Archie Moore and Eddie Hodges in 1960 movie "Huckleberry Finn" 

(credit: Wikimedia)

Huckleberry, the Classic

Just before Christmas. A hopeful, positive view of humanity.

I am a retired English 11 and 12 teacher up in B.C. who, back a few years ago, taught a number of American novels and enjoyed several of them thoroughly. “To Kill A Mockingbird” was a special favorite, but I did also teach one that is now very controversial in the US itself, namely “Huckleberry Finn”.

This novel is now controversial in a number of school districts in the US, as I understand it, because in it, the “n” word for African Americans is used many times. This is very politically incorrect for many people, and I sympathize with their feelings, but I think any district or state that bans this novel is making a big mistake.

I first read HF when I was about 14, but I knew even then how beautiful its outlook on people and the world was. 

Why would I say such a thing?

There is a very simple answer to this question: the novel contains an explicit scene which shows something basic about humans, at least in Mark Twain’s view, which may be the most optimistic view of humanity in all of literature.

As Huck and his negro companion, Jim, are journeying down the Mississippi on a simple, home-made raft, they are met by a couple of slavecatchers on another raft. Huck knows well what they want. They want to know whether he has seen any negroes on any raft or shore during his journey. If they can find and catch such a person who is a runaway slave, they stand a good chance of getting a generous reward from the slave’s owner and perhaps from the state government as well. Jim is hiding in the shack that they have on the raft and the slavecatchers are foiled by a ploy of Huck’s. But he knows that if he lets Jim escape pursuit completely, maybe even helps Jim to avoid capture, then Huck himself will become an accomplice to a very serious felony.

Huck and most of the people in the South in those times had been raised to think that a slave is not fully human; he is property. By escaping from his slave life, Jim is stealing himself from Miss Watson back in Huck’s hometown. As Huck says, Miss Watson never did anything bad to him, and Jim is a very valuable piece of property. Huck, by helping Jim to escape, is committing grand larceny. Huck has been raised to believe that he is about to commit a mortal sin. He is very scared for a while as he considers his options while Jim sleeps in the shack.

But as he considers his choices, Huck is also thinking about all the times that Jim has taken care of him, and how Jim calls him “Huck honey” with real affection. Huck’s own father was a drunken, child-beating monster. If ever a kid had reasons to be bitter, that kid is Huck. But on the positive side, in a very deep way, Jim is the closest thing to a loving dad that Huck has ever had.

Huck decides that even if it means he will burn in Hell for all eternity, he can’t and won’t turn Jim in to the slave catchers or any of the authorities in the towns they are passing along the river either.

Why do I value this scene so much and make such grand claims for it?

Because I believe Twain is showing us something so fundamental about human beings here that the scene can still sometimes move me to tears.

Nowadays, I think 95% of the people of the world would say that Huck did the right thing. Huck’s humanity overcame the conditioning that his culture had put into his head for all his life so far. Jim is a good man. A good human being. He is a slave purely by chance, the luck of a draw that he did not set up and cannot change. The value of one human being – to Huck, Twain, and me – outweighs all the prejudices that Huck has been taught by his sick culture.

And make no mistake about it: Huck has been through about as much as any kid could take and still come out sane. His dad beats him. His dad is such a bad drinker that he regularly has delirium tremens. His dad is a thief and a liar with no redeeming features whatsoever. The only reason he had even come back into Huck’s life was because Huck had come into some money. Old Finn is angling to get his hands on that dough from the time he comes back into Huck’s life, which is early in the novel.

But the decency in Huck’s own character will not be denied.

The conclusion to be drawn from this scene is very simple: the basic nature of human beings, for most of them, is very, very good. So much so that even a life of abuse and brainwashing can’t turn Huck into the kind of monster that his father is.

There is more interesting plotting and character development in “Huckleberry Finn”, but for me, that one scene in the middle is worth the price of the book.

And let me be even clearer here. I taught kids from 12 to 19 for 33 long years. Did I ever meet up with a kid like Huck, a kid who turned out well in spite of a nightmare childhood? You bet I did. Kids who were going home every day to one or two drunken parents and three younger siblings and who were taking care of the whole household when they were under 18 years old. For me, based on real life experience, Twain is right. Most human beings are very good.

