...and I still have nothing to report.
Not that it's especially interesting to anyone else, but I've been immersed for about eight days now in H. G. Wells' The Outline of History.
I'm reading the original 1919 version, now in the public domain, which begins with prehistory and ends with what was then known as the Great War. Because of its age, a lot of new information, such as the Leakey discoveries at Olduvai Gorge and the recent discovery in China of what turned out to be the world's oldest printed book (a copy of the Diamond Sutra which predates Gutenberg's Bible by several years) are not mentioned.
Even so, Outline is interesting because of the way it puts events in historical context.
Wells shows, for example, how the Roman Empire was far less than Western history has traditionally made it out to be, with more advanced empires coming immediately before and after it. Even during its height under the emperor Trajan, he says, Rome was not as large, as well-organized or as cultured as China was during the same period.
Among the people who he believed have been overrated by history are Alexander the Great and the Israelite kings David and Solomon. (At what point in history, by the way, are we supposed to switch from 'Israelite' to 'Israeli'? I had a friend when I first started in the news business – a fundamentalist Christian – who wrote news copy referring to the modern state of Israel as 'the Israelites.')
So that's what's happening with me. I also have Eckhart Tolle's new book, recommended by a friend, which I'm sort of browsing through. I haven't read any Tolle before, and I'm having some trouble warming up to him.
1 comment:
Eckert Tolle is a capitalist, nothing more. He knows how to write what people will buy.
I just read "Road to Heaven - Encounters with Chinese Hermits". Very poorly written but kind of interesting. The actual interviews with the present day hermits were the best part. Here is one example of an answer given by a monk that had lived alone for 50 years in a mud hut on the side of a Chinese mountain:
"Man's nature is the same as the nature of heaven. Heaven gives birth to all creatures and thay all go in different directions. But sooner or later they return to the same place. The goal of this universe, its highest goal, is nothingness. Nothingness means return. Nothingness is the body of the Tao. Not only man, but plants and animals and all living things are part of this body, are made of this body, this body of nothingness. Everything is one with nothingness. There aren't two things in this universe. To realize this is the goal not only of Taoism but also Buddhism. Everything in this world changes. Taoists and Buddhists seek that which doesn't change. This is why they don't seek fame and fortune. They seek only the Tao, wich is the nothingness of which we are all created and to which we all return. Our goal is to be one with this natural process."
I wonder if this is why in recent years NOTHING has seemed interesting to me. Maybe the label "depression" does not fit? I used to couldn't wait to get to this destination or buy such and such item or have sex with so and so. Now, well, I kind of just want to float around in the bosom of god. Is that nothingness?
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