CONTEXT: This piece from my visit to Cologne, Germany in 2016 doesn’t deal directly with Christmas. But I post it in honor of that holiday, 2022, to respectfully take issue with the premise – which increasingly pervades our outlook – that worthwhile human progress must come, more or less only, through the exercise of human reason. As noted in my ‘Jewish Bride’ essay recently re-posted, however much I praise and benefit from all the understanding, knowledge, technology etc. of our era, I deeply question if all other attributes of our nature should be disregarded or dismissed in its favor.

To cite an axiom of mine: Reason is not the only thing that makes us Human. To starkly illustrate that, I noted the Nazis’ diligent use of science in that recent post, as an instance of what may be called ‘brute Reason’ (as opposed to brute strength). Another example was Hitler’s T4 program, the covert murder of thousands of Germany’s physically and mentally handicapped people as ‘useless eaters’ who could only drain society’s resources and never contribute to them. Admittedly that was so, but despite euthanasia arguably meeting the standard of ‘logic’ as a basis for T4, it led to an unthinkably abhorrent course of action, repugnantly devoid of empathy – a humane quality whose value I propounded in ‘Jewish Bride.’

The following piece about Cologne cathedral speaks to the task to which Christmas calls us, and the wholly legitimate (in my view) human need for validation which may be found by complying with its summons. A need that should not be delegitimized – particularly by fortunate folk who have, or see, no need for consoling, sustaining hope – nor can be fully appeased with science’s gifts to us of greater comfort, more distraction and longer, better physical life.

Those are all marvels, but this essay suggests that many of us cannot find adequate meaning to life through them. It seeks to remind us of alternatives – generally, not feeling bound to seek exclusively rational answers – that will always be there for us if we need strength and comfort that otherwise elude us. And the humility to admit to such needs – to aspire to something unreachable by intellect alone, nor by other personal gifts – can be a first step in letting extra-rational hope ‘console and sustain’ us.

One need not be religious to be empathic, of course. But religious faith can offer a vantage point from which many of us may be inspired (given a last, vital boost) to act thus, piercing limitations that might otherwise keep us from doing so.

Cathedral Entrance: This is the end of the church with the great towers, unfinished until the 19th Century, when this grand portico was also added between them. The Industrial Age sculptors who executed this did their Medieval forbears proud; their carvings looked like they were cut by men who believed their work here might help admit them to Heaven, as their Gothic era predecessors may have exerted themselves to do.

The imagery above this door (in the space called the tympanum) may have some Biblical iconographic message, as art often did when literacy was scarce, but I didn’t even try to interpret it. Instead, I had long been intrigued by photographs of the Tympanum showing it with an unmistakable golden cast, so I looked closely to see if it was stone, rather than bronze, or some form of gilding. It is indeed stone, but clearly of a type different from that surrounding it, presumably chosen for its distinct color.

In a concession to efficiency, modern technology is used at the Dom to admit its 20,000 daily visitors. Its doors are sensor-driven transparent panels that glide back and forth horizontally (rather than swinging on hinges) with a soft whoosh.

The cathedral’s eventual completion during the Gothic Revival of the 19th Century was a rationalized, near-perfect expression of an extra-rational impulse. The skyscrapers of our era may scrape the sky, but they do not reach for Heaven. They are not meant to; their main goal is maximized economic utility.

Churches like the Kolner Dom, however, were meant to stretch for the celestial, connecting to its presumed benevolence in sharp contrast to a tumultuous world whose difficulties might otherwise be despaired of. They resonated of a hope worth enduring seemingly intractable hardships to attain, and sheltered embers of the West’s vitality until, in later times, ‘hope’ began to mean other (and more often, material) things than when this building was begun.

The great leveler mortality, and the right of every Christian to strive for Paradise, were formidable equalizers in the world of the Middle Ages. Inside a church, a prince, lord or knight might rate a better spot for mass, but otherwise, each person was truly “Everyman.” That is, animate dust, never truly, fully in control of his or her ultimate fate in this life. In this setting, a peasant, rough mason, thatcher or fuller might feel brethren to a king in ways they never would or could, elsewhere.

But they would not have considered sharing this most basic of all concerns as “Democratic” – a term and concept as alien to them as the planet Saturn. It was just an understanding among the faithful that all men were largely powerless, most individual concerns of scant import to the great expanse of time. And since Christ evidently held every person worthy of the offer of salvation to resolve the trials and vagaries of this life, it implied that, in the sight of God, no soul was less precious than any other (a seditious idea that would eventually help undermine the custom that high-born men were most entitled to rule, and reap, this world).

Even a Divine right monarch was Death’s subject, his crown and sway no more consequential than the degree of his lowest serf. It must have been a sharp reminder of actual priorities, in a world in which the rich and mighty were accorded such preeminent status, to realize that luminaries could die just as soon and suddenly as the poor and feeble; or be damned. To Medieval Christians, the presence of a deity presumed to be so saturated with love as to have gratuitously conjured the universe out of nothing, and bestowed the further gift on its only actively conscious beings – us, humanity – the option of of a path to escape the shadow of death was one context in which, assuredly, “All men were created equal.”

