What to read?

What to read? I pose it as an open ended question. It's a question I feel hopelessly unqualified to answer. If there's anything I've learned in life, it's that I really don't know much of anything at all. Socrates's old saying..."the more I learn, the more I learn how little I know"...seems a fitting description for how I feel in attempting to answer this question. It's a troublesome fact of life that we only seem to know which path we should have chosen, after we've walked down the wrong one, and I'm afraid of wasting time with the wrong books.

So, what to read? Millions of books have been written over the course of human history. But it seems that most of those millions have come, had some little moment of time in the sun, and then, like their authors, died. Forever lost to history, never again to carry their creators thoughts to someone else's mind. Causing their authors to die a kind of second death. This seems to be the fate of most of mans penmanship, I suppose it will ultimately be the fate of my own. But, there are a few books which, while others move all around them in and out of the bookstore shelf, remain constant. A few which never seem to fall out of favor. We call them classics.

Seriously though, what to read? Are the classics, as they're called, really worth reading today, or are they just relics for the home library. Do people read them, or collect them. Are they still relevant? I don't know the answer to that. I can tell you that Epictetus was relevant to me when I read it (see previous post), but when it comes to classic literature, I don't really know if that's the exception, or the rule. I don't know if I'll be able to answer that question until I've walked far enough down that path, and as my intent is to understand what thoughts led us to the world we live in today, I don't know of any better path to walk down.

So I've narrowed the list down to classics but , which of them should I read? I've looked online (couldn't think of a better place to look) for complete listings of classic literature, and most especially, influential books. The kind that are most likely to have shaped our world. I really don't know how much I should rely on these lists, but since I have nothing else to go on, they'll have to at least serve as a starting point. The result is a long list of books I'm hesitant to post here, mainly because I think the list is in no way static. As I read one book I'm sure it will refer me to another I haven't considered and my list will grow, shift, and hopefully be refined. My list is also open to suggestions, please, if you've read some classic that you feel has helped mold this world into what it is, let me know.

What to read first? I once herd a conversation where a woman was trying to tell someone a story and said..."I'm not really sure where to begin"...to which the other person simply replied..."how about at the beginning". I can't think of a better place to start. Chronology seems to be the best way of sorting my list.

So with that in mind, the first book will be...

There, on the shelf of the thrift store...

It's been five years now since I volunteered an afternoon at a local thrift store, and found something there that left a lasting impression on me. They asked me to straighten up the bookshelves. There was no real order to the way the books were arranged, they were just disorderly and I was asked to make them look nice. So I did, or at least was in the process of doing so, when I came across a book that reminded me of a childhood dream of mine.

Ever since I saw the movie Superman, as a child, I wanted to have a library like Lex Luthor. A rotunda with bookshelves for walls, and a sliding ladder...or at least a more modest version of it. Don't get me wrong, I never wanted to be a super villan. I never wanted to lob missles into the San Andreas Fault or anything like that. And like all kids at the time, I wished I had super powers and could fly around like Superman, But that library, it always seemed like something good in the clutches of evil. Like something that needed to be saved along with Lois Lane. And ever since, I've wanted one of my own.

There, on the shelf of the thrift store, was one of the books in what I later learned was a series known as "The Harvard Classics". 50 volumes of what it's publishers considered to be some of the greatest works of all time. It was volume II, and it consisted of some of the writings of Plato, the Golden Sayings of Epictetus, and the writings of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (who I remembered from the movie Gladiator). Now, to be completely honest, I never really intended to actually read the book, I saw it, wanted it, and brought it home with me because it looked like the kind of book that would make a fitting start to a Lex Luthor library. It looked cool. To me it was more art than book. Something to be admired and not disturbed. But after a week of watching it sit on a shelf, curiosity got the best of me and I cracked it open. I started with Plato, Plato was over my head, so I moved on to Epictetus.

I came across these words "The other day I had an iron lamp…I heard a noise at the door and on hastening down found my lamp carried off…” In my mind I thought "I can't believe I'm sitting here reading from some guy who was complaining about his lamp being stolen...2,000 years ago! But I read on, and what I read impressed me. He next said " The reason why I lost my lamp was that the thief was superior to me in vigilance. He paid however this price for the lamp, that in exchange for it he consented to become a thief: in exchange for it, to become faithless." I sat there thinking about those words for what seemed like five minutes. I couldn't put my finger on why, but I found myself almost in awe of his words. I read on;

“No man is free who is not master of himself.”

