Christmas Special: Christian and pagan origins

     Christmas is a holiday now celebrated through many different cultures around the world. Some Muslim nations even hold Christmas as a special time of year. The holiday has grown to encompass more than the Christian reverence of Christ's birth, and  it now stands for the love of mankind for his fellows, an appreciative acknowledgement toward the friends and family that make life meaningful.
     The origins of this "Christian" day are far from their modern recognition of Jesus of Nazareth's birth.
Ancient Egyptians and ancient Greeks worshiped gods of the resurrection (Osiris and Dionysus respectably) at the end of the year, but European paganism had the strongest impacts on modern traditions.
     The sum total of Christian impact on the holiday is a recognition of Jesus's birth. All similarities end there since Jesus was born anywhere from August to September, not December. Early church fathers make no recognition of Christmas as a revered time of year since adoption of the holiday began later. After centuries of church leaders discouraging celebrations on 25 December because of non-Christian traditions, Pope Gregory I instructed his priests not to ban winter celebrations but adapt them for Christians. This did not definitively end Christian opposition to Christmas's celebration. Though Christmas was eventually an intimate part of Christian religion, Oliver Cromwell's government banned the festivities in England during his reign because of the pagan origins. In the British colonies of the New World, Puritan groups such as the Massachusetts Bay Colony continued the ban for several years while other areas embraced  the tradition.
     The Romans held an annual week-long festival, Saturnalia, 17-25 December, to honor Saturn, the god of agriculture. A Christianized Roman populace later replaced their heathen celebration habits with a recognition of  Christ's birth, but the traditions used to celebrate this holiday did not noticeably change for centuries. An example of unchanging practices despite a religious shift is easily exemplified with the human-shaped biscuits, the origin of the gingerbread man, that were eaten during Saturnalia to symbolize the human sacrifice of the Lord of the Misrule at the end of the festive week. While the human sacrifice is no longer a part of tradition, the gingerbread man is.
     The dominant origin for most Christmas traditions actually spring from European pagans. Rituals celebrated the winter solstice and recognized the return of daylight with spring on the way. Pagans decorated their trees in worship of natural spirits, the predecessor to Christmas trees, used mistletoe to poison the victims for their human sacrifices, and sang carols to ward off evil spirits.

     Santa Claus is an excellent example of merged traditions. Bishop Nicolas of Myra in Turkey attended the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. In 1087 his body was moved from Turkey to Italy where it absorbed the gift-giving tradition of Pasqua Epiphania, a local saint, especially placing toys in children's stockings. Gifts were exchanged on 6 December, the anniversary of Nicolas's death. As this tradition spread north into pagan tribes, representation of Nicolas merged with Woden: a man with long white beard riding a horse through the sky in late autumn in heavy winter clothing. The celebration date shifted to 25 December as Christians attempted to convert the pagan rituals as was done with Saturnalia centuries before.
     The modern depiction of Santa Claus, however, comes largely from the nineteenth century. In his Knickerbocker History, Washington Irving, an American writer, used the translated Dutch name of Nicolas (Sinterklaas), "Santa Claus," to describe a bearded, horse-riding man. The poem "T'was the night before Christmas" changed the steed from a horse to reindeer and added the descent by chimney. Harper's Weekly, a newspaper, popularized the visual aspects of Santa Claus from the 1860-1880s. As the final touch, Coca-Cola commissioned a Santa advertising campaign in the 1930s with the only stipulation being a Coca-Cola red suit. Thus, Santa Claus contains elements of Christian, pagan, and commercial origins that effectively represents the amalgamation of Christmas today.
     By the 1880s the modern conception of "Christmas" was secured with egg nog, Christmas cards, Santa Claus, and the Christmas poems and stories by Clement Clark Moore and Charles Dickens. By the mid 1940s Christmas became a commercial focus for many American-based companies with FDR's extension of the Christmas shopping season to Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, as well as Coca-Cola's successful development of Christmas advertising begun in the 1930s.
     Christmas has long been a winter holiday celebrated by people of different religions around the world. Despite the modern Christian emphasis, it is fitting that a holiday begun to celebrate life and human relationships continues to spread joy around the world in all different cultures, religions, and peoples.


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Agatha Tyche

Years that Question

     The history of man normally has various centers of power. Rarely are those centers tangled into one place. America, the superpower, is projected to be replaced by China at the economic pinnacle by 2016. The Christian missionary title of the world already belongs to South Korea so the United States has lost that too. As a military might, the young nation still holds up the mark for now.
     With the widespread protests, civil wars, and increasing wealth of the Middle East, the population explosion in Africa, and the increasing economic might of SE Asian nations like the Philippines, India and Indonesia, the focal point of global power is already changing, but will the landscape change as a whole or only within the upper classes? European imperialism shredded the last African-based empires a century and a half ago, and the Ottoman Empire's fall after World War I ended the last prominent Middle Eastern empire.
     Will economic development in previously termed "third world" countries finally sling-shot forward? If a non-Western country becomes a superpower, will the change in power be beneficial to their economic development and social stability or will the effort of rising up empty the coffers? Alternatively, will the newly found power refocus attention on the new pole and cause further development?
     Much of the twentieth century focused on the mutual destruction of Europe's powers. With this new century other nations are stepping on the springboards of global domination, but will they learn the lessons of their predecessors or only seek accumulation and domination?

     As with all new things, elements of excitement and fear merge indistinguishably. Population dynamics of a growing world are prying power from the elderly Western nations. What will become of the old powers - looted, restored, or stabilized? Will a multi-polar world destroy or encourage trade?
     Let's find out.

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Agatha Tyche

House of Cards

     Always destruction is faster than building. A big family dinner can take a full day to cook but eating rarely takes more than an hour. Clean up is faster than adding ingredients and cooking as well, and the time to make a fancy dinner is easily two-thirds of the total time. The Twin Towers of New York City imploded in an hour and a half but took five years to construct.
     The universe's touted law of entropy never sleeps. Disassembly is quicker than manufacturing. One of the starkest revelers of this fact is fire.

     House fires, ships burning at sea, fires that consume entire cities from Rome in 64 AD to London  in 1666 to Chicago in 1873. The accumulated work of thousands of hands is destroyed in hours. The Sack of Rome by Alaric's Visigoths in 410 robbed the city of nearly 800 years of art and wealth.
     While man is a master craftsman capable of making beauty inexpressible in words, he is also the master of ruins. Life is a tentative thing with many ingredients needed to usher in a new generation that can be undone with few decisive actions. Genocide removes a unique perspective of life from the world just as war obliterates the creations of an entire civilization. Is man not to fight the entropy around him by assisting, fabricating, and envisioning what the works of his hands could be? Let us not allow the continual story of man's answer to entropy be bureaucracy and mass production but the beauty of our lives, stories, and the love we share with our fellow man.


