Tonight I completed 'The Scarlet Pimpernel'. It was a good book, and I think perhaps I would be interested in reading the sequels to it, but for now, I think it would be better to read something along the lines of 'A Tale of Two Cities', to fully en-capture the literary spirit (as told by the British) of the French Revolution. For now, the next book on my queue rests in either Don Quixote, The Canterbury Tales, Dr. Faustus or Our Mutual Friend. All of these I aim to read very soon, but, I am favouring Don Quixote for the immediate future. This makes me wonder, what is the point of literature? I certainly enjoy many aspects and parts of some literature. Some literature disgusts or bores me with a vile distaste for it. I hate Shakespeare because he bores me horribly, as well as people like Joyce and all of the other modern authors who have lost site of the story.
I think a big part of literature rests in understanding the times and perspectives of other people through language. This of course is difficult, but I think important. I do not always understand the narrative devices used to elicit some sort of higher or wittier understanding of the work, but this is partly due to my obstinacy and rebelliousness to what I view as the pretentiousness authors put on as aires. I continue to read however, mostly good proper Victorian literature, because I like the use of language and the multitude of synonyms the Victorians employed.
Moving on from literature, reading John's journal today made me wonder about a few things, posted in response to his thoughts. The idea that human life is somehow immeasurably worth more than any cause worth fighting for, save perhaps other people, is an odd thought to me. I am not saying that this is not how it is or not how it should be, but I think it really depends on someone's perspective of if this is how it should be. I look throughout history, and men I would consider great and men I would consider wise, would not necessarily see human life as more worthwhile than everything else. In fact that view tends to hold them back more than anything. All of the great leaders throughout history are seldom known for doing things through peacetime, there may be a few, but not many. Adolph Hitler, and Joseph Stalin, certainly did not think too much of human life to gain land, and power. These men are seen as evil, but even thinking about people we may consider more noble have employed similar means to achieve their ends. Abraham Lincoln comes immediately to mind, he in essence cost hundreds of thousands of lives, for a few ideals.
These ideals may seem noble to us, but if human life is paramount in worth to us (I am guessing because we ourselves are human and therefore think we are the most full of worth), would not this many lives be not worth the cost, of union in our nation and emancipation to the slaves of the Confederacy? I am sure that had the civil war not been fought that almost all of these people would have lived substantially longer, but we fought the war all the same, over ideals and land. Others come to mind too, had we not fought the Indian wars, we would certainly not be living as far as California, Boulder (where I am), and indeed on almost any of this continent altogether. It is my belief that war (or fighting) for anything, be it ideals, resources, land, slaves or whatever, is as natural to mankind as eating or talking.
This may be unfortunate, but mankind is aggressive in its very nature, and has been since we can find archaeological evidence for. Most of our artifacts, of stone age and earlier cultures and even pre-human societies of things like australopithecus, are things of destruction, killing and butchering. This evidently is a survivable trait, and it seems funny to me that every nation in the world has a defence to their credit (at least every nation I know of), including the Vatican, with their Vatican Guard. This is not to say that they are always fighting, but the defences are still there, and this suggests that for one thing human life is worth less to every nation than the loss of their culture at least, because if there ever were people with that ideal, they died out long ago. I suppose I am ranting now. So I shall talk more on the subject another night, I know there may be those of you who disagree with me, but again I am mostly listing facts and not a decisive moral stand point upon them.