{"id":3871,"date":"2020-06-19T10:28:27","date_gmt":"2020-06-19T14:28:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/?p=3871"},"modified":"2020-06-19T10:28:27","modified_gmt":"2020-06-19T14:28:27","slug":"omnia-disce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/?p=3871","title":{"rendered":"Omnia disce"},"content":{"rendered":"

If I have a patron saint, it’s probably Hugh of St-Victor [12th century, author of Didascalicon<\/a>], whose advice was

Omnia disce, videbus postea nihil esse superfluum<\/b>
\n(Learn everything, you will see later that nothing is superfluous)
\n<\/center><\/p>\n

\nOne can’t, alas, Know Everything, but elaborating one’s understanding of the world around has been a lifelong Odyssey<\/a>, and a great joy. Sometimes the piling up of knowledge and the interweaving of threads of understanding leads to precipices, viewpoints where an unanticipated vista opens to disclose a chasm of personal ignorance. Happens all the time…<\/p>\n

\nIt’s a measure of something<\/i> that I have read NONE of the reading list on issues of race<\/a> in this issue of Harvard Gazette. I am uninformed in these matters, and forever surprised\/chastened to discover vast realms of ignorance of important things I should<\/i> have known about. Just now I happened upon May Jeong’s Ah Toy, Pioneering Prostitute of Gold Rush California<\/a>, which considerably enlarges my knowledge of the history of Chinese immigration into California, and raises a host of other issues and questions about intersectional matters.<\/p>\n

\nIt’s easy to find examples of “I’m not responsible for…” with respect to evils of the past (slavery, the extirpation of aboriginal populations, anti- stances toward various Others, etc.), and indeed I’ve mouthed the formula myself in defense of one thing or another. The question of ‘responsibility’ might be reframed into a discussion of how does\/should\/might<\/i> one take account of complicities<\/b> in distant (temporally, spatally, socially…) iniquities and inequities. At the very least, one ought to be ready to inform<\/i> oneself when a chasm of personal ignorance presents itself. Books like 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus<\/b><\/a>, the works of Eduardo Galeano (among them Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History<\/b><\/a>, Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World<\/b><\/a>, The Memory of Fire<\/b><\/a> trilogy) and Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States<\/b><\/a> tend to blow the wheels off the wagon of complacency.<\/p>\n

\nLately I’ve been reading Walter Johnson’s The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States<\/b><\/a> (which sports Kate’s beautiful maps) which provides a potent backstory to recent events like Ferguson (Amazon blurb: “…exemplifies how imperialism, racism, and capitalism have persistently entwined to corrupt the nation’s past…”). So much of our national mythos is built upon glorifications of events and people, of wilful self-deceptions under the rubrics of Patriotism and exceptionalism, of flaunted symbols like The Flag and the honored dead of glorious wars, and of notions of Progess and Victory. The Emperor’s Raiment, the thumping of tubs, demagoguery, coming to a screen near you…<\/p>\n

A brace of haiku in praise:<\/p>\n

moral certitude
\ninspires the cannon fodder
\nwaving flags: Huzzah!!<\/p>\n

\nanother martyr
\nours or theirs: keep careful count
\na winner someday\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If I have a patron saint, it’s probably Hugh of St-Victor [12th century, author of Didascalicon], whose advice wasOmnia disce, videbus postea nihil esse superfluum (Learn everything, you will see later that nothing is superfluous) One can’t, alas, Know Everything, but elaborating one’s understanding of the world around has been a lifelong Odyssey, and a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,53,31,34,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-argybargy","category-haiku","category-nacirema","category-reading","category-zeitgeist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3871"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3875,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3871\/revisions\/3875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}