The Better Man

Posted on September 11, 2016 by smellincoffee

ST: The Better Man
© 1994 Howard Weinstein
294 pages

McCoy: “I should have told you about this in my quarters, not yours.”
Kirk: “Why? Some kind of weird protocol?”
McCoy: “No, I’ve got a better liquor selection.”
Fresh from a refit, the Enterprise has been summoned to the planet Empyrea. Or rather, Dr. McCoy has. In his days as a young officer, he and his captain-buddy Mark Rousseau discovered there an isolationist colony of human beings, dedicated to perfecting their own gene pool. Though the Emyreans were stridently against outside contamination, Rousseau did manage to win permission for Starfleet to set up a science station on the planet to monitor unusual star activity. Shortly after their ship, the Feynman, left Empyrea,  McCoy sought transfer away from both it and his now ex-best friend, Rousseau. Whatever happened? And why have McCoy and Rousseau been asked back?  (Was it a woman? Of course it was a woman. Discover new life and go to bed with it, that’s the StarFleet way!)
The Better Man is a rare TOS book in that McCoy is the primary character, with Kirk stuck on the Enterprise.  Though it takes place two years after The Motion Picture, the plot could have easily fit within the five-year mission:  two main threads quickly emerge, with a third crisis tying them together. When McCoy visited the planet eighteen years ago, he worked with a local scientist, and now — almost  eighteen years later — she has a daughter, just about eighteen years old.  And that’s a problem, because when the child is given her customary bioscan at eighteen to make sure she’s worthy breeding potential, the government is going to realize her daddy is Not of This World. She’ll be sterilized, or worse yet, killed, because that’s the sort of thing that happens when people start controlling others to make things…Perfect.  You get mass killings or reavers,  and so in the fashion of Captain Mal,  people here are aiming to misbehave. Specifically, McCoy manages to get himself kidnapped by the Empyrean Liberation Front, which is even more embarrassing than it sounds: the ELF is one teenager who wants to start a revolution and use McCoy as leverage. 
I found A  Better Man a fun, quick read. Weinstein gets the subtleties of McCoy’s language fairly well, and there’s several fun lines:
===============================================================
McCoy: “Y’know, that day Spock threw that bowl of soup at Christine Chapel will always be one of the highlights of my life.”
Kirk: “I suppose that says something about your life.”
Kirk: “I thought you wanted to have as little to do with them as possible.”

Scott: “I do, sir, I just want it to be my idea — not theirs!”

Scott: “Looks like so-called genetic perfection has doesn’t away with the occasional horse’s ass.”
Spock: “A correct observation, Mr. Scott, if I understand the reference.
Scott: “That y’do, sir.”

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How to Live

Posted on September 11, 2016 by smellincoffee

Musonius Rufus on How to Live
© 2012 Ben White
112 pages

Virtus isn’t just for the men any more.  Musonius Rufus is the forgotten Stoic, a man hailed alongside Socrates as nigh-saintly by Origen, but now almost forgotten. More’s the pity, because Rufus didn’t offer just another collection of admonishments to keep in mind what you can control and what you can’t.   What works remain of his are simply known as Lectures and Sayings, recorded not by him but by a student. They apply the lessons of philosophy across the entire experience of human existence, giving modern readers a taste for how broad the day to day lessons of the Stoics actually ran — from the meaning of life to proper beard grooming.

The most extraordinary aspect of Rufus’ teaching for the modern reader is that he maintained that philosophy was fit for women as well as men. The pursuit of virtue and the pursuit of manliness, for the Greco-Roman mind, were one in the same;  virtue was manliness. Not one to be limited by etymology, Rufus argues that women can profit just as well by philosophy as men. They carry the same inner spark, and the fruits of a philosophically-tamed soul are just as salutatory for a woman as man. Does a woman not need courage to defend her young against those who would harm them? Does she not need clear thinking to balance the household accounts, and does she not need self control to maintain peace in the home, and to protect herself against the same foibles of humanity as her husband?