Conversely, speaking of inequality, it was just outside this portal that I saw the disturbing sight (mentioned in my original Facebook overview of my trip), of two men who seemed to be beggars, arguing, then forcibly grappling with each other. My German isn’t good enough to understand what they were quarreling about; possibly for the most advantageous spot to accost tourists. Their struggle was over quickly and with no visible harm done, but was a reminder that Cologne – wondrous as it may be to visitors – is not unlike most urban areas: Dense concentrations of people where some inhabitants occasionally feel forced to fight just to stay alive.

I’ve never seen homeless people in combat like that in my hometown, Chicago, but it probably happens anywhere people are reduced to desperation; an especially depressing, though instructive, spectacle when it happens amid First World prosperity like central Cologne or Chicago. And especially at the entrance to a building dedicated to proclaiming some of our loftiest aspirations.

(It would be interesting to know the back story of that fracas. Germany has a robust social safety net, and I learned that the Archdiocese of Cologne – which surely controls the Dom on whose threshold this struggle took place – also offers extensive charitable services for anyone in desperate need. I must wonder why those two men did not, or could not, seek out the different types of aid that are apparently available.)

Upsetting as that image was, I’m glad to have seen such a display of raw life, a jolting reminder, especially in view of my own relative financial stability, of how broken our world is for so many people.

The Kolner Dom is an awe-inspiring edifice, but ideals such as it betokens cannot be fully represented by the temples raised to enshrine them. Those would lift us higher than other creatures, and so can only really assert themselves by inspiring the quest for a world in which people neither need nor desire to fight, from those two men apparently frantic to stay alive, all the way to World Wars.

That seems to me a crucial duty of any great creed: Not only for most religious faiths, but especially for them, as they appeal to forces and inclinations at the upper limits of our nature. Such faiths exist to offer reason for hope, when Reason – used in isolation from the full panoply of the human spirit – may seem to justify, even to demand, jettisoning anything our minds cannot concretely encompass, as a sort of bloodless sacrifice to be performed in exchange for enjoying the practical benefits of the modern era. As if the wholly human dread of reverting to the darkness were some flaw a modern person should simply be able to suppress with machine-like equanimity.

The semi-feral tussle I witnessed – amid a rich, rebuilt city, laid waste to frustrate the infernal Nazi agenda that people should emulate the kill-or-be-killed behavior of wild animals – at the doors of a place meant to invite us to better things, accentuates that we collectively still have many thresholds to fully cross.

CONTEXT: This is the first piece I will post here in observance of Christmas, 2022. The next two will be re-posts from my 2016 visit to Europe, and later meditations upon it. The second of those will be posted on the Twelfth Day of Christmas – Epiphany – January 6; for which its subject makes it especially appropriate.

I have adjusted the refrain of the carol, ‘Oh Come All Ye Faithful’ by a single word, to re-affirm a core aspect of Christmas which seems increasingly to get obscured: Jesus personified willingness to sacrifice the Self for the Other. Thus any act of loving generosity may be said to ‘reflect’ Him. And I hope anyone who is not Christian will try to accept that striving to act in this way really is supposed to be a defining element of sincerely following Christ.

This, despite the fact that many people who claim to revere Christ often do not act so as to ‘reflect’ a grasp of His intentions, nor apparently recognize any need to do so. Or who may believe lip service is sufficient. This includes any ‘identity/culture warriors’ who assume the Prince of Peace wants them to behave heartlessly in His name.

Further, I would assert that, as the accompanying image suggests, it is more important to follow His example, than merely proclaim one’s adherence to it. Thus, while the man giving his sandals to the poor boy may embrace some other religion, or none at all, I sense that Jesus – presumably preferring hallowing acts to hollow words – would rejoice in his compassion anyway.

Here is another expression of my point in changing that single word:

‘Wherever selfless love is shared,
Know that He is present there.’

(All people of goodwill practice decency and kindness; I do not presume to claim those as uniquely Christian values. Only that they are obligations – of which they should never lose sight, and always strive – for those who do call themselves ‘Christian.’ As one who does call myself such, I acknowledge often failing at those, but accept my lifelong duty to keep trying.)

We humans can use our gift of reason to choose to obey our finest impulses, and thereby deliberately summon the best of our humanity. Particularly when doing so goes against our own immediate interests; like giving away one’s footwear to a brother being who needs it more. The mere existence, and exercise, of such empathy nudges our whole world slightly closer to Paradise for everyone; hence, the dirt that will get on this giver’s feet transfigures as the soil of the Garden of Eden.

So whether you regard Christ as a factor in your life or not, may the loving care this image shows inspire you to ‘summon the best of your humanity’ also. It is the simplest thing that many of us can do – regardless of why – to better this Life. 

Which I would venture to believe must gladden Him, also.

