Tag / history

by omniagallia

FOR BASTILLE DAY: HONORING LIGHT, AND FIRE

France recently made a choice that re-affirmed what she reveres and encourages. It arguably offers inspiration for everyone, so is worthy of special note today, Bastille Day.

For over 200 years, France has honored her very greatest citizens at the Panthéon, a grand temple-like structure in Paris. Only a very select cohort get commemorated there, those who excelled in service to the nation, or to literature and science of global stature. For comparison, the ashes of Voltaire, the greatest philosopher of France or almost anywhere, are enshrined within. Many others were Napoleonic officials largely unknown today, reflecting evolving political and cultural priorities.

But this year, French President Macron directed that, for the first time, an historian, Marc Bloch, be ‘Panthéonisé,’ have a monument within its walls. The attached video shows part of the formal ceremony of his induction into this Gallic Valhalla (Gal-halla?). This reflects not only gratitude, but inspiration – even appropriate awe – at his glorious example.

This exalted privilege was bestowed on Bloch partly for his immense contributions to global study of history, but also for selflessly risking his life opposing France’s Nazi occupiers, who eventually martyred him.

His scholarly deeds alone might qualify him for this elevation, but his extraordinary bravery absolutely must. Other great minds (Zola, Marie Curie, Victor Hugo etc.), and gallant citizens (Jean Moulin, another patriot martyr) are lionized there, but few, if any, others so exemplify both the ‘Light and Fire’ – the mind and the spirit – referenced by this post’s title.

Fittingly, the Panthéon is not far from the Sorbonne, France’s elite university and venerable epicenter of academic excellence. Bloch taught there during the 1930s, contributing substantially to its heritage.

Born in Lyon in 1886, he was ardently patriotic, out of unforced love for his homeland, and her Revolutionary pillars, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. He fought valiantly for France in World War I, was wounded twice, receiving two of his nation’s highest awards, the Croix de Guerre medal, and induction into her Legion of Honor. A secular Jew, Bloch likely felt spurred to demonstrate his loyalty in response to the Dreyfus Affair, when a Jewish army officer was falsely accused of espionage. It had convulsed the country during his childhood, and its anti-Semitic tremors lingered long.

After the Great War, he resumed his studies, devising (with colleague Lucien Lefebvre) the Annales School of history. That method examined the impact of ordinary people, not the famous and powerful, on historical events. Since there are few records, for example, of lives of serfs (topic of Bloch’s magnum opus ‘Feudal Society’), ‘Annales’ inquiry required cross-disciplinary extrapolation from long-disregarded sources to study them.

This approach implicitly bypassed ‘Great Man’ history, focused on Caesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon, Churchill, etc. Ironic, as Bloch will now be remembered in a temple officially dedicated to the nation’s ‘Great Men.’

When France declared war on Nazi Germany in 1939, Bloch, by then a 53 year-old professor, re-enlisted in the Army as a logistician. It was patriotic, but probably also from fierce desire to obstruct Hitler, embodiment of all that Bloch, elite scholar and individualist citizen, must detest. The feeling would be mutual; Jew-hating Hitler was also violently anti-intellectual.

The Germans, having converted their country into a war-making machine, swiftly defeated France, then occupied the northwestern half of its territory, leaving the southeast nominally ‘free.’ Its improvised capital was at a Spa town now synonymous with national dishonor: Vichy.

Expelled from teaching at the Sorbonne by Nazi bans on Jewish educators, Bloch moved to the free Zone, where he taught again, and eventually joined the Resistance, ‘Partisans’ combating the German occupiers. This was an act of almost insane courage, due to his age, relative notoriety, and being, as a Jew, already a prime target of Nazism.

It is breathtaking to ponder the terrible dangers to which he knowingly exposed his flesh and blood for abstract principles he considered more precious than his own life. He was given vital noncombat work, such as translation, coordination, and composing Resistance propaganda.

Examine Bloch’s picture in the video; he is late middle-aged, not some naïve, reckless youth. He knew the lurking horrors of the world, and surely realized what risks he faced among the Partisans. He faced them anyway, entering a lion’s den like the Old Testament Prophet Daniel, but unlike him, paid with terrible suffering when the beasts devoured him.

In 1943 in Lyon, Bloch was betrayed into the grip of the Gestapo, and interrogated under torture for months, supposedly revealing nothing. He was executed June 16, 1944, along with other Partisans, partly as a precaution, after the D-Day Invasion. A witness said Bloch’s last act was comforting a terrified adolescent prisoner, also about to be shot.

Facing imminent death himself, surely in pain from torture, yet still kind enough to soothe a distraught comrade. What humanity, both profound and soaring! And like Daniel, the articles of faith he treasured – France and her Republican virtues – lived on after him. Perhaps even partly because of him: An historian who, himself, contributed to history by hastening the liberation of his beloved country.

I once wrote a meditation about a holding cell I saw in the ruins of Gestapo headquarters in Berlin. Bloch’s Self sacrifice recalls that I said that if that site ‘saw mainly cruelty and horror, it must also have seen Olympian courage and nobility.’ He unquestionably showed those qualities, struggling against Fascism.

Few of us have the brainpower to attain his scholarly stratum, but theoretically, more people may be capable of heroism. Yet very few of us actually are, so his bravery may be even more astounding than his brilliance.

Now his nation is according him recognition commensurate with his splendid feats. Part of Macron’s decision was likely a wish to address a deeply sensitive chapter of French history. Her Occupation by the Nazis is still an infamous memory, because many Frenchmen aided Hitler not out of expediency – shameful enough – but conviction, seeing him as Europe’s bulwark against Bolshevism. They became his avid accomplices, persecuting their countrymen, especially Jewish ones.

The Great War hero Pétain, who resolutely preferred Hitlerism to Stalinism, became Vichy’s Premier. He set up a regime with like-minded reactionaries who hated many fellow Frenchmen – Liberals, Jews, Communists – more than the conquering Germans. Vichy connived with the Nazis in various ways, most ghastly, deporting multitudes of Jews to death camps from France, where some 80,000 perished.

For decades after, while many who cooperated with the Occupiers were still alive (and some in public office), France avoided confronting the scope of its societal culpability. Now that the War Generation is mostly dead, Macron likely intends Bloch’s commemoration at this most hallowed venue of French greatness, to suggest how the squalid implications of Vichy’s collaboration should be countered.

For Bloch’s spectacular gallantry, even Panthéonisation, a pinnacle rite of national reverence, may seem inadequate. He said of his death-daring decision to resist, ‘There can be no salvation where there is no sacrifice.’

I have no better descriptor for such magnificent nobility than the one I used before: ‘Olympian.’ Or possibly, in deference to his background, ‘Samsonian.’

In recognizing Bloch thus, France pays a debt – atonement? – not only to a patriotic hero, but to one who, by his scholarship, indirectly promoted values for which he ultimately died: the worth and sanctity of the ordinary individual. One whose view of history was that it is not moved only by men on thrones or horseback, but also by ‘ordinary individuals,’ he supported that view by defying bestial oppressors. Not with swords or guns, but words and ideas.

The disgrace of Vichy may always stain France, as tolerating the thwarting of Reconstruction may forever mark America. Societies that cannot acknowledge past error cannot improve, because they deny experience. By celebrating Bloch thus, Macron has decided France needs to face this shame, but also to learn from, and move beyond it.

