Michael Seselja > Recent Status Updates

About to get to my favourite part of any revolution; the counter revolution.

Just started with the introduction to the audiobook. Chesterton’s style so far appears to be “repeat essentially the same thing over and over again but in slightly different ways”; and yet it’s somehow captivating.

Over 900 pages in and I’m still waiting for the revolution to start revolutioning.

Like most modern historians the author is quite left wing. Conservatives are usually the bad guys. Sometimes it seems that he really sympathises with the radical left of the time.
One might say, well the radical left of the 1840s is probably centre right now! That might have a bit of truth to it but reading accounts of radicals from the time I think many of them would still fit on the far left of the spectrum today.

Achilles is loading up for his grand entrance like a big chad. Unfortunately while I was reading Plato he spoiled the ending of this for me. A bit annoying. It’s only been out for 3000 years after all.

Chapter 5 done. Some important themes I’m noticing that are relevant today;

1. The revolution always eats itself. The French revolutionaries of 1830 were successful but then overthrown in 1848 by those who felt they hadn’t gone far enough. Not too hard to see this playing out today (JK Rowling is the most obvious example).

2. The left is really keen on rule by the people. Until the people vote against them.

One thing I’ve noticed is that Hugo seems to think social problems and crime will be solved if everyone just gets an education. Looking at this in 2025, the naive optimism is kind of funny.

Still enjoying the story.

As things ignite across Europe the author wisely begins by ordering events geographically rather than chronologically. As revolutions in one part of Europe affected those in others this is difficult, but he does an admirable job. The reader is given little reminders of events going on in Vienna as Berlin is discussed for example, which helps to focus on one place at a time while keeping the grand narrative in mind.

The author is quite good at painting a picture of events across so many countries in Europe leading up to 1848 without getting bogged down in unnecessary detail. I’m finding it more readable than most history books of this length. Or maybe that’s because my attention span is finally improving after years of being nuked by my phone.

Loui still wants to eat the book so nothing has changed there. The story continues to heat up as more people are brutally killed and I ponder whether the Trojan War really happened.

This period of history (the mid nineteenth century and the age of revolutions) is particularly interesting to me because you can see modern politics starting to form; socialism, liberalism, nationalism and conservatism are all being defined. This means that the ideological boundaries were a lot more blurred than we’ve been used to for decades. I think there’s a decent parallel to the present day there.

The book starts with a description of the conditions of the poorest of the poor in 19th century Europe and it is very easy to see why socialism became so popular.

Now that the book has reached early 2020 I’m being uncomfortably reminded of the crazy Covid times.

Although the Cardinal was dismissive of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations in Volume 1, I think he did have something of the Stoic in him.

Part Two. Hugo has been weaving the narrative (which is really interesting to follow) in with his own musings about nuns. On the one hand the disdain the nineteenth century liberal has for a convent is clear; he sees it as a bygone relic of a superstitious age. But as a nineteenth century liberal (not a twenty-first century one), he hasn’t abandoned belief in God and is intrigued by the life of prayer led within.

Some chapters of this are certainly more interesting to read than others but I’d put that down to the specific author more than the topics.

Finished Book XI.
The pacing is really not attuned to modern sensibilities (and it would be much less memorable if it was). I guess that’s why it’s called an epic.

Well into Book III now, and although Book I is still my favourite I do love the dialogues between Christ and the disciple. I’ve also sometimes found myself wondering whether the author actually had a mystical experience that he’s basing these on. I wouldn’t be surprised as he is absolutely full of wisdom.

“A hundred years is young for a church and old for a house. It is as though a man’s house is, like himself, is short lived, and God’s house shares his eternity.”
“Being themselves joy and happiness by nature, children immediately welcome joy and happiness with familiarity.”

Who writes like this?

Seems decent as a broad strokes introduction to the history of Ireland but I suspect it won’t give me too much depth.

Just as in part one, Cardinal Pell doesn’t give you any false piety; he’s just honest. When he doesn’t find a particular saint’s life or works particularly inspiring he says so. I like this.

“Very different is the situation in Croatia. There the peasant masses have a long tradition not of subservience to the government of the day, as in Serbia, but on the contrary, of opposition at all costs.”
This quote from an American visitor in 1936 shows exactly where I get my contrarian nature from.

What I’ve read so far could stand on its own as a pretty good novel. Particularly enjoyable is the pages long description of a tortured conscience as the protagonist tries to fight the urge for self-preservation.

Just like other great books of this era the dialogue is absolutely off the charts. Did people actually speak that well back then and do we all just speak like uneducated fools now? Probably not. But it makes for good reading.

Book I
Listening to an audiobook of this at one chapter a day because 3 minutes of Thomas a Kempis is more than enough to mull over for a whole day. The first book is so wise that it feels like it’s what King Solomon would have written had he lived in the Christian era instead of the Old Testament.

Book VI-VII
It’s hard to decide who I want to win this war (obviously I know who wins). There’s heroes and villains and Greek gods on both sides.

There’s even a Tower of Babel analogue as Poseidon gets concerned about the Greeks building a big wall and tells Zeus that men will no longer think about the gods if they succeed. But unlike the Tower of Babel, Zeus tells him to give it a rest.

Hoping to get some interesting background on what the Jews believed at the time of Jesus. However I keep getting distracted by the cringey 20th century takes of the author (the usual; Paul didn’t write half his letters, the Gospels weren’t written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John).

Got this from the Marist library one day. Reading it to see if it’s modernist rubbish. Signs aren’t good so far.

Book IV-V
The chaos caused by the the gods fighting on different sides is becoming apparent. I wonder how this sense of chaos (a heavenly court full of feuding gods you can try to play off against each other) affected how the Greeks viewed the world? Probably made them very superstitious.

Also Homer is a great writer, especially his descriptions of death.