​This morning’s electronic version of the New York Times opened with a full page spread, complete with sophisticated visuals,  entitled “Odessa is Defiant: It’s also Putin’s Ultimate Goal.” “Oh?” I thought.  How do they know that is  Putin’s ultimate goal? I better read this article later this morning.”  But by the time I came back from the airport, it was gone.  Totally gone.
The headline and perhaps the article as a whole was damaging to the Ukrainian cause.  That’s why I wondered abut hacking. But never underestimate the power of sheer ineptitude.
Still,  thanks, hacker or whoever: the  headline puts front and center the big question What are Putin’s ultimate goals?  I have a quirky answer to that which I will post in a few days. Stay tuned.

Readers of this blog know how skeptical I am about focusing on efforts to make oneself (or someone else) happy. It’s a by-product not goal, I have come to think, Aristotle not withstanding.
But I have to admit that Roko Belic’s 20    documentary  Happy is smart, savvy and fun.  Some genuinely interesting thinking is going on about happiness and this film catches a lot of it.  It’s available on Prime and well worth seeing.
 

​The city of Kherson, on the  west bank of the Dnieper River, seems likely to be the next focal point of the Ukraine war.
       It’s worth thinking about its name and the history behind it.  The name is derived from the Greek chersonesos, peninsula, literally dry land-island.  In the sixth century before our era a Greek colony was founded not far from modern Sevastopol in the Crimea. The settlement lasted for almost two thousand years, then was almost forgotten.
But it was not forgotten by Catherine the Great of Russia who in June 1778 gave the name to a city she was founding on the west bank of the Dnieper River. Although the new city was about 150 miles away from the ancient Greek colony, it seemed an appropriate name to Catherine.  She knew her Greek history!
The new city was a commercial, shipping and ship building center, but its name points to another reason for its importance.  It controls access to Crimea.  If you want to dominate Crimea, you need Kherson. Its name shows that Catherine’s strategic objectives included Crimea. 
Wars usually have tangible goals  - , territory, natural resources and industrial ones, and human capital to exploit them.  All these are in play as Ukraine and Russia battle it out for Kherson. But don’t forget symbolic capital, especially when a Vladimir Putin is involved.  He wants to restore the grandeur Russia enjoyed under Catherine the Great, Peter the Great and his namesake the sainted Vladimir. He will not lightly relinquish Kherson. The Ukrainians, I believe, know all that  full well and will do what they can to take that city away from Russia.
It’s too powerful a symbol to let slip away.

  Here's the preface to the translation of my book on Thucydides​ into modern Greek:; it has just appeared in Athens:
The writing of this book was mostly done on the slopes of Mt. Lykabettos, in the library of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. Now, to my great delight this translation brings my book back to its home in Greece.
The impulse that drove me to write about Thucydides’ often puzzling work was, however, far less joyous.  It was part of a struggle to understand a brutal, vicious modern war – modern yet in many respects echoing what Thucydides had analyzed. In our present situation, it seemed to me, we needed to read Thucydides closely, asking at every turn how his text worked.  Only in that way, I concluded, could we understand the perspective and insight in his complex, but often deeply moving writing.
That was many years ago. For a while there came a time when wars abated, despotic regimes retreated, walls fell, apartheid waned, and civil society seemed to flourish in many parts of the globe, Hope seemed rational
But No!, inevitably perhaps, the old miseries returned – ranting demagogues, ill-considered invasions, carnage, defeat, civil strife, , catastrophic withdrawals, atrocities and disruptions of the order of nature,-“droughts from which came great famines and that exceedingly destructive plague-like disease” (1.23.6)
We were back in Thucydides’ world, or, more precisely, in a situation largely of our own making in which we need more than ever Thucydides’ relentless efforts to bring to light the forces within our nature as human beings  that can, as he says, “enslave judgment.”      In such a setting the close reading of Thucydides’ history seems more urgent than ever.
But that, surely, a new generation of readers and scholars  must determine for itself.  My hope now is simply that this reading of his text will provoke new and deeper understanding of Thucydides’ ever-challenging, ever-revealing work.
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       “Gun fetish” was, I thought, just a cute way of talking about the obsession some American males have with their guns. The recent mass shootings, however, have made me look more closely at the word and the ideas behind it. That investigation puts the problem of regulating firearms in a new light.
“Fetish” is of Portuguese origin, coined when their explorers noted the special role that some man made objects had among the West African people.  The Portuguese used the word “feitiço  “  for them meaning a charm or magical object. That word was derived from Latin   facticius, artificial, and ultimately from the verb facio, to make.  Fetishes were made things, not,  in other words, an unusually shaped stone or piece of gnarled wood , but something humans made, especially of metal.
       That word must have had rich connotations for these good Catholic explorers (and exploiters),, since the Nicene Creed which they surely knew full well, speaks of Jesus as gentium non factum,  “begotten not made,” that is, the son of God, a true divinity,   not some pagan idol. 
So, from the start, fetishes were scorned by the Europeans.  That did not stop Europeans from collecting such objects, enshrining them In museums, and, eventually, exploring their psychological and sexual implications. . (The word begins to be used in a Freudian, or sexual sense in 1897.)
Among curators, anthropologists and art historians the word has now become a mark of “colonialist discourse.” See S. Silva: ”Art and Fetish in the Anthropology Museum” in The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief 13 (2017)
For the understanding of such objects on their own terms the Yoruba cult of Ogun, god of war and metal, may offer a useful perspective.  The god stands behind the production of metal objects, but the objects themselves “function as conduits for the god’s power and protection,” as Claude Cernuschi has put it to me in an email. .