So my American friends, don’t let this book go. If some of the terms in the book are offensive to some people, that doesn’t matter near as much as the worldview that it offers to teenagers (in high school) and to us all. And in defense of HF, Huck and his friends only speak with the terms people in that time used. HF is largely an accurate reflection of the times that it describes, times we would do well to keep in mind – so they don’t happen again.

The offended ones will get over their discomfort if they just have a good English teacher to study this book with them.

There is hope for any species that contains even small numbers of Huckleberry Finns. Absolutely. We aren’t just bags of meanness and farts. We really do have some humane qualities of incredible beauty and decency. 

(Enjoy your day, lads and lassies. And thank you for visiting my blog.) 

                        Archie Moore in his prime (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 

               

                                                              Liza Minelli 

              (credit: Public Management Association, via Wikimedia Commons)

Signs of a Scary Hazard

One of my many fears about the way that US politics are going is that there are too many people who don’t seem to recognize a hazard even when it is right in front of them.

Let me elaborate.

A couple of the scariest scenes in all of movie-making history are in the movie “Cabaret”. Bob Fosse directed, Michael York and Liza Minelli starred. It was set in Berlin in 1931. The Nazis have not yet got to power in Germany, but they are clearly getting stronger by the month. Through the course of the movie, more and more battles between Communists and Nazi thugs, and generally all who oppose the Nazis appear in the streets and in the clubs.

In the middle scenes of the story, Brian (York), Sally (Minelli), and their short-term friend, the Baron, are riding in his Mercedes limo through the downtown core of Berlin. Sally is asleep in the back seat, the Baron’s chauffeur is driving, and the Baron and Brian are talking in that same back seat. It’s a big car.

They come upon an ugly street scene. Nazi thugs have battled in the streets with Communist thugs, and someone has been killed. The body is lying in the street and people are standing about in awkward poses, not moving. Fosse clearly did not want viewers to forget this scene.

The Baron says somewhat glibly, “The Nazis are a bunch of stupid hooligans, but they do serve a purpose. We will use them to control the Communists, and later we will control them.”

Brian is a very intelligent man, a young prof from Cambridge University who is doing a year in Berlin as part of his Ph. D. training in German Language and Literature. He is looking at the scene with worry written on every line of his face, and he responds to the Baron’s remark with a skeptical grimace.

                           "Cabaret" movie poster (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 

                                          (credit: Wikimedia Commons) 

In almost the very next scene, again Sally is asleep in the car (hung over from too much champagne, probably). Brian and the Baron stop for lunch at a pub on a small backroad in the countryside. Bavaria, probably, though I don’t recall whether any clues tell viewers for sure what part of rural Germany they are in.

As they pause for a smoke after their lunches, a small band in one corner of the pub begins to play a sweet-sounding melody, and then a Nazi youth starts to sing a song. It is a patriotic song, telling of how “tomorrow belongs to me”. He is blue-eyed, blond, and very good-looking in his Hitler Youth uniform and, apparently, one hundred percent certain his party is right, his leader is right, and he is right. The Nazis, the scene implies, will build a new Germany. Or so this kid thinks.

But the scariest part lies in how the scene ends. By the end of the song, the lunch hour crowd in the pub, about 70 people sitting in outdoor seating, are all singing the chorus of the boy’s song, then standing, and raising their arms in the Nazi salute.

Brian and the Baron go back to the car. As they approach it, they both glance back at the pub. Brian says, “You still think you’re going to control them?” The Baron shrugs disdainfully.

We in the audience, of course, know what is coming for Germany and the world. This strutting clown with his shouting and his “Hail Victory” saluting is no wall-paper hanger (one of the odd jobs Hitler did in his lost years in Vienna). But the Baron seems just as smug in his view of the situation in 1931 as the Hitler Youth singer in the outdoor pub is in his. Utterly complacent.

Why this disturbs me in our time is that I’m beginning to see signs that there are people supporting Trump who know he’s a clown. A hooligan. But they seem to think that he is needed to stop the postmodernists and moral relativists who are infecting our elites, especially our university elites, in these times. I don’t care for postmodernism and moral relativism either. But I’m not about to make the Baron’s mistake. It’s lazy and naïve. You don’t make bargains with dragons.

                                Hitler in Nazi parade (1928) (credit: Wikipedia) 

It’s very hard to read political signs in one’s own times. But the parallels that one can draw between 1931 and our times are many.

I have to leave off. I’m scaring myself.

Have a nice day.