Bloch’s life offers a luminous ember that France – indeed, the world – can use to kindle determination to resist the darkness to which any quasi-wolves like Hitler would make humanity revert. Republican France was Hitler’s nemesis militarily, but also philosophically, for the hopes of her Revolution were – and are – mutually exclusive with those of Fascism.

If any life could help inspire such determination, Marc Bloch’s could. By honoring him, his nation shines light on a detestable corner of her national story, but also re-asserts her vibrant desire to promote human progress.

Such progress may take place in libraries and classrooms, or cells and torture chambers, sometimes as much as in armed battle.

As against the ramparts of the Bastille, on July 14, 1789.

by omniagallia

AMERICA, THE MEANINGFUL:

True patriotism is not reflex, flag-waving, Jingoist Chauvinism. True love of one’s country means neither hyperfocus on its imperfections, nor just ignoring them. As in loving another person, authentic affection doesn’t require pretense of perfection, but appreciating the beloved’s full potential, beyond any undeniable flaws.

So for me, America’s 250th Anniversary elicits reflection blended with some pride; and cautious optimism. As my title tries to suggest, she may still offer much to the world, if she can surpass forces that tainted her founding promise.

I thought of this during a walk in my vibrant Chicago neighborhood recently. The sense of freedom and security I felt seem valid reasons for thanks, as well as hope for, my country. My area reflects a society with good social ‘bones,’ not inherent, ambient chaos. And recognizing such seems a better way to appreciate America than any parade or statue.

But even those whose well-being our society long prioritized take such privileges for granted at their peril; personal freedom and security are not defaults in this world. Nationalist songs like ‘America the Beautiful’ may exaggerate positivity, with lyrics like ‘thine alabaster cities gleam,’ but such words stretch imagery to absurdity. Neither Chicago, nor any other American city is literally alabaster, white, pure, flawless stone.

To say the least, our heritage is not pure and flawless either. And it may have too long been presumed to be ‘White,’ which – ironically – has stained it.

While my neighborhood is relatively safe, clean and attractive, it still shows signs of the instability of any society where prosperity is protected to the detriment of those who lack equal access to it by legal, economic and cultural barriers. This should be an intolerable mismatch for any land that reveres equality.

The new Obama Center pictured here is granite, yet reflects genuine hope for ideals, for which allusions to alabaster cities get brandished, rather than face the reality of failing to uphold them. Its design, so unlike other public institutions of its type – the classical Museum of Science and Industry appears behind it – suggests how diverse visions can be stimulating and beneficial.

The vision released on July 4, 1776 would diverge far beyond anything those prosperous White men, seeking redress against the authority of their lawful King, foresaw or imagined. They simply meant to adjust the power structure to benefit those they (presuming to define who was worthy – and ‘normal’), considered more fit and entitled to rule than any hereditary monarch: Themselves.

But the grand ideas they declared that day took on a life of their own, for if such mere mortal men need not submit to alleged natural rulers – princes and lords – why did anyone else? Those men opened a door to individual worth and autonomy that could not apply, indefinitely, only to those like themselves.

In time, their ‘adjustment’ swelled to an avalanche, gathering all people suppressed by traditional hierarchy, demanding control over their own lives. They never foresaw full citizenship for women, let alone ‘Negroes’ which would likely have horrified them. Progress has been slow and uneven, but it seems willful to deny that such counter-traditional leaps towards general personal liberty are not genuine evolution toward equality, based on one’s humanity alone. One should not expect perfection, or nothing; human affairs rarely work that way.

Consider: there was a built-in crossed-purpose – almost a ‘curse’ – for our professed ideals, which has deflected them ever since. A priority for many Americans was exploiting the wilderness of the continent, portrayed as a quasi-sacred duty, in which worldly success was divinely sanctioned.

But the sort of folk willing to endure hardship, ocean voyages in primitive ships, risk life and limb to develop this enormous land, were more likely driven by self-interest – including a great many who came in the later 19th Century – than abstract principle; including concern for native peoples who already lived here (to say nothing of slavery). And that’s fair; those willing to exert themselves beyond what is easy should get greater rewards. To a reasonable degree.

But American popular culture now endorses rewards to ‘unreasonable’ degrees. Thus, our economy recently spawned history’s first dollar Trillionaire (a South African immigrant who, unsurprisingly given racial presumptions amid which he grew up, rejects empathy as a value).

The obvious benefit of that self-interested vigor, first released to tame a wild continent, still curses many of us to consider wealth a virtue, no matter how unethically it is obtained, or how much harm (active or passive) it causes. Such frenetic dynamism may have been necessary to develop needed natural riches, but has largely outlived its usefulness, and made our nation the place where a phenomenon as unequal as one person having more money than there are stars in the heavens was apt to appear first. America too often encourages, facilitates – demi-deifies – such financial overkill, rather than treat it as a gross failure of proportion, self-awareness and modesty in a world of Want.

Is it hugely surprising that a society that largely approves such excess might also lack moderation in its politics? The validation of the Self effectively implied by the Declaration of Independence has, in many ways, decayed into indifference to the Other. That engine of greed collides repeatedly with the aspirations of the Declaration; historically, greed almost always wins.

Almost.

Events generally get driven by people with abundant energy, if often short on scruples. Actions speak louder than words however grand, and our true priorities gradually slid from the sublime to the avaricious.

Further, while the ‘equality’ the Founding Fatcats of ’76 sought chiefly rejected hereditary governance by asserting the inherent sovereignty of all (men), today, many Americans – especially, unremarkable white men – do not want to be ‘equal.’

They want to be ‘supreme,’ and thus many without distinguishing deeds or gifts cling fiercely to the unwarranted ruling class privilege our society has long accorded them. They would stand atop others to keep themselves raised, but such (violence-bacKKKed) egotism in fact proves them unworthy of rarified status. They don’t deserve it, have just been too long indulged to believe they are entitled to it.

To return to my ‘almost’ caveat about self-interest versus principle:  ideals like those America asserted as its foundation are organic, self-sustaining, and cannot be put back in a box. They still win over ‘rugged individualism’ often enough to display their power, and thus remain worth striving to advance, rather than abandon as unrealistic.

And there are still prominent American voices advocating aspirations higher than Plutocracy, if we listen to them.

Hope is often unrealistic, but ideals are conceived to oppose intolerable (apparent) realities. Refusal to accept things as they are – belief that something better is possible – is an indispensable well-spring of much human progress. It’s what the Philadelphia Patriarchs intended. They knew their undertaking had historic implications; they just didn’t realize how much.

It is easy to focus on all the ways America has deviated, obstructed, or failed in its lofty pretensions. But it is worse than useless to give it up as a lost cause, and not still try to absorb those pretensions, mutated but improved, from those envisaged by those Patriarchs. Passivity concedes the public realm to the scruple-free.

The nation we can realize by seeing ‘Patriotism’ as combining personal autonomy with using it to contribute to our broader community, can genuinely nurture our experiment in freedom. Maybe observed as ‘Inter-Dependence Day?’

