I did a bit of time-traveling last week: I left New Zealand an hour after I arrived in Portland, and stilly managed to get eight hours of sleep in there. KC came to the airport to greet me, and I stayed up talking with her and Ben before sleeping for the first night in my new dorm room.

And oh what a beautiful room it is! The third floor of ‘Ullivan is full of light and windows, and the vaulted ceilings turn living in a box to living in a house. I also raised my bed all the way up to make a fort underneath. Hurrah!

The weekend was busy, going to the airport twice to pick up friends, shopping for books, supplies and foodstuffs, and catching up with dormies, old and new alike. I needn’t have been afraid that everything would be horribly different; most of what has changed is good, and most of what was good has stayed. And the freshman aren’t scary at all — they remind me of Peaches, Jacob, Jessica, Kara and me last year. Of course, we already have a tight-knit group of friends on the floor, but there’s always room to grow.

Classes are good, especially Anthropology with Makley. The first day stimulated neurons that had been lying dormant since high school Humanities. I found ideas and questions flowing into the margins of my notes! The concepts are connecting to those of Steve’s linguistics classes, Discourse from last year and Prosody (which Steve has apparently been obsessing over all summer) this year. At last, my academic brain chocolate, you are mine!

Speaking of happiness… There is a long story I would like to tell sometime, now that it’s finally found a beginning: Once upon a time, there were two ninjas who thought they were very good at being sneaky, but in the end they only fooled each other. Suffice to say that the ninjas have retired now, and though I do not know the ending, they will live for now as if it were “happily ever after.”

(Which is, after all, the best way to live.)

Que sera sera.

…

New favorite word: memeplex.

New favorite book that I haven’t read yet: Giraffes? Giraffes!

My blog is now over a year old. It seems hard to believe, but time’s passage is revealed in many things: I’m helping my brother prepare his college applications; next year he will be a senior. Next week I return to Reed, and it’s strange to think that I knew none of my dormies 365 days ago. I have never been away from a home for so long, yet it has been even longer since I was on Bainbridge. Things change fast, but I feel them slowly.

My first website was created back in 1998, Moonlite’s Web Nest. That was where I posted add-ons I made for a little artificial life game called Creatures. I’ve never quite abandoned the game or its sequels, and neither has the Creatures community, even after 10 years. Now Max is learning CAOS (the game’s scripting language), I’m learning Blender, and we have a brand new website to show off our stuff!

Tuesday was my mom’s birthday. When she woke up and came downstairs, she found date scones, streamers, and sitting on her computer desktop… Moof! He’s only my third 3D model (the first with armatures), but I think he turned out perfectly. I was going for moose-type thing, but I love KC’s reaction: “It’s like a ram and a teddy bear made love. And had a sweet little baby boy.” Stay tuned for a wide range of moof merchandise.

Some things never change. I wonder how Reed will be different when I get back. New people, new classes; will it really all feel new? Do I want it all to stay the same? Jessica reminded me of the frustration I felt last year. I wonder if my restlessness has truly gone away… Snakes on bloody plane, mate.

Let your self fade away
and the light inside joins the sun
and shines out like a beacon;

Innocence is gained, not lost.
Cry.
The waters of blood are moving;

The dirty become more clean
and become transparent in the washing
and the blood moves into the forest.

When religion and science meet,
the world gets turned inside out and
I want to move to New Zealand where
I am a child and
God is an electron.

He looked at us
Almost taunting
Took his head back
And laughed.
It roared through the hills
And canyons
Changing the water into ice.
We fled
Our hearts full of fear

For ourselves.

He chased us
Through the villages
We were pins
And he simply crushed
the haystacks.

The colors in the sky
Were green
Horrible
At some point one of us

(I’m not sure which one)

Stopped running.
He looked at him
And took his head back
And laughed.
It melted the sky
and hills
and canyons.
But we still fled
Minds filled with hate.

Our hearts full of fear.

Rain bullets
Shooting down to stone
Tearing the blossoms
Ripping off the petals.
They fall,
Weighted,
No longer dancing to spring.

The edges of his feathered crown
Were worn
As he road into battle
On a spotted horse.
His men yelled
And were excited by thoughts of war
And glory.

War it was.
Glory it was not.
And his feathered crown lay bloody on the grass.

Although Boccaccio’s “Ser Ciappelletto” portrays a man who sins up until his dying breath, it is also an early Renaissance Humanist commentary on life. As Ser Ciappelletto blasphemes the Church by lying to one of its holiest friars, Boccaccio is also making a critique of the Church’s validity. When Ciappelletto dies, he has convinced the friar of his completely (and falsely) sinless nature and attains sainthood on earth. Yet his ultimate fate is unknown. Boccaccio intentionally left Heavenly judgment out to make a point: what matters is the here and now because God and the afterlife are beyond human comprehension.

