Finally...Boston!

Part one of the move is now complete - I have finally arrived in Boston! It is much cooler here, despite what the locals say. Friday night arrived and I missed my usual comrades (they know who they are!) So, I read. Newly liberated from graduate school, I have rediscovered my passion for reading. I am currently revisiting "A Tale of Two Cities", and I have a hypothesis: I think we read the 'classics' far too early in life to fully appreciate their literary, cultural and social value. Dickens, I need not say, is a master descriptor. This book is going in my imaginary class on the French Revolution. I also just finished reading "Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War" by Peter Maass. Fantastic. More on that later.
When not reading, or emailing old, lost friends, I have been watching the news. How can one not? I don't know what I am more alarmed at: the sheer, devastating power of nature, the structural problems in government-based assistance that has slowed the process of recovery, or the tenous nature of our civil society - at all times. This is a fascination of sorts right now, but I am increasingly drawn to the pessimistic theorists of society: it seems at times that Thomas Hobbes was not far wrong. Not that I am suggesting an inherent 'evil' in human nature - I would never argue that. Still, our civil [civilized?] society has all the trappings of permanence, but turns out to be precariously balanced, repeatedly. Systemic problems in society (poverty, race/class division, lack of public funds) are to blame for the violence and unrest, to be sure. It is ironic though, that if we did not already know better, we might have more easily believed the scenes from New Orleans belonged somewhere in the "third"/less developed/less technologically advanced/less modern world. Feel free to insert your adjective of choice - I don't stand by these labels, they are standard usage for natural and man-made disasters occuring anywhere outside of North America and Western Europe. There is a danger here - I might just get on my soapbox...
Back to point: after we have picked up, recovered and moved on from this crisis; when images of stranded, starving refugees from New Orleans are no longer being flashed on our TV screens; perhaps then, we will be more careful in drawing the stark boundaries between us-the modern, and them-the not quite modern. Boundaries that cause more problems, and solve none. There are no "civilizations", there are only societies with more or less functional institutions. Civil society is fragile, and dependent on much more than ideology and rhetoric. This brings me back to my earlier, much less impassioned discussion of good literature. Another good read: William Golding's "Lord of the Flies". A very effective professor once made me write a paper discussing Golding's novel in relation to Hobbes's "Leviathan". Some lessons stick longer than others.
We've come full-circle. I'm tired and really should go to bed lest I ramble on all night. I'll address less weighty concerns next time, I promise.