Trying to be Perfect

  Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. –Matthew 5:48

Recently I came across small blue paperback with a line drawing of Benjamin Franklin on the cover that I must have purchased 70 or more years ago. The glue in the binding had almost deteriorated, and as I turned its pages they detached. It reminded me of a youthful obsession I suffered from: improving myself by reading self-help books that told me how I could be a better person.

 Franklin’s Autobiography  isn’t exactly a self-help book, but my teenage self, I recall, used it as one, after I read, and re-read chapter 9, his “Plan for Attaining Moral Perfection.” Franklin wrote:

I wish'd to live without committing any fault at any time; I would conquer all that either natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into. As I knew, or thought I knew, what was right and wrong, I did not see why I might not always do the one and avoid the other.

Franklin had made a list of 13 virtues he would work on: Temperance, Silence, Order, Resolution, Frugality, Industry, Sincerity, Justice, Moderation, Cleanliness, Tranquility, Chastity, and Humility.  He worked each week on one virtue, which meant he could focus on each of the 13 four times a year. The Franklin biographer Walter Isaacson suggests there are “hints of irony and self-deprecation” in his recollection, written at age 79. However Isaacson thinks that Franklin had been very sincere when he began his moral perfection project at age 27.

 As a sincere young person I tried to work on my virtues, using Franklin’s list. Each virtue had a short explanation. Temperance was “Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.”; Silence was “Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.” The virtue I didn’t quite understand was “Rarely use venery but for Health or Offspring; Never to Dulness, Weakness, or the Injury of your own or another's Peace or Reputation.” I wasn’t quite sure what venery was; sometime later I realized Franklin was talking about sex. I tried Frankin’s scheme a few months, perhaps as long as Franklin had.

 There had been earlier ventures into perfection by way of self-help. Perhaps the first was as Boy Scout. I memorized and took very seriously the Scout law: a Scout is Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, Reverent. The Scout Oath spoke of keeping oneself  “Physically Strong, Mentally Awake, and Morally Straight.” I poured over the  Handbook for Boys, the American Scout manual, which, among many topics like camp craft and merit badge requirements, explained the law and oath. For instance, being Clean wasn’t just about taking baths. It read:

 Fellows who hang around street corners or waste their time in other ways are the ones generally who have time for dirty stories and thoughts. The fellow who keeps busy with worthwhile things, who is thrifty with his time and his energies, is also clean in his thoughts and actions. “Rules of Scouting,” page 38 of Hanbook for Boys

My attempts at perfection also came from religion, responding directly to that verse in the Gospel of Matthew. My mother, an artist, had an illustrated book of the Ten Commandments. The pictures were fairly abstract but recognizable. Many were fairly abstract, but I tried not to take the Lord’s name in vain; “Hell!”, was a curse word. I honored my parents, and I knew I shouldn’t steal or lie. I wasn’t quite sure about coveting maidservants and adultery was a puzzle.

 But the bible wasn’t as much use in my quest as was Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking. It had religious stuff, for sure, but also what I felt was practical advice. He wrote:

 “The way to happiness: Keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry. Live simply, expect little, give much. Scatter sunshine, forget self, think of others. Try this for a week and you will be surprised.”

“Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.”

And so on. I had a copy of The Power of Positive Thinking bound in faux red leather, which my mother must have purchased for me. I later got Peale’s workbook. Good stuff – no wonder my 12-year-old self was a Norman Vincent Peale fan, as was (and I think still is) Donald Trump. I could add other books my young self poured over, like Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.  But you get the drift. Over time, my addiction to self-help dwindled, thank goodness, and now I recognize the selfishness in self-help.

 Eventually I came to realize that moral perfection was a pretty hard task. They may have helped get me though loneliness in childhood and adolescence. Being a good friend to others in real life no doubt helped more – even with fellows who hang around street corners. The drive for perfection is not as strong as it was in youth, though my wife still thinks I’m a bit of a perfectionist. The appeal of self-help books, too, has greatly lessoned, and when I read a magazine article or book that offers “simple steps” to improve some aspect of oneself, I resist. Life isn’t simple enough, and perfection isn’t possible.  

 Nationalisms

I do find it awkward holding dual Canadian and American citizenship in this time of tension between these two great countries. I feel like a mugwump.

 What is a mugwump you ask? originally an Algonquian word, the exact definion of which is unknown, it meant something like “war leader,” “important person,” or “one who thinks himself important.”