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Agatha Tyche

What Man Has to Say

     The most rudimentary forms of civilization involve man's organized interactions with others of his cultural group under rules of social interchanges. An authority higher than the individual unites people together whether from a small group of local extended families, an expanded tribal system, or a government with positions beyond the individual leaders which pass power on to consecutive generations. As governments developed and attempted to force their wills upon the people they governed, an obvious problem developed. Since the government derives it power from those it governs, a populous cannot be governed unless it submits to that government.
     The philosophy of this social contract has undergone intensive analysis since its popularized conception in the seventeenth century with notable advocates John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. The social contract states that the power of the government, specifically that of a monarch, is derived from the subjects that empower it. Thomas Hobbes famously describes the processes of governing man whose natural state is anarchy and is subdued with promises of protection and threats of violent death usually carried out via execution.

     In the nearly five centuries since the birth of this political philosophy, the world has change. Monarchs no longer dominate the spectrum of governments in power around the world. Mercantilism is no longer the prevailing economic theory of Europe. Life imprisonment has replaced the death penalty in most Western nations since the 1970s. Instead of having a government ruling over illiterate masses with the threat of exploitative military enforcement, the people now decide who oversees their nation's domestic and international affairs.
     Neither Hobbes and Locke's world nor our own have succeeded in uncovering the perfect government,  but in the centuries since the European Enlightenment, the common man has gained a voice of authority after a long struggle. Still the task of governments has not changed. Strength is in the appeasement and distraction of the masses to rising against the body of government as the French did in their bloody revolution at the end of the eighteenth century.
     Ancient Rome's deteriorating economy encouraged emperors to give large food handouts to prevent the one million people in the city from rioting over grain prices which gave origin to the phrase "bread and circuses (panem et circenses)" to describe the collapse of civil duty and only give sustenance to public approval.
     A thousand years later the people's voice still thundered. The 1381 Peasant's Revolt in England came about because of government incompetence and high taxes. The American and French revolutions occurred largely because of high taxes and the political oppression of the common man. The 1790s stirred Europe into a revolution frenzy with several smaller revolutions occurring through the early 1800s, especially the Europe-wide 1848 revolution. Under the Soviet regime in Eastern Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, Hungary rose up in 1956, and Alexander Dubček's initiated the Prague Spring in 1968. Both sought anti-centralization. The recent and widely televised 2011 London riots were also credited, in a large part, to a common and growing frustration of the government's mismanagement of economic policy's.
     After two millenia of documented uprisings caused largely by economic stimuli, does this still impact modern governments? Yes. As Thomas Hobbes explains in The Leviathan, governments are created to protect and control people, but if the government fails in its purposes, the people should and shall rise up as the American Founding Fathers explained in several Lockean documents. People outnumber government enforcers since the regime's protectors come from the population it governs. Thus, if a significant portion of the populace is dissatisfied enough to riot, a new government can be created.
     George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four touches on a similar topic. As the main character, Winston Smith observes,

"If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within. Its enemies, if it had any enemies, had no way of coming together or even of identifying one another. Even if the legendary Brotherhood existed, as just possibly it might, it was inconceivable that its members could ever assemble in larger numbers than twos and threes. Rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflection of the voice; at the most an occasional whispered word. But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They need only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely, sooner or later it must occur to them to do it. And yet --!
Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they will never become conscious."    George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 60-61.

     Considering the absolute power many monarchs held centuries ago, modern man is the most privileged class ever. The goals of cultures differ from each other and from themselves through time. Food and wealth accumulate with those in power, and since man needs to eat, he will always rise up when the life of those he loves is threatened.
     When evaluating the policies of your country, make sure to consider them based off historic perspective and the goals of the current regime then consider how that impacts the population as a whole: beneficially or detrimentally. No man or government is perfect, but since we have to share the world, let us do so with the satisfaction of making it as good a place for as many as possible.

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Agatha Tyche

Thank you

     After 18 months, I would like to thank my regular readers, especially from the United States, Russia, China, and Germany. We've covered topics from the aspects of the soul, the purposes of wars and revolutions, and reflections on virtues. Thanks for hanging in there!

     The bi-monthly posts will keep coming. Working outlines for posts through July 2014 are already being researched and written. Thank you for following my disparate thoughts, and if you have ideas, interests, and topics you would like presented, leave a comment.
     The list of nations is organized by the number of views from that nation. If there is an equal number for multiple nations, the country first to view comes earlier on the list. Thank you, readers around the world!

United States
Russia
China
Germany
Ukraine
France
United Kingdom
Netherlands
India
Poland
Kazakhstan
Malaysia
Chile
Lithuania
Brazil
Columbia
Indonesia
Mexico
Peru
Latvia
Venezuela
Israel


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Agatha Tyche

Commitment

A pledge to support a policy then reinforced by any actions necessary to maintain that policy requires sacrifice, determination, and endurance. That is commitment.
     From the last decades of the eighteenth century to the civil wars marring the land today, subjects and citizens of nations have risen up to claim their own political and economic freedoms.
     The American Founding Fathers began the experiment of modern democracy through a three-branched republic. While some of the men paid gravely for their treasonous decisions, the desire for liberty and political self-determination encouraged the revolution to press on. Similarly, men seeking to gain political power outside of the three estates began a revolution in France a decade after the Americans. Trying to override the centuries of systematic tradition left the European terrain bloody from executions of nobles and peasants, soldiers and saints, instigators and innocents. No group surrendered peaceably because all saw themselves as right. Another example of men seeking independence is the Indian colonization by Britain in 1757 which ended in 1947 after forty-two years of constant opposition from the Indian peoples. The nation fought for independence while simultaneously supporting Britain through two world wars.
     These examples only exhibit large movements of a deterministic, steadfast commitment to the ideal of independence and freedom. Individuals have committed their lives to various independence movements through history with particular emphasis in the last few centuries from Simon Bolivar's revolution in South America to Martin Luther's clerical reform that sparked the Reformation to the industrial revolution that introduced a new materialistic mindset on world wealth.

     Commitments do not always result in the fall of government, rebellion, revolution, or war. Justinian I of Constantinople chose not to flee during the Nika riots. Instead, the emperor suppressed the public outburst, cemented his role, and took opportunity from the destructive riots to create architectural masterpieces that awe the world today. Commitment results in change, but the change can be catastrophic like the French Revolution or beautiful like the Hagia Sophia.
     Hanging on through the rough patches to achieve what is desired and see the greatness of accomplishment is why endurance is highly prized. Humanity is unique in its robust ability to subdue its surrounding environment, but while changes are occurring out of your control, a true test of your determination is your willingness to hold steady and finish the task at hand.
     If you believe strongly enough, it is worth it.


