Life, people, the world, society, politics, countries, current events

This blog is for my own benefit, to help me organize, analyze, rationalize what I think and feel about the events in my day. These include but not limited to news events, personal interactions, reading, comments, if any are ever left on this blog. Bernard Paris has written a book, Bargains With Fate, which applies his interpretation of Karen Horney’s concept of personality to Shakespeare’s characters. The concept holds we all develop an idea, frame, belief that if we act certain ways the world will magically and not merely in a direct, cause-effect way, respond as we wish is beguiling, but ultimately of limited valid application. We all believe we can by taking certain actions obtain certain outcomes. This approach is different, it posits we expect or believe the results come thru non-real world power. For example, if I behave kindly and generously to others, they will behave the same to me. If I work hard and smart I will succeed. Not in each case because people naturally react as they are acted upon nor because hard smart work must naturally solve problems and overcome obstructions. But because the world is so arranged by a higher power that good acts returns good acts. Or because reward/success is ‘given’ to the virtuous and hard smart work is virtuous. There is no allowance for sociopaths, or psychopaths, for narcissists, there is no allowance for disease and accidents maiming and killing the ‘good and virtuous.’ Perhaps the European Nazi holocaust convinced many that this view of the world is naïve and dangerously incomplete. Perhaps this view was prevalent in Shakespeare’s time when church attendance was mandatory, information for most was thru conversation and anecdotal, and in England of that time the government was based on the firm belief that God had specifically ordained the monarch to rule the realm. Indeed, as nearer to god than her subjects, Queen Elizabeth performed ‘laying on of hands’ at the pleading of her subjects to cure disease and bring ‘good fortune’. The mindset must have been very alien to us. So yes Paris’s approach may have explained how Shakespeare and his audience framed the characters actions, feelings, and motivations. Shakespeare the genius has presented characters, many so life like and ‘rounded human’ that they can still touch us, be comprehensible to us, but we do not see them in the same way perhaps he and his audience did. The disillusionment and cynicism of the post WW1 ‘lost generation’ and the incomprehensible, horrific but undeniable truth of the holocaust have demonstrated to much of the western world that there is no Fate at all that will hold up its end of a Bargain.