 Canadians and Americans have taken the term for their own uses. In Canada, it’s the name of a monster that lives in Lake Temiscamingue, which is a swelling of the Ottawa River between Ontario and Quebec. For Americans “mugwumps” was the name a New York newspaper gave to reformist Republicans who refused to support the nominated Republican candidate in the 1884 U.S. presidential election. The mugwumps considered James G. Blaine corrupt and supported Glover Cleveland. Today we call Republicans who fail to support President Donald Trump “moderate Republicans,” though I suppose we could call them mugwumps.

 My American father, Charlie Adams, though whom I inherited American citizenship, had his own definition. A mugwump is a person, or a bird, who perches precariously on a thin rail fence, his mug on one side, his wump on the other. I don’t know where my dad got that definition, but he thought it very funny.

 My father had deep American roots, according to a genealogy book his family held, His line of Adamses went back to a Puritan Adams, Henry, in 1634 in Massachusetts. Ancestors fought in the Civil War on the Union side, and, though his mother, on the Confederate. Dad wasn’t especially nationalistic, but he was definitely American, and served in the U.S. Navy as an officer during the Second World War.

 Peggy Neale, my mother, other on the other hand was proudly Canadian, born in Montreal six years after her father, my grandfather, immigrated to Canada. His career was working for that very Canadian corporation, the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, in their hotels division. Since we lived in the States, each January mother had to renew her “Alien Registration Card.” To my knowledge, she never became an American.  Because father was on an assignment in the Navy, my mother went home to Canada to give birth to her first child, me. I am Canadian by birthright. I grew up in the States – Florida, New Hampshire, and Texas, went to college and university in Massachusetts and Wisconsin, but after finishing studies returned to Canada in my twenties, and have lived in Vancouver for 57 years.

A very early memory is hearing a bugle play at a patriotic ceremony which must have been in 1945 at the end of World War II, after victory in Europe but before the Japanese surrendered, and my father could come home the South Pacific. As a school child with my hand over my heart, I recited the pledge of allegiance “to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation with liberty and justice for all.” In 1954, the U.S. Congress and President Eisenhower added to one nation the words “under God,” so my 12-year-old self complied.

 And there are a lot of things that the U.S. has done that I’m proud of. Playing a major role in the defeat the fascism in Europe, the Marshall Plan that followed, helping create and hosting the United Nations, containing Stalin’s and other Soviet leaders’ expansionism during the Cold War, generally supporting decolonization in Africa and elsewhere, ending legal segregation and the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, raising living standards for many Americans – certainly not all – up to the 1980s. I love so many American authors, poets, and other artists. Many national parks are gems.

 On the other hand, the United States has made many mistakes, foreign and domestic: Vietnam and far too many wars afterwards, and allowing inequalities to grow and fester, leading to its current government which seems to want to destroy almost everything I hold great about America. And Americans elected the current president – twice. Fool me once, and it’s a mistake; fool me twice, and I’m just being stupid.

And I have come to love Canada. How could I not? Canada’s embrace of diversity, especially during the last couple of generations, is key for me. As a Quebecker, at least by birth, I appreciate the tolerance of the Two Solitudes for each other, and the acceptance by most of bilingualism.  International peacekeeping, Medicare, public broadcasting, the arts, especially its musicians, Canadian football, hockey (of course), that its police both R.C.M.P and local don’t tend to shoot people as often, that the country is trying to reconcile with Indigenous peoples  – all these are important. This is not to say Canada hasn’t made mistakes, too.

Like 8 or 9 out of 10 Canadians I support Canada’s current Prime Minister’s efforts to counter U.S. tariffs imposed by the current American administration. I know which side I’m on in the trade war, and I know a lot of Americans also oppose what their country is doing in trade. I haven’t crossed the U.S. border for years, and my wife won’t let me buy American produce in the grocery store.

 I must say my bi-national situation has made me somewhat skeptical of all nationalisms. One has to be from somewhere, and it is good to appreciate the place where one is from. But it seems that nationalism is far to often, and far too easily, exploited by elites. The result can be unnecessary wars, jingoism, and chauvinism. It can be a cudgel wielded against vulnerable minorities. Albert Einstein once put it this way: "Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind"

 Yet I simply cannot renounce love for country – in my case for two countries. I am my father’s definition of the mugwump, sitting on the rail, precariously, this way and that, mug on one side, wump on the other.

 

Emily Carr without "Indian" Art

There is little question Emily Carr misappropriated the sacred art of the First Nations people of British Columbia. The most egregious example of this was in making clay pots, bowls, and rugs with First Nations designs. Carr must have known she was doing this. It is certainly possible that a First Nations woman, Sophie Frank, told her she was stealing what wasn’t hers, though if so, Carr very likely would not accept that criticism.