Happy anniversary, Jessica!
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Agatha Tyche

A Lesson in Empathy

    Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

     Here is a mental exercise. Take what you are most devoted to and passionate about and convert that into a feeling of patriotism for your country. Imagine four years of rain, mud, bullets, and dead friends culminating in losing the war against your most hated enemy. The enemy then forces your nation, that you love most dearly, to pay for the entire cost of the war, never form a military again, and surrender valuable tracks of land.
     After your participation in the largest battles of the war and seeing the courage and strength of your nation only to have it surrender, you feel betrayed. Not by your enemy or the soldiers you fought alongside. Instead, the political backbone of the nation surrendered, destroying the triumph of the military efforts.
     Now imagine, after four years of devoted, unfailing service, after betrayal by the thing you most loved, you raise up opposition to end this political monstrosity that has taken the place of  your beloved country. You are arrested for acting out your beliefs, but, eventually, you are released. Sharing your thoughts with your friends, they pass on your inspiring ideas to give hope to the people. Your people. Who lost all dignity, wealth, and hope after the war. With a surge of emotion, you announce a plan to achieve just revenge against the enemies that destroyed your country and your people. The adversaries responsible for the imploded economy and the death of millions of brave men.
     After years of planning, you succeed in getting large-scale attention and support for your revenge plan. In fact, you go a step further and say that victory will be a new world. A better world where success will out last the lives of your supporters - and the lives of their children and grandchildren  - in a version of stabilized, near-eternal glory.
     But you fail to achieve this dream for millions of your countrymen. The antagonistic countries oppose your dream, and they fear and hate you just as you fear and hate them. How can inspirations of greatness and righteous revenge be objected to? Because they were accompanied by mass racial genocides.
Can you empathize with Adolf Hitler?

     Part of what historians must do to succeed in understanding history is to stand in the shoes of the people that experienced it. For another example, to understand the impact of Martin Luther's Reformation, historians place themselves in Luther's life to flush out motivations. After this the lives of church officials, royalty, nobles, and the common people of all nationalities are similarly related to to explain history's reactions as they progress. Whether or not these individual perspectives are accurate is unimportant since to understand actions, the initial biases must be empathized with. A true test of a historian is to relate to the most disagreeable characters while sharing bias, prejudice, and conviction in order to portray history as the past actually happened.

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Agatha Tyche

Forgotten Knowledge

Humans, as a collective whole, learn so much we . . .
1.) Forget the basics.
     Athletes constantly drill to keep the most instinctual reactions a part of their game. Research in psychology relies on basics of biology to keep theories sound; biological research relies on chemistry; and chemistry relies on physics. The foundation of knowledge, instrumental to advancing, is easily forgotten once soaring skyscrapers rest on a hidden anchor of necessity.
     The perfect historic example of forgotten knowledge is the king of modern construction: concrete. Romans discovered this building material around 300 B.C., but functional knowledge collapsed with the empire. Joseph Aspdin of England reinvented the modern form of Portland cement in 1824 which has since been used to build the cities of today's nations.
2.) Disbelieve the tales of the past.
     Belief is usually based on experiences. Doubt is created from a lack of evidence, and skepticism requires proof to be satisfactorily refuted. Sometimes, the truth is simply hidden, buried beneath the accumulated dirts and sands of the years. The great Mesopotamian city of Ur, inhabited for 3,000 years, lay underneath the deserted landscape until recorded in the seventeenth century but was not explored until 1918. This massive discovery lead to an explosion of knowledge about the ancient inhabitants but lay neglected for three centuries after its discovery. In our intellectual arrogance and security, the modern West holds itself above the experiences of the past only to undergo the punishment of repetition.
3.) Bury our failues.
     The greatness of a people is earned through a complex combination of economic prosperity, military innovation, and cultural drive. Eventually, a stronger culture not weakened by pride or years of sustained power destroys the older nation. That defeated power often falls into a shadow of its former self but may reassert strength centuries later. Interestingly, the very reason for greatness is hidden in the dirt and sands of the defeat while the people continue on.

     Agamemnon, Achilles, and Odysseus united to attack the wealthy, fortified city of Troy. The defeated Trojans' tale after the war is never mentioned, but history knows. Troy rebuilt. In fact, Troy rebuilt itself at least seven times, so prosperous were the trade intersections of her age. The lesson that can be learned from differing layers of the Trojan city is that defeat does not mean the surrender of greatness.
     Burying failures can do two different things. First, moving on keeps the lesson from being learned so misery and self-pity pervades. Secondly, pressing forward while learning from previous mistakes causes a re-accumulation of strength and wisdom that, if beaten, will rise again.
     Like athletes, many people strive to be the best and succeed in their goals.Strength proves nothing since it is easily overcome by superior strength of endurance. However, searching strength's components reveals an understanding of foundation upon which all else is developed. The basics evaluate the errors in previous mistakes and can bolster motivation by learning from the failures of the past.
     Build a city of skyscrapers, fly to the moon, or plan your budget but remember the basics because without a solid foundation all accomplishments will fall.

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Agatha Tyche

Boundaries

     What do we hold the individual responsible for? This is not simply a matter of social interaction since an individual subject or citizen is part of a whole that represents a national identity.
     Does the level of freedom in personal, social, or everyday interactions cause or encourage bigger moral boundaries?
The real question: Does the more a person feels he can do, impact what his country thinks it can do? Or is the reverse true: Does national expansion of ability encourage increased personal views of ability?
     If a country realizes its power to conquer another nation and succeeds, the citizens have boosted confidence in their country's might which results in high morale, increased economic prosperity, and raised levels of military support among civilians. If a country fails to subdue its enemy, its populace feels discouraged, depressed, and demoralized, especially after repetition proves their fears true.
     However, if the citizens themselves have freedom, inspiration, and energy, that translates, on a national scale, into an invigorated strength for the nation as a whole.
     But what comes first? National success translating into increased moral freedoms of the subject-citizens or bold private practices impacting public policy?
 

