Octavia Butler, Marcus Aurelius and More Thoughs About Election Day
On this Election Day Eve, I don’t feel compelled to exacerbate handwringing nor even to traffic in hope, though, if you read the previous entry , you’ll find that I’m certainly not un-hopeful. I don’t want to spend a lot of time on building an argument for how or why I look on the current historical moment that we are all part of as I do. Aurelius put it better than I ever could: ”This is a fine saying of Plato. That he who is discoursing about men should look also at earthly things as if he viewed them from some higher place: should look at them in their assemblies, armies, agricultural labours, marriages, treaties, births, deaths, noise of the courts of justice, desert places, various nations of barbarians, feasts, lamentations, markets, a mixture of all things and an orderly combination of contraries.” (The Meditations, VII; 48) This isn’t to say that one assumes an aristocratic, above-it-all, attitude; simply to recognize that what is unfolding moment by moment is part of a greater...