Life in the Empire
Far from the Madding Crowd
Inspired by a comment our Pan made on Tribe RBC
Few Victorian classics I've had the pleasure of reading come close to this one. I had heard the title before but couldn't recall the source of that. Far from the Madding Crowd ....I grabbed it and made a B-line for the cashier. I was not to be disappointed. In one way or another, each of us can see a reflection of our own lives in that of Gabriel....
Description of Farmer Oak - An Incident
WHEN Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced to chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun.
His Christian name was Gabriel, and on working days he was a young man of sound judgment, easy motions, proper dress, and general good character. On Sundays he was a man of misty views, rather given to postponing, and hampered by his best clothes and umbrella: upon the whole, one who felt himself to occupy morally that vast middle space of Laodicean neutrality which lay between the Communion people of the parish and the drunken section, -- that is, he went to church, but yawned privately by the time the con-gegation reached the Nicene creed, and thought of what there would be for dinner when he meant to be listening to the sermon. Or, to state his character as it stood in the scale of public opinion, when his friends and critics were in tantrums, he was considered rather a bad man; when they were pleased, he was rather a good man; when they were neither, he was a man whose moral colour was a kind of pepper-and-salt mixture.
Since he lived six times as many working-days as Sundays, Oak's appearance in his old clothes was most peculiarly his own -- the mental picture formed by his neighbours in imagining him being always dressed in that way. He wore a low-crowned felt hat, spread out at the base by tight jamming upon the head for security in high winds, and a coat like Dr. Johnson's; his lower extremities being encased in ordinary leather leggings and boots emphatically large, affording to each foot a roomy apartment so constructed that any wearer might stand in a river all day long and know nothing of damp -- their maker being a conscientious man who endeavoured to compensate for any weakness in his cut by unstinted dimension and solidity.
Mr. Oak carried about him, by way of watch, what may be called a small silver clock; in other words, it was a watch as to shape and intention, and a small clock as to size. This instrument being several years older than Oak's grandfather, had the peculiarity of going either too fast or not at all. The smaller of its hands, too, occasionally slipped round on the pivot, and thus, though the minutes were told with precision, nobody could be quite certain of the hour they belonged to. The stopping peculiarity of his watch Oak remedied by thumps and shakes, and he escaped any evil consequences from the other two defects by constant comparisons with and observations of the sun and stars, and by pressing his face close to the glass of his neighbours' windows, till he could discern the hour marked by the green- faced timekeepers within. It may be mentioned that Oak's fob being difficult of access, by reason of its somewhat high situation in the waistband of his trousers (which also lay at a remote height under his waistcoat), the watch was as a necessity pulled out by throwing the body to one side, compressing the mouth and face to a mere mass of ruddy flesh on account of the exertion required, and drawing up the watch by its chain, like a bucket from a well.
But some thoughtful persons, who had seen him walking across one of his fields on a certain December morning -- sunny and exceedingly mild -- might have regarded Gabriel Oak in other aspects than these. In his face one might notice that many of the hues and curves of youth had tarried on to manhood: there even remained in his remoter crannies some relics of the boy. His height and breadth would have been sufficient to make his presence imposing, had they been exhibited with due consideration. But there is a way some men have, rural and urban alike, for which the mind is more responsible than flesh and sinew: it is a way of curtailing their dimensions by their manner of showing them. And from a quiet modesty that would have become a vestal which seemed continually to impress upon him that he had no great claim on the world's room, Oak walked unassumingly and with a faintly perceptible bend, yet distinct from a bowing of the shoulders. This may be said to be a defect in an individual if he depends for his valuation more upon his appearance than upon his capacity to wear well, which Oak did not.
He had just reached the time of life at which "young" is ceasing to be the prefix of "man" in speaking of one. He was at the brightest period of masculine growth, for his intellect and his emotions were clearly separated: he had passed the time during which the influence of youth indiscriminately mingles them in the character of impulse, and he had not yet arrived at the stage wherein they become united again, in the character of prejudice, by the influence of a wife and family. In short, he was twenty-eight, and a bachelor.