CONTEXT: This was my final post from my 2016 time in Europe. It was the result of much reflection, and so was not finished until mid-2018. The results of the 2016 Presidential election – shortly after my return – seemed (to me) like an alarming quirk of history, in the shadow of which my recent journey to various sites of Fascism should be carefully considered.

‘Journey’ is also the word used in my Introduction to this blog to describe personal meditations posted here, including ones like this derived from my travels. The meandering path from some initiating experience – like the Gestapo cell, the Ann Frank House, and this wondrous example of artistic virtuosity – to what I ultimately write about it is indeed a journey, wandering among the observations that ‘initiating experience’ summons, and seeking the best routes to express them.

And this piece, as noted at the end of my recent post about the Westerkerk, may soften the rather bleak observations made there. Here, I try to draw attention to the broader, yet finer, implications of what Rembrandt achieved in this painting. Encouraged by those, I venture to recall a force in human affairs that might help successfully, and benevolently, redirect them.

This ‘force’ has never been easy to follow – I alluded to a related principle in ‘Marvelous Beasts’ – and here I continue to propose it as a counterweight to presumption that Reason, by itself, can save Mankind from himself. So far it has failed to do so, although Reason can produce conditions (exceeding our mere survival) in which we can save ourselves from ‘our Selves.’ This distinction is addressed in this essay, which tries to show what we might all learn from what Rembrandt rendered in this painting.

After this post, I will re-post two others based on my travels in Europe. Those – appropriate for the holiday season of this writing – are meant to draw attention to a traditional but often overlooked (or spurned as too conventional) source of the ‘solution’ I propose here, to augment the power of Reason; which is simply not our only facility as humans.

I would assert that it cannot be; it Must not be. For if it is, as I try to argue, it may eventually destroy us before the rest of our potential as fully-cohered conscious beings can finally overtake Reason, to fully temper its potential harm, and to amplify its potential benefits to us all. As such, my proposal here is unapologetically idealistic – some might say simplistic or naive – but is supported by how, in my view, hard logic is continually thwarted by human impulses it seeks to circumvent or simply negate. But it never fully can; something other than logic alone is crucial, including (but not limited to) exquisite human hope.

‘The Jewish Bride,’ by Rembrandt, Rijksmuseum: Although I actually saw this exquisite, arresting creation before reaching ‘The Night Watch’ in another gallery, I am putting this image last among my postings for Amsterdam – in fact, for my whole European journey – so as to end them on a more optimistic note than my possibly disheartening perspectives on the Westerkerk.

This is as intimate an image as “The Night Watch” is grand, considered so magisterial an example of pictorial craft that it may seem inadequate, even inappropriate, to try to describe it in words; it “speaks” for itself. However, my observations may at least help readers appreciate it in ways that are meaningful for them personally.

It is a technical marvel of utilizing brushwork and light, but its truest brilliance is in how candidly, delicately, it conveys a physical component of affection as a wondrous thing, to be celebrated, not concealed, as it is so much more than mere lust.

What Rembrandt has captured here – frozen, yet ardent – is purest love. This is likely his most successful rendering of the quiet splendor of relations between men and women, a matter of far greater import than the pinched, prim sensibilities it was once felt to violate.

For even this picture’s subdued, tender representation of many-splendored love – a softly erotic gesture, a man’s hand resting gently on a woman’s breast – was too much for the Victorian era, during which Rembrandt’s popular fame began to spread far beyond art experts and collectors.

Hence its name; at some point, it was given the title “The Jewish Bride,” (Rembrandt painted numerous members of contemporary Amsterdam’s thriving Jewish community, but it is not known with certainty who these subjects actually were) as an effort to camouflage its patent sexual element. That title supported a quaint description I once read of this picture, to the effect that it shows “the bride’s father adorning her with a necklace on her wedding day.”

No, it does not. This man clearly has his hand on the woman’s breast, something one presumes, no father would do to his daughter (and if one did, Rembrandt would not likely have seen fit to record it). And just as clearly, the woman approves, as indicated by the gesture of her hand and her blissful facial expression. The painting’s name likely began as a crude ploy to misrepresent a joyous, tactile aspect of affection, along with its unspoken depth; to prudishly pretend that this lovely picture and sentiment show something that they don’t.

One even wonders if Rembrandt contrived the man’s great, swollen sleeve with such a sensuous sheen to encourage viewers to revel in things with exclusively sensual appeal. Sexual love is another object of such appeal, and he may have used the voluptuous sleeve to visibly suggest its wonders, far beyond mere desire of the flesh.

This was painted some 25 years after “The Night Watch,” and shows the progress Rembrandt had made, technically, emotionally and presumably spiritually. “The Jewish Bride” could scarcely be less like the earlier tour de force; it is intimate in both size and tone, and echoes the artist’s apparent grasp of the transience (and other shortcomings) of fame and wealth as motivating goals. Rembrandt was perhaps Amsterdam’s most sought-after painter around the time of “The Night Watch,” but owing to the mixed reception it got, to personal sorrows, financial reverses, and other aesthetic experimentation, by the time he gave the world this masterwork his fame and fortune had long been waning.