     Relative to her European neighbors, England had a free society whose elite could function independent of the king, diverging from continental policy because William the Conquerors' agreement with his nobles. Land ownership determined wealth which determined social freedoms as evinced by the Magna Carta. The more power possessed, the more leeway allowed because of retributional might. With the rise of the British Empire, the country's policies pushed forward to maximize economic production, especially after the beginning of the industrial revolution in the late eighteenth century. The evolution of British rights from the Magna Carta to World War I meant that while citizens were protected, the individual was undervalued by the collective whole largely due to the sheer size of the empire. After the collapse of imperial age Britain, the country espoused greater values for individuals culminating in the strong support of the socialist movement by the populace. In short, the freedoms of the populace allowed the nation to grow and expand.
     Let us look at the proudest of England's daughters, the United States, to re-enforce this conclusion. America, land of the free, has, since its independence, boasted of the great freedoms its citizens possess. The politicians espouse that freedom made the nation great since individual liberty inspires innovation. Since its victory "over" the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the world's mono-polar power dominated the world stage economically, politically, and militarily. With that supremacy on the world stage, overconfidence both in the late Cold War era and 2001 with the initiation of the war on terror has significantly reduced both political acceptance of unconditional freedoms and private views of self-ability with the economic recession begun in 2007. In short, America perfectly reflects that individual freedom promotes national greatness and coincides with that nation's collapse. National dominance abroad has turned to national dominance over internal affairs, undermining private, personal freedom.
     As ancient Egyptian religion expanded outward from the pharaoh to the general populace, Egypt grew into one of the the mightiest peoples in the world. The freedom eventually pushed too far and caused a disintegration in the general structure of society. Thus, there is a necessary balance between freedom and strength. Ancient Greece and Rome both provide similar examples.
     An example of this is the basic military training of soldiers. The general both wants his men to follow orders as well as achieve success with minimal loss. If a commander orders his troops to march across train tracks with the train coming, some may run over beforehand, others afterward, but none of the men will walk into the train to die because they have the freedom of thought.
     Is the conclusion then that bigger self-ego generates bigger national-ego? Or that bigger national-ego inspires bigger self-ego? While being partially both, the laws of a nation determine private freedom. Private freedom indulges the population to push farther and strive harder, culminating in national expansion. National expansion proves superiority abroad further strengthening domestic freedoms in a positive feedback loop. This continues until, inevitability, the freedoms undermine national efforts because of individual desires or the nation's expansive powers turn internal to crush opposition by diminishing freedom.

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Agatha Tyche

Arrogant Offspring

     The biggest and strongest can always get their way. Every major tribe and dominating empire can attest that what they want, they get. That mentality could be human nature, the corrupting nature of power, or simply a precedent now ingrained in the human experience. As Europe began to rise with the power of innovation, logic, and resourcefulness, they conquered the world. The earth has been Euro-centric for centuries. Now, as that power wheel begins to shift away from Europe and the West into a slowly adjusting balance with the major Eastern powers of China, Japan, Indonesia, and a few others, the long gloated power of the nations of Europe finally falls into question.

     Whether or not Europe was right to colonize and dominate the world, the past has affected the present as it always does. However, the criticism of the present upon the past directs the future, learning and digressing from previous experiences. Europe birthed the modern world: industry and nation states now permeate the world from European origins. All non-European (and even some European nations: Spain and Eastern Europe) are the children of the colonial era, even if only intellectually (Japan, Thailand). Who now is the bread winner that inherits the power endowed by the old, retired grandparents of Europe?
     By necessity the new power will have once been a colony of Europe. In that sense, Europe will live on just as Rome has lived on through Europe. As the maps above and below illustrate, nearly every habitable portion of land, the world around, has been controlled by Europeans within the last five hundred years.
   

     With the trauma of the twentieth century, those nations destroyed each other through successive wars - while planting industrialism and the keys to power abroad. Who will be the new leaders?
     Consider America, proclaimed owner and victor of the last century, the "American Century." Can she continue to "police" the world considering her shrinking industry, weakened economy, and divided self-interest? Perhaps - she has done so for nearly seventy years already, but with self-criticism. America has forgotten why she came to power, why others fell.
     This nation, though powerful, has several drawbacks.
     1.) America is a young nation by the estimate of dates of independence, her immediate geographical neighborhood even younger. Europe was nearly three times America's age by the time it arose to conquer the new world.
     2.) Along with her youth, America has been historically isolationist most of her history. In fact a good portion of her population still wishes to be self-focused, isolationist, and let the world run itself. Ron Paul, a candidate of the 2012 presidency, had strong isolationist ideals in his campaign and garnered a moderate support. The world wars woke America, but she has not completely abandoned the internal, domestic idealism that characterized her before 1917.
     3.) In conjunction with this isolationism, America is too self-centered to be the big kid on the block. All of her issues are focused on economic might or anti-communism/anti-terrorism agendas. At least the Europeans began industrializing their colonies. The mistakes made in Europe were also made in their colonies, but no precedent existed to caution. The US makes the same mistakes which have already been shown to be dysfunctional to the distribution of power
     In answer to America's weaknesses, what nation is respectably old and stable? What nation has learned from the brutal, oppressive domination of European control? What nation is strong, if inexperienced, on the world stage? What nation remembers its past?
     China is one of the oldest, most geographically stable countries in the world. She was abused by Europeans ransacking trades along her ports, and the Opium Wars destroyed her self-respect. As Western ideologies infiltrated her masses, China split between capitalism and communism. With Taiwan remaining just off her coast, China is still divided between those economic ideologies. However, she has weighed both options and seems to have found a fully functioning middle ground as evidenced by her expanding economy the last thirty years. China is excellent at remembering its history. Ancestor worship strengthens the patterns of the past, and China will likely avoid the selfish individualism rampant in the West. As an economically and military powerful and up-and-coming nation, one of China's biggest flaws is her inexperience on the world stage. "Cathay," an old English term for China, intentionally isolated herself from much of the world the past millenia. In order to dominate the vacancies on stage, she will have to accept a mantle of unprecedented world influence.
     Who then should lead the world? The West is falling. America's monopolar decadence is disintegrating as China has successfully siphoned Asian and African influences to create an increasingly bipolar world. Could the West and East work together, united, as nations seeking a common goal? Will the East try to reassert its ancient strength, so long absent the past five hundred years? Will the West completely collapse a midst an incomprehensibly large pile of debt and military-economic oppression?
     The study of history reveals many things, but only the future can pull the curtain back.


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Agatha Tyche

Berry picking

     Picking berries has been an agricultural function since ancient history. While the types and uses of berries alter with the time and culture, the process remains remarkably the same even for different berry types. Many berries are thrown out because they are imperfect by their size, age, or other qualities. Age is the only attribute that can be justified in contributing to a berry not being picked: it is either too ripe or to the point of molding off. Other reasons should be ignored. Size is unimportant if the berries are to be eaten free of hand or mashed into ingredients. Dried-up berries will still provide flavor when added to the overall berry mixture. Even oddly shaped, slightly aged, or the young, sour berries can be used when mixed in to the larger picture.