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Whoever came up with the Shedworking idea ....is pretty far from the madding crowd. It's probably a very good idea to be ....that way, far from the madding crowd. By nature, and I honestly don't know how it came to be...I've always been drawn to places where I can hide and watch the madding crowd from a safe distance. I don't like crowds. Their behaviors are poison to my soul. Maybe this is why this book touched me so closely. My motto...be brave, be different and respect others who are too.
Few Victorian classics I've had the pleasure of reading come close to this one. I had heard the title before but couldn't recall the source of that. Far from the Madding Crowd ....I grabbed it and made a B-line for the cashier. I was not to be disappointed. In one way or another, each of us can see a reflection of our own lives in that of Gabriel....
Description of Farmer Oak - An Incident
WHEN Farmer Oak smiled, the corners of his mouth spread till they were within an unimportant distance of his ears, his eyes were reduced to chinks, and diverging wrinkles appeared round them, extending upon his countenance like the rays in a rudimentary sketch of the rising sun.
His Christian name was Gabriel, and on working days he was a young man of sound judgment, easy motions, proper dress, and general good character. On Sundays he was a man of misty views, rather given to postponing, and hampered by his best clothes and umbrella: upon the whole, one who felt himself to occupy morally that vast middle space of Laodicean neutrality which lay between the Communion people of the parish and the drunken section, -- that is, he went to church, but yawned privately by the time the con-gegation reached the Nicene creed, and thought of what there would be for dinner when he meant to be listening to the sermon. Or, to state his character as it stood in the scale of public opinion, when his friends and critics were in tantrums, he was considered rather a bad man; when they were pleased, he was rather a good man; when they were neither, he was a man whose moral colour was a kind of pepper-and-salt mixture.
Since he lived six times as many working-days as Sundays, Oak's appearance in his old clothes was most peculiarly his own -- the mental picture formed by his neighbours in imagining him being always dressed in that way. He wore a low-crowned felt hat, spread out at the base by tight jamming upon the head for security in high winds, and a coat like Dr. Johnson's; his lower extremities being encased in ordinary leather leggings and boots emphatically large, affording to each foot a roomy apartment so constructed that any wearer might stand in a river all day long and know nothing of damp -- their maker being a conscientious man who endeavoured to compensate for any weakness in his cut by unstinted dimension and solidity.
Mr. Oak carried about him, by way of watch, what may be called a small silver clock; in other words, it was a watch as to shape and intention, and a small clock as to size. This instrument being several years older than Oak's grandfather, had the peculiarity of going either too fast or not at all. The smaller of its hands, too, occasionally slipped round on the pivot, and thus, though the minutes were told with precision, nobody could be quite certain of the hour they belonged to. The stopping peculiarity of his watch Oak remedied by thumps and shakes, and he escaped any evil consequences from the other two defects by constant comparisons with and observations of the sun and stars, and by pressing his face close to the glass of his neighbours' windows, till he could discern the hour marked by the green- faced timekeepers within. It may be mentioned that Oak's fob being difficult of access, by reason of its somewhat high situation in the waistband of his trousers (which also lay at a remote height under his waistcoat), the watch was as a necessity pulled out by throwing the body to one side, compressing the mouth and face to a mere mass of ruddy flesh on account of the exertion required, and drawing up the watch by its chain, like a bucket from a well.
But some thoughtful persons, who had seen him walking across one of his fields on a certain December morning -- sunny and exceedingly mild -- might have regarded Gabriel Oak in other aspects than these. In his face one might notice that many of the hues and curves of youth had tarried on to manhood: there even remained in his remoter crannies some relics of the boy. His height and breadth would have been sufficient to make his presence imposing, had they been exhibited with due consideration. But there is a way some men have, rural and urban alike, for which the mind is more responsible than flesh and sinew: it is a way of curtailing their dimensions by their manner of showing them. And from a quiet modesty that would have become a vestal which seemed continually to impress upon him that he had no great claim on the world's room, Oak walked unassumingly and with a faintly perceptible bend, yet distinct from a bowing of the shoulders. This may be said to be a defect in an individual if he depends for his valuation more upon his appearance than upon his capacity to wear well, which Oak did not.