The only true riches Rembrandt still possessed when he made this were his unsurpassed skill and the profoundly sympathetic insights he had gained, through his own troubled life, into the human condition. Many people become embittered by disappointment and the trials of old age, but he seems to have done the opposite, to have had his sensitivity – the core of his being – mature and grow due to the lessons age taught him.

Becoming thus enlarged, rather than shrunken, is surely a mark of a great spirit, and in this case, a peerless artist, able to recognize and convey an abstraction with singular beauty.

For beyond its portrayal of soothing amorous delights, in this picture, Rembrandt – whether he meant to or not – approximates what full harmony between our own selves and Life Itself might look like (rather than perpetual contest with it as Nazism demanded, and as relentless self interest still does): Being at one with creation, in every sense of that term, exulting in communion with something one discerns, and willingly accepts, as being greater than just oneself (in this case, a contenting rapture).

And thus, by illustrating an all-fulfilling tranquility, the underlying import of this image is an encouraging one. It is a counterpoint to my disquisition on the Westerkerk, about how the primacy that personal autonomy and Reason have been given in Western civilization has helped insidiously seduce us to believe that our brains make our deeply compromised race – atom bombs, Auschwitz, gulags, etc. somehow notwithstanding – equal to (the conceptual perfection of) divinity, or a substitute for it.

Felicity like that shown here is not about personal self-involvement, nor is it a reward for careful calculation. It arises from a different place entirely.

Human intelligence could design and build stalwart Dutch ships, and chart the seas for them to sail to the other side of the world and back. It could figure how heavy a load of cinnamon from the East Indies such a ship could safely carry, gross profit it might make on a dock in Rotterdam, exact shares of payment for the partners who paid for the voyage, etc. It could try to predict how long it might take a spice to become a staple of European palates, and a source of continual profit.

But the coin of intellect has more than one side. To give an especially heinous example, it could also be deployed as the Nazis did, to help finance their war by formulating, down to the Pfennig, the economic value that could be harvested from Jews being sent to death camps; the average worth of their personal property, their clothing and shoes, their cash, their gold teeth, etc. – even their hair (possibly including Anne Frank’s), shaved off on arrival at the camps to stuff mattresses.

Some of the best minds in Hitler’s Germany were set, avidly, to the stupendous complexities of managing railroad traffic during wartime, including trains carrying victims – and not just Jews – to Stygian destinations for the good of the Reich.

(And while the Nazis were an extreme historical instance of misusing the mind’s powers, consider the assiduous internet hackers as of this writing, 2018, looking to enrich themselves or just conjure chaos through their immense technical talents.)

That horrifying, but (to me) valid example of the peril of idolizing Reason as, effectively, our only hope causes me to repeat a mantra-like adage I have used in these postings before – which few things display better than the imagery of “The Jewish Bride”:

Reason is not the only thing that makes us Human.

No other living beings have it as we do, but it is absolutely not the only facility we have that matters, or avails. I have known of too many people who were dim yet clearly decent, and others who were brainy yet beast-like to accept that intelligence alone can, does, or should, primarily define what it means to be a ‘person.’ But the degree of pre-eminence our society now bestows on rationality seems to suggest it can, does and should (even though brain acuity is largely a function of random genetics, rather than some earned, onboard virtue).

Used with sage, benevolent intent, Reason can be a marvelous tool; used without it, it can just as easily hypercharge iniquity, as much an unleashing as a releasing. If we exploit it too often in ways that harm the world and each other, we may not deserve to possess it, for it is as much a sacred trust to be honored as an evolutionary advantage to be seized.

Great souls like Rembrandt used mental powers to summon visions with the shimmer of Heaven; the Nazis used theirs to call Hell to Earth. So I would suggest that we humans do not necessarily reach our greatest potential only through the exercise of our minds, however useful or awesome their contributions may often be. Most of us can do so just as much — if not even more so – by using our hearts.

In that view, the golden element for “being fully human”, is not intelligence, but empathy – the disposition to connect, share vulnerabilities, to proximately merge with others – an ability only humans may fully manifest. Other species, with few abilities to spare beyond maintaining their own survival and that of their offspring, cannot fully manage it even if they could apprehend it.

Unlike them, people need not be either atomized competitors, or undifferentiated flocks. Our collective brains (especially in our technology-adept era) can let us ensure our own sustaining stability and surplus, and thus afford to choose to be kind to each other – if we simply will.

Surely, Rembrandt portrayed loving empathy here so marvelously by deploying his own resources of it, as integral a tool of his art as paintbrushes and measuring stick.

To have exceptional raw brain power, one must be born with it, but not so with empathy. It can be recognized, learned and embraced, so it is a practicable goal for far more people than innate intellectual brilliance could ever be. Moreover, every worthwhile experience in life cannot simply be compacted into some reliable, rigid algorithm, and trying to do so would shear a great many of them of the uplifting radiance they offer – a power one admits, rather than grasps.