The peoples of West Africa, as best I can tell, never treated firearms as having such special powers. Perhaps the Portuguese didn’t either. But today many Americans find that just holding a firearm can have powerful psychological effects.  They won’t call their weapons “fetishes,” but psychological research has shown that for some   young American males simply holding a gun, even a toy gun, powerfully increases aggressive feelings.   In 2006 a team led by the psychologist Francis McAndrew of Knox College reported findings, recently summarized in the New York Times: for June 2, 2022., “Disturbing New Pattern in Mass Shootings: Young Assailants.”  In one experiment a group of young men:
“… were given a children’s toy and an actual firearm.  The presence of a gun changed their behavior significantly,” …  “Just holding a gun gave you guts.” (The NIH provides an a convenient abstract of this work. There are also important observations in “If you give a man a gun: the evolutionary psychology of mass shootings” in The Conversation  December 4, 2015 “ 
       None of this research suggests that guns are like fetishes, but it makes me wonder if the motivation behind the observe aggressive impulses may include the feeling that the gun confers a power beyond ordinary human limits.  The gun, seen in this way, is an almost  sacred object,, not subject to restraints imposed by those who do not understand the psychological power they can confer. . Like all fetishes, the gun can seem sacred to those who possess them, or are possessed by them.   
Such power can cloud the mind when it tries to interpret the relatively straight – forward text of the Second Amendment; it inspires zealous resistance to any form of regulation; it deludes some individuals with feelings they are entitled to kill.
       Traditional fetishes, to be sure, differ from modern firearms in two important respects. Guns can be, often are, lethal. Second fetishes are usually draw together a group of worshippers, while guns, especially  assault rifles, seem to have special appeal to “loners,” isolated individuals, almost always  males, who lack friends and feel rejected by society.  The high degree of social isolation in the United States may account for much of our country’s off the scale murder rate.
These observations are speculations by someone who makes no claim to expertise in these matters.  But surely it is time for all of us to start thinking in radical ways about gun violence. The problem clearly is not responding to measures currently in place, nor are those most widely discussed in the media likely to tame a fetish. So let us struggle with more radical questions:  Is it possible to defetishize an object? Can a less dangerous fetish (a motorcycle, pe perhaps) be substituted for a more dangerous one? Can a fetish be turned against itself?  For example, could someone skillfully intervene at an early stage with groups of those most clearly at risk- gun owning young men, “loners,” those who feel rejected and experience intense social isolation?  Could a shared veneration of the fetish counteract the social isolation that seems to drive some men to murder?
Bad idea? Too hard? Too risky? Too radical? OK, come up with a better one.

      Here's the latest Newsletter! Hope you enjoy it.

​Interpreting the Second Amendment:
Comment in the most recent of these Newsletters evoked some strong reactions, including  an important observation by Hunter Rawlings  about James Madison’s way of expressing himself.  That in turn elicited a useful comment by Arthur Eckstein on 18th century thinking about “a well-regulated militia”  Both Rawlings’  blog post and Eckstein’s comment can be found  in the blog for  June  13: https://www.wrobertconnor.com/blog/hunter-rawlings-on-james-madison-and-the-interpretation-of-the-second-amendment
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Richard Seaford of Exeter University also reacted to the discussion in the last Newsletter of the financing of American college education.  His piece, “Wealth and How We Use It,” can be read on the  blog post for June 9th.
You’ll also find there a link to TLS’s version of his presidential address to the British Classical Association.  Good reading!
          I am very grateful to all those who react  and respond to my blog and Newsletter. Keep ‘em coming!
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Are the Best of the Best Are Experiencing the Worst of the Worst?
          In personal email correspondence I found something else – outrage at the mass shootings, and despair at the inability of the political system to make any  significant response.  This is part, I fear, of a more wide-ranging discouragement about the political impasse that makes it difficult to take action on pressing issues such as social justice and climate change.
          If discouragement prevails among the mature and well-educated readers of this Newsletter, what is it like to be an adolescent in this climate?  We know the answer to that question, at least in part, from the statistics showing a rise in suicide,  self-harm and other forms of psychological distress among  young people, not least those in highly selective  colleges and universities  See “The Numbers Just Continue to Rise”“ in the Boston Globe of June 8, 20222.
Whatever its causes, many colleges are having a hard time keeping up with this problem, and nearby Emergency Rooms  are sometimes overwhelmed  by young people in desperate need of psychological help. Psychiatrists are so booked up that they often cannot take new patients or see them with the needed frequency.  It’s another pandemic, but not getting the attention it needs.
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Recent Blog Posts at https://www.wrobertconnor.com/blog
 