Rufus does not merely maintain that women can be philosophers, too;  given that men and women share the same divine gift, Reason, they can perceive and are thus subject to the same natural law. The same rules apply to everyone, and from them there is no escape. Rufus admonishes men and women alike to practice sex only within the bounds of marriage, and only with one another. Rufus is not a prude;  in regards to pleasure, he is consistent across the board. Don’t wear more clothes than you need; excessive protection from the elements only creates a soft, fragile body, and a frail constitution. Rich foods? Nonsense.  Fruit, cheese, and vegetables — a simple diet is best. Why build a mansion? You only need  shelter from the elements, no need of luxurious colonnades and precious gems.  To fill a home with silver is to fill it with worry;  no thief would take off with wooden cups and earthenware plates.

Another singular aspect of Rufus is his perception of man as a political animal. While Marcus Aurelius often alluded to man being a social creature, his Meditations are largely counsel to himself; Epictetus’ works are the equivalent of philosophical boot camp, focused on the individual steeling himself for life. Seneca, in his letters counseling friends, is convivial, but he is surpassed by Rufus. There are numerous sections in this book which focus on humans in relationship with one another,  with the most important bond being marriage.  For Rufus, the family is the cell upon which society is based: marriage not only renews human life, creating new generations, but it provides its members  one of the vital lessons of life: we are made for one another. Marriage should be engaged not for looks or money, but to be a companion to another — to love, not merely with passion but with will, with duty. Philosophy is the art of life, and to practice it means to discern man’s duty to his creator, to himself, to his fellows with whom he is made to work alongside.

Although I still plan to read a formal translation of Rufus (Lectures and Sayings, Cynthia King) to make sure that Ben White’s adaptation here is faithful, I thoroughly enjoyed this little book by Rufus. His commitment to a simple, authentic life on all fronts is admirable, more  detailed than Epictetus and carrying with it an integrity that Seneca can’t quite muster. Rufus didn’t just write pretty words about how exile was nothing; he practiced it.  Like Epictetus, he makes Stoicism and philosophy matter of day to day life, but these lectures here cover more of the practicalities of human existence than Epictetus’ boot camp does.  Rufus is both challenging and bracing!

Related:

The other Stoics:

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How the Scots Invented the Modern World

Posted on September 10, 2016 by smellincoffee

How the Scots Invented the Modern World:The True Story of How Western Europe’s Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It 
© 2001  Arthur Herman
400 pages

An elderly patron at the library has adopted me as his go-to source for history books. These days he merely arrives at my desk and announces, “You know what I like. Let’s find something!”. As a reward for my literary services, he decided to lend me one of his books, How the Scots Invented the Modern World.   As it happens, I know very little about Scottish history, except in connection with English and American history — so I dived in, and found it a most interesting book.  At its best, it’s a history and reflection on the Scottish enlightenment, sweeping enough to bring to mind Will Durant’s approach for history.  The author addresses — for starters — religion, philosophy, architecture, politics, economics, and literature. At a middling level, it’s social history of a sort, recounting the Scottish experience in America in a manner very much like previous books I’ve read on the Scots-Irish.  At its most trivial, it is merely a narrative recollection of this Scotsman inventing this and that Scotsman inventing that, and oh, by the way, that fellow invented steamboats in America, and he was born in Scotland.   Fortunately, How the Scots Invented the Modern World is only trivial toward the end.

 The bulk of the book is taken up with Scotland’s intellectual and economic development as a developed and ‘enlightened’ nation, though the author favors those who celebrated Scotland’s romanticized wildness, like Sir Walter Scott.   Some very familiar names, like David Hume and Adam Smith appear here, along with names wholly new to me, like Francis Hutcheson.  These figures do not appear sans context; instead, their arguments are rooted in Scotland’s political history, from the various revolts against Anglicanism and Catholic kings, to Scotland’s matrimonial bond to England.  In the authors view, Scotland was not a victim of empire, but helped author it, and indeed we see Scots exploring Africa,  arguing for a remolding of India in the British form, and penetrating deep into the American interior as Scots-Irish settlers.