     People are like berries. Everyone contributes to the final creation. Size, color, age, and juiciness all vary with the individual. Some groups may be better in size but lose flavor while some of the driest berries may be exactly what is needed for the right taste. Being too perfect may actually detract from the success of that berry because it will be the first one snatched up birds, deer, squirrels, or people which would destroy its potential for reproduction. The most undesirable berries can be the most successful for their usefulness and reproduction.
    Many great leaders and thinkers of the past have not brought children into the world to carry on the legacy of their name or qualities. Alexander the Great, founder of the largest empire of his time, fathered a child but failed to live long enough to rear him. Nikola Tesla, though one of the most creative minds to work with electricity, never had a known relationship with any woman. Ludwig van Beethoven, the great musician, never succeeded in marrying or having children.
     While the finest of berries may be exquisite in certain aspects, the emphasis on one quality forces a decline in other areas. Many of the most brilliant people in the world struggle with social conventions. Conversely, those who interact perfectly with others, seemingly reading other people's thoughts out of the air, may fail rudimentary intelligence tests.
     On the pendulum's reverse swing rests the berries that are poisonous to eat. People, as berries, can poison their consumer. The toxin does not destroy the usefulness of the berry, however. Consider that some of the worst criminals and ruffians become heroes in war. Despite their unsavory habits in polite society, their skills provided them with assets necessary in the heat of bloody war. Considering that some great war heroes may also become poisonous themselves when they fully ripen just as Adolf Hitler did after his respectable service in the Great War.
     The diversity expressed in the types and uses of berries are a poor comparison to the multiplicity of character people reveal. Don't judge a book by its cover. Don't judge a berry by a single variety of qualities. The only way to know if a berry is true is to eat it just like the only way to know the character of a person is to get to know them.


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Agatha Tyche

The Sagacious Non-King

     Letting go or giving up something that is greatly desired for the cause of another person is the main definition of sacrifice. Though the victor is the one that history remembers, some of the losers are more worthy of remembrance because their achievements, character, or ideology is worth recognition.
     Conrad I, the Younger, was the first German king not descended directly from the Charlemagne line. With his election by the nobles of East Francia (modern Germany) to avoid the absorption of the eastern portion of Charlemagne's empire into the western half, Duke Conrad of Franconia, ruler one of the five most powerful Germanic tribes in the region, was granted power because of a succession crisis. He spent significant portions of his twelve year reign seeking to consolidate power against opposing tribal factions.
     Conrad I never succeeded in solidifying his power, and he was mortally wounded in a battle against one of his rivals. Knowing his demise approached, Conrad instructed his younger brother to offer the crown to Duke Henry of Saxony. Conrad knew that Henry alone among his rivals possessed the knowledge and power necessary to congeal the powers of the warring Germanic tribes. Thus equipped with an alliance between the Saxon and Franconian forces, Henry I succeeded in reuniting East Francia under one king. Henry the Fowler's successor and son, Otto the Great, founded the Holy Roman Empire which became and remained a major power on the European continent for nearly six hundred years.

     Conrad I surrendered his power and lands to his bitter enemy Duke Henry of Saxony to unite the East Frankish Kingdom, secure the autocracy of German dukes, and keep the West Frankish Kingdom out. He gave his power and supporters to Henry bolster unification efforts. Henry I used this power to revitalize the German crown and set the foundation for the Holy Roman Empire; Otto I finished Henry I's actions and succeeded in achieving all of Conrad I's hopes.
     In the face of death, Conrad I sacrificed all his authority and military might to his contender in order to achieve an objective impossible without an alliance. He sacrificed for the love of his people even though it put his antagonist in power. He embraced his own defeat as a sacrifice to raise the authority of the German emperor into such potency as to last through until Napoleon Bonaparte nine hundred years later.
     Winning isn't everything. Sacrifice and compromise can be the best way to resolve a situation to avert pointless stalemate or defeat brought on by division and attrition. Know when to let pride go and seek those who desire your same goals even if slightly different.

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Agatha Tyche

Rock Hard

Your life, soul, who you are is a rock, a steadfast boulder. Perhaps you are like basalt, reflecting things around you with your unique perspective. Or perhaps, you are more like granite with colorful imperfections making your flaws beautiful. Again, your rock may be limestone with a diversity of useful applications. Your rock, whatever it is, represents the true self of your identity. When standing alone, the rock is both a symbolic representation of who you are and your actual self: malleable to an extent but extraordinarily brittle under awkward stresses. Strength lies in the beliefs that direct you toward your goals of achievement, everyday interaction, and, most relevant to this essay, the presentation of who you are in your appearance to others.
Your rock can stand alone, be independent, stand as a monolith, a marker for all to see. Pride is classically said to be green and embitter its possessor, destroying that individual's desire and ability to sympathize and forgive. Instead, think of green as representing a plant: marine algae or terrestrial grass. The green in innocent, even decorative at first, but over time it hides the true rock, your character, covering the uniqueness with the ordinary, yet complex, shades of green. The plant, for which I will claim as algae, grows drawing nutrients and cracking through the base rock, your character, and true self beneath. Should this erosional work continue, the rock will break, crack, shatter, disassemble, and collapse inwardly from the outward force. The root from the plant that is growing into you unproductively uses the nutrients that you have stored.

The algae, for I myself like to think of pride as a scum that clings, resilient to the rock's surface. When it is fresh and wet, it grows, digging into you further, and gets in the way of all else as it hides your real surface. However, when it is dry and hard, stuck tightly onto the exterior, you smell foul as the as the algae attempts to retain moisture and hibernate until needed "again." Either way the rock is hidden beneath the growth.
What can be done?
Nothing - let the algae grow, taking its toll, slight as it is. Keep in mind the order of ecological succession, for, while the algae is small and easy enough to remove, after some time, other, harder and tougher plants take root. Just as a sapling is small and unintimidating, a tree is monstrously large, heavy, and intimidating. To let the algae grow is to abandon yourself to the order of succession and surrender your nutrients to the development of a forest of outgrowth of pride and vices.
Alternatively, to remove the algae is energy intensive, annoying, and difficult. However, to remove the pride or algae while new, saves the rock from scarring and allows it to stand forth as it is truly, not hidden away spending its precious limited allotment of resources in a purposeless forest of vice.
The choice, while easily presented, is difficult. Your choice early on can be undone at any time, but the longer the wait the more impacting the nutrient-sucking roots will be and the less visible your true self will become.
Pride has been called a mask, or, perhaps, a set of scales, but I, with my interest in plants, compare my pride to that of algae: a scum that hides, stinks, digs into, and can remain forever.
It is desirable for aesthetic presentation of no kind. To remove this leech on life is daunting, but its removal leads to the highest rung of bliss and self-satisfaction achievable by the knowledge that you are all you can be.
Scrape your scum away.


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Agatha Tyche

Passions

Ambitions, Passions, Devotion, Drive
These are the fuels that inspire man. These are the causes for change, victory, and success that pepper history books. These are the things that give normal men heart to strive onward through failure to reach their goals.
It is easy enough to break down the success of idolized heroes that achieved greatness: seek a goal, strive forward despite opposition, never quit. The simplicity of success does not remove the need for its application. The most convicted person's passion can fade. The most ingenious man can err, but the one that succeeds will achieve regardless. Greatness can be seen as unexpected or unlikely for those of lower socio-economic standings, but regardless of resources, the persistence to follow passion will accomplish anything it sets out to do.
This consuming passion can pass from a leader to inspire an army to trounce a larger, better equipped enemy, from a single philosopher to individuals that act upon those ideals and create revolutions of mind, matter, government, and society, from a single research paper that incites scientific exploration deeper into theory, atmosphere, ecosystem, or genome. The fire of the desire is what must be protected for mythological greatness to be achieved.

