Never Knew

A few weeks ago I was listening to someone I hadn't listened to before.  I love listening to radio shows and podcasts!  They provide a wide variety of perspectives!  I never knew I would like this show so much.  I never knew I needed the wisdom and truth he was espousing.  This particular show was about Karl Marx's life.  It was about his ideals, beliefs, misery and his connection to the devil.  Yes, Satan, and yes, he was a miserable person.  Much of his teachings were/are very Satanic.  Some of Marx's first writings were poetry and plays about the devil.  If Marx was atheist why would he have such a fascination with the devil?  He was about tearing down the traditional order.  He called for the "ruthless criticism of everything that exists".   He critiqued his own existence and the existence of others.  He believed that "everything that exists deserves to perish"-Mephistopheles; this was his favorite quote. Through his poetry we learn that everything must lay to waste!  He worshipped active destruction. He was a big fan of Mephistopheles a demon in German folklore. Marx was known for being a filthy individual on every level.  He lived off any money he could get from his family.  His wife would beg her family for money until they couldn't give anymore.  When Friedrich Engels comes along, he funds the Marx family from his rich family inheritance.  Four of Marx's six children died before he did.  Karl Marx never was an actual worker of any kind, but he wrote much about the working class as if he was.

Somewhere in this show Dostoevsky, the famous Russian writer was brought up.  Dostoevsky was possibly not aware of Marx's teachings at the time he wrote Notes From Underground, but in this work he was contradicting Marx in every way.  It's possible Dostoevsky had heard of Marx, as he was familiar with Charles Dickens.  Dickens and Marx were aware of one another and very opposite.  Dostoevsky hailed Dickens as the "The Great Christian". 

 Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground was discussed in this podcast about Marx.  I went to my Audible account and found Notes From Underground.  Since it happened to be a free listen, I listened and was fascinated.  I never knew I needed to know the greatness of that work.  I found myself wondering constantly if the underground man was a good guy or a bad guy.  It could be argued that he was both. This could be true for Karl Marx as well; you might be tempted to think he was a good guy.  Let me be clear;  he was NOT a good guy! Although the Underground man was right about much of society, he was his own worst enemy through his extreme skepticism.  Even though he separated himself from society and criticized it, he was still penetrated by it.  He is contradictory, selfish, both right and wrong.  In the end, I think most would conclude that he was a bad guy in the sense that he was reveling in his own misery.  This is reminiscent of Marx.

Throughout his notes, you can come to an understanding of what was making him so miserable.  Despite being in a utopian society, he desires true freedom, but he lacks family, connection, and love in his life.  He points out all the ways utopia takes away freedom.  Freedom being the greatest desire for all humankind.  He points out that people will do crazy things to prove that they are exercising free will, yet throughout the whole book he is doing things just to prove that very thing he criticizes in others.  He makes the point that people could be in utopian society laying around pools and satisfying their hedonism, not a worry other than reproduction, but eventually they will start tearing down walls just for something to do.  In describing Marx's miserable life, it sounds similar to the underground man.  All underground man truly had was his skepticism and criticisms of society.  He had even lost his own self interest.  His misery stems from a couple of events in his life when he refused love for selfish reasons, maybe logical reasons too.  He is good enough to save a woman from the life of prostitution, yet refuses to love her, even though he could, because she finds his misery something to look down upon.  He provides the woman reason and logic for why she should reject her current way of life.  She listens and is grateful, but her heart is broken because of his constant insults.  He can't give advice without insulting.

Dostoevsky is so good at arguing the good and evil, the right and wrong, liberty and tyranny, freedom and bondage, the truth and the lies on such a deep psychological level in a human individual.  He hashes these things out in such detail that I find it impossible to not be moved by it in some way.  Mental gymnastics is inevitable when reading Dostoevsky.

Have you ever come across something you never knew you needed?  I love finding new loves, appreciation, knowledge, and talent along the way of life.  I might be just realizing how this book and many others have impacted my life.  I never knew how much I needed them until I look back on my education and development.  Isn't this how it is for much of life?  I barely even remember what my life was like before I had kids.  They have changed my life in the best ways!  I never knew I could love the way that they caused me to love.  I never knew I needed these new personalities and people in my life!  I never knew I needed to discover cake decorating!  A creative outlet that allows me to be artistic and free in a way I didn't know existed.  