I would recommend this book solely on the treatment of Enlightenment-era political philosophy along, as the author is strongest here. That section won me over despite some early black marks, as when he identified a founder of the Jesuits as a figure of the Reformation, and declared that the Protestant revolution made the Bible no longer a closed book.  Now anyone could hear it read, or read it themselves. What were they up to at church in the centuries prior, playing tiddlywinks?  The entire structure of Judeo-Catholic-Orthodox liturgical tradition is based on the reading of scripture! Still, the author managed to redeem himself wonderfully after that.

Related:
The Scotch-Irish:  A Social History,  James Leyburn
Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, Jim Webb
How the Irish Saved Civilization, Thomas Cahill

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Images of CS Lewis’ World

Posted on September 9, 2016 by smellincoffee

CS Lewis: Images of his World
© 1973  Douglas R Gilbert, Clyde S Kilby
144 pages

Last year I was tasked with the lamentable duty of weeding our history, literature, and science sections, and so in consequence spent several weeks methodically going through the stacks, book by book, making several discoveries. One,  in regards to literature, evidently my city became CouchPotato-ville in the 1970s. I found book after book which had enjoyed steady attention from the 1930s to the  1960s, but once the 1970s hit — nothing. A precipitous drop off. I suppose everyone started watching Family Feud.  I also encountered a great many books I’d never seen before, like CS Lewis: Images of his World. As the title suggests, it is a photographic treatment of Lewis’ life, illustrating the towns, universities, and pubs wherein he lived, along with some biographical exposition as  extended captions.

Personalities central to Lewis’ life appear here, like his wife Joy, his stepsons, and of course his numerous colleague and fellow writers, namely Tolkien. There are also unexpected supporting characters like his long-term gardener. The latter inspired a character in The Silver Chair, and the book smartly combines letters or biographical narration about Lewis’ life with photographs. A photograph of several young Cambridge students cycling down High Street is the backdrop for a letter in which Lewis details an early social outing, getting together for ‘brekker’ before pedaling off through town. Similarly, his recollection of the many ferry trips from Ireland to boarding schools in England is accompanied by a large photograph of two boys crossing the same ferry, looking at the approaching coast in anticipation.  These shots of others, while illustrating Lewis’ life, don’t appear staged;  there’s at least one fellow on a bicycle who didn’t look pleased at all to find a camera aiming in his general direction, though the intended subject was the street.  There are also photographs of Lewis’ earliest creativity, of his schoolboy notebooks filled with the history of “Animal-Land”, accompanied by little drawings. I’ve been meaning to enjoy this book in full for a few months now, as  I often glance inside it while shelving just to savor the photographs of Cambridge, Oxford, and the Irish countryside. Many of the photographs are only greyscale, but even so they’re delightful. As someone who has read and enjoyed thoroughly his autobiography, I am grateful to have discovered this piece.

Related:
Images of America (Selma, Montevallo) series
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Smoking Guns, Sinister Schemes, and Still More Dangerous Blondes

Posted on September 7, 2016 by smellincoffee

Faced with the specter of a three-day weekend, but late-summer heat still too oppressive to venture out in, I enjoyed a little classic-movie marathon. I mention this here because while it’s not a read-to-reels post, all three movies are based on books (or a play).   The collection gathers The Big Sleep, Dial M for Murder, and The Postman Always Rings Twice.   (It also includes The Maltese Falcon, but I’ve seen it a few times already.) Reader Cyberkitten mentioned that he would be hard-pressed to choose a favorite from among these three, and having watched them I now sympathize. They’re all exceptionally well done.