“A Nearly Perfect form of Government” June 25 What makes a democracy work at least at one scale.
Staging Euripides’ Ion” June 21 What the tragedy is really about
“His Greatest Contribution to the Field”  June 10. On “I’ve written only one masterpiece. Bolero.  Unfortunately, it has no music in it.”  Maurice Ravel to Arthur Honneger.
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Ponderable::
“The critical contribution of Periclean leadership to Athenian success …  was not so much his expert understanding of the political system that he led, but his ability to maintain civic cohesion  through his superlative prestige.” “  Mark Fisher “Thucydides’ Tragic Science of Democratic Defeat”  in The Review of Politics 84 (2022), 25–54. 
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The Value of History:
          The last Newsletter poked fun at the phrase “History teaches us that …” But that raises the serious question of what is the value of history?  Michael Lurie called my attention to a passage in Schopenhauer: “ “What the faculty of reason is to the individual, history is to the human race. By virtue of this faculty, the human being is not, like the animal, restricted to the narrow present of perception, but knows also the incomparably more extended past with which it is connected, and out of which it has emerged ... Thus, writing history serves to restore to unity the consciousness of the human race, which is necessarily interrupted by death, and is accordingly piecemeal and fragmentary,”.
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Word of the Month: Euphemism
The Greek word demands we respect the disruptive power of language.  Better to keep silent than to misuses speech.  We’ve taken hold of the word and made it insipid.  It’s become a “nice” way of speaking, not a stern reminder to watch what  we say and how we say it..
In Late Antiquity some Greeks were aware that this was already a problem:
“ All the ancients, but most of all the Athenians, were careful not to use ill-omened words; so they called the prison 'the chamber,' and the executioner 'the public man,' and the Furies (Erinyes) they called 'Eumenides' ('the kindly ones') or 'the Venerable Goddesses.' " [Helladius of Antinoopolis, quoted by Photius] “
The British philosopher Bishop George Berkeley observed
 “…in our dialect, a vicious man is a man of pleasure, a sharper is one that plays the whole game, a lady is said to have an affair, a gentleman to be a gallant, a rogue in business to be one that knows the world. By this means, we have no such things as sots, debauchees, whores, rogues, or the like, in the beau monde, who may enjoy their vices without incurring disagreeable appellations. [George Berkeley, "Alciphron or the Minute Philosopher," 1732] (from Etymonline s.v. euphemism.)
We are learning to be wary of ostensibly “nice” euphemisms.  Our teacher is now Vladimir Putin, who has given us instructive example of “special military operation.”
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Zen Master Avoids Happiness Trap:
The trap was explained in a blog post on February 23: https://www.wrobertconnor.com/blog/the-happiness-trap
     The Zen master responds::
“The  good archer does not aim at the bullseye.”
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Thanks!
These monthly Newsletters will take a vacation in July and August, but I will continue blogging  through those months.  I always welcome your comments and leads to new ideas and information. Keep ‘em coming. .
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I hope you like this Newsletter and will consider forwarding it to friends with a suggestion they join the mailing list by sending me a message either here or at wrconnor1@gmail.com.
Next week I’ll post “Just Holding a Gun Gave You Guts:” The Gun Fetish in America.  Stay tuned.
Have a great summer

​

Even though we are not registered voters on the Maine island where we spend summers, we attend its Town Meeting, in part to see hoe democracy works in such a setting. This year’s “warrant” included a controversial and expensive item, challenged by several voters.  As one voter after another spoke up, the rationale for this item became clearer and clearer. At last its lead  opponent rose again, this time to withdraw his objection.  The item then passed, unanimously.
       Before moving on to the next item on the agenda the Moderator remarked, “This is a nearly perfect form of government. People speak up; facts become clear; people listen and sometimes change their minds.”
       He’s right, I think, though I came away convinced that democracy is not so much a form of government as a habit of mind, slow to form, easily unlearned, but precious and life-giving. 