 Carr, a second generation Canadian whose father was very British, Europe, hit upon the idea of documenting “Indian” art – poles, welcome figures, blankets, etc. before the First Nations culture vanished. Carr believed, as most settlers at the time did (and some do now) – the First Nations way of life would disappear because it was the inevitable as civilization marched on. The primitive would give way to the more civilized. Natives would be Christianized and assimilated into modern society.

 Carr’s sketches and drawings made during many trips during her lifetime throughout Vancouver Island, up the BC mainland coast, and over to Haida Gwaii (then the Queen Charlottes) are picturesque, but, I would argue, not the art that makes her great. Only some of the paintings that came after her last trip, usually done in studio, are what she’s best remembered for. And the really good works came after she stopped trying to freeze “so-called” dying art in charcoal and oil.

 I would say that her painting Big Raven (1931) was one of her first great works. It shows a raven totem, black and bold, towering above a whorl of green, abstract trees, a purple mountain, and a complex dark sky with light streaming down behind it. Carr had documented the raven totem decades before in Haida Gwaii. Cumshewa (1912) was done in the then-abandoned village of Cumshewa, which had been devastated by the smallpox epidemic of 1862-3. The earlier painting is interesting, but lacks the force, the defiance of the later one which is not merely record of a pole on Haida Gwaii.

Carr was 59 when she painted Big Raven, finally an artist who didn’t need to appropriate First Nations art. Another painting completed this year after numerous studies in charcoal was Red Cedar. The subject is the trunk of a large cedar tree in a forest. Its green is fairly abstract as is the forest floor behind it. What to me is remarkable is the luminous nature of the cedar’s trunk, which really can only be properly appreciated looking at the painting itself. It shines with a glowing yellow and red highlight with the brownish bark. Carr dropped all direct First Nations design – though one can make out a natural half-oval shape at the base of the tree.

 In her last paintings, Carr turned her attention to what her own culture was engaged in, logging. Industrial clear-cut logging leaves a forest in an ugly state, but Carr’s paintings during this period show that there can be a sort of beauty even there. She focussed much on skies she had seen to create transcendence. The sky could be wild, as in Above the Gravel Pit (1937). The painting I love most also comes from witnessing the industrial exploitation of the forest landscape, Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky (1935). Again no appropriation, but a celebration of lone spar trees, left after all other trees had been clear cut. The sky sanctifies a lone survivor. Surprisingly to me, my eyes get misty when I look at that picture.

 It is only after Carr dropped appropriation of an earlier culture, not her own, and dealt with on what was happening in her own that her paintings come alive. One can appreciate another’s culture, if done with respect, but I don’t think one can do great art by using the symbols and ideas of another’s culture. Not only is it abuse to misappropriate, it just doesn’t work, not even by an artist as talented as was Emily Carr.

 Was Jesus Mad?

 

Historical figures can be hard to figure out. One I find difficult is Jesus of Nazareth, the man whom Christians go one and on about. Was, or is, he a god or God? Or was he mad as we would (and do) label a person making such a claim today?

 The playwright George Bernard Shaw believed Jesus became convinced he was a god who if killed would come back to life. His analysis of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament is rather distant than the one I heard in Sunday school. It appears in his essay, “On the Prospects of Christianity” written in 1912 as a very long preface to Androcles and the Lion.

 To Shaw, Jesus starts out in the gospel sane and interesting, but undergoes a change. He writes:

 One day, after the disciples have discouraged him for a long time by their misunderstandings of his mission, and their speculations as to whether he is one of the old prophets come again, and if so, which, his disciple Peter suddenly solves the problem by exclaiming, "Thou are the Christ, the son of the living God." At this Jesus is extraordinarily pleased and excited.

 Convinced of his divinity, Jesus goes to Jerusalem, and “assumes all the traditions of the folk-lore gods, and announces that, like John Barleycorn, he will be barbarously slain and buried, but will rise from the earth and return to life.”. Various events happen, he causes a disturbance outside the Jewish temple, and when he is betrayed by Judas, Shaw writes

 One of his followers shows fight, and cuts off the ear of one of his captors. Jesus rebukes him, but does not attempt to heal the wound, though he declares that if he wished to resist he could easily summon twelve million angels to his aid.

 But, following his own ethics, he doesn’t resist, and after trial and the urging of the Jewish establishment, he put to death in an extremely cruel way, by crucifixion. Shaw concludes that “[i]n His prolonged agony of thirst and pain on the cross at last breaks his spirit, and he dies with a cry of ‘My God: why hast Thou forsaken me?’”