Wild passion spreads, infects, and solidifies its existence, but action, persevering through failure, discouragement, and criticism, awakens the pulse of the goal itself.
Who might we look back on to note their achievements?
Alexander the Great - a charismatic general that inherited a unified Greece and elite Macedonian army. With an army of 30,000, he defeated the largest empire the world had ever seen at the height of its power. Never losing a battle, he onquered the world
Charlemagne - early king of modern day France in a period of war and educational void. He unified the Frankish tribes, united more of Western Europe than any between Rome and Napoleon, reinstituted learning when less than one percent of the population was literate, and set up the basis for modern Europe by acting as an abbot, a loving father, over his subjects. While conquering Germanic tribes to the east and establishing the modern definition of Europe, he struggled to find support from the Byzantine Empire, which he never succeeded in doing.
Genghis Khan - a Mongolian tribesman, he used innovative military techniques that transformed one of the backwoods of Eurasia into the origin of one of the largest empires in the history of the world.
Ludwig van Beethoven - while positioned from birth in a musically enriched family, he proved his substantial abilities but became poor and deaf, yet he still wrote music so energetically that walls and napkins were covered in musical scores.
Leaders throughout time, empire, circumstance, and interest have incited fervent support for their projects. However, passion is larger than mere politics, military intrigue, or economic production. Philosophers, authors, inventors, and those that dared be different achieved that which was thought impossible by reaching through the limiting fabric of realism to achieve what only dreams of determined, insurmountable energy can conjure with a focus that must be admired by others.
You're a nobody? Be a nobody that doesn't quit, that has unrestrained energy for hobbies, goals, and dreams. Be a nobody that matters.


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Agatha Tyche

Solitude

     You know that moment when you feel absolutely alone? Not the alone where you desire distance from everyone else, every possible sound of human life - the other kid, when the pressures and weariness of existence lay so heavily upon you nothing revives your spirit? You desperately seek someone that can hear your pains and worries, embrace but calm your fears, and connect you with unrequitted understanding.

     But you can't because you've distanced everyone you know from your innermost thoughts and emotions. You are unavoidably alone, singular, dispossessed, independent, and unaided by choice because you feared the pain that any sort of relationship causes when its broken. All relationships end: by voluntary, consensual choice, a jarring break caused by distance, emotion, circumstance, or death.
     It's funny how our younger years are so sensitive. As children no one really knows anything and information is just accepted by the brain as it assimilates meaning from its surrounding. That understanding can change, but the impact on the brain is permanent though it can be, eventually, navigated around.
     And that's where I find myself tonight. I am alone, miserable, and gloomy, but I have no one to turn to because I fear the searing, unceasing pain that comes from the falsely dependable comfort of closeness. Once a string is attached to the heart, it is never simply cut loose, always ripped out. Yes, the relational strings we allow to dilapidate, ignored over time, pain less when severed, but the most robust, supportive strings rend the heart in two. That pain, encompassing the entire processing pyche of the person, lingers for too long, always sharp, sharper with time under the haggard circumstances of life that enhances its edge to break through shallow scars of only half-clogged blood.
     I struggled through my notes, books, and memories of the past history of the world. How a nation, people, or figure betrayed by the dearest love overcame this life-shattered, purpose-nulling, eternity-agonizing pain. The answer, revealed in stories, poems, and tales, is time and forgiveness. But that doesn't always work. Often the scarred party is so embittered the entirety of remaining life is consumed with bitter hatred, self-doubt, general loathing and anger. Alternatively, the crushed spirit whimpers and dies from the "broken heart."

I have it in my heart. I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed . . . The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no. He who led the young men is dead . . . I want to have time to look for my children and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. ~ Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce tribe

     If the rock is angled just right, time doesn't dull but sharpen blades. Forgiveness is seen as a profession by those too weak to hold on to anger. Moving on? Impossible.
     Pain isn't a hollow feeling. Pain is the entirety of the substance, but no longer physically impaling like a scrape on your leg when each movement causes a spasm. Emotional pain is a distracting, limiting pain like a dull knife with weights attached slowly compressing into your heart. Always. And every moment of joy guilt, anger, hatred, and bitterness boils up against that joy from the unhealed wound that effuses pain as a well.

     That despair seeps into life and forms a carefully arranged, thick callous around any passage to the heart. If a lasso is thrown, rejection is immediate. If a stab is taken to penetrate the protective layers, violent aversion will directly ensue.
     All this caused by others.
     That's the difference between depressive loneliness and solitude. Solitude is sought to inspire, reflect, relax, comfort, and relieve. However, solitude is worthless if, even in the presence of others, no company or society reprieves self-caused isolation.
     Self-imposed emotional and physical isolation is not healing, but sometimes, it's what dulls the pain the best - though alcohol and other drugs are often abused to cloud memories. Winston Churchill remained depressed most of his life and became known for his particular fondness for drink. One in four U.S. presidents has been historically noted for inexplicable mood swings likely caused by depression. Whether those emotions were bottled intentionally to shield the heart from pain cannot be known because the individuals never expressed them.
     Abraham Lincoln, "I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on earth. Whether I shall ever be better I cannot tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me."
     Theodore Roosevelt, "The light has gone out from my life."
     Edgar Allan Poe, "I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom."
     Another timeless example of trying to erode life's pain: soldiers. In history, life, and literature, soldiers vie against each other to live in the moment. Drink until the mind is blank. Gamble away the spoils gained in blood and death. Bury sorrow in the facade of tough acts of self-preservation. Chase death causelessly to provide the mind distraction from what it is too fully aware.
     There is still something to be learned from the past, present, and pain. Depressive solitude, even if not overcome, does not diminish a life from achieving great things.

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Agatha Tyche

Favoritism

     Is favorite best? Most beloved? Most popular? Your pet objects? Why are things favorited? What causes people to choose something preferred or deemed more beneficial than another?
     One of the largest components in creating "favorites" is upbringing and taste. The environment that forms an individual contributes a large portion to his experience. Either that experience caters to and embraces his tastes and interests, or it causes a rebellion to embrace the things directly opposite of that initial upbringing. Further experience and interactions through life will gradually shift these tastes as he ages.
     Coupled with the environmental experience is the association of memories with those particular markers. I have terrific memories from going up to see my grandparents every summer in a small, isolated, backwoods town in Western New York state. Many of my passions and ideals of life stem from the joy developed and landscape explored during those stays. Conversely, grandparents on the other side of my family cherished material wealth and social habits of the higher end of society. As I aged, one situation saw me rebel while the other saw me attraction. The generation of soldiers from the 1940s will be hard pressed to support German industry under any circumstances while the new generations hold little grudge against their German counterparts.