And thus, there can be no regularized formula for empathy (and the happiness of sharing) but it may be defined as one heart allowing itself to beat in accordance with another, or others; unspoken, unbidden, authentic “fellowship.” And in cases like this painting shows, such a bond may ascend to near adoration.

Of itself, technology (frequently one of the most positive by-products of Reason) is inherently incapable of such an experience or outcome, having neither sensibility nor moral inclination of its own. It can remove obstacles like the need to fight over vital resources (so that survival need not depend on physical prowess as much as it once did) to help us reach shared and sharing harmony – or let us drive madly in the opposite direction. Thus, a knife can slice bread or slit a throat; it is not an invariably positive implement. Empathy however can serve only to make those who practice it better people.

Intellect can provide us with the abundance needed for generosity, and may also let us attain the wisdom to recognize its worthiness. If the savage, anti-Semitic Nazis had destroyed this painting when they occupied Amsterdam, it might have been as much because of the luminously humane underlying message it projects – that giving, rather than taking, can actually augment us – as because the word “Jewish” is in its title. It is a premise diametrically opposed to their mania for hatred-driven power.

Hitler and his true-believers regaled in domination, and raged at empathy as despicable weakness. The mere fact that such luridly depraved, violent individuals loathed it so fiercely might give pause to any righteous persons and spur them to deliberately pursue it to try to restore the balance of our consciousness, which the Nazis had deformed with the crushing weight of their evil.

So in addition to considering all the positive blooming of individual agency that came from the Westerkerk and the shifting mindset it represented, we should also reflect on visions like “The Jewish Bride,” an icon of precious wisdom executed with supreme acumen, for the lessons they can teach.

For any type of love can be illogical bordering on madness, yet it can also be wholly life-affirming and ecstatic; a potent caution against guidance by logic alone. It may be transient, but also transcendent, uniquely bonding us, while it prevails, together in perhaps the nearest vantage we can get in this life to glimpse Paradise. Not the obscene, criminally proud Valhalla that Hitler dreamt of, but the innocent repose of Eden.

If you want to see what it can truly mean to be intrinsically “human,” contemplate this painting, as well as its origins amid Rembrandt’s somber adversity, out of which he brought forth this limpid idealization of existence. Rarely have pictorial expertise and long, sympathetic observation been so gloriously combined as here, to display – again, whether the artist actually meant to, or was, literally, inspired to channel a vision that even he did not fully grasp – a kind of consummation of life we may all seek. It both demonstrates his soaring genius which ennobles us as a species, and makes graphic that true happiness just might, in some attainable form, be accessible to us all – especially if we try to build it together.

Unlike the practical benefits of science, such artistry cannot lengthen our lives; but it can surely deepen them, in ways Reason alone does not, and cannot. Further, it would debase and reduce a visualization like this painting to try to ensnare the power it can have – enigmatic, yet seemingly inexorable – by fully explaining it.

This level of creativity, along with facets of life like the calm passion so gracefully portrayed here, are among the closest things in this world to the magical; or to the miraculous.

CONTEXT: This picture was among my last from my 2016 visit to Europe, as I prepared to return to the US via Amsterdam after seeing Rembrandt’s ‘Night Watch’ there. Before that, I had spent a week in Germany (Berlin, then Cologne). After returning home, I reflected on what I’d seen in the homeland of Nazism, to try to express in both historical and personal terms how the benefits released by individual empowerment (discussed below) played roles in putting us on paths to such outcomes as atomic weapons and Global Warming. Paths that were unforeseen.

But possibly not unforeseeable. The Reformation was surely pivotal in fostering our ideal of the primacy of the individual (and his right to pursue his own best interests), but here I consider whether that did, or could, make us truly ‘better’ – or if it also served, at least partly, to highlight the distinction between human intelligence and actual wisdom. And focusing on Amsterdam, a city whose immense role in creating the world and culture we know today, and which came to exemplify such primacy, led to me to consider – with benefit of hindsight – the implications of developments started, enhanced, or accelerated there. And to what consequences they ultimately led as they played out over time.

I used this building, the monumental ‘Westerkerk’ (West Church; this text refers to another picture I took of it from its front) and its origins in the Dutch Golden Age to serve as a referent for my observations here, on the questions above.

Also, the other post this one refers to at its end, is one I wrote about Rembrandt’s painting ‘The Jewish Bride.’ When these were first put online, they were, as it says, adjacent. But on this blog, they are separated by one entitled ‘Marvelous Beasts.’ If you wish to read my final post from Europe – offering my reflections on the impact of having visited Germany and its Nazi miasma – please look for ‘The Jewish Bride,’ published on this blog on December 22, 2022.