A post I used last Christmas, with a few small modifications. Merry Christmas, everyone.  

                                                                The Three Wise Men 

                              (from a mosaic in Ravenna, Italy, completed circa 526 A.D.) 

                                               (credit: Nina-no, via Wikimedia Commons) 

                                                    A Hopeful Christmas

Good day. Thank you for dropping by. I have one small announcement: the Chamber of Commerce has asked me to remind you that there are only a few shopping days left till Christmas. Just kidding. I enjoy Christmas shopping like I enjoy drinking bleach.        

        But it’s the meaning of this season, Christmas, that I want to write about today. And I promise to be more serious for the rest of this post.  

What conclusions do we come to if we apply a moral realist model to the cultural phenomenon called “Christmas”? What do I see in the beliefs and customs that surround this man who probably lived from about 4 B.C. to about 33 A.D.? I think more deeply about this question at Christmas time, as most of us do. In this Covid 19 era, even more so.

Like many thinkers in Western culture, I get fed up with how commercial Christmas has become. This year consumer spending will likely be dampened down again, or maybe just in-person shopping will be. Maybe Jeff Bezos, the tycoon of the online shopping world, will double his already unimaginable wealth by the new year. 

The ads sometimes start before Remembrance Day, and I find that hard to take. The men and women who fought in the wars that the nations of the world got drawn into in the last century or so deserve a special time that is set aside just for them. November 11 is supposed to be that day. The rest of us ought to set aside time for them, showing respect, gratitude. Greedy merchants crowding into that time by advertising their Christmas junk infuriate me. I make a quiet vow when I see Christmas ads anytime before November 12 to be sure that I do not buy whatever it is those ads are trying to sell – ever again. And in general, we give and receive too much stuff that we don’t need or even like. (“Hello, Little Gift. How long till you’re in the landfill?”)

I don’t like the commercialism that has poisoned Christmas, but I add to that, gluttony and drunkenness. We eat too much food and drink too many kinds of alcohol that we don’t need or even like.

                     Landfill dump (credit: Cezary, via Wikimedia Commons) 

Can anything save me from total disillusionment during the Christmas season? Yes. I couldn’t have said that for many years, but I can today. Ten years or so ago, I figured something out.  

The way of humans on this world for the most part has been to take as much as they can as often as they can. In our era, the philosophy of greed has even begun to threaten what once was taken for granted, namely the ecosystem of this planet. Perhaps in what I have to say today, I can give some hope to those of you who are beginning to despair at the indifference of our leaders toward environmental issues. But my main focus will not be on environmental issues because they weren’t issues in Jesus’ time. His main gift to the human race was something else.

The worst consequence of human greed for many centuries of our history on this planet has been the biggest crime, the one that we do to each other, i.e. war. When earthquakes or hurricanes hit another land, we grieve for the people there, we send help, and we do what we can. But basically, we can handle natural disasters. The horrors people do to each other are in a different category altogether. A child can tell you that we have more than enough resources on this planet to feed, clothe, and shelter everyone in comfort. Our leaders’ sending us to war is not about making sure that people have enough to live in dignity. Wars are about vain people gaining face. Realizing that truth is what makes us feel so disillusioned with our own species.  

And let me not mince words or be vague here. Historians estimate that of the horrors that have happened to people because of the aggression of other people, more than ninety percent have been caused by governments, not by criminals. Wars and concentration camps, mostly. Mafia thugs are disgusting human beings, but they are small fry compared to the Hitlers and Stalins of the world. And the Shaka Zulus, the Genghis Khans, the Caesars, the Alexanders, the Pol Pots, and the Joshuas. The war madness has infected every culture on earth.

Where, then, does Jesus fit in?

War had been ugly and pointless for centuries before Jesus ever came on the scene. Everything any war ever accomplished could have been accomplished without any bloodshed at all, if the people involved had agreed to debate the issues openly, negotiate, and compromise. He saw that. He also saw that the war technologies were improving all the time. Even in 30 A.D. humanity was on a course of self-destruction.

The ways of greed, politics, and war and the improvements in our military technologies can be thought of as lines on a graph of time. As the two lines climb forward across the graph – as our greed and our technology both keep growing - we watch in horror. We know that inevitably one day the lines will touch. There we will finally make a weapon capable of wiping out the whole human race at the same time as the sea of politics casts up a leader who will use it. There is a kind of paralyzing, mathematical certainty to this graph. Even to Jesus, two thousand years ago, it looked as if we were doomed to someday destroy ourselves. He saw this desperate situation taking shape even in his own time.

