A Lost Classic - Aeschylus' Proteus - Reimagined From Homer

I spent the night reading Aeschylus' Eumenides, Oresteia part 3. What a letdown. I guess the lost 4th play Proteus was the thing to catch the king.

I googled "Aeschylus Proteus" yesterday afternoon, but for once Homer's Odyssey is a better bet than the world wide web. Menelaus tells Telemachus the story directly, and I can easily imagine how Aeschylus would change it.

Homer brings Menelaus home for a tragic grief scene. In the satire play, Aeschyus would make Menelaus visit Athens. Menelaus, deluded by Proteus to imagine Athens to be his native Argos, shows how absurdly pompous Athenian leaders are in comparison with the returning hero. Then he meets Orestes his nephew, still living in Athens, now a sophist and teacher of youth, who tells him the tragic tale, and ends the four plays on a bizarre note of Menelaus realizing that he has got everything wrong. The home coming hero returns to the wrong home.

Greek Yes, Jewish No

The Greeks say Yes. The Jews say No.

From these great Yeas and Nays the singularity of the West emerges.

Historical singularity begins with Herodotus, who sets the tone. For Herodotus many small singular facts lead up to a wonder. Many wonders combine in the imagination to create the modern world, the cosmopolitan millieu of the sixth century before the common era, which is a singularity.

The pattern goes like this: facts -> wonders -> millieux -> singularity.

For example, the wealth of Croesus of Lydia, a wonder supported by many facts, gives rise to his astonishing attempt to attack the Persian empire, then ruled by Cyrus. This in turn leads to the behemoth of Persia turning attention towards the Greek peoples who lived beside the Lydians, and the singularity of the Persian wars.

In Thomas Mann's Joseph novels, by contrast, the language is delightfully marked with missing ideas, concepts which the writer has negated from the text as a way of highlighting them: the past for Mann is a well which no-one can guess the depth of, and the figures of the early Jewish nomads are the combined myths of many men of the same name. Multiple Jacobs, manifold Abrahams - the entire Jewish tradition negates image and passively accepts textual interpretation. The effect is of sophisticating out of existence clear assertions one way or another. We are negated towards truth.

Greek and Jewish patience underlines the difference. The Greeks struggle against the circumstances, creating tragedy and comedy thereby. The Jews accept and move with their sufferings, crafting from the living stuff of everyday and historical pain something indestructibly true and actual.

The Cure For Stupidity: A Reading of Chekhov's 'Cherry Orchard'

Last night I read Anton Chekhov's 'The Cherry Orchard'. Today I read the first two plays of the Oresteia of Aeschelus, 'Agammemnon' and 'The Libation Bearers' and the book length essay on the trilogy by Robert Fagles, and would've finished the third play 'Eumenides' were the first two of the trilogy not so depressing. But I want to share my impressions of the Chekhov here, not the Greek.

'Cherry Orchard' was frustrating. Having a fair idea of what Doctor Chekhov's on about now, I found many of the ideas in the stories tucked away out of sight in the play.

But what am I to make of it, after all?

I feel that I watch Dr Chekhov dissecting something which gives every indication of being a cherished and valuable living family system. If I were to discover this is an illusion I would be mollified, but I do not: the family and the world the Doctor dissects for our delectation is revealed for nothing more than entertainment and a night at the theatre. Human fables and follies are clinically exposed. It is perfectly barbaric.

I kept saying aloud to myself as I read "Oh my God these people are so STUPID!" Their stupidity, which Chekhov courteously justified by grief, madness, alienation, loose morals, and a variety of other straw men, is the salient feature of the play. Everybody is irredeemably stupid.

Robert Anton Wilson once asked if there is a cure for stupidity. Anton Chekhov presents, no not a cure for stupidity, but a purgative. Here is Doctor Chekhov's presciption:

An ordinary middle class life, free from slavery, lived for the sake of some basic common ideas - say, dignity, cheerfulness, liberty and productive work - this life, this life alone, in itself without any dogma, afterlife, metaphysics or creeds, this life is enough.

It may be that the cure for stupidity is found in the audience of a Chekhov play, if they only remember, and laugh - and then remember to laugh when they themselves commit the same follies, believing in the same ridiculous fables, as Chekhov's characters do.

An Essay On Responsibility, Complete!

Here are all the links of the Essay on Responsibility. They have proved popular and useful to readers.

Part One - Positive and Negative Responsibility.
Part Two - Responsibly Paying Attention (by Vagueing Out).
Part Three - Response Rituals and the Power of Confusion.
Part Four - Responsibility Rituals Applied.
Part Five - Responsibility and Sponsorship.
Part Six - Responsibility and Emotional Freedom.
Part Seven - Three Response Skills: Administration, Mindfulness, Surrender.

More advanced levels of skill are in the notion of overresponding. But that is another blog entry, for another time.

How to Squeeze the Slave Out of The System: Anton Chekhov on Anton Chekhov

Write a story about a young man, the son of a former serf, and a small shopkeeper by profession, who sang in the church choir; who, as a schoolboy, was brought up to show reverence for the officials, to kiss the hands of priests, to bow before the opinions of others, to be thankful for every slice of bread he ate.