Whereas imagery like ‘alabaster cities’ is so far from reality as to seem like an admission that, since we cannot really be good citizens, we may as well aim for impossible perfection. But we do not need alabaster cities, we need faith that what got set loose 7/4/1776 deserves our best efforts to keep alive and evolving.

In addition, we should ditch our widespread knee-jerk near worship of wealth, as a worse-than-useless relic of a grasping frontier mentality. If we don’t start to reject baser impulses like hyper-Egoism, we will never attain, nor deserve, the higher state the founders offered us all; however unintentionally.

We may pray, as the song says, of America, that Providence may ‘Mend thine every flaw.’ But it is also said that Heaven helps those who help themselves, so we should actively pursue benevolent – and meaningful – contributions to life as individuals and collectively. Not just for our nation but humanity in general.

What may be accomplished, by free people with material sufficiency, focused on values immeasurably greater than rampaging rapacity? Reaching for and spreading such values may be more powerful than the self-interest of those who initially set them in motion – and possibly, worth more than all the ‘stars in the heavens.’

by omniagallia

‘The Laurel Wreath is Ready Now, To Place Upon his Loyal Brow’

This title is from ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home,’ a song for Union soldiers who did their duty during the Civil War, earning the praise, gratitude and esteem of their communities. Men who deserved a laurel wreath, an ancient symbol of victory.

The same could be said for soldiers like those in this image of hungry, freezing men of Washington’s Army at Valley Forge in the terrible winter of 1778, when their determination for independence was desperately important. It helped the new United States hold out till war aid against mighty Britain began to arrive from France and Spain.

Members of America’s armed forces in 2026 should bear this legacy and standards of courage in mind. Probably none of Washington’s Continentals ever got an actual laurel wreath, but America’s survival to become a flourishing republic – far from perfect, but free from Kings – was the greatest memorial to their valiant resolution.

I am distressed that it feels necessary to point out that our military’s ultimate loyalty is supposed to be to the Constitution – and to nothing, and no one else. But at this moment, doing so seems vital, as our politics are driven by vicious men who typically show concern for nothing but their own interests and egos. Worse, who believe that their inclination to use intimidation and force make them natural rulers, rather than agents of barbarism.

Will our servicemen and women recall, and sustain this legacy of Valley Forge? Or might they ‘just follow orders’ to fire upon, and enslave their fellow citizens, rather than be taunted as ‘suckers and losers’ if they hesitate?  Would they help install a king in all but name, after their forebears gallantly expelled George III from his American colonies, because most of their people wanted to be citizens, not ‘subjects?’

Will they adhere to their oaths? Their nominal superiors not only ignore their own, but pursue self-involved, primal dominance, and scoff that morality is for weak fools.

Our approaching Midterm elections may show whether American military personnel, of any rank, believe that today, honor and patriotism can be discarded so as to be one of the self-identified ‘winners’ to whom, bluntly, Might makes Right. Whatever shortcomings there were and are in American self-government, they must surely be worse if people utterly unsuited to rule honorably (or competently) gain unconstrained power. Especially by trying to use military force to thwart the consent of the governed.

The rebels at Valley Forge had no certainty they would prevail; only faith and hope. And they knew if they lost, British law said they could be disemboweled, drawn and quartered, then beheaded as traitors.

Do American military men and women today have such stalwart commitment to liberty? Will they obey the Constitution, rather than would-be despots who might use armed violence to subvert it? Do they deserve a laurel wreath for loyalty, as ‘Johnny,’ or the soldiers shown here, did?  

They should consider all this before being confronted with a need to decide where their ultimate loyalty lies. And they should ask, before putting their careers, reputations and maybe their very lives on the line, if they can trust the ones demanding they do so, to reciprocate any sacrifice they make.

To go by their record, those who might ask them to betray their oath and heritage might abandon them once they serve their purpose. It seems a risky bet to reject a noble legacy to put faith in people who have acted as if they see anyone who helps them as expendable tools. Or as contemptible fools, for expecting arch-cynics to keep their promises.

Let alone, for some gullible wish to march home with pride, rather than shame.

by omniagallia

‘Lo, How a Rose ‘ere Blooming – ‘

The title of this post is the traditional English translation of the name of a classic German Christmas carol, ‘Es ist ein Rose entsprungen.’ It refers to a rose, lovely and fragile, that nevertheless blooms amid the cold and darkness of Winter.

The rose referred to in those lyrics is Jesus, who offers light to the world, and not just amid the darkness of winter. His coming at Christmas, and the attached photo are connected by imagery of the rose. In this case, specifically, by a White Rose.

I took this during my visit to Europe last October. It shows Bavaria’s main courthouse, the Justiz Palast in Munich. In February of 1943, as the course of World War 2 was shifting irreversibly against Germany’s Nazi rulers, this building was the site of the trial of brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl, and Christoph Probst (arguably the intellectual epicenter of the circle), principal members of ‘Die Weisse Rose,’ the White Rose, code-name for a group of young resisters to Hitler’s regime. Its members had profound moral hostility to Nazism, and some, including Hans, had served in the Army on the Russian front, and witnessed German atrocities in the USSR.

The Scholls and their co-conspirators were patriots clear-sighted enough to know by then that the war was lost, despite the government’s frantic lies about its course. They wanted to save their beloved country from complete destruction by the overwhelming power of the enemies Hitler had brought down upon it. In fact, this courthouse still bears scars from the bombing that would befall Munich the next year, 1944.

But beyond patriotism, Sophie and Hans were also impelled by deep, resolute Christian faith. They knew perfectly well the awful risks they faced at the hands of the Regime’s savage Gestapo secret police, but felt stiffened to resist it by writing, printing, and spreading vehement anti-Hitler leaflets (considered high treason). They believed their creed, if sincere, obliged them to resist evil, no matter the danger.

Presumably, knowing that Jesus had accepted giving up His life for the world figured into their commitment. The White Rose’s members did not seek martyrdom, but did not shrink from its peril either.

Sophie, probably because heroism is not usually associated with women, has become a legend of principled resistance to evil. But she did not act alone; after being caught (by tragic happenstance) distributing their leaflets, she, Hans, and their associate Probst were arrested, tried, convicted, and beheaded. Sophie’s captors were so astonished by her courage and resolve, they offered to mitigate her guilt from the capital crime with which she had been charged, for they had surely never encountered such authentic nobility by doctrine-spewing Hitler Youth. But she refused to accept, forthrightly stating that she would not recant what she knew to be true and rightful, and bend to the ruthless might and criminality of Nazism.

I had not sought this building; only walking past it, and reading ‘Justiz Palast’ did it occur to me it was likely where White Rose members were tried by the screaming judge Roland Freisler, ‘The Fuehrer’s Executioner.’ To suddenly grasp what had happened here, then reflect on the soaring courage and honor once shown within was both arresting – I stopped mid-step as that realization came over me – and awe-inspiring. Unlike the recovered colored light in Notre Dame in Paris (described in an earlier post), here, my wonder was engendered not by powerful, inadvertent visual symbolism, but directly by human deeds.

If seemingly, more-than-human deeds.

The passionate idealism of the White Rose was the strongest possible rebuke to the carefully curated cruelty and fanaticism of the Hitler Youth, saturated by the Nazi state in racist, bestial ideology. If callow, juvenile men can be manipulated into believing that their worst instincts are actually nobly warlike, the Scholls and others showed how youthful ‘passionate idealism’ may also see right through malevolence, and valiantly oppose it.