He had just reached the time of life at which "young" is ceasing to be the prefix of "man" in speaking of one. He was at the brightest period of masculine growth, for his intellect and his emotions were clearly separated: he had passed the time during which the influence of youth indiscriminately mingles them in the character of impulse, and he had not yet arrived at the stage wherein they become united again, in the character of prejudice, by the influence of a wife and family. In short, he was twenty-eight, and a bachelor.
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Whoever came up with the Shedworking idea ....is pretty far from the madding crowd. It's probably a very good idea to be ....that way, far from the madding crowd. By nature, and I honestly don't know how it came to be...I've always been drawn to places where I can hide and watch the madding crowd from a safe distance. I don't like crowds. Their behaviors are poison to my soul. Maybe this is why this book touched me so closely. My motto...be brave, be different and respect others who are too.
Views: 126
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by waldopaper on
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As Lincoln allegedly said about the Gettysburg Address, "...this speech won't scour..."
“9-11 Truth” is Irrelevant
First of all, I am a “9-11 truther,” ok? The “official story” is so obviously a load of crap, I don’t even bother “debating” it any more. I would propose this question to all the other “truthers:” let’s just suppose you could wave a magic wand and everyone in the USA no longer believes the “official story.” THEN what? Answer: THEN NOTHING. Because tight now, the larger “truth” is this: it really does not matter what you “believe,” because the larger “truth” is more fantastic, horrible, and even harder to face. Here it is:
There is no “government.” There is no “political process.” There is no “country.” The great collective that passes for the USA is merely a network of corporate fiefdoms controlled by professional looters who are turning imaginary paper into machines, food and protected territory as fast as they possibly can… because they know the approaching die-off will convert monetary feudalism to the real feudalism of fortresses, food and weapons.
Right now, if you can’t reach into your back pocket and pull out eight-figures worth of paper without breathing hard… you may as well not exist. You are fertilizer. The celebrity actors and actresses passing for “political candidates” keep the charade going either because they’re stupid enough to actually believe it or because they are being paid to stand on their mark and recite their lines on cue. Some (like Romney) participate out of vanity or hope of getting more paper to convert.
We are “human resources,” not that different from any other commodity… things of value that can be used. Right now, there is a surplus of “human capital,” and that means your life is cheap. If you do not exist to “create wealth” for the professional looters, your life is worthless. If you seriously disturb the great chain of force (which is unlikely—but possible) you must be destroyed, and plenty of your fellow serfs are more than willing to stuff you up a chimney for a wish-sandwich and a bottle of wee-wee.
What to “DO” about it? Oh yeah… we always have to “DO” something. Well, we’ve “done” enough already… because we’re so far behind the thinking part, the “doing” part is destructive. It’s like asking a Neanderthal (who is millennia away from understanding the “germ theory of disease”) about medical triage. The least we can DO is stop nattering about “Ron Paul” or “9-11 Truth,” “electing Democrats” or whatever as the magic bean that’s going to grow a stalk up to the Golden Goose and the Magic Harp.
All we have is each other, and half of us would eat the other half simply because they are hungry… and would grasp any kind of bullshit “ideology” that would excuse gnawing on Granny’s haunches to cure their tummy rumbles. Searching but not finding understanding any way…
We’re lost in this masquerade.
Lincoln probably never actually said that... and i aint comparing myself to Lincoln in at all... but far from the madding crowd, one has to wonder... what does it take to get people angry... or curious... or even involved? No doubt the crap is going to hit the fan from any number of directions... already has... and the worst-case is a freaked-out populace thinking all this came out of a clear sky with no warning whatsoever.
True, there are more voices in the blathersphere now... still not enough... not fast enough. After getting whacked off the rink for harping on "9-11" being an inside job, I should be gratified to see more voices piping up... but I'm not. That was 3-5 years ago... and too much has gone down since then. The die-off is in motion, and now it's down to feeding ourselves without the gossamer infrastructure now sputtering to a halt. It's tempting to heap a bunch of invective on the fat bully-boy bullet-headed cops who richly deserve to be shanked and kicked to the gutter... but this will accomplish nothing... in fact-- just like it did in '68-- it will convince the bullet-heads they are right in circling the wagons and heaping on even more brutality.