​       It’s my favorite Greek tragedy, from the opening scene when the young temple slave Ion sweeps the pigeon droppings off the steps of the temple of Apollo, to the final, belated dea ex machina, makes grandiose historicism out of all-too-human foibles.
       I have loved the play ever since seeing it performed in the theater of Herodes Atticus in Athens one summer many ears ago. At the crucial moment, the scene where mother and son recognize one another, the portly Greek gentleman seated to my right broke out in simultaneous tears and laughter.  It was a perfect act of literary criticism.  He got it just right.
Perhaps, however, I can add one small detail, a suggestion about the staging of the play. It’s set in the forecourt of the temple of Apollo at Delphi.  Ancient theater goers would know that right there were inscribed the two most famous maxims: Avoid Extremes and Know Yourself (Pausanias 10.24.1.   Modern readers and playgoers would benefit from having these words in view as action veers toward the extreme, then averts catastrophe  as the characters come to know who they are.
So, stage it so the maxims send their messages – loud and clear for every viewer to behold amid tears and laughter.

​One day in the winter of 1956/57 a fellow student  came over to me as I was studying in the Ashmolean Museum’s library in Oxford.  “Gilbert Murray is in the next room, he whispered. “I thought you’d want to know.”  I did indeed for Murray was still a great presence in Britain even though he had stepped down as Regius Professor of Greek  twenty years earlier.  There he was, aged NN, with  knit gloves with cut away fingers to help him turn pages in the always chilly Ashmolean. It was my one glimpse of the great man.
      Murray’s contributions to classical studies have not held up very well.  His nearly two dozen translations of Greek tragedies and comedies, big sellers in their day, seem quaintly  out of date; his books on Greek literature and religion rarely enter into modern scholarly  discussion.  
      But he made one great contribution to the field – whispering in the ea of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin that his succedsor should be not the reswpected philologist J. D. Denniston or the charming man of letters Maurice Bowra, but a relatively obscure young man teaching not at Oxbridge, but at redbrick Reading.  Murray was, in A.E. Housman’s words, a “public intellectual,” devoted to liberal causes, articulate on the BBC and elsewhere, and accustomed to the corridors of power in British politics. His word was sufficient.  E.R. Dodds was appointed Regius Professor of Greek, the most influential position in Classics.
That was in 1936. In the following  years Dodds did what Murray had tried to do but never quite succeeded – he broadened the intellectual reach and changed its scholarly direction, most notably through his Sather lectures, The Greeks and the Irrational, and his editions of Euripides’ Bacchae. The vitality of Classics today owes much to Dodds, an to Murray’s whisper  in the Prime Minister’s attentive ear.
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      These recollections came to mind on reading David Butterfield’s review of Daisy Dunn’s Not Far from Brideshead: Oxford between the Wars, in the TLS for April 29, 2022  Thanks to Jean Houston for calling it to my attention.

 

On reading remarks in  my recent Newsletter   on the interpretation of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Hunter Rawlings of Cormell University responded with these  observations about its primary author James Madison:
 
“It is evident that it is not James Madison’s meaning in the Second Amendment, but his idiosyncratic wording, that has undermined gun control in our era (not in prior eras, e.g., the 1939 U.S. v. Miller decision by the Supreme Court).  It is also evident that a proper understanding of his syntax would solve the issue of a Constitutional gun right without going through the almost impossible process of repealing the Amendment.  Having read a lot of Madison, I am  convinced that his standard usage compels us to interpret the second clause of the Amendment as dependent upon (or, to use a more formal linguistic expression, “entailed by”) the first:  that is, the right “to keep and bear arms” depends fundamentally upon the existence of “well regulated Militia(s).”  The fact that Madison did not say “Since a well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State…” in the first clause, but instead used what linguists call an “absolute adjunct” (“being necessary”) has, unfortunately, caused the problem.  If he had written “Since” with a verb in the indicative or subjunctive, the meaning would be clearer, but his use of the absolute expression is standard for him in the protasis of a conditional sentence.  Madison clearly, and I mean clearly to anyone acquainted with his syntax, and with the conditions current when he was drafting the Amendment, meant that the right “to keep and bear arms” is a right of the people only because militias are “necessary to the security of a free State.”  He was, in the historical context, trying at the outset of the new federal government to appease Americans who knew that their state militias had been crucial to our victory in the Revolutionary War, and were worried that a new national (federal) army might overshadow the state militias and dominate and threaten the people, who were used to, and proud of, their state militias.
 
In summary, a proper reading of his syntax and a basic understanding of the historical context make the Second Amendment no longer applicable, i.e., moot. Any other reading is ideologically willful.  Justice John Paul Stevens knew all this, and so have other Justices, but in recent decades they have been in the minority on the Supreme Court.”
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Here’s the text of the Amendment, prfetly clear, O think, to anyne who, like Madison and his colleagues, knew their Latin and could spot an ablative absolute at musket range:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”