Hello Fresh!

"Much in the novel was written hurriedly, much is too diffuse and did not turn out well, but some of it did turn out well. I do not stand behind the novel, but I do stand behind the idea."^[4]

When I was in college, one of the things that produced for me many inspired years of learning was the discovery that in only the 19th century magazines had become a popular part of modern contemporary society. These were the starting point for lots of writers. As a matter of fact, I imagine that part of the reason for the success of some novels, enduring success, was how nice and convenient it was to write serialized novels, chapter by chapter. (Imagine greater editing!) This was the way The Idiot by Dostoyevsky was written. It was obvious to me, a young and practically ignorant young woman, that the popularity of magazines just the other side of a century before had been an amazing anomaly, so late in the game. (I wasn't sure about the word anomaly so I looked at synonyms for the word and chose to let it stand on account of its one pairing with "departure") They departed from writing an outright novel and had magazines for a good while. Even into the early 20th century, writers like Heinlich and Bradbury were writing for magazines. I have yet to try and publish anything in a magazine. I wonder if they will have magazines in the future? They taught us that print media was on the way out in journalism school. 

That is why this is also one of my favorite times, the 19th century, because it was the departure of the old age before the new age of technology. The devices that are common and hardly even wondered and awed at were being imagined then. I am most proud of the first computers being programmed by  women. No one really knows this, but scientist is a term for a woman! Men love to keep women from the spotlight. Is that why Henry Higgins called out, want of feeling, I think? If you click the link you can watch Eliza throw her slippers at him while he calmly calls her a gutter snipe. Smart people sometimes miss the point, too. 

Which brings me round to my point, I wanted to discuss the idea behind The Idiot. I have known this little problem for quite a while, the problem of innocent eyes. I was just thinking about someone utterly detestable and said to myself, "I cannot imagine being that person." Most cannot imagine being the bad guy. But some people have a hard time even imagining that there is a bad guy. This was the point of The Idiot.

I suspect that every criminal believes The Idiot lives to some degree in all law abiding people. Also recently, I was reading about Nazi Germany and was again brought to terms with the human ability to cease to care. (lol) That was a lot of not caring. Desensitized to feeling sympathy or empathy, to violence, to destruction, to the inevitable destruction of one's very self. What did they expect was going to happen?

This was a major facet of the 20th century, as George Bernard Shaw illustrates along with many other folks who swing socialist. Quote with a little bio, I will italicize what matters:

Despite his failure as a novelist in the 1880s, Shaw found himself during this decade. He became a vegetarian, a socialist, a spellbinding orator, a polemicist, and tentatively a playwright. He became the force behind the newly founded (1884) Fabian Society, a middle-class socialist group that aimed at the transformation of English society not through revolution but through “permeation” (in Sidney Webb’s term) of the country’s intellectual and political life. Shaw involved himself in every aspect of its activities, most visibly as editor of one of the classics of British socialism, "Fabian Essays in Socialism" (1889), to which he also contributed two sections.

Perhaps I am late learning what socialism is, it has yet to be of great concern to me the name of the political caravan, only the comfort of its seats. 

The interest I have in the story The Idiot has to do with this. The idea has been one that has been more and more important to me over the passing years. I am very much like the hero of the story. At least, I was. But the years that came after my green years, (green to life, green to the evils of mankind), have changed me. Although I do seem to have retained a sort of hila

rious self-deprecation that gets the crowd every time. 

I admire the idea. I, like Dostoyevsky, believe in ideas. This high ideal "problem" is not a setting the bar too high but having idealistic morality. I am good, therefore, the world must be good. But this conclusion fails where it is innate and without philosophy. Without thought, it is like being born beautiful as Snow White into the home of the Queen. She's a sitting duck until she meets the woodsman. I knew this about myself when I was young. That because I was all good, I missed things. It takes one to know one, and idiots are rare.

This is where a new philosophy is born. And this philosophy we will call "the truth". We wouldn't get away with calling truth a philosophy if it weren't for living in the 21st century. But in the 21st century there are a lot of new ideas going around. Truth NOW is only a profound ideal. This ideal is set pretty high. Truth, without being just an ideal, is the foundation of all things good. I live by the philosophy that all things work together for good for those who love God. All things. This truth helps the no longer green thing see, if it isn't, like Revelations says, "snatched from the hand of God, if that were possible"*.  

And in likeness to this is the truth that those who are not innocent see things as all bad. Those who are clean, and innocent are foolish, idiots. The innocence of an aged idiot is an anomaly. How does a person reach adulthood without having the crown of innocence snatched from his head? 

Last night I read about Manasseh, one of the kings in the bible, his father was the great king Hezekiah of a strong Israel and also the grandson of Isaiah. Manasseh was the longest reigning king of Israel, and one of, if not the wickedest. His reign helped to ruin them for good. In the book of Chronicles, he was a pretty nasty guy, and where I found him, he got away with it. I was disappointed in that story, so I looked him up after my bible reading. (I brought the bible yesterday as my book for reading, something to comfort me as I deal with some personal things. I have been praying about them.) 

I found out that things are not what they seemed. Sort of a great story, (last week's great story that inspired me ) Manasseh was imprisoned and made a full recovery from being evil. I was not the biggest fan of his redemption, as what he did to his Grandfather Isaiah was horrendous! (He cut him in half) But I found out ways to forgive him, if he were forgiven. 1st, he begged the lord for forgiveness and promised to turn from his evil if he returned to Israel, and upon his release and return, he did make things right. 2nd, as his grandfather was one of the greatest prophets of the bible I am convinced as a believer that Satan would have really gone after him. The proof is in the pudding. 3rd, and slightly more interesting, he was named for another person in the bible. The name, for a superstitious person, could be partly to blame. We know he was superstitious because that was his big fault.  His name meant in Hebrew, "to forget" or as I read it last night, "God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father's house" (Genesis 41:51).    

If Satan lied to Manasseh, and Manasseh said please father I beg your forgiveness, perhaps the Lord relented. This is interesting to me, it is another allusion to Christ, just like Jonah.

This week I returned to Our Lady of Fatima, I was reading about saints because someone asked me about Christs miracles and I wanted to remember the miracles of crying statues and milk drinking Ganesha's. The last time I read about Our Lady of Fatima I saw a woman instead of Russia spreading its errors. This is funny, because I saw the same thing the last time I had read Revelations in 2015. The "Whore of Babylon", I thought, might be some woman who really was sleeping with all the men of the world's great powers. But these things are an allusion to the same kind of thing, errors. Supposedly, if Russia has consecrated herself to the Sacred Heart of Mary, we don't have to make a big to-do about all this erring. 

Speaking of errors, who's the real idiot? The innocent or the guilty? I say both, for a time. 

*Revelations was maybe not going to make it into the bible on account of it's being too far-fetched for the people who looked into including it. Some things which would not have been easily fathomed in those times which are now are the 1. Two prophets who are seen by all people. 2. The elect who are snatched from God's hand, if that were possible and 3. The sudden importance of certain sinners as not making it into heaven, namely cowards and liars. 

** Correction on point 2, this is Matthew. I wrote a blog recently about the bible being greatly composed of end times stuff. I apologize for my inability to remember facts perfectly, but have a sense most of the time as to them needing to be checked! If I could only remember to check them first!