If the White Rose members had been exclusively logical, they would have kept their mouths shut, their heads down and their non-combatant status as university students intact. But they did not, for they discerned a duty more precious than their very survival. In serving that, they did far more than deserve to be remembered. They have left a source of inspiration like few who have ever lived, igniting the full power of the soul to act beyond transient concerns, in the interest of values whose urgency never fades. Their determination starkly, absolutely contrasted with some of history’s worst acts of inhumanity.

The example of their bravery and self-sacrifice matters critically in a world where brute force such as (but not restricted to) Nazism too often seizes control of events. Again, the Scholls and Probst had stalwart Christian worldviews, so it seems likely that Jesus’ care for the whole human family – the antithesis of Nazi racial theory – must have been part of their inspiration.

(Of course, such devotion can arise from non-religious sources, but in this case, their intensely personal, if not rigidly formal, faith enabled these young folk to confront death, rather than yield to its menace.)

It is often in seemingly irrational deeds like theirs, floridly contrary to Self-interest, that the scope and potential of our humanity may sparkle most brilliantly. In such cases, we may benefit from decisions that cannot be rationalized, as much, or more, than from many that make perfect sense.

The White Rose was a bloom that will never wither, just as Jesus is the rose, blooming at Christmas, abiding despite all the malevolence in our oft-sinister world. By not doing the sensible thing, the Scholls showed that decency and honor have not perished – in a way adjacent to how Christ showed the same, in love and kindness. I am not nearly brave or strong enough to have done what they did, but am inexpressibly grateful to them for showing that, however implausible, it is not impossible.

Indeed, I have noted in other writings that our finest actions are often not our most rational ones. Surely, all readers of this post know of instances when people braved danger or suffered pain that they didn’t have to, out of simple, heroic decency. Or purest love.

Though this post seeks to honor the White Rose as an instance of aspiration adequate in scope for Christmas, nothing I write could possibly do justice to the splendor shown by its members, and especially its martyrs. The best I can do is to marvel at the implications of their deeds and ethics.

 As long as we have hearts to swell and eyes to tear with admiration, members of this tiny circle may be remembered; and emulated. They did not stop Hitler or his monstrous war, but they proved that not even his towering evil could exterminate righteousness, for it was, and is, still to be found around us. An invaluable lesson and a spectacular bequest to the world.

I cannot accept that the human sphere must be merely a cynical contest of genetic material, of our individual gifts or our burdens. The White Rose was proof that such random circumstances can be exceeded, as Christmas suggests Divine hope – and faith – that we can each, conceivably, resolve to rise above such constraints. And far from being exclusively the refuge of the weak and passive – as the Nazis derisively presumed – the Christianity of this trio, at least, made them guerillas for Christ.

The legacy of the Scholls and Probst reminds us how even the most demonic sway in our terrestrial element can never fully overcome the life force that summoned it, in the beginning, as ex-nihilo Creation. When hope guards rectitude as indispensable as that the White Rose defended, all the shadow in existence cannot, and did not, subdue it.

by omniagallia

A Different Enlightenment:

On a recent visit to Europe, a friend and I went from Paris to Sarlat (a lovely Medieval vestige in France’s Dordogne, itself a marvel of nature and history) then Munich, and finally Vienna. It was all rather wondrous.

I hope to post reflections on some pictures I took, as after my 2016 travels. But I am currently focused on a large writing project, so may compose only a few essays, about photos I deem especially significant.

This image initiates that effort. It shows a spectacle not seen in centuries at gloriously rebuilt Notre Dame de Paris. The entire restoration from the fire of 2019 was magnificent, but encountering this long-gone ‘rainbow’ was enrapturing. Without the fire, this vista might have stayed lost forever.

After that inferno, the church’s walls were scrubbed of ages of candle smoke, incense, etc., and its stained glass consummately cleaned. Consequently, this cloud of limpid color, long obscured in the gloom, is now cast onto the stone-work overhead. The restorers likely anticipated its return, but I certainly had not, so discovering it astonished me.

Where I stood filming had been saturated with lead dust, ash from burned roof beams, rubble, all still in peril of structural collapse after the fire. That Notre Dame was not just restored, but is better than before, is evidence of determined, diligent, ingeniously potent human agency.

However: In Medieval Christian theology, God was light, which this revived iridescent glow assuredly suggests.  Thus, this image may be pondered as divine approval, or affectionate reward, for how we deployed our collective gifts to rescue this venerable shrine, sacred to abstract aspiration.

I especially hope to write posts for three other photos from my journey. One is consonant with the majesty of human endeavor suggested here; the other two contrast with it.

I photographed Munich’s courthouse, where another intimation of our best Nature appeared. There, in 1943, members of the White Rose, a legendary anti-Nazi network, were tried and condemned to death for their ‘noble treason.’ Supposedly, they even dared scold their judge for moral dissolution and complicity with Hitler – a deed of defiant courage I find as awesome, in its context, as this compelling phenomenon in Notre Dame.

In contrast to that summit, two pictures I took at Dachau, suburban Munich site of Nazism’s prototype Concentration Camp, witness a chasm. One shows a statue of an anonymous inmate, inscribed ‘Honor to the Dead. Warning to the Living.’ The other is a photo of inmates taken by a guard, carefully conceived and crafted to sate Nazi mania to degrade and dominate the ‘other.’

Both these images feel ominously relevant to the political climate in America today, 2025.

The fact that so many people seem not to have learned the grim lessons places like Dachau symbolize makes me fear our species may have reached a pivot point. A point beyond which our Reason, spawning technology to serve the primally self-interested, may be as liable to degrade or destroy us, as to advance us.

Thus, until if and when I write about those three, the image here must serve to assert a proposition I ardently feel worth advocating: belief in the ultimate positivity, underlying and overarching, of our mortal existence. What these apparently unrelated things – this recovered spectacle at Notre Dame and the White Rose’s nobility – have in common, is that the instinctive admiration most of us feel for such marvels may suggest that simple goodness is the default of our nature, and wickedness a baser aberration. And they may help us keep faith in that default, despite all counter-evidence.

Scripture says that after the Great Flood, God set a rainbow in the Heavens in token of a promise never again to chastise humanity for its failings. The rainbow shown here may be mere optical happenstance, but such apparently random coincidences may act as mechanisms to move us to hope, may offset dispiriting, life-negating evidence, inspiring us to reckon that an elementally better world is possible; even necessary. A world more worthy of this sensational vision, and of the soaring honor of the White Rose martyrs, than of demonic Dachau.

In terms of attaining the highest level of being we can, reaching beyond the Self alone – love – may prevail, where logic fails. So I invite readers to consider this image as evocative of tender, reassuring encouragement to such ‘reaching.’

Most humans’ spirits are not data driven, so physical experimentation, mathematical proofs, etc. are not tools for such undertakings, which are outside the realm of reason, alone. We must generate and embrace such Hope within our Selves. And it must subdue animal urges such as Nazism invoked, or we are lost.

Hope need never die, unless we let it expire. At grievously wounded Notre Dame, we did not, and as a result, got back this breath-taking apparition.

by omniagallia

For Bastille Day: Libertines – Egomaniacs – Fratricides?

