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Sunday, February 13, 2011

Happy Valentine's Day

The rose is red, the violet's blue
The honey's sweet, and so are you
Thou are my love and I am thine
I drew thee to my Valentine
The lot was cast and then I drew
And Fortune said it shou'd be you
                                -The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951)

Jenny Lewis plays ‘You are What you Love’ on my iPhone as I read the history of St. Valentine’s Day, as best it can be pieced together by the mishmash of authors on Wikpedia.com.  The holiday has a history that reaches back farther than any recorded evidence thereof, and has roots as far back as the 3rd century AD, when saints by the name of Valentine (of which there were many) were martyred for political reasons. The legend that makes the most sense as the root of the holiday involves Emperor Claudius II of Rome (who shares a birthday with my nephew Manuel). Claudius II personally executed a Valentine, purportedly for marrying young military men when Claudius had decreed that all soldiers were to be single, to keep the distractions from war to a minimum. Valentine supposedly married them to their sweethearts nevertheless. Of course, these stories originate with Chaucer in the 14th century, and are not terribly reliable.
Whatever the actual history, Valentines have been exchanged for centuries, since the holiday was made popular in 469 AD, even though it was removed from the church calendar in 1969. In Elementary School, it is now compulsory, requiring the children to be fair to one another, one valentine to each child from each child, and the main reason to look forward to it is the candy involved, as an Elementary School holiday. There is no palpitation of the heart when opening the bag of Valentines to see who truly loves you, or comparison of those received slips of Hallmark wonder to determine whose popularity is greatest. Once again, our children are protected from the real world in a democratic, self-esteem building farce.
When I was a child, there was pride in the number of Valentines, just as there were crushed spirits to accompany the empty bag for those least popular children. It was painful and cruel just as much as it was endearing and beautiful. As an adult, I am well used to the crushing side of Valentine’s Day, though I am personally invested in a fantastic relationship. For some of us, the history of crushing pain and loneliness is attached to the day forever. I do find it interesting that a holiday that has made itself a celebration of intimate relationship can have such power to depress people. Everywhere I see and hear people in revolt, rebelling against what has become the silliest holiday in Hallmark’s calendar, as if there is an invisible hand sticking a middle finger in peoples’ faces by its very existence.
I wish for all of you a happy Valentine’s Day, free from the inherent loneliness and the history of anguish implied. I myself intend to celebrate with my husband with dinner and a movie, much like any other date night throughout the year. My celebration is more based on the fact that it is the anniversary of the day Adam proposed to me. He is and will always be my martyred saint.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

The Problem of Evil



Evil is a concept that was not introduced to humanity for most of our development, but came out in response to the dark ages in c. 1300-1200 BCE, when many of the world cultures had to start from scratch due widespread destruction. There are scholars who attribute this destruction to the “sea peoples”, though no one really knows what that means. Whatever the causes, Israel, India, China, the Middle East, and Greece had to fight tooth and nail to survive the pressures and come out the other side.
Having done so, they all developed some sort of moral direction in spite of the immoral or amoral gods of their pasts. Danger and pain became something that all of them incorporated into their world views. In Greece, the Myceneans had enjoyed what appears to have been a peaceful and joyous existence (though some have posited a dreadful element of human sacrifice behind the smiling goddesses displayed in the frescos), and were brought down by the forces of evil, leaving the tribes to loosely assemble into the poleis of the 5th century. In response to this, the culture of the emerging Greeks was tempered by expectations of evil.
Instead of falling into the trap of the Myceneans, and finding that their peaceful existence can be wiped out by surprise at any moment, the tragedies and myths of the Greek peoples tended toward the macabre and intensely emotional. As I have mentioned before, this tendency worked to tie the people together in catharsis, sharing the experiences of fear and pain that would make them into a tighter unit and explain the need for community and government. The other side of it is the basic problem of evil that plagues the religious communities all over the world to this day. The Greeks came to the conclusion that there could be no peace or prosperity, no happiness without the converse agony.
As Americans, we seem to have forgotten this, whether it be truth or not. Whether we like it or not, we were founded on the ideals of the Greek city-state, but did not import the communion aspects of tragedy. We see evil on television- watching the crime dramas and housewives of some state or another, but without the connection to the drama, we are still spoiled. With all the money and time we have, most of us have no experience of personal tragedy at all. How far are we from a world where every evil and pain has been erased by the technologies of the future? And, once it happens, will any of us have a clue what happiness really is?
Perhaps we will squabble over the little things in life rather than appreciating the broader scheme. Perhaps we will find that there is less connection between us than there has ever been before, as our experiences of pain tie us into a cohesive whole.
I certainly don’t know, and the problem of evil continues…