I began with The Big Sleep, which continues a trend of Humphrey Bogart movies for me. This wasn’t like the rest, though, as they (Across the Pacific, Passage to Marseilles, Action in the North Atlantic) were all WW2 movies.   The Big Sleep was actually filmed and finished before World War 2 was over, but its release was delayed to make room for a few war movies to air. Instead, it’s another detective mystery like The Maltese Falcon.  Bogart is employed by an elderly general to find out who is blackmailing him, and to pay the money if need be. When the blackmailer is mysteriously murdered — lots of murder in this movie — Bogart realizes there’s more to the story, especially when everyone (including the general’s family) insists he drop the issue.  The plot is very complicated, but Lauren Bacall is amazing at being Bogart’s slightly antagonistic client-love interest. Her hautiness is matched only Bogarts’ utter refusal to take anyone’s nonsense seriously. (One of their better scenes here:

Dial M for Murder featured the direction of Alfred Hitchcock, who has never failed to deliver a gripping tale.  M for Murder immediately introduces the reader to a confident seller of sports equipment, Tony Wendice. Though he  seems to dote on his beautiful blonde wife (Grace Kelly!), nevertheless Wendice plans to do her in. In years past, while he was traveling the world playing tennis, she was having a little dalliance with an American criminal novelist. His revenge? To arrange for her murder, via blackmail of a morally dubious classmate, and to use the novelist as his alibi. The perfect crime, but when it goes awry he  seems achieve an even greater revenge by quick thinking  — but the devil is in the details!  Part of the fun is that several important characters are concealing key information from not only the murder-mastermind, but the viewer.  The novelist character adds a certain flair. The ending, when  Wendice closes a door and recognizes that something profound has happened,  has a marvelous touch of class.

Lastly, I finished the weekend out with The Postman Always Rings Twice, which featured neither familiar acting nor  direction. The story begins with a hitchhiker arriving at a roadside cafe and deciding to put in a little work there.  The owner is a happy-albeit-doddering old fellow, Nick, who is married to another beautiful blonde who enters rooms one hip at a time.  I knew  right away she was trouble,  and soon enough she and the hitchhiker have fallen in love and have decided to use Nick’s frequent bouts of drunken stupor to arrange for a fatal accident.  Their first attempt fails, but the second try succeeds…albeit with unwanted results, and soon the two are fighting each other as well as resisting justice — justice that the movie’s end supplies, with an artful level of tragedy.

If I had to choose a favorite, I would select Dial M for Murder; as masterfully performed as Bogart and Bacall’s roles were,   M for Murder’s deceptively straightforward plot won me completely.

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Murder at Fenway Park

Posted on September 3, 2016 by smellincoffee

Murder at Fenway Park
© 1994 Troy Soos
252 pages

1912, Boston. The Titanic is only a few weeks lost to the North Atlantic bottom, but Mickey Rawling’s mind isn’t on one of the biggest maritime disasters of history. No, he’s just been inducted into the Major Leagues, hired to play with the Boston Red Sox, and his first night he’s stumbled upon a man beaten so badly the victim’s face no longer exists. And then Mickey threw up on it, just for good measure. Murder at Fenway Park is the story of a rookie ball player who turns amateur detective when he realizes the police intend on fingering him for the crime. While the cozy relationship between the Red Sox and the police might protect him during the baseball season, come fall he’ll be left to his own devices.

The first in Trey Soos’ baseball-murder mysteries,  Murder at Fenway takes readers through a violence summer, in which Rawlings rubs shoulders with baseball greats like Ty Cobb,  and does his best — with the aide of a nickelodeon musician and a Socialist working on the garment factory-version of The Jungle —  to figure out who did it before either being arrested or beaten to a pulp by the original murderer.   The writing is sometimes unpolished, but the opening framing device — an old man wandering through the Baseball Hall of Fame, feeling he and the sport have become long-distant strangers, then flashing back to the murder story on seeing the victim on a baseball card — was well executed.  I suspect readers will find the setting more interesting than the mystery, considering how dramatic this era was in baseball. This was the decade that produce legends who gave their names to awards — Cy Young, Ty Cobb — although we’re two years away from Babe Ruth stepping up to the plate. This is technically alt-history, considering that Soos kills off a player who — in reality, died of a heart attack in 1959.

Murder at Fenway Park is by no means amazing literature, but it’s enjoyable if you like early-20th century mysteries, or golden age baseball.

