the question below:

How many modern people are actively resisting the development of evil in our contemporary world?

Comparing our contemporary world with Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union is ridiculous! We live in a free world! We have democracies! We elect our leaders! No one oppresses us! There's no propaganda or surveillance and even if there is, it is mostly innocuous and transparent! We have human rights, diversity, inclusivity, and rule of law!

I will let the scoffs clear from the air for a moment before continuing.

You are right. It is a bit of a stretch to compare the contemporary West to two bloody dictatorships of the twentieth century. It really is a matter of apples and oranges, but I made no mention of either the Nazis or the Soviets in my question. What I wanted to know is the number of people actively resisting the development of evil in our contemporary world.

What kind of question is that? Only a few deplorables collaborate with evil now! The rest of us are all actively fighting against it! We fight against nationalism, which we label fascism! We shut down offensive hate speech! We don't allow anyone to oppress anyone else! We support open borders and safe and orderly mass migration! We abolish cruel reality and replace it with compassionate and altruistic unreality! We provide safe spaces for everyone! We endorse men who claim to be women and women who claim to be men and use legal and punitive means to punish anyone who dares to challenge this reality! We fight against the evil patriarchy and the oppression of Christianity and the family! We hire people based on everything but ability and competence! We adjust science to fit our ideological molds! We punish wasteful people to fight climate change! We rewrite history to make sure everything opposing our ideas is regarded as evil! We make a point of never allowing any evil views into the media, and if they do seep in, we attack them with the vitriol of a pack of savage dogs! We encourage children to be their real selves by giving them hormone treatments! We liberate women through abortions! We make sure children learn to be good citizens by thoroughly indoctrinating them into our narrative at schools! We only bomb evil people in the name of goodness! We hold white people accountable for their racist crimes! We have John Lennon's Imagine as our anthem! We . . .

Okay, okay. I get the point. You are right. You are resisting evil now and you certainly would have resisted the development of evil in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union had you lived then.

Oh, if only you had lived then, you upright, moral, secular citizens! Your resistance and actions would have spared the world from a great deal of evil indeed!

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