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