Lincoln's true genius still goes largely unrecognized today... far fewer words, far greater clarity... far from the madding crowd.
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Permalink Reply by pan on
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Defying Hitler
If you read ordinary history books, he says, "you get the impression that no more than a few dozen people are involved, who happen to be 'at the helm of the ship of state' and whose deeds and decisions form what is called history.
"According to this view, the history of the present decade [the 1930s] is a kind of chess game among Hitler, Mussolini, Chiang Kai-Shek, Roosevelt, Chamberlain, Daladier, and a number of other men whose names are on everybody's lips. We anonymous others seem at best to be the objects of history, pawns in the chess game, who may be pushed forward or left standing, sacrificed or captured, but whose lives, for what they are worth, take place in a totally different world, unrelated to what is happening on the chessboard.
"... It may seem a paradox, but it is nonetheless the simple truth, to say that on the contrary, the decisive historical events take place among us, the anonymous masses. The most powerful dictators, ministers, and generals are powerless against the simultaneous mass decisions taken individually and almost unconsciously by the population at large... Decisions that influence the course of history arise out of the individual experiences of thousands or millions of individuals."
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"They are under a spell. They live a drugged life in a dream world. They are terribly happy, but terribly demeaned; so self-satisfied, but so boundlessly loathsome; so proud and yet so despicable and inhuman. They think they are scaling high mountains, when in reality they are crawling through a swamp. As long as the spell lasts, there is almost no antidote."
Yes, the trend in History has generally been to overlook the "typical." However, what I see in my micro-typical world is not very good... mostly denial. The "financial" world will implode rather quickly in the 2Q.
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Permalink Reply by curt on
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"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." -- Mark Twain
The Third Wave ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave
Gruppenzwang ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_pressure
Herd Behavior ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_behaviour
Charles M. Schwab -
The hardest struggle of all is to be something different from what the average man is.
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from Chapter 2
"To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement. The sensation may be caused by the panoramic glide of the stars past earthly objects, which is perceptible in a few minutes of stillness, or by the better outlook upon space that a hill affords, or by the wind, or by the solitude; but whatever be its origin, the impression of riding along is vivid and abiding. The poetry of motion is a phrase much in use, and to enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night, and, having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass of civilised mankind, who are dreamwrapt and disregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars. After such a nocturnal reconnoitre it is hard to get back to earth, and to believe that the consciousness of such majestic speeding is derived from a tiny human frame."
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Permalink Reply by Mouse on
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Just noticing how different some things seem now that my telephone landline gives off lots of weird clicks and even echoes my voice back at me now, as though it had accumulated the sound and was spinning it back through my ears.
The acquiescence of ordinary Britons troubles civil-liberties advocates.
"It's remarkable that there is no general protest" over widespread surveillance, said Simon Davies, a director with the advocacy group Privacy International.
Many of Britain's neighbors in continental Europe consider Britain heavy-handed in its use of surveillance tools. When even the "most law-and-order mayor in France" visits Britain, "they feel like it's a horror film," said Sebastian Roche, a political scientist at the University of Grenoble in France.
underthecarpet.co.uk
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Barack Obama will be in charge of the biggest domestic and international spying operation in history. Its prime engine is the National Security Agency (NSA)—located and guarded at Fort Meade, Maryland, about 10 miles northeast of Washington, D.C. A brief glimpse of its ever-expanding capacity was provided on October 26 by The Baltimore Sun's national security correspondent, David Wood: "The NSA's colossal Cray supercomputer, code-named the 'Black Widow,' scans millions of domestic and international phone calls and e-mails every hour. . . . The Black Widow, performing hundreds of trillions of calculations per second, searches through and reassembles key words and patterns, across many languages."