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Rescue Warriors

Posted on September 3, 2016 by smellincoffee

Rescue Warriors: The U.S. Coast Guard, America’s Forgotten Heroes
© 2009 David Helvarg
384 pages

When Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005, the Coast Guard was the first on the scene, with helicopters in the air saving lives long before FEMA stirred. Though one of the United States’ military branches, the Coast Guard is an unusual institution;  best-known for its high profile search and rescue missions. Far and away the smallest military branch – and the most physically and academically rigorous in terms of its recruiting requirements —  the Coast Guard’s mission takes it far beyond safe and shallow coastal waters.   Rescue Warriors provides both a history of and a tribute to this oft-overlooked service, mixing history of its various missions and interviews with men and women working overtime to preserve lives and keep the coasts safe.

Although the Coast Guard was officially organized in 1915, it prefers to trace its history back to the revenue cutters of George Washington’s administration, which enforced and collected customs and tariff fees.  Another parent organization was that of the lighthouse and lightship service. The present Coast Guard has maintained that duel-purpose organization, simultaneously enforcing maritime law and rescuing those in danger.  Its mission portfolio is vast: in Rescue Warriors,  Helvarg interviews search-and-rescue teams,  drug-enforcement patrols,  counter-terrorism missions, environmental cleanup crews, science stations, and even more.  Helvarg spent time with servicemen and officers from around the United States’ territorial waters: the Gulf Coast,  New England,  California, Alaska, Hawaii, and even (with Canadian ‘permission’) in the Artic northwest passage.  Despite its ‘coast’ guard name,  Coasties may be found throughout the world: their boarding teams are especially relied upon in the Persian Gulf,  boarding local boats (with consent) to ask about  pirate concerns – and fishing for information on parties hostile toward the governments of Iraq and the United States.  (If the Coast Guard being a military branch simultaneously providing law enforcement seems constitutionally questionable, that isn’t surprising given that Wilson presided over their formal creation:  he never met a constitutional curb he wouldn’t drive over.)

The demands placed on the Coast Guard only seem to be increasing: a global economy means more ships to monitor, and with the Artic now open for commercial traffic and industry,  there will be still more ground to cover. The Coast Guard is much smaller than even the closest other service, the US Marines, but the gulf between its responsibilities and resources has demanded a great deal of efficiency. The average age of a Coast Guard ship is thirty-five years, and its officers’ training vessel, the Eagle,  was built in 1936.   That’s resource conservation, though when a helicopter requires 40 hours of maintenance for every hour of flight time…. The reason for the Guard’s physical and mental demands becomes obvious in reading this:  they are operational every day, not simply training for the next big conflict, and they often go against nature at its hairiest – flying helicopters into punishing winds to seek out those in peril on the sea.  They’re also up against human nature: in the opening chapter on rescue operations in Hurricane Katrina,  the Guard’s Seahawk helicopters took ground fire from locals; another man threatened to shoot a helo crew if they didn’t rescue him, and when they dropped people off at a CG station, it was promptly looted –  though the ammunition locker refused to give up its contents.  At least against cartel gunmen, the Coast Guard  is authorized for “Airborne Use of Force”.

Rescue Warriors  makes for encouraging reading, filled with  tales of rescue, of men and women stretching themselves so that others might live.  Helvarg sees the Coast Guard’s historical legacy and current role as exemplary, highlighting the early employment of women in the lighthouse service, and urges that the Coast Guard be given more resources so that it might serve the United States’ expanding needs.   Ultimately, this is a fun read, a mix of history, present-day history stories, and a fair bit of editorializing by the author whenever there is an environmental connection.

Related:
The Heart and the Fist, Eric Greitens. The memoirs of a humanitarian-turned-Navy SEAL, another mix of service and force.

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When Tigers Fight

Posted on August 31, 2016 by smellincoffee

When Tigers Fight: The Story of the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945
© 1989 Dick Wilson
269 pages

“We Japanese cannot win here. We are trying to plow the ocean.”