     Emotional stimulation is the last stimulus of favorited items. Psychologists and market analysists attempt to associate activities or feelings with specific emotional states. Colors have an impact on this as well. Many religious movements in the modern West have attempted to ally their teachings with emotional peace and benevolence.
     In the end, one's preference for most things has little impact on on the overall curvature of life. Your satisfaction in life should be unhindered whether your door is brown, white, or green. The pampered, excessively materialistic West throws temper tantrums for favored positions and items while those less privileged are more accepting of adverse conditions. Reexamine your priorities and determine which preferences define your core values to diminish other, simply pleasant, emotional associations that needlessly inhibit key judgement choices of favoritism. 

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Agatha Tyche

Uncomplicated Biology

     Despite the ease of urban life, something seems to stir in man's rigorous society that causes him to long for the freedom of open hills and unexplored land. The open field, virgin forest, uncharted desert, and frontier land has always inspired great deeds and ideals of newness. Doing as no known individual of our species has ever done appeals to a great many people. This trait remains prominent in America, descendants of those who left the old world to venture into "unclaimed" lands.
     The glories of the simple life have been toted since ancient times. Although by modern standards, Alexandria, Egypt under the Ptolemaic Empire remained a small city, it focused creative arts from the far ends of the world. Poets held the life of shepherds as blissfully uncomplicated. Only the repetition of days called. Tending crops, caring for animals, and tending the home were the only "necessary" tasks to life unburdened with the needs of social pleasantries in the cities.

     Though the basic goal of this rural lifestyle is survival, stress is still prominent. Famine, drought, and disease are always factors. Socially, you are trapped with a very small group of people every day of the year usually limited to the ten to fifteen family members living in the house and farming the surrounding land. If something goes wrong, you have limited resources and manpower to accomplish the task. While the "simple life" has been glorified, several powerful reasons have gradually forced humans to congregate in ever increasingly large cities.
     This desire for a "simple life" has been around nearly as long as major civilization. The Hellenestic world, especially Alexandria, Egypt , focused on writing romantic literature (anacronistic terminology) that depicted farm work and animal husbrandry as glorious trades above the gloom of city life. The next time you wish for the simple life, remember the hard work in manual labor, the setting aside of harvest and limited resources to last through the months of unproductive winter. Life is much more dependent on the weather, and increased distance from other people confines relationships with the people in the area.
     Be thankful wherever life has put you. If a time comes to farm the land and store your produce, cherish those life lessons as much as ordering a meal in the restaurant, though the frequency of the second has lost its sparkling appeal for many. Enjoy your life as it is while always grateful for the others around you.


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Agatha Tyche

Dictator Apprehension

     Fear.
     Control.
     It is remarkable how much of life is controlled by fear. We are afraid to step out of our pre-determined boxes and be judged by those around us for not predictably following our reputation. We are afraid to jump in somewhere that we have no experience and pitch in, take charge, do the task. This is true for all ages especially in schools and jobs. Once a reputation is assigned for one quality, even a reputation for disinterested neutrality, any excursions outside of it are fitted as uncharacteristic. A proficient example of this is elementary or junior high school when the teacher yells for silence. Of course, everyone ignores her and continues boisterously until the quietest child in the class screams for silence. Everyone is so surprised, they hush instantly. Nothing changed in their desires to continue the conversation. When the expectations of someone we assume to understand rather well does that unexpected thing, surprise abounds. To avoid that unwanted attention, many of us simply conform to that expected box of our personalities that is affectionately known as a "mask." Our fear of doing the unexpected controls our actions, and we become a stranger even to ourselves.
     This problem is compounded when physically near people more familiar with your habits. The times I have been most uncharacteristic is around people I have never met and run little chance of seeing again. This is also true for my friends. If they meet someone I am acquainted with, they might have acted completely unlike the behavior I expect.

     Historically, many people have had little choice in their daily conduct. The goats need milked, the irrigation canals need cleaned out, firewood needs stacked, and when the work is done, exhaustion forces sleep. In modern times governmental power enforced rigorous conduct laws on citizens. Despite this constant management of both human and physical resources, people eventually took the courage in hand to resist and choose their own desires. The Prague Spring of 1968 revealed the resentment against the United Soviet Socialist Republic in the surrounding puppet nations. This rebellion occurred at the height of Soviet influence, wealth, and military might. The people still opposed.
     Political rebellions reveal the instability of a government. No longer can the law be credibly enforced. The masses arise with bitterness at the mistreatment for an actual or imaginary wrong, and the rebellion is crushed or a civil war breaks out. Ancient Egypt successfully rebelled against the Persian empire's invasion and reestablished native control and religion for a generation. The Greeks defeated Persian advances twice. France successfully repelled British land claims after more than a century of war. America overthrew their perceived oppressors in the British monarchy. Britain resisted Nazi advances and remained unconquered.
     History invariably reveals the desires of a people. With America's social stigmas of nicely situated boxes and divisions, personalities and interests are farmed for cooperation in the work place and monetary expenditures. But if history has taught anything, it is better to resist these outside influences.
     Be yourself. Choose the option most suited to your interests and desires. Don't let your social stereotype paint you into a box that poorly fits your personality and talents. Don't fear the judgement of complete strangers. I have a tendency to act like the people around me. The more time I spend with a single person, the more like them I become. Sometimes this is good; often it is unsatisfying. Be who you want to be. Act as you see right -  not because it is expected but because you honestly are that way. Go about the life you wish to lead without apprehension of the dictator in the public society around you. Just smile, say your greeting, and get doing what needs done!


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Agatha Tyche

Personality in Words

     Words carry meaning through historically defined associations and connotations over time. Specific words may hold special meaning to an individual with emphasis on other suggested context. This understanding of various explanations can be applied to the words used or the actions displayed. I now bring up the question of my presence here. What initially encouraged me to begin this blog and analyze greater concepts of humanity in relation of understanding the present through examples and explanations of the past?

     Scientific discoveries fascinate me, and I am much inclined toward modern discoveries, especially in the arena of genetics. Progress is nothing unless compared to and improved from the past. This is where the foothold for the blog begins - I am fascinated by history because of the observations that can be drawn into the present to shape our world. Historical analogies are easily applied to the most specific instances of life today - if only to contrast the difference. Human nature does not, however, change as readily as assumed in the West, and large components of Greek, Roman, and other cultures convert very well into our understanding.
     Why write fiction then? To what point and purpose does non-didactic prose play its part? It is refreshing to read for the sake of reading. As a college student putting between sixty and eighty hours into my studies each week, the last thing I want to do in my free time is further educate my mind. Fiction is an easy and enjoyable way to allow the mind to strengthen different areas other than every day functionality. Fabricated worlds and unique scenarios transport us away from our modern misery. Certainly, this is true when one reads a story, but it is more apparent and fulfilling to stir up words into the shape of your own imagination. I have several fictional story lines floating in my head; each is but a single chapter of my ideas. I apologize that none of them will be written here. Most will probably never be written down at all because of time.
     Writing an aggregate between science, history, and sociology rationally stretches the mind as it searches for associations, connections, and links between two seemingly different areas. In conclusion then, writing achieves the same effect in the writer of both fiction and nonfiction: a natural expansion of the mind that strengthens the interrelations of life.
     Why am I here? For years I have expanded that mental connection internally and lost much progress in branching out from other areas. Once one of those theories or interpretations is physically, or in this case virtually, recorded, my mind is now liberated to shift focus and expand farther.