 Shaw’s analysis is interesting but there are problems with it. The playwright was imaginative, and wrote several plays still produced today. However, Shaw was not a biblical scholar; he asserted that Matthew as the oldest gospel, but it’s almost universally accepted that it isn’t. Shaw argument that the bible shows Jesus’ personality changing after Peter’s pronouncement that his is “son of the living God,” I think is questionable. Jesus nowhere in the bible says he is God – that idea becomes important later in the history of Christianity, accompanied by great controversy that lasted nearly 300 years, settled only after the Emperor Constantine stepped in and pressured Christian leaders to end it. They pretty well did so by writing the Nicene creed.

 G.K. Chesterton, a contemporary of Shaw, the creator – among many other things – the Father Brown detective stories, and a prolific Roman Catholic Christian apologist, was a good friend of the playwright. They enjoyed debating, publicly as well as privately. Chesterton wrote a critical biography of Shaw in 1909, and even that failed to end the friendship which continued for decades.

 Said Chesterton of Shaw: “He understands everything in life except its paradoxes, especially that ultimate paradox that the very things that we cannot comprehend, are the things that we have to take for granted.” I think this means that by accepting paradox, one can believe that Jesus was both mad and also, in a very real sense, divine. The ancients (except the Jewish people) had little problem with this way of looking at some: Caesar Augustus insisted he be taken as a god; but he was also the very human head of the Roman Empire for 41 years.

 What do we moderns take of men more recent in history than Jesus, for instance Shakespeare, Newton, Bach, or Einstein. Can we comprehend how Shakespeare could create Hamlet, or Newton explain the movement of heavenly bodies, or Bach compose well over a thousand pieces, or Einstein explain so much about the universe, without calling upon the idea of divinity? A divine spark? They were men, we accept; were they gods?

 We can think of Jesus as mad. Millions think of him as a god, or even – paradoxically – capital “G” God. Is that the truth? Or, as Pilate asked before sentencing Jesus, What is truth.

 

 

Afterword:

Chesterton also wrote: “I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid.” I say, that includes what I have written.

 

 

 

  A Parliament vs a Congress

Unfortunately for Americans, their revolution took place too early, and afterwards they were stuck with in inadequate form of government. It’s always given them trouble, the worst a Civil War which led to the death of well over half a million young men. Now it has led to the possibility of the death of their democracy also. Canadians, in a more northerly part of North America, escaped the American fate by delaying their independence from Britain by more than half a century.

 Except for various forms of democracy in ancient Greece or Rome, early government was simple: a king (rarely a queen), a group of barons, and subjects. Occasionally a king had to call together the barons and ask for resources to put down a revolt or finance a foreign war. Over time, the barons began to ask for rights in exchange. Over time the barons formed a proto-parliament, insisting that the king meet them regularly. With the rise of a middle class, the parliament became not just made up of barons but of others, too. While power had been slowly devolving from king to parliament over the years, in 1776 George III in 1776 had considerable influence on Britain’s colonial policies.

 The men who led the American Revolution, the so-called “Founding Fathers, weren’t all that fatherly. They included many relatively young men. In 1776, John Adams was 39; Thomas Jefferson 33; James Madison a very young 25. George Washington was only 44. Young men are idealistic, and they were very much influenced by the ideals of the Enlightenment – by John Lock’s argument all men having a right to life and liberty, by Jean Jacques Rousseau’s ideas about popular consent of the subjects, by Baron de Montesquieu insistence that a king’s power must be checked by an elected body.. Out of these largely untested ideas came the Declaration of Independence and a few years later, a constitution.

 Worried about the power of a king – or that a president who might turn into a king the constitution set up a division of powers so that supposedly the legislature and the judiciary could hold the president in check. That it crippled a government that could seldom act quickly and decisively was not seen a problem. It couldn’t resolve the slavery question except by Civil War. These young fathers thought all involved in governing the new nation would act independently, with dispassionate reason. They made no provision for political parties. However very soon political parties formed, and an electoral college, supposedly of wise men chosen by state legislatures, fairly quickly became political, also.

 The problem is that, when it comes to power, the decision as to who is to govern comes not so much from reason as from self-interest. One wants what is best for number one, for oneself, one’s family, one’s own community. That may coincide with what the majority think is in the so-called “public interest.” But it probably won’t. Rationally, Thomas Jefferson knew slavery was wrong, but he died holding well over 100 people in servitude.