Before plunging into the abyss of hubris and attempting to claim the entire Pacific as its own  in 1941, the Empire of Japan was hard at work attempting to enlarge itself at the expense of its ‘elderly, doddering brother’, China.  China was, in the 1930s, in a weak state: riddled with outside colonies and barely unified after a period of feudal civil war, its only defense against Japan’s increasing aggression being sheer size and numbers.  After reviewing the early stages of Japanese intervention in China, which included taking over Germany’s colonial interests and asserting its own after the Great War,  Wilson uses the Marco Polo Bridge incident as the start of the war and delivers a straightforward military history, concluding in the epilogue that the Sino-Japanese war was a complete waste for both sides. China was ravaged, falling into the hands of an internal dictator, and would not emerge onto the global stage for decades thereafter — while Japan would, astonishingly, bounce back as a commercial titan.

Before large-scale combat actually began, Japan had effectively annexed a portion of northern China, Manchuria, and placed a surviving member of the Chinese nobility there as their puppet. The armed conflict assumed an air of self-perpetuation escalation, as these things do, and soon Japan’s goal was the complete military subordination of China. Its early attacks seized Beijing, in the north, and Shanghai in the south. (The infamous Nanjing sadism followed Shanghai.) From there, Japan labored to link  its spheres of power, resulting in numerous battles  in the mountains and vast expanses between the two cities.   China’s Nationalist leaders were able to augment their meager defenses with men and material from the west: not just the United States and Great Britain, but Germany and Russia as well. One of the more interesting tidbits exposed in this book is that Hitler struggled to rid the army of its anti-Japanese types, so while Bavarian’s most famous mediocre painter  was looking for alliance with Tokyo,  other German elements were supporting the Rising Sun’s scorched victims!)  Once Hitler plunged into his foolhardy invasion of Russia, Japan felt free to  seize Anglo, Dutch, and American East-Pacific holdings and thus began a separate campaign for Burma, which lay between British India and the Japanese empire in China.  After a retreat, the Allies returned in a year to reclaim the territory, and by that time Japan was being slowly pushed back by the US Navy and Marines. Even as it was driven into defeat,  the somnolent internal war in China between Nationalists and Communists became much more active.

For me, this was only the beginning  in trying to get a handle on the Chinese side of the war. It seems like a good outline, and Wilson doesn’t skip over important aspects like China’s guerrilla warfare or the utter horror the war let loose in China: both from the brutal behavior of the invading army to the  grim measures the Nationalists resorted to, like flooding the country to stymie a Japanese offense but killing and displacing thousands in the bargain.

Related:
Forgotten Ally: China’s WW2, Rana Mitter
The Rape of Nanking, Iris Chang

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Killer Blondes and Killer Wheat

Posted on August 29, 2016 by smellincoffee

A few weeks ago I read Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man, a murder-mystery from the same Pinkerton agent turned author who produced The Maltese Falcon.   I was sold by the opening line:

I was leaning against the bar in a speakeasy on Fifty-second Street, waiting for Nora to finish her Christmas shopping, when a girl got up from the table where she had been sitting with three other people and came over to me. She was small and blonde, and whether you looked at her face or at her body in powder-blue sports clothes, the result was satisfactory.

The narrator will, in the opening act of the novel, consume a small truckload of spirits, and some fun lines follow. (Paraphrase: “‘Practically’. Everybody’s telling me ‘practically’ the truth. What I want is some impractical joker who will shoot straight!”)  Alas, I didn’t  care whodunit. The solution surprised me, though!

This Saturday, I wrapped up William Davis’ Wheat Belly,  which I read more for inspiration than information. As someone who lost 120+ lbs in a half a year after dropping most processed food, I’m solidly in the camp the author was writing to. (I’ve also read Why We Get Fat, and that work by Taubes is in line with the Weston Price/Atkins/Paleo/Davis family of nutritional thinking.)  According to Davis, modern processed wheat is a frankenfood with no resemblance to natural wheat, and  responsible for obesity, diabetes, celiac disease, and even some mental problems.  As I said, I don’t really need convincing that bread, cereal, etc. are bad for the waistline, but I’ve been unable to break 206  (March 2012) and it is utterly annoying.  I have weaknesses, you see —  like sweet tea and sweet potatoes. In the last couple of weeks I’ve actually cut out my ‘sweet’ tea altogether (which was lightly sweetened — 1/4 cup in a full gallon of tea, but if you drink a pitcher a day it’s a lot of sugar), mixing in lemon juice instead.  (I mostly drink water, of course, but one does like to taste something every once and again.)  Essentially I read this to psych myself up for valiantly saying “No” to the various little temptations — tortilla chips,  blueberry waffles, that sort of thing.  The psychic game is the reason I’ve been reading the Stoics and WW2 history lately…it’s all about trying to adopt that indomitable spirit. I’ve also resumed daily walks, which less about burning calories and more about mental focus — I find it’s a lot easier to exercise my will against cornbread if I’ve already exercised said will four miles in the rain.