In July, George W. Bush signed into law the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which gives the NSA even more power to look for patterns that suggest terrorism links in Americans' telephone and Internet communications. The ACLU immediately filed a lawsuit on free speech and privacy grounds. The new Bush law provides farcical judicial supervision over the NSA and other government trackers and databasers. Although Senator Barack Obama voted for this law, dig this from the ACLU: "The government [is now permitted] to conduct intrusive surveillance without ever telling a court who it intends to spy on, what phone lines and e-mail addresses it intends to monitor, where its surveillance targets are located, why it's conducting the surveillance or whether it suspects any party to the communication of wrongdoing." This gives the word "dragnet" an especially chilling new meaning. The ACLU's Jameel Jaffer, director of its National Security Project, adds that the new statute, warming the cold hearts of the NSA, "implicates all kinds of communications that have nothing to do with terrorism or criminal activity of any kind." Why did Obama vote for this eye-that-never-blinks? He's a bright, informed guy, but he wasn't yet the President-Elect. The cool pragmatist wanted to indicate he wasn't radically unmindful of national security—and that his previous vow to filibuster such a bill may have been a lapse in judgment. It was. What particularly outraged civil libertarians across the political divide was that the FISA Amendments Act gave immunity to the telecommunications corporations—which, for seven years, have been a vital part of the Bush administration's secret wiretapping program—thereby dismissing the many court cases brought by citizens suing those companies for violating their individual constitutional liberties. This gives AT&T, Verizon, and the rest a hearty signal to go on pimping for the government. That's OK with the Obama administration? Please tell us, Mr. President.
daily.pk
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"Let it be said..... that we carried forward that great gift of Freedom, and delivered it safely to future generations."
That sums it up for me pretty well, in floods of tears for a while there.
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Permalink Reply by hannah j on
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http://www.aclu.org/freespeech/gen/40848prs20090826.html?s_src=RSS
NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit today demanding records about the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)'s policy of searching travelers' laptops without suspicion of wrongdoing. The lawsuit was filed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to learn how CBP's policy, issued last year, has impacted the civil liberties of travelers during the first year of its implementation.
"Traveling with a laptop shouldn't mean the government gets a free pass to rifle through your personal papers," said Catherine Crump, staff attorney with the ACLU First Amendment Working Group. "This sort of broad and invasive search is exactly what the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable searches are designed to prevent."
In its policy, CBP asserts it is free to read the information on travelers' laptops "absent individualized suspicion." CBP claims the right to search all files saved on laptops, including personal financial information, family photographs and lists of Web sites travelers have visited, without having reason to believe a traveler has broken the law. Additionally, CBP's policy extends to suspicionless searches of "documents, books, pamphlets and other printed material, as well as computers, disks, hard drives and other electronic or digital storage devices." The policy covers all persons, whether or not they are U.S. citizens, crossing the border
more at link
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Trying to take Uncle Bill's advice to heart - especially the bit about avoiding vampires.
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Permalink Reply by BO on
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Is vampire a euphemism for hypocrite? Seems that the symbology works.
"Hypocrisy is the act of pretending to have beliefs, opinions, virtues, feelings, qualities, or standards that one does not actually have. Hypocrisy is thus a kind of lie. Hypocrisy may come from a desire to hide from others actual motives or feelings."
Beware those who would seduce you in the name of virtue. Guess that's why virgins (the supremely pure of soul) are their primary targets.
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Permalink Reply by Mark on
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So the idea is to only listen to those who would seduce you in the name of vice?
When a junkie talks about vampires, there's no reason to reach for symbology.
One thing I learned when I was homeless was to stay away from people who lived on an allowance from mommy and daddy, and who never seemed to go to jail no matter how many crimes they did. Because people like that were always looking for patsies, people without any money, who could take the fall for them.
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Don't know if Burroughs ever proclaimed that his life was a model for others to follow. That would be a bit hypocritical wouldn't it?
Now, give me your typical [self righteous] religious type, and I'll show you what hypocrisy really looks like. Personally, I'd rather deal with a junky. Sure, they'll both rob you if you're unwary, but at least with the junky, you'll know why.
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