The recent Bezos Matri-Money in Venice reminds me of an episode from the French Revolution. We tend to think of the Fall of the Bastille, July 14, 1789 as the start of that grand historical process. It was pivotal, the most violent defiance of King Louis XVI’s authority to date, but was soon followed by an incident more pertinent today. We are not at a tipping point like that event turned out to be, yet it feels increasingly relevant.

On October 1, 1789 the Flanders Regiment reached Versailles to take over duties of a unit that defected at the Bastille uprising. At the same time, a bad harvest was making bread, staple of most French diets, costlier in Paris.

The King’s bodyguard threw a sumptuous banquet to welcome the Flandriens. As if luxuriant food as commoners faced starvation weren’t insensitive enough, the newcomers also displayed inordinate gestures of loyalty to Louis. The callousness of extravagant dining and obliviousness to broad frustration with a feckless King were dangerously at odds with the mood beyond the royal Court.

News of those antics got soon back to Paris, and as a result, a mass of irate women marched out to Versailles to remonstrate with Louis about the cost of bread. They breached the palace, and coerced the royal family to return to Paris, where they could be more easily controlled, guarded and menaced.

In 2025, there are no Divine-Right Kings on whom national publics can focus frustration. But we have our own focus: behavior like that extravaganza in Venice by those who, like Louis’ courtiers, evidently see themselves as above the concerns of (other) mortals.

It is a fair, if inexact, parallel to reaction to that Flandrien feast that today, beleaguered folk observing modesty’s ‘Dearth in Venice’ resent the ultra-rich absorbing ever more of Global wealth. Often by redirecting it from previously comfortable middle classes.

Even more reckless, today’s plutocrats try various ploys to pull up the socio-economic ladder, to make their privilege and power inassailable. (‘Ploys’ like rendering healthcare less accessible, reducing life expectancies; hence my citation of ‘Fratricide.’)

Was the unseemly profligacy of the wedding of merchant martinet Bezos due to delusion? Arrogance? Both?

Did its guests not realize the resentment their hyper-indulgence causes fellow citizens? Citizens watching as historically unique widespread financial and personal security –- which they consider the bedrock of any ‘just’ society – gets deliberately eroded?

Especially when many of those guests avoid taxes (as the accompanying image suggests) with the same vigor they siphon profit to themselves. Often, using techniques they – the groom first among them – devised or control.

(Sidebar: Is facilitating techno-charged rapacity ‘Evolutionary progress?’ Surely, this is not the highest state of development to which we can aspire!)

Can they actually believe their efforts to revive a Gilded Age – a glittering membrane over a dark reality of struggle for survival for most – will pass unnoticed, and unresisted, by ‘most?’

All this is an insufferable offense against simple fairness, so any popular wrath it ignites should come as no surprise. How can allegedly smart (rich) people be so blinkered they can’t see this is both intolerable, and untenable?

There is a huge difference between most people today, and French commoners in 1789. They were accustomed to hardship, hoping mainly that survival be as little difficult as possible, whereas most of us experienced ‘widespread financial and personal security’ not long ago.

We know life Can be better, and should not accept its being degraded so kleptocrats can outdo each other with grander yachts.

Why should so many give up so much, to pamper so few?

Or is it arrogance? Do members of the ‘élite’ simply not care what the common herd thinks? Or presume it can be reliably manipulated? But today’s ‘herd’ is educated enough to sustain a modern economy, so its members are aware life was not, and need/should not be, constant struggle for survival.

In honor of Bastille (Bez-steal?) Day, the subtitle of this post is a satire on three pillars Republican France has espoused since her tumultuous birth: ‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité’ ‘Liberty, equality, fraternity.’

Ideals that any libertines, egomaniacs or enablers of fratricide who made it onto the Venice guest list likely not just ignore, but consciously mock. Most especially égalité/equality. Their personal ‘ideals’ are obviously irreconcilable with France’s Secular Trinity and its promise of a better human condition.

To return to that women’s march: legendarily as they neared Versailles, palace staff tried to close its gates. But they hadn’t been shut in decades, and were rusted immovably in place. Heedless gentry had just presumed civilization would prevail to sustain (and be exploited by) them. Their presumption that their privilege was indestructible proved false, so when a reckoning came, it left them unable to shield themselves.

It wasn’t barbarians at those gates. It was wives and mothers fed up with being ‘subjects’ of those whose selfishness proved they did not merit their prerogatives.

Those rusted gates may prove a metaphor for glitterati who attended Bezos’ rites, then ignore justified anger from beyond their velvet cords and gated residences. Who assume civilization is there to protect them, even as they (‘Carnivores in Venice?’) prey on most of its members.

If Venice’s spectacle is 2025’s equivalent to the cluelessness of the banquet for the Flandriens, the equivalent to their tin-eared praise for Louis XVI may be our plutocrats’ shameless tax avoidance, a childish mindset that one may limitlessly ‘take,’ but need never ‘give.’

History may see capers like the flaunted opulence in Venice as what led a critical mass of people to conclude the economic structure benefits only a veneer of the powerful.

In another essay, I will speculate on cynical ways plutocracy may be trying to distract us commoners from noticing how we are being despoiled. Like Versailles’ gates, such gambits are liable to eventual failure, when snarled with the accumulated rust of popular rage.

That essay will be titled ‘Bread and Circuits.’ 

by omniagallia

American Police: Which Vision will You Defend?

The accompanying image shows Roland Freisler, Chief Judge of Nazi Germany, in his court. Sometimes called ‘Hitler’s Executioner,’ here he is being watched by a group of regular German police in their distinctive helmets.

I don’t know who the man facing Freisler is, but if he was in the hands of this robed thug, he was almost certainly considered an enemy by the Nazis. He had likely been tortured, and this trial is a sham pretense of judicial process, performed for purposes of propaganda and public intimidation. He is probably doomed, as Freisler routinely imposed the death penalty. His melancholy facial expression shows he already knows his likely Fate, as not so much the ‘accused,’ as the ‘condemned.’

This image implies something American policemen and women may find themselves facing: The critical, pivotal role of ordinary ‘cops-on-the-beat’ in facilitating tyranny.

The Gestapo, Hitler’s savage Secret State Police, never numbered more than a few thousand agents, when Germany’s population was nearly 70 million. So to make up for their small number, that baleful Bund encouraged the general public to help suppress disloyalty by spying on, and denouncing each other.

But for actual day-to-day enforcement of Nazi law and oppression, the Gestapo largely depended on local police in Germany, and in lands they conquered in their wars of aggression. They were the practical force that implemented most Nazi tyranny; without their active cooperation, Hitler’s security apparatus could never have had the fearsome control that it did.

American policemen and women today should bear this precedent in mind: Generally, ‘tyranny’ cannot function without the help and complicity of people like themselves. So if they realize they are being suborned for policies that repress, rather than protect, freedom, they may be wise to consult their consciences (and their own long-term best interests) before taking a first step onto a slippery slope of being the henchmen of ruthless Hierarchs whose only real principle is the defense of their own interests.

(Officers should also remember that Authoritarians rarely reciprocate loyalty. They may privilege their enforcers in the short term, but will remorselessly sell them out to benefit or save themselves. If they were honorable, they most likely would not need to be ‘authoritarian.’