What’s coming up?  I’m chasing a few rabbits at the moment and need to focus on one them, really,  Gobs of history — WW2, Spanish empire, Arab conquests — a little historical fiction, and a few miscellaneous bits.

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The Porch and the Cross

Posted on August 27, 2016 by smellincoffee

The Porch and the Cross: Ancient Stoic Wisdom for Modern Christian Living
© 2016 Kevin Vost
198 pages

Stoicism as a moral philosophy has had admirers through the ages, and especially during the medieval epoch. While modern snobbery tends to dismiss the medieval mind as intellectually somnolent, in truth the cathedral schools and universities of Europe were alive with discussion and engagement. Part of that engagement was with the classic tradition, which included not only the old masters but their progeny, like the Stoics.  Doctors of the church, like Ambrose and Aquinas, were especially interested in the Stoics’  understanding of how the mind could be entrapped by vice, or sin, and how people could resist such an influence.  Kevin Vost is a contemporary Christian whose faith is informed — even formed — at the Painted Porch. I recognized this when reading his Seven Deadly Sins, which frequently looked to the Stoics for advice, and so knew I had much to look forward to in The Porch and the Cross.  Here, he reviews the lives and principle ideas of four Stoics (Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius), examines their legacies through history, and finally applies the lessons to Christian moral concerns.

The Porch and the Cross’s format makes it immediately accessible to readers who have never heard of a stoic. The biographical intro chapters reveal first Stoicism’s broad appeal, as the four authors spanned Roman societies, from slave to emperor.  Vost follows this with a summary or distillation of their major works, which concentrate the very best of Stoic thinking and practice for the beginning investigator.  If you have never heard of Stoicism before, here is the elevator version: the universe has a perceivable order, and the good life consists of conforming to that order, in part by recognizing that there are things within our control and things outside our control. To worry about that which cannot be controlled is self-defeating: we should instead focus on what we can do, like being prepared for what Fortune throws at us.

There are obvious points of agreement between Christianity and Stoicism:  for instance, both emphasize the preeminent importance of a soul squaring itself with the order of the cosmos — or in Christian terms, in line with the will of God. Both view spiritual order as superior to the needs and appetites of the body, though Catholic orthodoxy cautions the faithful against holding the latter in complete contempt — that’s the sort of thing Gnostics, Manicheans, and Puritans get up to.  Vost instead looks to Stoicism as a guide for moderating the influence of  both inner turmoil and outside temptation.  Self-control is a virtue hailed by both Stoics and Christians, and Vost is especially pleased with Musonius Rufus’ writings on sexual propriety.

Another common link is the Stoic conception of the cosmopolis, that all men hold within them a divine spark which makes them brethren. The well-ordered soul is not confined by tribalism, but can look beyond it — just as the Christian life is not a nationalistic one, but one which brings together  all people (“Greek and Jew, Scythian, barbarian“) into communion.   Communion is an important Stoic concept, as Marcus Aurelius often reminds himself: we are members with one another — not units within a pile, as bureaucrats would have it, but discrete individuals with distinct jobs. We are, Aurelius said, like the fingers of a hand — we can either work with one another, or put up with one another, but to antagonize the other is irrational and vice-laden.

At just under two hundred pages, The Porch and the Cross is a terrific little collection, bringing together the best-of  from the extant masters into one slim volume, with connecting commentary. I’d forgotten how truly bracing they could be, and must look into reading Musonius Rufus!

Related:

The Stoics themselves:

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