     Read, enjoy, appreciate, criticize, ignore, apply, retort, quip, or argue. Connections are always springing up where you least expect them, and each one carries a new perspective on that activity or object of the past that can instruct the future.


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Agatha Tyche

Prohibit Assessments

     "One reason we struggle with insecurity: We’re comparing our behind-the-scenes to everyone else’s highlight reel.” ~ Steven Furtick

     People differ. People also interact. Life is about interacting in a tolerable and acceptable manner with those people that differ . All lives are different, all experiences vary, all tastes prefer and change in accord with circumstance.

     A successful person is one considered to relate to and gain support from those people that do not closely resemble him. Politicians attempt to cater to the simple, hard working man that few politicians have ever associated with.

     I find myself in a position of leadership over a group of men with widely variant interests from my own. My goal is not pleasant association but mastery and love through earned and proven decisions.

     “You must be their leader, their father, their mentor, even if you’re half their age. You must understand their problems. You must keep them out of trouble; if they get in trouble, you must be the one who goes to their rescue. That cultivation of human understanding between you and your men is the one part that you must yet master, and you must master it quickly.” ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

     One of the joys of life is discovery. By accommodating the input of mentalities estranged from your own, expansion is the only possibility. Whether that expanded world crashes off a cliff or enriches its possessors is merely a risk of life.

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Agatha Tyche

Resourcefulness

     "One and done" seems to be the christening chime of every new consumer item in Western culture. "Disposable" this and "recyclable" that. Even with the economic recession, things are built to be thrown away when their use has been fulfilled. No longer is the extra screw from the remote saved in a can to fix the clock when it breaks - a new clock is simply bought to replace the broken one.
     The GI generation seems to be the last great generation of repairman. The white collar classes seem incapable of getting dirty. Even gardeners use gloves to dig around in the dirt. In the great classics of adventure, most written while Britain ruled the seas and explored the deepest jungles, men knew how to work with their hands. Gun jamped? Clean it out. No matches for the fire? Rub sticks together. Cheer crying woman? Buy the biggest bouquet of flowers and actually know what each flower symbolized.
     Yes, these are Romantic examples and emphasize the tragic portions of life while avoiding the hum-drum. However, there is a net social lose as these skills pass from the working knowledge of a population. Many men no longer know how to check their engine, change their oil, or jack a car because AAA will come to the rescue if the car breaks down.

     My favorite book has long been The Swiss Family Robinson. Why? Stranded from society, the family salvages what materials they can from the wreckage of  the ship then proceeds to create nearly every aspect of the European civilization they left behind. Robinson Crusoe also does an excellent example with resourcefulness from the most obscure items to make a fully functional life.
     But why is resourcefulness important in our modern technical age? Does it achieve anything purposeful? With increasing limitations in resource gathering, re-usability has once again become desirable if still limited to the materials used. Gold, used in computer processing units, is heavily recycled both for value and rarity as is platinum in catalytic converters.
     Resourcefulness teaches thorough mastery of the environment while retaining frugality which was highly valued by Benjamin Franklin and the Romantic authors of the nineteenth century from all nationalities. Resourcefulness allows independence since much can be done with very little. Isolation and limitations are reduced to inconveniences, not crippling disasters. Independence is liberating.
     In this sense, yes, subsitutive capabilities achieve an economic aptitude and unrestrained personal liberties. The more you can do with what you have, the fewer things cease progress.
     Resourcefulness is always valued in war. Whether an invention that does your particular need exists or not,, little aids a dying man or outnumbered troops in their immediate needs. Improvisation is a skill useful for the highly experienced mind since physical resources are easily overcome with creativity and flexibility. The general that adjusts his strategy to increase the advantages of the natural topography stands a larger chance of survival if not outright success, and the man that is ingenious enough to use a razor as a bayonet may yet live to fight again.
     The next time an ordinary item becomes useless for its purchased purpose, ascertain its worth by applying its properties to a new task.

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Agatha Tyche

Cynicism

     Bitterness is a highly concentrated acid that resides in a region around the heart. If this gland's container is punctured, scared, or shaken, that acid may begin to leak. Since the gland will continue to produce acid as before but exposure will spread to the rest of the body, the container is rendered useless but can almost certainly be repaired. If th container is not patched, the concentrated acid will destroy the heart, erode the stomach, damage the liver, and puncture the lungs. If left untreated the acid may also infect the brain and poison its perceptions into a illogical insanity of hate.

     The cynical mind has been poisoned by its own views. Understandably, some event or person has ruptured the regular bodily processes and created a perverse, embittered mind. While the bitterness supplies a sort of adrenaline affect that enables the user to bear considerable burdens beyond normal bounds, the price is mental sanity and a shortened life.
     But if cynicism provides a limited "superpower" of life, isn't it worth the price? Cynicism sucks the joy from life; no circumstance can provide happiness to the cynic. Optimism is worthless because beneficial events only serve to increase the bitterness as the user recognizes the vanity of false joy. Pessimistic to the core, apathy and depression stalk the cynic in all aspects of life. Without doubt benefits can be found, especially within the determination to hate and striving toward destruction of the hated ideal or being.
     Theodore Roosevelt's launched an entire crusading speech against the blasé of life and cynism.

"The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer . . . There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic never tries to perform – these are not marks of superiority but of weakness." 

     While you may defeat the opposition of life, you do it at the cost of yourself. Again, another famous, oft-quoted man of the American past, Ralph Waldo Emerson, cautioned against the burning hatred of dissatisfaction and enmity in life.

“Don't hang a dismal picture on the wall, and do not daub with sables and glooms in your conversation. Don't be a cynic and disconsolate preacher. Don't bewail and bemoan. Omit the negative propositions. Nerve us with incessant affirmatives. Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good. When that is spoken which has a right to be spoken, the chatter and the criticism will stop. Set down nothing that will not help somebody.”

     Embrace the life you have. Accept your faults, the faults of others, and the rainy-day circumstances that force the barometer to weight heavily on your life. Cherish the moment and embrace challenges to prove yourself to those that contest your merits.

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Agatha Tyche