Before aiding such a person, officers should consider his record for showing loyalty – with deeds, not just words – to those who show it to him.)

And to beware of any pretense of serving society (or just some ‘worthy classes’ of it) by carrying out directives that are clearly intended to do the opposite. For example, Freisler’s department was officially called ‘The People’s Court,’ (Volksgericht), when it was obviously mainly a tool of public control, and state terror.

Surely, Americans did not give their lives at Anzio, Normandy, Bastogne etc., in the belief they were helping to destroy Nazism, only to have something alarmingly similar eventually develop here. Do we no longer appreciate their sacrifice?

Officers, would you really want to do something Adolf Hitler would approve, like enshrining the merciless rule of the Ruthless over the sacred Constitutional rights of American citizens?

I hope our police begin to anticipate this scenario. What vision of ‘law and order’ are they willing to defend? One like that pictured here? Or the vision to which Americans profess to aspire, of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? And not just for themselves, or those just like themselves.

Our lawmen and women may have to face whether they are (or ever have been) serious about such ideals, or are just paying them lip service. They may have to decide at what point they will no longer be willing to ‘just follow orders,’ if the orders they are being given are unmistakably intended to distort the letter and spirit of American law – more than has ever happened before in our history – for the benefit of a cynical, insidious, self-interested minority.

Distant lands may not be the only places where Americans’ liberties must be struggled for. Who, exactly, do our regular polices’ consciences bid them to ‘serve and protect’? Better to ask themselves such questions now, than to suddenly confront those decisions, unprepared.

And to reflect on the meaning of this picture: Police as servants of evil, rather than its adversaries.

by omniagallia

Grains of Sand for Infernal Machines:

CONTEXT: I first posted the accompanying New York Times article (along with my own commentary) in 2020, shortly before COVID appeared and wracked the world. Then we had more immediate dangers to worry about.

Rather than this long-term one. Somehow, it feels like a good time to post this perspective again. On the premise of ‘an ounce of prevention.’

—————————————————–

This New York Times piece is one of few things I’ve reposted here, but it seems especially worthy. It advises how ordinary people can help thwart extraordinary evil by just not abetting it through passive resignation. And such ‘ordinary people’ surely includes me.

Friends who remember my postings about sites associated with Nazism from my 2016 trip to Europe may recall that I admitted not being brave enough to have overtly resisted Hitler’s rule by terror. In my post about a cell in the ruins of Gestapo headquarters in Berlin, I marveled at the ‘Olympian’ courage many prisoners held there must have shown, withholding vital information that savage interrogators tried to wrench from them with fearsome tortures.

The bravery of those who fight tyrants despite great odds is the inverse of their foes’ evil. They shine some of the brightest radiance in human nature into some of its darkest recesses; like that cell.

But other than praising such heroes and asserting that we who now enjoy peace and freedom partly due to their refusal to yield intelligence (that might have enabled Hitler to win) should honor them forever, I had no further recommendation. Not being heroic myself, I can hardly exhort others to be so, can only urge us all to be mindful and grateful to those with the character (or whatever alchemy gives some men and women the hearts of lions) to actively defy, and thus often help thwart, the full measure of Inhumanity of which Man is capable. One should feel awed by their strength, even if also humbled – and ineffectual.

Now, to the rescue from such disempowerment comes this NYT piece. It asserts that thinking our only possible responses to atrocity are overt resistance, or feeling helpless and inert, is a false, even harmful, dilemma. Righteousness may not be as hard or perilous as these stark alternatives suggest. Crime on a vast scale often depends on many factors – including bystanders not getting in the way – operating unimpeded if it is to avail. This essay prescribes non-dramatic actions one may take to diminish or frustrate the harm the wicked can accomplish.

Moreover, it says that assuming that we can do nothing absolves us, mistakenly, from considering how we might hamper criminal enterprises with minimal effort and risk, thus preserving our moral integrity while often aiding innocent victims. The author, a descendant of German Jews who left their homeland soon after Hitler took power, points out how the Holocaust could never have functioned so efficiently had non-Jews, in Germany or its conquered lands, encumbered it by withholding their cooperation, or abject passivity. Silence may not always give consent, but neither does it impede.

Indirectly hindering some demonic activity is not the stuff of legends like actively confronting it, but may still help slow or even grind it to a halt. Heroes of resistance should inspire us, but superhuman deeds may not be the only strategy available against horrendous undertakings.

If we cannot all radiate light as heroes do, we may try to reflect their brilliance, or at least not be acquiescent voids in which darkness may easily prevail. In my eulogy for my mother in 2015, I wrote that my late parents were very fine people, but not ‘demigods’, and that great scientists, explorers, titans of business, etc. – those whose feats benefit many lives (in addition to noble souls who dared the worst to fight the likes of Nazism) – form a thin stratum of our species who figuratively ‘help keep the world turning.’

But I also wrote that most people, although our lives and deeds are far more modest in scope, can still contribute something hugely important. We can make our world ‘Worth continuing to turn,’ rather than just be a grim cockpit where the strongest creatures rule and survive somewhat longer, but the Universe would be essentially unchanged if our planet fell into the Sun.

For most of us, helping to preserve the positive energy of conscious existence simply by not obstructing it may be the greatest impact of our time on Earth. That is individually modest, but collectively stupendous, the least of which we should all be capable, differentiating us among worlds and arguably the highest use of the human gift of reason: To try to tell right from wrong. And not everyone succeeds at this basic (if often difficult) task; we have all known people whose acts and attitudes make the world a worse place, even if not at the level of a Hitler.

This author helps us to seek the best in ourselves, to see how, even if we cannot be Odyssean, we may still help curb the deepest malice of the wicked. Even ordinary folk like me can do our small, but vital part, helping to disrupt the Devil’s vision, if we ever find ourselves in its periphery.

May none of us ever have to do so, but may we remember this lesson if Fate presents us with the choice.

by omniagallia

‘Resurgamus’: The Renewal of Notre Dame.

When the replacement for Medieval Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London, destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 got started, its architect Christopher Wren told a workman to bring him a flat stone to use as a marker. The man happened to choose a tomb fragment bearing the Latin word ‘Resurgam,’ ‘I Shall Rise Again.’ He likely had no idea what it meant, but had inadvertently made an auspicious gesture. Wren’s Saint Paul’s became emblematic of London’s rebirth from the catastrophe, and a beloved site of British self-image.

Now, Notre Dame de Paris has also risen from ashes, reopened today, December 8, 2024, but unlike Gothic Saint Paul’s, has been exquisitely rebuilt, not replaced. Medieval cathedrals were concerted projects involving entire regions, and the virtual rebirth of Notre Dame has indeed been communal. But in this case, the community was global; donations, resources and expertise coming from around the world.

It – ‘she’, Our Lady of Paris – originated when people did not assume they could understand, let alone control, the world around them. The heartbreaking day of the blaze in 2019 echoed that sense, as alert and suppression equipment meant to protect from fire failed to do so, a reminder of the limits of technocracy and human efficacy in general.

But as we have renewed Notre Dame, she may now help renew us.