“Exceed due measure, and the most delightful things become the least delightful.

“Even as the Sun doth not wait for prayers and incantations to rise, but shines forth and is welcomed by all: so thou also wait not for clapping of hands and shouts and praise to do thy duty; nay, do good of thine own accord, and thou wilt be loved like the Sun.”

“But what says Socrates?--"One man finds pleasure in improving his land, another his horses. My pleasure lies in seeing that I myself grow better day by day."

I was slowly waking up to the fact that although Epictetus lived thousands of years ago, he knew a lot more about life than I did. Somehow, I always thought that the further back in time you went, the dumber "man" was. Cave man vs. modern man. But, in fact, it now seemed that the only difference between them and us is time (and technology). But that we are otherwise, the same. And that in many respects (probably because of technology) they thought and reasoned more than we do. It seems that the seeds of life as I know it today were probably planted back then. And that perhaps the only other difference between them and us is that we live on the other side of the fruition of their ideas. They came up with political, ethical, and philosophic solutions to the problems of their time, those solutions were carried out (probably by others after them), and we now live comfortably on the other side, enjoying the fruits of their mental labors.

It later occurred to me (after the passing of my Grandmother) that while I was reading Epictetus, I was actually in a way sitting down to one of his lectures (I later learned he, a Greek living in Rome around 90 A.D., was a freed slave who ran a school of philosophy) I was having a sort of one sided conversation with him. And that books aren't just paper and ink, they are the thoughts of a man. I was reading the thoughts and wisdom of Epictetus. All the experiences of his long and difficult life led him to those conclusions. There, in my hand, was not a book, but a collection of ideas, not paper, but a mind (and it's hard earned wisdom). And just as we can choose to either learn from our own mistakes (what we call “the hard way”) or from the experiences of others (and thus avoid the hard way), When I read Epictetus I, in an incomplete but no less meaningful way, lived a bit of his life and learned from it, without having to do it “the hard way”. Without having to live his life. Some say it’s a shame reading takes so long, but living a life, and learning from it, takes much longer, and if we can live and learn from the whole of someone else’s life in a few hours or days, then it really doesn’t take long at all. “Anyone who says they have only one life to live must not know how to read a book.” - unknown. We can, in one lifetime, read a thousand books, and live a thousand lives!

At any time we can pull off the shelf the thoughts of Epictetus, Plato, Aristotle, Francis Bacon, or the founding fathers of this country. What a blessing that is, what an inheritance!

"How vast an estate it is that we came into as the intellectual heirs of all the watchers and searchers and thinkers and singers of the generations that are dead! What a heritage of stored wealth! What perishing poverty of mind we should be left in without it! -J.N. Larned

All this, however, brings up another question. What to read?

Of Our Inheritance

My grandmother passed away about a year ago. Though a sad event, it sparked in me a chain reaction of thought which I hope to convey here. About six months after her passing I was watching a PBS documentary about the Dust Bowl, I was shocked at how hard life was for the poor individual who by fate or misfortune, happened to live in Oklahoma during those years. Then, while mentally soaking in this bygone era, with all it's hardship and misery, old memories of conversations I had with my parents resurfaced and I was reminded that My grandmother was raised in Oklahoma during those same years.

I got on the phone and called my grandfather (he now lives alone in suburban Seattle). I asked him if grandma had lived through the dust bowl. He said yes. I then asked what it was like, what stories did she tell? It was (sadly) the first time I remember being truly curious about her life. His answers surprised me. He didn’t have much to say about it. Just a few brief generalizations about how hard it was, generalizations that were really no different than what I had just seen on PBS. He didn’t seem to want to talk about it. Now, before I go any further let me be clear, I don’t know why my grandfather didn’t seem to want to talk about the dust bowl. It may be he was in the middle of something and wanted to hang up the phone, or that he didn’t want to speak too much of events he himself didn’t live through, and whose stories, told by my grandmother, have begun fading from his memory. But at that moment I believed the reason he didn’t have much to say was that, she, never had much to say. That it was a chapter in her life she would rather forget. And maybe, it was suppressed to the point that she had forgotten it, and therefore never said much about it to my grandfather. It was too painful to recall, too raw in the telling, and best left deep in the dusty corners of a faint and distant past.