But then he saw a little further, and he put into his world a new way of seeing ourselves. He left us this: love one another as I have loved you. If you remember nothing else that I told you, remember this: love one another as I have loved you. You can do this. You really can. Just love your neighbor. Then all the good you can imagine will follow.  

In the middle of the Roman Empire, Jesus’ time was a time when war and the ways of life that it forced people into were considered obvious. Almost every person in that empire would have thought debating the matter was childish. If you had begun to argue that war might not be necessary, they would have told you, “Oh, grow up!” Many would have looked at you like you had just grown donkey ears. The main thing they prayed to their gods for was victory in battle.

All the recently conquered peoples in the Roman Empire contained rebels who were eager to get even with the Roman conquerors. This was true especially of the Jews, the people among whom Jesus had been born and grown to manhood. They had many secret groups plotting sabotage and assassination all the time. Jesus grew up in the middle of all of this.

In this social milieu of jealousy, hate, and violence people paid to go to arenas all over the Empire and watch men kill each other, right there in front of their eyes.  

Then Jesus came along and said: “It doesn’t have to be this way. If a man hits you on one cheek, turn the other to him. If he grabs your jacket, give him your shirt. If he forces you to walk a mile with him, walk three.” And he lived his values, all the way to his death. Others had said similar things, but Jesus, by the actions of his life and by the dramatic character of his death, caused people to listen and remember.

Since those times, heroes all through history, even modern ones like Gandhi, Mandela, and King, have shown by real-world example that with enough courage, the way of non-violence really can work. Christians have mostly been less sincere in observing Jesus’ simple rule, but we have still gotten gradually kinder every century since Roman times. The horrible “games” of Jesus’ time were abolished in about 300 A.D.. In more modern times, no one goes to bear-baiting anymore, as they did 400 years ago, and people who secretly attend dog fights, once their secret is discovered, are hounded from our midst, sentenced to jail time, as unfit to live with. Even then, if they ask sincerely for forgiveness, they can still be forgiven. Jesus gave us that too.

At first, the Romans didn’t consider Jesus’ ideas important. In fact, they thought his ideas were stupid. But well after he was gone, his cult – and a “cult” is what it was to the Romans – kept growing. There was something about it that tugged at human emotions. Worst of all, it began to steal some of the sons and daughters of the Romans right in Rome. Many converts were young people, even teenagers, fed-up with the materialistic, hedonistic emptiness of their parents’ way of life.

The Roman Empire is long gone, as are many others too numerous to list; Jesus’ words are still here. Love your neighbor.            

So, for me, was he divine? Was he the son of God the churches claim he was? No, not to me. Or to be exact, he simply had a lot more of a quality that all of us have, the spiritual quality, the capacity to believe in things not seen.

But what matters much more is that he put into the mix of ideas being passed back and forth by the human race, the simple idea that we can solve our differences without fighting one another. Thus, he injected a new variable into the equations of human history. If we can learn to love our neighbors, we may make it through the era of greed and war and finally grow up. Emerge as a new kind of species, a differently programmed species that no longer needs to keep itself fit by programming its young to be their own cultural predators, that toughen their cultures by war.

Before him, our destroying ourselves was a mathematical certainty. Now there is that tantalizing little ‘maybe’. Maybe ...we can really learn to love our neighbors.

For me, seeing the truth of that one big principle is more than enough to keep me from cynicism at Christmas time. Christmas, for me, is the time of year when I celebrate the fact that this gentle man entered into the flow of human history in the most warlike society that, up to his time, had ever existed, and changed – everything.

So what if some lying, greedy politicians won this round? My struggle against them will go on. They can’t stop that as long as there is breath in my body. I have free will and a truth to live by. The rest is up to me.  

Let materialism and greed fill the shopping malls to the roof with junk. They can’t discourage me. I believe in something real that is beyond all of that. We keep trying; we win some and we lose some; the struggle goes on. But there’s hope now. Before this one guy, as I see human history, anyway, there was none.

Merry Christmas, lads and lassies. Enjoy your family and friends.

 

 

 

Quote by Marianne Williamson (often attributed to Nelson Mandela):

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant or talented? Actually, who are you not to be? Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the spiritual glory that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our very presence liberates others.