Invictus

I learned the poem in seventh grade English. The our teacher, Mr. Hart, said that he held a thesis that it was actually translated from Latin and originated with Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and that name was also attached to the poem as it appeared on the blackboard. I never found any support for the claim, though the sentiment is clearly aligned to the philosophy of the emperor, philosopher, and soldier who was portrayed by Sir Alec Guiness in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 

 

“Invictus” by William Ernest Henley

 

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

 

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

 

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

 

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate;

I am the captain of my soul.

 

Previously on NecessaryFacts

The Cure for a Failing Empire 

The Influence of Ayn Rand's Objectivism 

The Scientific Method

The Scientific Method (revisited)  

Mortality 

The Wizard of Oz and the Anti-Intellectual Tradition

“Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the Earth or slinks through the slimy seas has a brain. Back where I come from we have universities, seats of great learning where men go to become great thinkers. They think deep thoughts with no more brains than you have.”

L. Frank Baum was a serial entrepreneur, a newspaper publisher, a playwright, and theater producer. With The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Baum intended to create for his children and their friends an American fairy tale. That claim is supported by two biographies, The Wizard of Oz and Who He Was by Martin Gardner and Russell B. Nye, and To Please a Child by Frank Joslyn Baum and Russell P. MacFall. The Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen are archaic and often gruesome. Baum’s story is filled with the stuff of 19^thcentury America: hot air balloons, colored glasses, and intricate mechanisms. The heroes do not take vengeance on the vanquished. In the next Oz book, women rule the kingdom. A trope used by Aristophanes, it surely reflected the drive for women’s suffrage in Baum’s day. But for all of his cleverness, insight, and intelligence, Baum was not an intellectual. And, to the point here, the successful 1939 cinematic presentation of his story speaks from and to the anti-intellectual tradition.

In the book, rather than a grand ceremony, each of the heroes receives their reward privately. The Wizard removes the Scarecrow’s head and stuffs it with bran, pins, and needles. 

“Hereafter you will be a great man, for I have given you a lot of bran-new brains.” The Scarecrow was both pleased and proud at the fulfillment of his greatest wish, and having thanked Oz warmly, he went back to his friends.

Dorothy looked at him curiously. His head was quite bulged out at the top with brains.

“How do you feel,” she asked.

“I feel wise indeed,” he answered earnestly. “When I get used to my brains, I shall know everything.”

“Why are those needles and pins sticking out of your head?” asked the Tin Woodman.

“That is proof that he is sharp,” remarked the Lion.

In the movie, the Scarecrow is handed a diploma for his Th. D. degree and he says, “The sum of the square roots of two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side.” That, of course, is nonsense. But that does not matter. It sounds complicated and it came from a Scarecrow who did not even get fresh bran stuffing. The men at the university (there being no women at university in the common view) have no more brains than the Scarecrow. They only have impressive degrees that empower them to recite silliness. 

Numismatists and economists have probably underscored the real meaning of the Scarecrow's brains by reading in allegories about William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech. Baum clearly took many elements from American culture. He was an active politico, speaking to both Democrat and Republican rallies. The truth may be that as myth, The Wizard of Oz allows us to read our own meanings into its symbols. Whether he intended to lean on the Crime of '73 as he did the use of ipecac and sunglasses is an open question. 

My article on the economic allegory within The Wizard of Oz can be found on the ANA Website Blogs here. That presentation was taken from my article in the Central States Numismatic Society Centinel. I previewed that with a letter to the Numismatic Bibliomania Society E-Sylum here. That was from 2009. But the trend continues, demonstrated by this 2016 report about the opinions of retired economics professor David Denslow in the Gainesville Sun. 

  

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

What, if Anything did Dorothy Learn?  

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life 

Captain America 

Money as Living History

Monsters from the Id

Monsters from the Id: Science is Mankind’s Last Great Hope a film by David Gargani.

Science fiction movies of the 1950s, despite their obvious faults, inspired a generation to become scientists.  In the films, whatever the problems – even when caused by scientists – they brought the solution.  They were heroes.  And they got the girl. Sometimes, the scientist even was the girl, an exception to mainstream cinema and fiction generally.  That point is not in this documentary.  That oversight is one of several, in a generally outstanding effort.

In the words of director, Dave Gargani

The 1950s was an idealistic time in American History, filled with hope, opportunity, and wonder. It was also, "The Atomic Age" where new technology promised to both save humanity as well as put it in jeopardy. All of these factors gave birth to one of the most prolific genres in film history, 1950s Science Fiction Cinema. More then just bug-eyed monsters and little green men, 1950s Sci-fi Cinema provided science inspiration for millions of eager youths across the country. Then after 1957 and the launch of Sputnik, science fiction became science fact as an inspired population worked toward one of the greatest achievements of mankind, spaceflight. Monsters From The Id weaves the intersecting themes of over thirty classic films in order to tell the untold story of the Modern Scientist and his role in inspiring a nation. The film continues to explore the psychological and cultural impact of 1950s Sci-Fi cinema in America and asks, "where is science inspiration found today?"

