The Persian arrangement

 Herodotus didn’t think that individuals, by nature, are evil. It’s the social arrangements — the bargains we make to live in groups — that are wrong.

Herodotus marveled at the Persians and their magnificent empire. But he could not imagine living as a subject, rather than as a citizen. The Persian arrangement seemed to Herodotus to be unnatural. Humans naturally need freedom to do the things that make each individual human. Without that freedom to develop, an individual isn’t fully human.

It follows that each person should be free to have a say in the governing of collective life. You can’t surrender your say to a tyrant and be healthy, whole, human.

Many readers of The Histories have come to that idea. But Ryszard Kapuściński focused that thought beautifully in his Travels with Herodotus. Kapuściński has a digression on why people surrender that part of their nature and follow dictators. He calls the people most susceptible the “superfluous people,” people who have been left behind, without place, position or purpose.

 

All dictatorships take advantage of this idle magma. They don’t even need to maintain an expensive army of full-time policemen. It suffices to reach out to these people searching for some significance in life. Give them the sense that they can be of use, that someone is counting on them for something, that they have been noticed, that they have a purpose.

 

The benefits of this relationship are mutual. The man of the street, serving the dictatorship, starts to feel at one with the authorities, to feel important and meaningful … The dictatorial powers, meantime, have in him an inexpensive — free actually — yet zealous and omnipresent agent-tentacle. Sometimes it is difficult even to call this man an agent; he is merely someone who wants to be recognized, who strives to be visible, seeking to remind the authorities of his existence, who remains always eager to render a service.

 

Kapuściński was thinking of Europe — of the rise of fascism and of the brand of communism that prevailed in the Soviet bloc — rather than of the United States.

The passage might remind you of Eric Hoffer. He called these folks true believers.

• Source: Ryszard Kapuściński, Travels with Herodotus; New York: Vintage International, 2007, pp. 112-3.

Farmers and politics

 When a friend asked about politics and the prospects of Democrats in Georgia, I thought of Jimmy Carter.

Until about 1990, people in rural and urban areas tended to vote alike. Since then, rural areas have voted increasingly Republican. Urban areas have voted increasingly Democratic.

My county is heavily Democratic. But it’s been a while since most people in rural counties thought that the Democratic Party had ideas that were good for them.

That’s sad and ironic. Democrats do have some ideas about how to relieve the suffering of farming communities. Just ending the war would help with the prices of fuel and fertilizer.

I think rural folks would be willing to listen to some new ideas. But when the messages are delivered by … well, pick your favorite Democrats and compare them to Carter. Carter had a kind of credibly among rural voters because he was a farmer. Even people who doubted his politics would give him the benefit of the doubt and listen.

The role Carter played in his community was genuine, rather than theatrical. When he was 95, he was still teaching Sunday school in Plains. People would come from all over to go to Sunday school, even if they weren’t religious, much less Baptist. The newspapers said that about 10 people showed up for the adult Sunday school class — unless Carter was teaching. Then the crowd would jump to 500. People arrived at the church early and tailgated in the parking lot, just to get a seat.

The idea of people tailgating for Sunday school is jarring — especially when you consider that Carter’s politics were unpopular in rural Georgia.

I’m not arguing for going back in time or glorifying old ways. I just wish the Democratic Party could find some candidates who speak rural.

Beardtongues

 When the forest canopy fills in, the ephemeral wildflowers of early spring disappear. The woods around Panola Mountain seemed almost bloomless. But we found some beardtongues in the deep shade.

Genus Penstemon is the largest genus of flowering plants native to North America and found only here. I don’t know which of the 280 or so species I was looking at. The scientific name suggests that penstemons have almost five stamens — two pairs of fertile ones and a sterile or rudimentary one, which the biologists call a staminode. The common name beardtongue comes from the long, hairy staminode.

Some penstemons are pollinated by hummingbirds, while others are pollinated by bees. Folk wisdom has it that those adapted to hummingbirds usually have red flowers, while those adapted to bees have blue or purple flowers. The beardtongues we saw were blue, but the color was almost gone. They reminded me of old china: delicate, fine, fading.

Real pleasure

 Athenaeus wrote an epigram praising Epicurus. The heart of it goes like this: 

The scope of nature’s wealth is modest.

But empty judgments have no scope, no limits.

 

Hedonism — the idea that pleasure is a guide to goodness — was controversial in ancient Athens. But I think it’s almost incomprehensible today. The pleasures Epicurus claimed as ethical guides were natural pleasures, rather than human inventions.

It seems to me that if Epicurus could be with us today, he’d urge us to take a walk in the fresh air and forget about our own devices for a while.

• Source: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers; translated by R.D. Hicks; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991, Vol. II, p. 540. I’ve departed from Hicks’s translation.

Divisions and borders

 People forget that Gen. Ignacio Zaragoza, the hero of Cinco de Mayo, was born in Texas.

Zaragoza’s birthplace still stands in Goliad. He was born in 1829 and was 6 when the Texas Revolution erupted. His father, a sergeant in the Mexican Army, was loyal to the government. His mother was a Seguín, one of the families that led the revolution.

People who love and respect each other can end up on different sides of arguments. That seems to happen often along borders.

Texas, for all its silly politics, is a borderland. I can’t imagine having lived my life without knowing and loving people on both sides. I think governments that seek to sever those natural human ties will fail — and deserve to.

• Note: For more on the Battle of Puebla, see “Celebrating Cinco de Mayo,” May 5, 2023. It’s here:

https://hebertaylor.blogspot.com/2023/05/celebrating-cinco-de-mayo.html

A sign, not a poll

 In the South, “Trump” is not so much a person as a social movement, a kind of populism that sweeps the region every 30 years or so. For the past few years, in rural areas from Georgia to Texas, we’ve seen Trump symbols displayed at homesteads permanently. As symbols go, these were more like flags than election signs.

On this last trip, all those signs were gone. We didn’t see one.

Stepping out v. staying put

 The trip to Tennessee has me thinking about travel. I had gotten to the point where I wanted to stay put. But that little trip unsettled the notion of being settled. I found myself learning things I hadn’t expected to learn.

Part of this is learning from the Wise Woman and learning about her. We are opposites in some ways. I dislike complicated technology. I master a few reliable tools and pass on everything else. The Wise Woman has never seen a gadget she didn’t want to try.

Before I met her, I used to backpack in the wildernesses of Texas. I traveled light. Instead of lugging a tent, I usually carried a ground tarp. I slept under the stars but could rig a shelter if a storm blew in. Many Texas hikers always carry a lot of water. I eventually found so many springs I could get by with a water bottle.

When I met the Wise Woman, I took her to see the wonders. I carried a tent. I cooked what I thought were elegant meals. I brought bug spray. She was not impressed.

Later, we did some truck camping. A bigger tent and all kinds of gadgets went into the bed of the truck. I would complain when I couldn’t find essential tools, such as a flashlight, buried among things that you might use, such as a cat stroller.

Different people travel in different ways. In some ways, I’ve changed. As a young man, I dashed across parts of Europe and Mexico. I ran from one site to another. If I went to a museum, I would try to see it all. My old friend Melvyn, by contrast, would sometimes sit in front of one painting all morning. Perhaps I am becoming more like that.

I’m beginning to think that if the Wise Woman and I parked a camper in a state park for a few days, I’d be content to hike a little and catch up on some paperback books.