Westerkerk, Reflections: Here is the Westerkerk, looked at from a different angle from my previous image of it. I photographed this view partly just because it is a handsome structure I wanted to admire further, but also as a metaphor for trying to see more perspectives than the one that most immediately presents itself. And I don’t mean simply looking at it from another physical angle, or saying more about its history than I did with my earlier photo. I mean examining the cultural implications it represents – since its origin, up to our own time – as I did for the Kolner Dom.

As I write on my home computer, in preparation to post descriptions of my travels on the global bulletin board of the internet, I reflect (again) that the possibility of doing such things are just some of a multitude of modern phenomena from which I personally benefit, and am glad for. Others are the ability to travel the whole world, and the need such enormous distances spurred for faster communication. Westerkerk didn’t directly have a thing to do with creating any of those, but it represented the post-Medieval mindset that would drive the courage, incentives and ingenuity (and validate the desire for personal gain) to seek solutions for such travel, communication needs etc., and to fill them.

As noted in earlier Amsterdam posts, such an approach to life, in which Man could actively shape his own destiny, was a seminal leap beyond the constraints of the West’s consciousness in the Middle Ages. Earlier Europeans had simply assumed that life was inherently tenuous, and the world a place so massively mysterious that finite human minds were probably never even meant to fully grasp it. So they had deployed much of their ingenuity and resources into honoring the Christian understanding of eternity; their hope, and possible reward, for enduring the here-and-now, for appreciating the gift of merely existing, for possible redemption from every form of innate human imperfection, including mortality itself.

Amsterdam however, by virtue of its trading advantages and tradition, its primacy in the Protestant Dutch Republic, and by the industry of many of its citizens (who knew they would be applauded, not disapproved for seeking self-improvement), played a bigger role than most cities in creating the world we have today. Its rows of tidy, solid houses were the work of a society willing and able to make this world better, without focusing exclusively on an unseen, unknowable afterlife. Indeed, in the Westerkerk’s and related cultures, material wealth in this life was often assumed to be evidence of divine favor and proof of worthiness for further reward in the next. (Much later, that premise would have a role in Karl Marx’s critique of religion as he devised classical socialism, but that is far beyond the scope of this writing.)

But Westerkerk was a Christian church, and the Amsterdamers were not simply indifferent to dimensions of existence beyond this one; for them, Christ was still the irreplaceable key to Heaven, which remained the ultimate goal. However, their vision of it had far more room for human agency, in which our species had not just the ability and right, but a duty, to use its singular brain power to “tame the Earth and subdue it,” to benefit ourselves. Gradually, Western society has made the here-and-now its main preoccupation, the one sphere we can see, control, and rely upon. Hope of personal validation in some other plane of being has, incrementally, come to be tacitly rejected: A sort of “Paradise, Tossed.”

This leads me back to my “unforeseen costs” remark in my post about “The Night Watch,” as well as a prior reference about how Japan was a part of the Dutch trading network. Japan was never conquered outright as many other European imperial possessions were, but from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Centuries, its government permitted the Dutch, alone among Europeans, to trade within their country. (I’m not sure why they were chosen. Perhaps the Japanese feared that Britain was too powerful, and if invited onto their territory, might take over. The Dutch may have seemed less formidable potential foes.)

This arrangement led to a circumstance too tenuous to be considered a cause-and-effect connection, but nevertheless, one that strikes me as a coincidence so unlikely as to justify calling attention to it.

All the striving and inventiveness of the Dutch continued to interconnect and reverberate, augmented by accumulating scientific discovery across Europe, helping to shape the entire modern age. But improved science and technology wielded by unimproved humans – still too often driven by self-interest or aggrandizement – can bring fearsome results. By the time of World War II, the Dutch had long since lost their monopoly on access to Japan. Other western nations were active there, and Japan was the one non-Western society that became truly dynamic, and rose to national power and vigor elsewhere achieved only by Caucasians.

But the Japanese city in which the Dutch had their sole trading post for 200 years – through which they extracted local wares, and through which Japan, long deliberately isolated by its rulers, began to view and imitate the growing order and technology of the West – was Nagasaki. It was also where the second atomic bomb would be dropped, effectively ending World War II.

Far more portentously, it put apocalyptic power in fallible human hands.

No one could have anticipated that the West’s growing ability to manipulate the physical world would lead to the horrifying happenstance of Nagasaki’s fate. It is, I repeat, only a coincidence that the vigor Amsterdam helped, disproportionately, to radiate would eventually lead to the colossal forces that contended in global struggle, and to the stupendous scientific endeavors over the prior 300 years that had catalyzed it.

Still – What a coincidence. It seems to me the most significant of ironies that of all the cities on Earth, one of only two at which Man first brought Doomsday on himself happened to be where the inquiring, increasingly confident rational spirit that also built the Westerkerk had, for 200 years, entered the land upon which the bitterest fruit that grew (along with the sweet) from its tree of knowledge would fall to the ground – poisonous and world-shattering.