I never knew I needed to write the way that I do.  I never knew I could.  I never knew I needed the healing, peace, and comfort it provides.  I never knew the blessings of sharing the gospel through my writing.  Sometimes I hear new songs that I never knew I needed in my life.  I truly love learning new things!  I love learning new skills!  You are never too old or too smart to learn something new.  In recent years I've learned how to drywall, how to landscape, how to take care of carnivorous plants, how to play new songs on the piano, how to teach kids history, how to make jewelry and other items out of epoxy, how to mourn with my kids, how to teach my kids some hard things, and how to make soap and candles.  Whatever it is you are doing in life or with your life, let it be for good! 

I just read another great classical book that I didn't know I needed!  Its lessons are deep and profound, yet pretty simple at the same time.  So many of the books we know as "Classics" have some pretty harsh content, but their lessons are so important that it was acceptable to teach a certain version of these classics in schools. Many of the classics are abridged for this reason. The principles they teach along with a snapshot of a society in history provides us with contemplation upon things that are hard to think about.  They cause us to think about why something might be good or bad.  Many of these authors are critiquing the bad of society and calling it out! The point was to make a point!  I think many of these points are still relevant today, thus they are still important works. These books help us to learn how to think and how to think from different perspectives.  These books are a bit like a time machine that takes us back in history and the issues of the time.  These issues are not that different from today.  The morals they teach are timeless and eternal.

The Picture of Dorian Gray was censored on its 1st publication in a magazine in 1890.  The sexually explicit content was not appropriate for innocent women at the time, so the magazine said.  There was another reason they censored it......it was "too gay".  Yes, this story has an undertone, one that leads you to believe some characters are probably gay.  The magazine was actually worried for Oscar Wilde.  If people read the original content they might come to the conclusion that Wilde was gay himself and that could have been a danger to him at the time.  A modified version was released in 1891 that was less explicit.  I have to say I'm grateful that the version I listened to did not have the sexual content.  It's not my thing.  Gay characters do not seem to be a huge part of this story or even very apparent in the later version.  I'm not sure how apparent it was in the original version. 

This story is extremely profound and thoughtful, and very insightful.  It is gripping, horrible, and gives a picture of a part of society Wilde was judging pretty harshly.  Wilde is telling a story of the worship of beauty, oneself, and the impact of influence.  It is kind of a Beauty and the Beast sort of story.  It very vividly tells us what sin can do to the soul of a person.  Dorian's admirer and friend Basil is the good influence while Lord Henry is the bad influence.  Dorian succumbs to the bad, even to the point of killing his good influence.  Basil paints a portrait of Dorian that is so beautiful, because Dorian is a beautiful person.  His beauty convinces others that he is pure even though he is the exact opposite.  Dorian is upset at the painting because it will forever be beautiful while he, in reality, will age and wither with time.  So, he wishes to sell his soul for everlasting youth and wishes the painting to bear the passing of time and age.  His wish comes true.

With every sin, the painting changes expression, becomes old and wrinkled, and eventually distorted and marred.  It becomes the picture of his soul.  His soul was once beautiful, pure and innocent, but because of influence and the obsession with beauty his soul becomes tainted.  Dorian worships beauty, art, and hedonism.  Driven by vanity, he commits many horrible sins.  Many people in society still see him as good even when he is in turmoil over his sin.  Most sins he can ignore or let them pass without worry, but taking an innocent life, that was too much.  No amount of beauty saves him from the natural consequences of sins.  The consequences are not placed upon him by any man really, although it comes close to that.  His beauty does save him from consequences that could be inflicted by others.  The natural ones however, are inescapable.  The very conscience of the soul does not care about your outer beauty and cannot be manipulated or controlled by your own mind or any outside vices. When Dorian decides to become better, he still cannot escape his past sins, or his obsession with vanity.  This leads to his demise at the very end of the book.   

Why are the books we know as "classics" called classics?  Why are they important?   My personal opinion is that they teach the fundamentals of human nature, critique societal dysfunction and teach eternal principles and truths!  In a way they teach us to be accountable.  In our world today where the trend is "liberation from our nature", these books are extremely relevant.  When I was in high school I didn't love classic books.  I thought they were hard to understand, but when I really tried to understand (and my teachers pushed me) they became my most memorable reads.  Their influence is irreplaceable for me.  