For she stands as testament to past, present, and future wonders we may perform, when inspired to a common objective not dictated by our constricted spheres of self-interest. What happened after the inferno showed how determined hearts can animate the deeds of the head and hand.

This church – sacred not only in her Christian context, but also as an artifact of human identity and innate potential – quickly came to be seen as more than a superb work of artistry and engineering.  Amid her fallen masonry, blackened timber, melted lead, restoration may initially have seemed objectively impossible. But as realization of the importance of doing so grew, rebuilding came to seem daunting; then difficult; and finally unstoppable.

For we may do the ‘objectively impossible,’ if and when our Spirit is willing. Without such collective focus, Notre Dame would have remained a pile of ruins. Instead, in a cultural groundswell, she was embraced as a compass point in the firmament of our general consciousness that needed to be lovingly, faithfully rebuilt. Passively accepting her loss would devalue the whole concept of civilization, for if such an icon of shared human heritage was not worth exertion to save, what part of it is? Or would be? 

Arguably, it made little sense to lavish such attention on a burned out old-building. But that is a mistaken reading; doing so showed itself to be an absolute imperative. For she was never just a pile of stones, but represents the very best of who and what we are, or aspire to be, raised toward the heavens as an offering of our fondest hopes and finest deeds.

So it seems appropriate to use the plural ‘Resurgamus,’ ‘We shall rise again’ here, for the reopening of Notre Dame shows how – together – we may ‘rise again,’ to keep entropy from prevailing. Our devotion for a monument to some of our greatest non-material motivations displays the power of our impulse to create, rather than yielding to chaos.

Or to redeem; as this great shrine to hope returns to welcome the world during this Christmas season, we may choose to rejoice in the premise she has represented across the Ages, echoed again in her revival: There can be fulfilling, benevolent purpose to our existence.

Indeed, Notre Dame may serve her original mission better now than when she was new, amid general illiteracy, incomprehension of natural mechanisms, etc. We understand the natural world far better now, but her mission was and is to proclaim faith that humanity – everyone able to consciously, deliberately choose to act out of Love (whether they do so or not) – is not born merely to die, and return to dust.

Originally meant to assert that we are more than ‘clay vessels,’ she has now shown again how we are fit, and obliged, to participate in and contribute to the wondrous existence from which we sprang, and of which we will always remain as parts.

Our capacity for aspiration soaring beyond what is known or evident has not changed, although perhaps our priorities in reflecting such have matured and deepened. Today that means, quite properly, caring more about our brethren’s well-being than stone, timber and glass surrogates of abstract ideals.

But Notre Dame is a sublime exception to that kinder momentum, a link to our legacy of genius and potent agency; irreplaceable, and thus unacceptable to be irreparable. Her rebuilding stands in contrast to the violence and destruction around us, evidence that we have it in within us to create a more civilized world; in, and for, flesh and blood. Her sacrifice by fire, and our determination to reverse it, has reminded us of this imperative, and of our ability to ‘right wrongs.’ Which also implies that she may now encourage us to strive in a more worldly manner: To bring Heaven to Earth, especially to those most in need of it.

Evoking this dimension of our nature may be a comfort, as contemporary culture gradually prompts us to regard ourselves as organic mechanisms with little evident purpose but prolongation and material enjoyment of our physical lives. But one consequence of that perspective is that our ‘value’ as individuals – absent any non-material one – as measured by algorithms capturing our online activity, purchasing history, etc., is now largely a measure of how exploitable we are as marketing targets.

Those who control the algorithms, collect the data, can sell to or manipulate us accordingly, and thus their own ‘organic mechanisms’ flourish. In such a worldview, exploitation seems to be an only logical choice; that is, one based Only on logic, devoid of any other considerations.

But we are built for exaltation, not just for exploitation, as endeavors like Notre Dame – her origin, and now her renewal – evince. We have shown ourselves, yet again, what we can do if we try to act in ways worthy of sentient beings capable of efforts reflecting continuity, not mere sustainers of organic flourishing. We can be about more than coarse self-aggrandizement; much more.

Many may find this proposition comforting. Faith – not just religious faith – can manifest as the belief in the possibility, often despite implausibility, of facilitating some desired, better reality.

And the resurgence of Notre Dame is a glorious instance of what we can achieve when we act in concert toward some enterprise as great as we, together, can be. Thus, it is not just her fabric that has been renewed, but her defining symbolism of an impetus that remains – resplendently – beyond measure, quantification, or formulation.

An energy arising from heart and spirit, ‘vital’ in every sense.

by omniagallia

Reflections from London: Pathos and Progress

Today, November 2, was the birthday of my late mother, so I dedicate this post to her memory. Also to honor and advocate for the power of kindness and wise compassion, such as she often showed. That is relevant to my overall topic here, about our potential to advance beyond archaic lower impulses.

November 2 is also ‘All Souls Day’ in the Catholic tradition, when we may reflect on all those – not just our loved ones or co-religionists – who have gone before us in the great, turbulent narrative of Mankind.

Both those references, to advancement and reflection, apply to this post, which comes from my recent October, ’24, visit to Europe (London, Paris, Bordeaux). It deals specifically with a dark chapter of that narrative, one that our civilization has largely left behind, and with the hopeful implications of our having done so.

The word ‘Tyburn’ still resonates among many historically aware people. It is the name of a site originally beyond the western fringe of London (which has now grown up around it) where, for more than 500 years, men and women (and sometimes, children) convicted of capital crimes in the city were executed.

It lingers in the cultural semi-consciousness as a place of injustice, cruelty, indifference (as well as deep grief and sorrow) and other base attributes supposedly indelibly in Human Nature. Yet Tyburn may also now be considered a point from which ‘Human Nature’ has arguably taken a substantial step forward.

Perhaps the most somber incident during my 2016 visit to Europe was in Amsterdam, when I stood outside Anne Frank’s House, where she and her Jewish family hid from the occupying Nazis, only to be betrayed, resulting in most of them dying in the Death Camps. I had gone there immediately after viewing works by Rembrandt in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, a short distance away.

In my eventual online post about that episode, I referred to the end points of my walk to the House – starting at a venue of breathtaking creativity, but ending at one of abominable cruelty – as ‘A summit and an abyss of human endeavor, separated by a brief walk, yet from different worlds.’

Tyburn is no direct analogue to the Anne Frank House. If anything, its eventual fate reflects the sort of peaceful evolution which the Nazis, rabid advocates of the law of the Jungle, disdained and tried to thwart. But like the Frank House, it too, is only a short stroll from a locality of preoccupied vitality.

London’s largest retail district, Oxford Street, bustles immediately east of Tyburn, oblivious in its materialist spirit to the nearby place of morbid memory. Oxford’s commerce is hardly as exalted as the artistry on display in that Amsterdam museum, but like it, is an acute contrast to the mournful spot that Tyburn was for many generations.

The accompanying photo shows the extremely modest memorial – possibly thus due to shame by British society today at what was done here – to ‘Tyburn Tree.’ That was a gibbet which stood here from 1571 till the mid-Eighteenth Century, consisting of three vertical poles with horizontal beams between them, upon which multiple condemned persons could be hanged simultaneously. Before and after the ‘Tree,’ Tyburn was used to publicly carry out executions, till those were moved to Newgate Gaol (Jail) in the 1780s.

