Josh Murphy > Recent Status Updates

I understand I've just started, and America has revealed itself a little more clearly in the past year than was evident in 2022. The prologue defines the Western value of Compassion as: We believe a society should be judged by the way it treats its weakest members. I look around and think, "bullshit." Americans are more and more treating this world like their personal little zero sum game, and the weak be damned.

The prologue says Western cultures, thanks to Christian influence, share the values of Equality, Compassion, Consent, Enlightenment, Science, Freedom, and Progress... What western culture are you living in, Glen Scrivener?! Most of these values are barely even paid lip-service anymore. The past 10 years has seen the complete collapse of Western moral culture. This book was published in 2022! I'm an outraged skeptic

I'm going to admit right now that I'm coming into this book interested but filled with bitter skepticism. It started immediately with the cover's subtitle, "How We All Came to Believe in Freedom, Kindness, Progress, and Equality." Yeah, I wish we all believed in that stuff. Who is this "we" the cover is referencing? Christians? Western nations? Whichever it is, those aren't shared values.

I'm very judgy of Scott Huler. He's light and fun and I'm all like, "This guy is unserious."

He mentions how the Odyssey is, "a little long, a little dense, and the epic poetic language takes some getting used to," and I'm all like *pushes glasses up* "AC-TU-ALLY it depends on the translation. There are many accessible modern translations with every-day, accessible language... Peasant."

Why am I such a pedant?

I'm having a fine time so far. Enjoying following along with Roberta, not as much Seven. It's felt a bit dull, but things are starting to pick up.

Still thinking about the moment at the end of part 1 where the prince tells the "kept woman" that she's not to blame for what's happened to her. It's very contemporary, intersecting with the Epstein Files stuff of recent months. A contrast to the Files apologists who call the 15 year old children who were abused, "Underaged Women," and blaming them for choosing to enter the "kept" situation. Fyodor is progressive? :P

The end in in sight

200-Haven't I dreamed about you? You're right, I did, a long time ago, in the house on his estate...I used to dream and dream-and always imagining someone like you, kind, honest, good and a bit stupid, that you would suddenly arrive and say: "You bear no guilt, Nastasya Filippovna, and I adore you!"...And then that man over there would arrive: he would stay... to disgrace, outrage, infuriate, deprave, and leave

Thoughts so far: The Idiot is an observer: generous, open, humble, maybe naïve. He pities a girl who was seduced, abandoned, and reviled by the town, and his kindness inspires the local children to care for her. He’s accused of corrupting the youth (Plato reference?). Dostoevsky seems to ask whether goodness always looks like foolishness to the worldly. The women in this story feel strikingly vivid and 3-dimensional.