I think if these stories were more regularly referenced, talked about, discussed, read, and understood, the youth would not be living the horrors that play out in these books, but instead would be able to avoid some of it.  That's not to say that life won't be difficult or we won't make mistakes, but in learning the lesson and applying it, we might avoid some things, or we might just know the truth of things, and that is not nothing.  That is a big something!  Since many classics were inspired by their societal time, I will say this: The only way we will not repeat history is by applying the lessons we learn from it.  Simply learning history and principles will not save us from a repeat.  Only in the application of the lessons do we avoid the merry-go-round.

Now, in the classroom we teach our youth Social and Emotional learning, Critical Race Theory, anti bullying, and anti racism and yet, all of these things are just blowing up!  From my own personal perspective, kids are less happy than they used to be, there is more mental health issues, they are less confident, there are more bullies and more racism than I've ever seen.   Now in today's schools most kids would not be able to read the mildest version of these books without getting offended or feeling harmed in some way.  Classics have now been deemed as too negative and just too hard.  

In my youth, we were deemed as old enough and mature enough to handle some of the content.  The good lessons we could glean from it outweighed the negativity of it. What's wrong with talking about the hard realities and the evils that humans are capable of?  We purposely avoid sadness thinking it will be better for us.  If we face the sadness and hardship in books and history, then maybe we can change for the better.  We are missing out on opportunities to be moved, changed and inspired.  Besides being taught by my parents, grandparents, religion, friends and teachers, reading classics just reinforced the learning of good principles and contributed to the formation of my thinking and who I was becoming.  

How did I learn that racism was bad? Because I read To Kill a Mockingbird, A Time To Kill (a John Grisham novel, not considered a classic, but still in the ballpark of classic literature), and The Diary of Anne Frank.  Besides studying history, these books traumatized me!  Yes, they shook me and changed me, I will never forget what I felt while reading them, nor the valuable lessons they contained!  A Time To Kill brought me to tears while I was on a road trip with my family to Illinois.  There were many tears and corn fields in Kansas!  How did I know that kindness, compassion and honesty are important and giving second chances is a good thing?  Because I read Great Expectations, Little Women, Persuasion, A Christmas Carol, The Count of Monte Cristo and always loved a good Cinderella story.  How did I understand that Communism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism was a bad idea? Because I read Animal Farm, 1984, and watched actual footage from Nazi Concentration camps in school.  Yes in school! I also watched movies like The Escape from Sorbibor, and Schindler's List.  How did I know that sin had its own natural and inescapable consequences? Because I read Crime and Punishment, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Lord of the Flies.  

All of this reading and watching took place in my teenage years.  Actually, Great Expectations was the very first classic I ever read, it was a modified for younger readers edition, and I was about 10 years old.  I will forever remember the horrid Ms. Havisham.  I couldn't understand why Pip continued to be so kind to her and her daughter.  At the beginning of the book, Pip's kindness toward a former prisoner came back to bless his life.  In the end his kindness won over his love interest whom he gave many chances to and she did change once she was free from Ms. Havisham.  You also learn to have compassion for Ms. Havisham when you learn of her despair and devastation that lead to her mental madness.

Many classic books deal with topics of rape, murder, cannibalism, human extermination, torture, cruelty, war, mental illness, prisons, and unjust imprisonment.  It's pretty tough stuff, but talking about, reading or discussing these topics in story form and learning some of the history behind it might be a more effective way of teaching these principles.  Instead we're telling all kids they were born racist and must purge themselves of it, or having anti bully campaigns that take the place of actual punishments for bullying.  We're also convincing kids to be afraid of words and that their emotions are the only thing that matters.  

I have found that there are in existence extremely watered down, simple and clean versions of many classic stories written specifically for young readers.  So, there really is no excuse for not teaching these classics! Back when we just taught regular math, classical literature, truthful history, the fundamentals of science and let kids be creative and artistic, it seems it was a simpler time and a happier time.  I think there was less mental illness and stress overall.  Now EVERYTHING is politicized, even math, I don't get it!   I'll tell you a secret, you don't have to politicize everything, instead just teach true principles and history.  I think we were better off when we were doing that.  Teach how to think, not what to think.

I find classic literature amazing and I love studying it!  I learn from it and try to apply its lessons!  I've been inspired by many books and characters, so inspired that it has great influence and meaning in my new hobby/skill- soap making and candle making!  Everything is named after a book, a character, or author and has a signature scent made by me!  I hope it might inspire more people to read classic literature!  So, go read, learn, take a bath.  Don't be afraid of human nature, don't be afraid to challenge your thinking, don't be afraid to confront hard things, and don't be afraid to apply the lessons you learn!

"Seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith."- Joseph Smith Jr.