Boccaccio paints Ser Ciappelletto as a rather amusing fellow who torments the Church, the government, and his fellow Italians. Yet he does this all to amuse himself, not because he is inherently evil. “He would have been greatly embarrassed if one of his legal deeds… were found to be anything other than manifestly false; he would have drawn up as many false documents as were requested of him without any fee, and done it more willingly than one who was paid enormous amounts of money.” His final act in life is to lie the holy friar, convincing the man of God of his purity and piety. Ciappelletto lives a lier and a thief, and dies a Christian and a saint. Obviously the Church is no better judge of this man than anyone else.

In his final act of deception, Ser Ciappelletto solves the dilemma of his caretakers and creates a persona who will inspire people for years to come. Although the fate of his immortal soul is unknown, the legacy he leaves behind in life is the focus of his story. His present relationship with God is what matters, not what happens after his death. A real confession of Ciappelletto’s sins would just condemn him further, and also cause problems for the two brothers and the friar. But as Ciappelletto himself posed the solution, “I have, while alive, done so many injuries to our good Lord, that to do Him one last injury at my death won’t really matter.” His life is the method by which he defines his relationship with God. What happens after our time is unknown, and so it should not be our focus in living.

In life, Ser Ciappelletto sinned; in death, he becomes a saint. Yet just as his sainthood is purely an earthly construct, so too is the entire Church according to Boccaccio. The holy friar does not have any divine powers to discern Ser Ciappelletto’s true nature, and thus is able to be tricked into giving him the highest praise. This goes to show that the Church is fallible - it has no special ability to understand God, and therefore the nature of God is unknown. The only thing a person can be sure of is his lifetime on earth. In one short tale, Boccaccio redefines the human relationship with the Church and the afterlife in a purely Humanist perspective.

One murder is more human than a hundred deadly tsunamis, earthquakes, and eruptions. We find human nature in the individual, not the collective. Rousseau presents the idea of “total alienation of each associate… to the whole community.” These noble words pose an elegant solution to the problem of human society. If only, Rousseau proposes, each person was utterly selfless, the Social Contract would construct a stable and constructive society that would benefit all its citizen components. But human beings are not components, and nor are they selfless. If men were angels, you wouldn’t need government in the first place - society would be a natural utopia. Rashomon shows us a very different picture of our nature, at once more disturbing and more human. It presents humanity without apologies; people who are deeply selfish. It is the human mind that perceives a greater or more evil intent in even our own actions. Yet behind this facade of egotism lies the human heart, the source of love and compassion which may sometimes shine through. Rousseau rests all his arguments on this small jewel of human nature, while Rashomon demonstrates how rare and precious it really is.

There are four stories in Rashomon. The fourth is presumed to be the truth, but the other versions tell the same story - except that each person telling it is presented as the murderer. The bandit, Tajomaru, kills the husband, Takehiro, after challenging him to an honorable duel; the wife, Masako, kills her husband while deliriously begging him to stop looking at with disgust; Takehiro himself commits honorable suicide after having been betrayed by his own wife. Why would they blame themselves? They speak the truth as they see it. None of them believe they are innocent, and so confess their guilt. Yet their versions distort the actual events to place themselves at the center. They each play the tragic hero, led by events beyond their control to a point of no return - led to do the only honorable thing left to do. Kill Takehiro. The reality is that all of their selfish decisions culminate in Takehiro’s death. None of them are honorable; not one stands against Takehiro’s greed, Tajomaru’s lust, or Masako’s hatred. They are all so weak and so selfish that they delude even themselves into believing their angst.

The drives of the characters are not animal emotions, but a deep-seated self-centeredness arising from our own self-consciousness. We are more aware of ourselves than anything else, and so we are the center of our own world. Descartes brought this concept, “I think therefore I am,” into such sharp focus that the West has hardly been able to get beyond it for hundreds of years. Rousseau, at the forefront of Enlightenment thinking, sought to displace this self-centeredness and turn it into “group-centeredness.” But this idea, although it would make for a great society, would reduce us to the state of ants - a hive mind with no individual thought. And that is what makes us human. What makes being human any good at all? It is our ability to ultimately rise above this egocentric thought process. Without abdicating the self, we can embrace others. We can understand others as ourselves, drawing them inward - not giving up the self as Rousseau proposes, but expanding it. Walking away from Rashomon, we see the honest smile of the woodcutter taking home the abandoned baby. This is the rare strength of human nature that makes life powerful even in the midst of selfishness.

The Civil War

The Civil War was fought over the ideology of America. Two distinct cultures arose in the Antebellum, one in the North and one in the South. Northerners turned the idea of American independence into individual independence. Writers and artists trying to find a style unique to their country developed Transcendentalism, a philosophy that believed in the absolute authority of the Self. This led to a conflict with the South, which believed it acceptable to own slaves. Southerners had gone from tobacco farmers hoping to make a quick fortune to America’s equivalent of landed aristocrats. They wanted to revive the old ideas of Europe, and built a social structure that emphasized family and society. Unfortunately, the wealth of this upper class was earned by black slaves. Because of its questionable morality, southern slave-owners avoided the issue until northerners pressured them to abolish it. They had to defend themselves from the invading ideology, while northerners had to confront the institution that violated their beliefs. The conflict over slavery revealed the underlying problem of having two very different systems in one country. America could not have two identities. In its adolescence, the Civil War, Americans would fight and die to decide which role their country would play: old aristocracy, or land of independence.