I had explicitly planned to go see this plaque when in London. An ancient city, it has many fascinating attractions, but I wanted to seek parts of its story beyond ‘attractions.’ Tyburn is one such, which should be remembered and pondered, as it so long epitomized how fearsome and punitive our world once was. So I arranged for my sister (who accompanied me in London and Paris) to browse an Oxford Street store nearby, while I made my semi-pilgrimage to this focus of melancholy.

If one feels any need to reflect on dark, sad aspects of history, Tyburn is certainly a ‘focus’ to do so. Over the centuries of its use as a place of judicial killing, masses of ordinary folk were put to death here at the behest of a callous, hierarchical society, making it one of the grimmest places in the world before mechanized killing. (The Tower of London, more famous as a place of executions, was used to do away with the high-born who had offended the Crown. Commoners were consigned to the disgrace of Tyburn, with its jeering spectators and general chaos)

One of the most shocking things about Tyburn to 21st Century sensibilities is how many people were hanged there for petty larceny, a relatively trivial offense no right-minded person today would dream warranted dying for.

Statistics of how many executions there were, how many were hangings, how many of each sort of crime, etc. may be available in scholarly sources, but I did not seek those out for this post. For context however, it is believed that, during its 500 years as the main site where the law put Londoners to death, several thousand were slain here.

My interest is more in what such a phenomenon can tell us about who we were, and by implication, who we have become, and still are becoming. Bluntly, Tyburn was a place where English society proved that it valued property more than life; or at least the lives of the ‘lower orders.’ My unverified impression is that most of the people dispatched here were hanged for often paltry crimes such as the theft of the equivalent of 3 days’ wages. Again, these were offenses for which no modern person should ever accept that capital punishment was appropriate.

Thus, however many ‘souls’ were hanged here for such deeds, it was too many.

Those found guilty of more serious crimes, like murder and treason were also disposed of here, but again, class status played a crucial role – especially in cases of rebellion/treason. Noble folk found guilty of such were usually beheaded in, or near, the Tower, while commoners endured the gruesome ignominy of Tyburn.

Far worse, traitors from of a lower social ‘station’ were ineligible for the relatively merciful death of beheading, reserved to those ‘gently born.’ Lower status men were subjected to the full, horrific, meant-to-terrify traitor’s death, including being torn apart (quartered) by horses, along with other torments.

Thus, what happened at this site for so long should offend us today from various perspectives: First, it reflected a generally savage environment. Also, no doubt, many of the condemned were innocent of the crimes with which they were charged, but got swept up by a court system whose real concern was the protection of the elite’s privilege, property and prestige, more than individual guilt or innocence.

Worse, many, if not most of the victims did things that absolutely wouldn’t rate a death sentence today (even if such still existed). Capital punishment was applied to such a broad range of crimes that it was seemingly the preferred response to almost any sort of getting out of line against the social order, or even against mere convention.

Especially such as hanging for theft, when the guilty party may have acted out of desperation, starving in a culture whose priority was not the general welfare, but ferociously upholding a self-serving Status Quo. Like gibbeting a man for stealing a week’s bread to feed his hungry family when he could find no honest means of doing so. He got snared in a web in which his ‘betters’ got, and kept, the best of everything.

Worst of all in my view, even those who committed deeds we still abhor, like murder and rape, were often made to suffer in ways so perversely cruel that arguably they negated any moral high ground of the authority that would impose them. They were naked, cathartic revenge and intimidation, masquerading as justice.

How can any law that mandates human beings be disemboweled (part of the martial penalty for treason) consider itself to be defending civilization, rather than legitimizing barbarism? Any society that imposes such atrocities is acting out of organic self-interest, arguably little, if at all, better than those upon whom it inflicts them.

All of us today can, and should, be relieved that we are now living in a world where such things cannot, or should not, happen to us (or to anyone else). Slipshod convictions are far rarer, and ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ is expressly prohibited. Even non-lethal penalties during this timeframe were often ghastly, including whipping, branding and pillories.

Returning to the photo, this plaque is not at all prominent, set in a traffic island (ironically, triangular like the setup of the ‘Tree’ itself). Most of the drivers passing it probably don’t even know it is there, or don’t register that it marks a miasma of injustice (‘legality’ notwithstanding), the scene of uncounted deaths over centuries of enforcement of societal norms set by those who benefited most from them. To say nothing of the ongoing bestialization of a citizenry already roughened by the struggles of daily life.

As cars roared around me, I said a prayer for all the Souls whose mortal lives were ended there: Those wrongly accused, those guilty of crimes we would now consider misdemeanors, and those made to suffer in ways we couldn’t even find people today willing to inflict, regardless of the offense. Even for the genuinely guilty, and truly evil ones, of whom there must have been many, themselves often victims of squalid realities.

The former site of Tyburn is now mostly overlooked, but I had felt some compulsion to visit it. I cannot believe that most of those ‘souls’ deserved what was done to them here; not in severity, and possibly, not at all. I mused – hoped? – that my lamentations might at least partly offset the sheer dreadfulness this place both witnessed and reflected, and might minutely help compensate for the inequity of their wrongful sufferings and death being forgotten. Or just ignored.

As the Colosseum, where bloodshed was staged as entertainment, is now a ruin, so Tyburn – where a public reduced to semi-savagery by the brutishness of their grinding existences came to enjoy watching brother beings perish – is now long gone. An abandoned, shameful echo of life as pitiless conflict, and a mass failure of empathy for ‘brother beings.’

There are likely still some people today, in 2024, who might regard the agony of others as a diversion, as the mob often did at Tyburn. But such persons are now repugnant outliers; our culture has, as a whole, grown beyond such bloodlust. Most people today (I fervently want to assume) would be aghast at the idea of public hangings, or worse, as amusement.

All of which may explain why this site is now so modestly marked. Some acknowledgment of the enormity it represents may have seemed needed for propriety – but not to be proudly emphasized. Like a gross transgression committed in one’s raw immaturity of which one grows to be remorseful, ashamed, and even penitent. (As far as I know, British law today does not allow Capital punishment for anything, even Regicide; killing the King.)

I choose to interpret the transition of English culture beyond the need for a place like Tyburn and the values it was used to oppressively sustain, as mirroring the gradual improvement of our species. As proof that our ability to reason may manifest as an inclination to empathize. And as demonstrating that any assertion that Human Nature is immutably corrupt and selfish is not indisputably true.

Those who believe that facts, such as evidence of recurrent human baseness, must be accepted at face value, are free to do so. Those like me, who have faith that events may have subtler implications beyond their face value alone, are equally free (and in my opinion equally justified) to follow that path instead.

Such a hope also is a tribute to my mother; indeed, to most mothers. Perhaps the kindness, sympathy and tolerance that their role in bearing, protecting, and nurturing vulnerable life requires of them will, slowly but inexorably, continue to shape our world more than primitive impulses we should strive to subdue in order to deserve, and to attain, our fullest humanity.

Impulses like valuing our property (and our prosperity) more than others’ lives. That we should leave more and more ‘Tyburns’ behind, and recall them with only shame and a shudder, as we come to regard each other less mainly as competitors for survival. Such is an outmoded habit, an artifact starkly unsuitable for our brighter Age.

Just as the Tyburn Tree would be.