Write a story about this youth, who has been flogged many a time, who had no overshoes to put on in winter as he trudged through the snow to give his coaching lessons; who fought other boys; who tortured animals; who liked having meals at his wealthy relatives’ house; who played a part before God and men for no reason at all, perhaps for no other reason but the awareness of his personal insignificance.

Describe how this young man gradually, bit by bit, squeezed the slavish self out of his system, and how he awoke one fine morning feeling that real human blood was flowing through his veins, instead of the blood of slaves.

The young man is Anton Chekhov - first of the freed Russian generations.

Chekhov better than anyone described how the human problem is not in the times or rulers but in ourselves, that we accept enslavement. Every middle class person has risen from peasants and slaves.

Only Chekhov expresses the hidden moral dimension of the middle class - the reality that each person must make something decent of themselves through their own efforts, no matter what their origins. Middle class decency is not protestant or orthodox or hindu, but simply the recognition that all free souls must earn their freedom.

"I gradually squeezed the slavish self out of my system, and woke one fine morning feeling that real human blood flowed through my veins instead of the blood of slaves"

What a magnificent sentence!

Design Playtime - How to Design a Bank that Actually Works Quite Wonderfully

I do not like banks. Banking constantly frustrates me. I decided to overrespond by play-designing a bank which I would find cool.

First up, I have a problem with the word bank. It projects an old-time trustworthiness I deeply distrust. And with good reason. Banks try to bank on the illusion they are disinterested servants of your money. The fact that they are money merchants out to grab what they can should be put up front if they wish to be trusted. My first design move then:

- Quit calling it a "bank". Be honest. Call it a "money shop".

This gets rid of the most blatant dishonesty, but some subtle forms of sleaze remain. Top of the list is suits, ties and other formal business drag: suits convey an authority a money merchants simply does not have, and a seriousness they don't need. So:

- Drop the suits and ties. Wear real people clothes.

Wearing casual clothes can mean the silicon valley uniform of jeans and casual shirt and loafers. This is an excellent start towards making the environment a little less anally retentive.

The next thing to address in my money shop is the structure. Doesn't it bug anyone else that banks, like evil modern day Robin Hoods, steal from account holders to give to shareholders? The solution is simple: make anyone who opens an account automatically a shareholder:

- Quit robbing customers. Profit share with partners.

Bankers, you want passionately loyal customers? Put your money where your mouth is and institute a cooperative corporate structure rather than a competitive shareholder based one. That'll also win you enough press to make other banks consider casual dress for their employees too.

- Institute a cooperative corporate structure, such as a union, rather than a competitve corporate structure.

The dishonesty of the banking experience cuts both ways, however. Banks sleazily allow anyone, no matter who untrustworthy or unpleasant, to bank with them. By allowing anyone to open an account, they devalue the experience for everyone and render it common. My money shop must only be for partners and merchants who are willing to play well with others.

The answer, then, is to have the basic responsibilities of money merchant and partners (that was to say, customers), clearly displayed and agreed to up front. Transparency, goodwill and responsibility are sufficiently universal values that both merchant and partner can agree on, and by holding to principles both parties are allowed to dispense with the tiresome and vulgar dishonesty of pretending to be professional.

- Partners and money merchants both agree to be transparent, benevolent and responsible.

- Actual principles that partner and merchant agree to behave by displayed on the wall.

I reckon banks are naive in how they treat conflict. By letting the front of house staff deal with conflicts, they let a golden opportunity slip through their fingers. Instead, they should cherish their negative feedback.

- Have a agreed-upon conflict resolution process.

I have a few more ideas here which may take some working out, they are so forward thinking, and none more radical than putting a human being at the end of the phone line:

- Actually answer the phone. With a real life person. Immediately.

The benefits in loyalty far outweigh the costs of hiring a money merchant.

- Refuse to merchandise. Design financial products on the fly.

This notion, so unradical to me, would be a major way to expose the ripoff merchant tactics of banks. Imagine going to your money shop and actually working on a loan which seems good for both you, the account partner, and the money merchant? Astonishing. Designing a financial product on the fly also means that the account partner is forced to understand the actual terms of the deal, creating a more responsible consumer.

- Refuse to educate or promote. Instead, partner with businesses that give financial educations, and rely on word of mouth to attract customers.

This idea is just to focus on core business, instead of pretending to be our friends by offering dubious information in tacky pamphlets while smiling and ripping us off.

Banks are a leftover from the industrial age. Most of their business is out-dated. I am surprised banks still exist in their present condition of subtle sleaze and lack of taste. I hope these ideas can help them on their inevitable demise. I would be interested to see if a reader could design a better bank. Good luck!

Want summary? Here you go:

How to Design a Bank that Actually Works Quite Wonderfully:
- Quit calling it a "bank". Be honest. Call it a "money shop".
- Drop the suits and ties. Wear real people clothes.
- Quit robbing customers. Profit share with partners.
- Institute a cooperative corporate structure, such as a union, rather than a competitve corporate structure.
- Partners and money merchants both agree to be transparent, benevolent and responsible.
- Actual principles that partner and merchant agree to behave by displayed on the wall.
- Have a agreed-upon conflict resolution process.
- Actually answer the phone. With a real life person. Immediately.
- Refuse to merchandise. Design financial products on the fly.
- Refuse to educate or promote. Instead, partner with businesses that give financial educations, and rely on word of mouth to attract customers.