 Meanwhile, the parliamentary system evolved. King George’s III’s increasing mental illness reduced his power till he did in 1818. A son, George IV, became regent in 1811, and succeeded his father upon his death in 1818. George IV had no direct heirs, so a second son, William IV gained the throne in 1830. Neither were good at governing, and both were dissolute in their royal life style. Then in 1837 Queen Victoria, who had lots of strong opinions -- but they were about manners and morals, not about how to run the country. On matters of state, she became almost a figurehead, especially when the prime minister was William Gladstone, whom she hated. She much preferred Benjamin Disraeli, who flattered her as a “fairy queen” and arranged that she be given the title Empress of India, but who kept power for himself and parliament. By the 20th Century, the English monarch was a true figurehead, acting only upon the advice of his or her prime minister.

 The result in Britain – and in Canada, which adopted the British system in 1867, and even its figurehead queen – has been a government with the power to govern decisively unhampered by the whims of a monarch. Meanwhile, the United States government bumbled along for decades, hamstrung by a system of government that didn’t work very well. It relied far too much on politicians being rational, which they aren’t. Today, its limitations are very evident, and it appears unable to solve its problems. Health care is too expensive and spotty; roads and bridges and other infrastructure is decaying; the education system is uneven; the national debt is growing at an alarming rate.

 Interestingly, without Americans realizing it, its congress is taking on many of the attributes of a parliament. This is most evident in how the Republicans in both the House of Representatives and the Senate are acting like members of parliament, unquestionably supporting the government. So-called “bipartisan” legislation on any important issue – that is, legislation worked out after relatively rational discussion and compromise – is impossible. The economic, cultural, and hence political divisions in the country are sharp. However, the safeguards within a parliamentary system of government are lacking: the ability of a caucus to dismiss the executive mid-term by vote (or the threat of a vote) of non-confidence; that senior government officials, including the president, to be democratically elected, as the US cabinet is not; a public service led by highly professional executives; the regular, required question period; the presence of a unified opposition with a single leader; the ultimate authority of a head of state who can refuse undemocratic rule. In the US, the president is the head of; state.  

 Once the abusive person who currently holds the presidency of the United States is gone, I hope the country can begin to deal with its problems. Given its system of government, though, I fear it may not be able to.

 

A plan for writing

 I consider myself a writer, though I haven’t written much for a while. I made my income from writing for over 30 years. Still a writer is what I am. So I’m going to write more.

 What is it about being a writer? One writes by oneself. As with speech, the audience is others. Writing is like talking to people but not as fleetingly as talk alone.  

 If put together well, the words may stick around– in saved emails, in a collection of  letters, even in books. Unless recorded, spoken words fly away, unless one is a Socrates, who had his words written down by a Plato, or or one is a Johnson, who had a Boswell.

I enjoy the physical act of writing. I’m not sure where the letters are if I look at a  Qwerty keyboard, but my body – my fingers – know. It amazes me to see what was in my head appear on the page or pop up on the screen. Revision is fun also – making a sentence more compact, or placing a paragraph so the words and ideas flow like water. Occasionally writer’s block builds a dam. Yet eventually the dam breaks and words flow again and I get a great feeling as I surf the words-wave.

 What to write about? Maybe I’ll revise some of my occasional lengthy letters on a particular topic. Maybe I can make them not quite so pompous. I may expand on observations I’ve jotted down in many notebooks. I’ll look at drawings and doodles I’ve put in the same notebooks and see what they bring to mind. Here’s hoping I can maintain a light touch.

 At regular Tuesday meeting with a group of friends, with their indulgence – I intend to read out no more than a page of the latest musings and seek reaction. If I interest them by what I’ve written, I’ll be happy. If I get silence, I will have failed. If I get yawns, my heart will sink. In any case, I should learn something. Maybe they might too. Reaction will be my only goal, at least initially. There’s so much I want to write about. Possible initial topics: Emily Carr’s paintings; why the parliamentary system is superior; staying calm in marriage; is death part of life or the opposite?; was Jesus insane? I’m open to your ideas, and  your writing. There’s lots to write about. I’m looking forward to it.

 

Neale

 After 12 to 13 years, I have decided to activate this blog again. The pre-2013 blog was mostly pictures Now I have decided to do some more writing. Alan Cooper asked if I was going to put it on the web. Why not? I'll post my essays. What I plan to do is outlined in the first entry. I hope to write something at least once a week. 

 Neale

Where I've gone

Not a lot has been posted on this blog for some time. More is on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/D.Neale.Adams. But I yet may put some things up sometime. Neale

Deer Lake canoeing

Thanksgiving day canoeing on Deer Lake in Burnaby... and trading kids in the middle of the lake.

Andrea takes a picture of Russell and Jane and a whole parcel of kids at their neighbourhood's street party, August 2013

Naomi & Gus

Naomi and Gus (at 3 months plus). They so delight in each other.

Grandsons

All the grandsons: Frankie, Finnegann, and Gustav.