Open Blogging

Robert F says:

I’m in the last fifty pages of “Moby Dick”. This is my second or third rereading of the novel over the decades. To the degree that Ishmael expresses Melville’s mature theological/philosophical viewpoint, and I think that he largely does, it seems clear to me that he opted against the Calvinist God that his mother raised him to believe in, and, apparently never considering any other form of Christianity as compelling, opted instead for a kind of quasi-religious philosophy of human solidarity and mutuality in the face of this death and suffering filled universe. I understand why the grim theology of hard Calvinism would have repelled him; and I understand why the Promethean egoism of Ahab, which leads to premature destruction and death, would be something he would also ultimately reject — though he obviously saw a kind of tragic charm in it. However, the evidence he adduces for such a sanguine view of human fraternity and friendship in the text of the novel is woefully deficient, amounting to depicting in a few passages examples of such virtue enacted by the idealized, not to say caricature-like, Queequeg and other tribal characters in the story. I think this deficiency in his fiction reflects a dysfunction in his life, a tendency to romanticize and idealize friendship, most obviously seen in his largely one-sided relationship with Nathaniel Hawthorne, who he seemed to slavishly admire and idolize long after the friendship had gone cold. The problem with Melville’s humanistic faith, it seems to me, is that no single human being, or group of human beings, can see us through the violence and cruelty, and death, of this world; only God can. And only the God with the real human face of Jesus can; therein lay the only true humanism.

Robert F says:

Trump saying US should prepare to go to war against Nigeria to prevent harm to Christians….as he deports hundreds of thousands of Christians to countries of origin where their lives will be in danger, or third-country-removes them to countries where they will be enslaved and/or killed.