Northern ideology comes from Transcendentalism, a refinement of the ideas that forged America. The first Europeans that came to America sought independence from their mother country, and in the Antebellum, northerners were seeking independence from European culture, as well. The philosophy that arose from this venture, Transcendentalism, put the individual above all authority. “No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.” (Emerson) Transcendental writers, like Emerson and Thoreau, believed that society was bad for the individual, that “our life is frittered away by detail.” (Thoreau) This belief in the Self inspired people to see the wrongs of slavery, many calling for its immediate end in the South. “But is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice,” said Garrison. (Brinkley 336) He was surely inspired by Emerson’s words, “I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways.” (Emerson) The ideals of individualism that inspired the American Revolution also fueled the maturation of those ideas, as manifested in Transcendentalism. Northern ideology called for the breaking of tradition, and the independence from society and slavery.

The South, on the other hand, idolized the image of aristocracy. They sought to create an upper class like that in Europe, “true aristocracies, long entrenched.” (Brinkley 301) They felt the most important things were society and family. This class of rich nobles originated from the early colonial farmers, who had built small plantations in the hopes of getting rich on tobacco. (Alsop) The dreams of wealth had been achieved by some, enough to establish a stable hierarchy headed by wealthy southern plantation owners and their families. However, instead of peasants working the fields, slaved provided most of the labor. Southerners avoided the issue because slaves were the basis for the rest of their lifestyle. They wanted to return to the days of chivalry and high society, but the cost was in human freedom.

Northern ideology would not accept slavery, and northerners wanted to put an end to it in the South. Slavery violated the ideals of independence northerners believed in. “Like other reformers, … [Transcendentalists] were calling for an unleashing of the individual human spirit…” (Brinkley 336) This meant freeing the slaves, and the complete abolition of the institution. “Abolitionist writings had been antagonizing white southerners for years,” (370) but writing was not enough to convince them of the evils of slavery and the need for emancipation. John Brown rallied black slaves and white supporters, killing white southerners in the Harpers Ferry raid. (Loewen 173) He was caught and hanged. “Remember Shields Green and Copeland, who followed noble John Brown, and fell as glorious martyrs for the cause of the slave.” (Douglass) Northerners believed in independence, and pressured the South to bend to its moral authority and abolish slavery.

The South, however, resisted all northern threats and defended slavery. At first southerners “harbored reservations about slavery. But by the mid-1830’s, a militant defense of the system was beginning to replace this ambivalence.” (Brinkley 370) Slave-owners were forced to deal with the issue of slavery on a moral basis instead of avoiding it. Under pressure, their arguments were hypocritical. They “secretly feared that their slaves might revolt, even as they assured abolitionists that slaves really liked slavery.” (Loewen 189) In their defensiveness, they put up a flawed argument, poorly defending slavery when they actually wanted to defend aristocracy. The important thing to them was the lifestyle slavery provided, not slavery itself, but southerners believed “that an assault on one hierarchical system (slavery) would open the way to an assault on another such system (the family).” (Brinkley 305) They defended their culture from pressure from the North by defending an institution which they hoped would also preserve their ideology.

The Civil War began when the South realized that their system was too different from the North’s for there to be a compromise. Slavery became the breaking point between the poles of America, the one point where the two ideologies could not avoid each other. Their Civil War was fought over the identity America was to have, for if it did not happen, the country would have two separate ideologies guiding its behavior. This crisis of ego-identity versus role-confusion identifies it as America’s adolescence in Erickson’s theory of self development. The Civil War was not a conflict over slavery, but over the role of the country. Slavery was the issue that had to be resolved in order to determine America’s ideology, where before there had been two distinct ideologies. The North, with Transcendentalism, wanted individualism and freedom from all society and law. The South hoped to revive chivalry and high society, building an aristocracy of elite planters ruling over the lesser classes. Authority of the individual versus the authority of the hierarchy. Unity between the North and the South broke down as their ideologies matured and they became more willing to fight for those ideals. The realization of those differences, in the form of conflict over slavery, led to the Civil War. It was fought over which identity America would have: northern Transcendentalism or southern aristocracy.

Works Cited

• Alsop, George. Tobacco and Trade in Maryland. 1666.

• Alan. The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American People. Boston, Massachusetts: McGraw-Hill, 1993.

• Douglass, Frederick. Men of Color, To Arms! 21 March 1863.

• Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “A Nonconformist.” Self-Reliance. 1841.

• Loewen, James. Lies My Teacher Told Me. New York: Touchstone, 1995.

• Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. 1854.