 The interviews center on Homer Hickam (author of Rocket Boys which became the film October Skies).   Physics professor Leroy Dubeck also comments. He teaches from his book Fantastic Voyages (reviewed on NecessaryFacts here) to deliver science via science fiction. Professor of film studies Patrick Lucanio (Smokin’ Rockets and Killers from Mars) is an historian.  Also speaking  is his co-author for Smokin’ Rockets, Gary Coville.  Rounding out the live presenters is a film critic from New Zealand, Richard Scheib, who offers more suggestive hints than substance, another of the flaws in this gem.

http://monstersfromtheid.net/

The 92-minute presentation focuses entirely on the 1950s.  But science fiction cinema continued beyond that, and continued to inspire.  Also, a shift in our society moved scifi film and the s.f. genre generally away from that traditional optimism for technology.  The fulcrum was 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).  Star Wars (1977) was the lever.  In 2001, technology failed and we did not find out why until 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984).  By then, some restoration could be found, for instance in Brainstorm and Star Trek: The Movie.  The fact remains that Star Wars absorbed our attention, like the Blob, with no heroic teenagers to come to the rescue: a “hokey old religion” defeated a “technological terror.”  We moved away from hard science – perhaps because it was hard to do.  Physics is not easy, even if books such as The Dancing Wu Li Masters made it seem easy.  Once, in a class at Lansing Community College, our professor got tired of doing our homework on the board.  He said that any of us would go out in the back yard and shoot hoops for 45 minutes and not make a single shot and still claim to have had a good time. “How long do you spend on a problem?” he asked rhetorically.

A “next generation” did follow exploring with Jean-Luc Picard and continuing for 20 years through the Star Trek universe. Today, Star Trek continues. We have some reason to predict success, at least for some of the nerds.  (See the many citations to Big Bang Theory on this blog.)

At the same time the computer revolution of the 1980s also added kindling to reignite the fire.  War Games touted the hacker.  But Tron 2 Point Oh made the beta version look great.  The most heroic computerist in recent film was Matt Ferrell (“feral”) in Live Free or Die Hard.  Though he employs his hacker skills to help John McClain, Matt makes his day with a gun, becoming “that guy” who blasts away when no one else can, getting shot (but only wounded) and smiling while the medics patch him up.

And that leaves out all the other sciences. Perhaps the essential characteristic of the scientists of the 1950s film – also not mentioned in Monsters of the Id – is that they are generalists: “scientists.”  Dr. Patricia Medford (Them) was an entomologist, just as we met physicists, astronomers, and mathematicians.  However, each of them was an artesian well of information about anything that needed to be explained at the moment.   Science is not an object or a subject, but a method.  While other people rely on faith (superstition) or force (the military solution), the scientist reasons from facts and tests her hypothesis.  

And at the end of the movie, after the guns are packed away, and the pews are empty, the scientist wonders what else is out there…

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
Where All the Children are Above Average
Nerd Nation
Nerd Nation Portman, McKellar and Day
Nerd Nation 4.5

Republican Rebels

The first tyrants were rebels: self-made men on the rise in the archaic Greek world 700-500 BCE.  They replaced kings just as the parallel invention of coinage replaced cows for money, and philosophy replaced religion, and published writing replaced public speaking.  Tyranny led inevitably to oligarchy and then to democracy.  In 514 BCE, at Athens, Aristogeiton and Harmodios assassinated the tyrant Hipparchos making way for the reforms of Kleisthenes in 508 that created democracy.  Since then, rebels have been republicans. 



Julius Caesar and King George III were both denounced as “tyrants” not “dictators.”  The dictator was a constitutional office in Rome, a leading citizen chosen to take command during a crisis.  The most famous was Cincinnatus, the farmer who returned to his plow after soldiering for the republic.  In his name veterans of the American Revolution founded the city on the Ohio River. 

In our time, the dictator came and went with fascism.  We have forgotten how popular fascism was to the Progressives of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries: it promised a unity of business, labor, arts, and sciences under the coordination of the government.  Even those who opposed it thought it would work. 



American Dime 1916-1945 displayed the fasces symbol of unity.
Right: German half-mark and American quarter of the 1930s.

The world suffered Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini; Atatürk, Franco, Metaxas, and Perón; and still others.  Major. Gen. Smedley D. Butler and Prescott S. Bush plotted a “Wall Street Coup” against the New Deal, itself a form of American fascism.  On March 21, 1933, the Michigan Legislature passed the McNitt-Green bill, granting Gov. William Comstock “dictatorial powers” (literally) over banks and then later over insurance companies.  Gov. Comstock had the good sense to turn them down, but it was emblematic of the times.  The democratic republic was considered dead as civilization was submerged under nationalism and socialism. 

Today, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are nearly indistinguishable as President Obama continues the domestic and foreign policies of the former Bush administration.  Where now are the republican rebels? 

Perhaps resistance comes not from different politics but from abandoning political power entirely.  By its nature, it allows no plurality: once we vote - or the decision is made for us - there is no minority choice. 

In the marketplace, your preference does not prevent your neighbor's equal right to any other decision -- or none at all.  I have never seen a Super Bowl, even though over 100 million Americans enjoyed the previous one.

We all have the same President.  Only one Congressman serves my district.  One school board argues with itself and the public over what children should learn -- and are failing to learn.  Here in Austin, a 1% city sales tax provides the only bus system.  "Political choice" is a contradiction in terms.  If there is a "res publica" a "public thing" it is the agora, the marketplace, where all choices are supported -- and where None-of-the-Above is always your right. 

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS
Unlimited Constitutional Government
Contradictions in the Constitution
Debt: the Seed of Civilization
Entrepreneurship