To say the least, Japan’s intercourse with the Dutch and their civilization was not ultimately an entirely beneficial encounter. Nor was western man’s rise above passivity (inflicted, during the 19th Century, on much of the non-Western world in the form of exploitative imperialism) accompanied by a fully offsetting increase in grateful, sensible benevolence. We were starting to release, in the interests of not being in the grip of Nature, unprecedented forces we lacked the comprehensive wisdom to wield, and whose full consequences we could not foresee. Seemingly harmless, tentative steps that often warped into something very different much later started, for good or ill, in places with spirits like Amsterdam.

And this tension between measurable gain and unforeseen detriment is still playing out, in less violent, if still dramatic ways. Because much of the Netherlands is at or below sea level, it has centuries of experience at compensating for rising water levels (dikes, polders, windmills, etc.). It is now selling that knowledge, augmented by computer modeling techniques, to other countries whose coasts are suddenly at risk of rising seas due to Global Warming. I applaud the Dutch for sharing that vital expertise, even as I note their (unintended) role in creating a world in which the glorification of the individual – his autonomy, abundance, convenience, amusement, etc. – became such an unstoppable force that efforts to serve it are now disrupting the natural functions of our planet.

Obviously, none of Rembrandt’s contemporaries worshiping in the Westerkerk could have foreseen all that, but it has arguably turned out to be one result of the West’s incremental focusing mostly on trying to make this world and life as near to Paradise as possible. For no amount of individual genius can fundamentally improve “this world and life” if there is no compelling bar to its being used (as Hitler used so much contemporary science) as a platform to serve unreformed forces such as greed and pride, that have so long degraded them. We dare not just accept those factors as intractable, and assume that science will somehow find a way to offset them.

Anne Frank’s terrified refuge, so near this building, might also remind us of that.

Am I glad for all the technology that flowed from the stout Dutch ships and all the science that they and other Europeans devised to enhance their lives, that continue to improve ours? Absolutely. Do I see them as ends, in and of themselves, that consummate and validate the entire human experiment, the peak of our potential accomplishment? No; if they are indeed our best, history suggests that malevolent impulses will likely eventually just outrace them – again.

In my view, scientific advances are a path, not a destination. Any true, full transformation – that is, positive Evolution – we achieve must come from elsewhere. For what would seem to me to be a better goal for us to aim at, collectively and individually, please see my next posting, my last for Amsterdam, and for my whole 2016 journey.

CONTEXT: In my July 17, ‘22 post about visiting the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam at the end of my most recent visit to Europe in 2016, I referred to two extremes in that city as a ‘summit and an abyss of human endeavor.’ The ‘abyss’ was the Nazi Holocaust of Europe’s Jews, which devoured Anne Frank. The ‘summit’ in question was Rembrandt’s remarkable group portrait ‘The Night Watch’, housed at the Rijksmuseum, a mere 12+ minute walk from Anne’s home and hiding place.

Please bear that stark contrast – summit and abyss – in mind as a point of reference about the breadth of what we are capable, if you read the post below, which I wrote about my personal experience of that seminal painting. As it notes, I chose Amsterdam deliberately (instead of Frankfurt, Germany) to depart from Europe, in order to see the ‘Night Watch’ there.

Rembrandt’s conception for the piece both reflected and reinforced a seismic shift, going on during his lifetime, in the perceptions, priorities and purposes of ‘Western’ culture. In my Aug. 28 post about the stuffed Ocelot, also at the Rijksmuseum, I touched on commercial and scientific aspects of that shift, but here, turn my attention to what the art of that era reflected about its time and place; about an outlook that often both fed, and was fed by, those contemporary ‘commercial and scientific’ developments; and to energies those developments released – but also alludes to ones they would eventually ‘unleash.‘

Later, I will re-post other items I composed about my time in Amsterdam and Cologne, my other destination for meditating on how a society that spawned a specific cultural artifact – in Cologne’s case, its extraordinary cathedral – perceived life, and the visible world it encompassed.

The Night Watch” by Rembrandt van Rijn: One of the most pivotally innovative and visually agitating paintings in history; seeing this was my main reason for coming to Amsterdam. The title (which Rembrandt did not give it) refers to these men, members of a local guild, who, in an era before regular police forces, intermittently patrolled city streets after dark.

It may not be apparent to modern viewers what a vault of imagination this picture was, compared to previous conventions for the genre. Most group portraits at the time were static ranks of figures, all ‘shown’ equally, but ‘portrayed’ little, if at all; monotonous rows of semi-identical faces that most painters lacked the skill or time to fully differentiate. Rembrandt invigorated that template in this large canvas, using a dynamic flourish that invokes the individual personhood of its subjects (and better represents their appearances) with a potion of color and kinetics, chiaroscuro and character.

(We know the identities of all the men shown here because a graphic survives listing their names and locations within the composition. Some of them however grumbled that despite paying equal shares for the work, they had been reduced to blurred ciphers in its execution. True; this arrangement made for a great image, but not for equal shares in its drama. Further, they had not asked for, nor expected such a novel conception. Some art scholars believe that as a result of the mixed reception his daring “Night Watch” got, the career of Rembrandt – at the time, Amsterdam’s most sought-after portraitist – went into a slow, but steady decline.)