Now, whether or not she ever felt that way about that part of her childhood is irrelevant for the purposes of this post, It’s included here not because it’s what she went through, but because it’s what I perceived her experience to be at the moment I hung up the phone with my Grandfather. And it led me to the next link in my chain of thoughts. And that link is this; I don’t know anything about my grandparents.

All my life I’ve seen my grandparents through the lense of a grandchild. Through that lense, they were endlessly kind, endlessly happy, and seemed to have an endless supply of candy. It was a very childish and one sided relationship, with them doing all the giving, and my greedy hand always turned up looking for more. I didn't comprehend that those smiling faces had lived through the Great Depression, or that they had known the hardships of war. I didn’t, and still don’t, know many of the joy’s and sorrows they've lived through.

There's a scene in the movie "The Fellowship of the Ring" where two of the heroes of the tale, Frodo & Sam, are traveling across country and come across a traveling body of elves. The Elves were a Godlike race, a sort of humanity perfected. They were immortal, sang beautiful songs, were themselves beautiful, and yet were skilled wariers , and most importantly, carried with them all the knowledge and history of their world. Frodo & Sam don't confront them, they stand watching the light that emanates from them and listening to the melodic songs they sing as they pass. Sam turns to Frodo and asks where they're going", Frodo replies by telling him they are leaving the Earth, never to return. Sams response is, to me, poetic. He says simply "I don't know why, but it makes me sad". My grandparents, and the generation they represent, carry with them wisdom and experience. They passed through hard times, came through them stronger, and made the world better. But one by one they, like the Elves of Tolkien's books, are leaving the Earth, and like Sam, it makes me sad. But unlike Sam, I do know why. It makes me sad because I never took the time to know them (and learn from the wisdom they carry). And It's quickly becoming too late to ask them.

This is the generation that took us from Depression, through war, into boom times, and ultimately, to the moon. They built so much of the nation I inhabit, the highways, the great public works, the buildings and institutions. So much of the world I take for granted came either from them, or from the generations before them.

I didn’t build any of this. I didn’t build the New York skyline, or the Golden Gate Bridge. I didn’t build Chicago’s Miracle Mile, New Orleans’ French Quarter, or Boston’s Harbor. I didn’t contribute in any way to the creation of the great Hollywood studios, nor to our Nations Universities, nor to our unique form of government. None of it is my own creation. This peaceful, free, creative world is an inheritance given to me by a people I now consider to be more capable, more industrious, and more wise than my own generation. I see myself, and my generation, as the unruly grandchildren of a wealthy family, incapable of maintaining the family fortune and destined to squander it all into oblivion. We don’t have, nor do we seem to even want to have, the work ethic, nor wisdom required to maintain such an inheritance. Our nations infrastructure is crumbling all around us, we’re not maintaining the manor. We never passed through the hard times they did, we were never humbled like they were, and as a consequence, we never gained the wisdom that comes with such experience.

I don’t want to squander my inheritance. I want to build on it, and improve it, I want to carry the torch of history forward in a positive way. But I am incapable of maintaining a system I don’t comprehend. And I feel like I don’t really even know what it is I’ve inherited.

I said before that I don’t know anything about my grandparents. Well, now I'll take that a step further and say that just as I see my grandparents through the narrow lense of a child, I now believe I see the world, not as it is, but through a narrow lense. I don’t know what led us to the world I inherit today. I don’t know what great thoughts, what wisdom took us from cave man, to modern man. How did we get here? What kind of people did this? What did they know? What was their character like? Or does their character even matter?

The intention of this Blog is to attempt to answer those questions. Until I understand how and why we got here, I won't know what to do to help keep us here. To keep us from decline, to keep us from losing our inheritance, and hopefully, to continue making forward progress.

The people whose wisdom and morals made the world what it is are mostly dead. They, like Tolkien's Elves, have left the Earth forever. But, unlike the Elves, many of them left the wisdom they carried with them behind. They wrote their thought down on objects that they knew would outlast them. The more valuable part of the Inheritance they’ve given us is not found in the monuments and institutions they left behind (although they’re greatly appreciated) But in the books they’ve left us. They are the “how to” manuals that will guide us through life, they are the blueprints for what we’ve inherited, and even if all we have were lost, they would tell us how to build it all back up again.

"Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations." Henry David Thoreau

Books, or rather what they contain, are our inheritance.