People in the 21st Century have seen many action-oriented paintings like this, and so may find it difficult to grasp how novel “The Night Watch” was for its context. But at its time, it was an astonishing leap of creativity, like the music of Beethoven would be later. Both seemed to come from some entirely new dimension; unfamiliar, unexpected, even jarring.

Unfortunately, its vision has been significantly diminished from its full original ingenuity. At one point, this picture had to be moved from the hall it was painted for to a smaller space, and substantial parts of its edges were cut off to make it fit, badly distorting Rembrandt’s original arrangement. So I was thrilled to see a smaller copy beside it that some lesser artist had made of it before it was hacked, showing its intended layout. It did, indeed, sit its space better than as it appears today, but even truncated it is wondrous, a harnessed optical tempest; the Elements masterfully deployed, rather than randomly released.

This work could scarcely be more different from another era-defining masterpiece, da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa.” She is a rendering of cool intellectual rumination, a subject serenely detached from the petty reality of her mortal spectators; floating outside eternity and untouched by it. “The Night Watch” is no such exercise of calm introspection; one can almost feel wisps of breeze set off by the bold advance of the forthright men shown in it. It surges with movement and champing energy, the vitality of its participants fully realized by Rembrandt’s skillful integration of technical effects – as much as by the indefinable, but unmistakable, mystery of true “artistry.”

The subjects themselves, and Rembrandt’s treatment of them, reflect – among other things – the maturing self-image of the Protestant Netherlands regarding the efficacy of human enterprise, to a step beyond its classically-based stirrings in the Renaissance. That is, this picture focuses on actual people, not merely as backdrop in some crucifixion scene, a disport of Greek gods, martial valor, or some other elevated tableau. Rembrandt, in successfully executing a truly compelling group portrait, thereby presents its members’ reality as living, self-directed personages rather than space-filling scenery for some worthier center of attention.

And that was no minor adjustment of emphasis. At the time, Protestant cultures such as the Netherlands generally looked upon most Christian religious graphic art as akin to idolatry (though Rembrandt produced a good deal of it himself), so paintings depicting faith-oriented subjects faced shrinking patronage in Northern Europe. Instead, when members of the expanding Dutch middle class sought pictures on which to spend their growing earnings, they were likelier to prefer domestic scenes or portraits that edified the here and now, rather than evoking a putative, better afterlife.

Rembrandt was one of the very greatest devisers of a new real-life, real-time aesthetic. “The Night Watch” was painted when he and his work were at the height of their contemporary fame and desirability, showing Amsterdamers as they wanted (generally speaking) to see themselves: Masters of their own Fate, through their own vigor and resolve. And this approach produced a self-perpetuating cycle; the more self-assured the commercially-oriented Dutch became, the more Rembrandt and his colleagues were inclined to depict them that way, till a corpus of creativity emerged that insistently exalted such everyday references of relatively “ordinary” people. Imagery and actuality augmented each other.

As I had hoped, savoring this splendid image surely made Amsterdam a far better last memory of this journey for me than Frankfurt could have been. And having now seen ‘The Night Watch’ (marvelous though it is), I find I prefer Rembrandt’s single portraits to a larger work like this. Many of his clients were newly affluent people looking for possessions through which to display their hard-won prosperity, and portraits (previously the province of the high born or truly rich) had great cachet. To me, his portrayals of lone subjects seem to benefit from the fuller attention he could give them, the palpable presence he could elucidate when representing a single personality.

It also bemuses me to think that such peoples’ acute trading instincts might have been thrilled to discover that, in having had Rembrandt paint them, they eventually got unimaginably more than they had bargained for: True immortalization. In many cases we do not know the names of his sitters, but even anonymous and silent, he made their life realities converse with us across infinity.

Look at some of his later portraits, and you may see what I mean. Far from just giving his clients prestigious wall decorations, Rembrandt transfixed their “selves” forever in the gleaming amber of his genius, putting them among the first common people – those without high formal status in their societies – anywhere, to be explicitly monumentalized in paint.

For in that new era, ‘common’ people could not just afford to be portrayed: They were felt worthy – As individuals – of Being portrayed. Such an assertion of a self-generated, rather than divinely bestowed, value of every person (though still far from our more fully-formed 21st Century ideas of individuality) was one of many major changes western Europe underwent at this time, from the mindset that had driven, for example, the inception of Cologne cathedral.

That evolution from quasi-passive acceptance of, to active participation in, Earthly existence has admittedly brought human life immense benefits. But it would also later lead to unforeseen and stupendous costs, as I will discuss in other postings here.

Apropos: In Amsterdam, after fortifying myself by seeing at the Rijks the beauty produced by some of our species’ best spirits, I made the short pilgrimage to Anne Frank’s house to confront what we can do at our worst.