Thomas Hobbes

FROM DAVID BROOKS’S COLUMN ON HILARY CLINTON, APRIL 28^TH:  Maybe once upon a time there was an environment in which ruthless Machiavellians had room to work their dark arts, but we don’t live in Renaissance Italy.  We live in a world of universal media attention. . . .   You can’t intimidate people by chopping your enemies to bits in the town square.  Even the presidency isn’t a powerful enough office to allow a leader to rule by fear. . . .   Modern politics, like private morality, is about building trust and enduring personal relationships.  You have to build coalitions by appealing to people’ self-interest and by luring them voluntarily to your side.

NEWS ARTICLE ON SMUGGLING OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS FROM THE TIMES, APRIL 28^TH.. . . The boys had joined the unceasing flow of Arab and African immigrants who are churned through the lawlessness of a post-Qaddafi Libya and spewed out into the Mediterranean – more than 170,000 last year and a least that many expected this year.

It is a journey through a failed state in which border security is all but nonexistent, corruption is rampant, the coast guard rarely leaves port, and the proliferating human smuggling operations are growing even more callous and brazen. . . .

Since the overthrow of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in 2011, warring militias have become the only law in much of Libya.  Smugglers have “nothing to be afraid of,” as one put it, because security along the coast has disappeared.

APRIL 19th: 'TIS PITY SHE'S A WHORE

Please bring to class on Monday an envelope with your name on it, containing either $20 or $40, to reimburse me for our tickets.  The performance is on Saturday, April 25th, at 2:00, at the Duke Theater (address above).   The tickets are being held for me at the box office; I will distribute them in the lobby, so please arrive at least twenty minutes early.

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Steven Pinker (an evolutionary biologist) has a chapter on "Family Values" in his book How The Mind Works.  Here is part of what he has to say about the taboo that is at the heart of 'Tis Pity:

"The first problem children face in life is how to hold their own among siblings and peers.

The relationship between a brother and a sister has an added twist:  one is male, one is female, and those are the ingredients of a sexual relationship.  People have sex with and marry those with whom they interact the most – their co-workers, the boy or girl next door – and the people most like themselves -- those of the same class, religion, race and appearance.  The forces of sexual attraction should pull siblings together like magnets. . . .   There should be millions of brothers and sisters wanting to have sex and get married.  There are virtually none.  Not in our society, not in any well-studied human society, not in most animals in the wild. 

Do brothers and sisters avoid copulating because their parents discourage it?  Almost certainly not.  Parents try to socialize their children to be more affectionate with each other (“Go ahead – kiss your sister!”), not less.  And if they did discourage sex, it would be the only case in all of human experience in which a sexual prohibition worked.  Teenage brothers and sisters do not sneak off for trysts in parks and the back seats of cars.

The incest taboo is a a public prohibition against sex or marriage between close relatives.  Avoiding incest is universal; taboos against incest are not.  Brothers and sisters simply don’t find each other appealing as sexual partners.  That is an understatement:  the thought makes them acutely uncomfortable or fills them with disgust.  Repugnance at sex with a sibling is so robust in humans and other long-lived, mobile vertebrates that it is a good candidate for an [evolutionary] adaptation.  The function would be to avoid the costs of inbreeding:  a reduction in the fitness of the offspring."

APRIL 13th: JONSON'S VOLPONE

This lyric poem is sung during the action of Volpone, in in Act 2.  I'll explain the context in class, and why it is important.

Song

Come, my Celia, let us prove,

While we can, the sports of love.

Time will not be ours forever;

He at length our good will sever.

Spend not then his gifts in vain.

Suns that set may rise again,

But if once we lose this light

‘Tis with us perpetual night.

Why should we defer our joys?

Fame and rumor are but toys.

Cannot we delude the eyes

Of  a few poor household spies?

Or his easier ears beguile,

Thus removed by our wile?

‘Tis no sin love’s fruits to steal

But the sweet theft to reveal,

To be taken, to be seen,

These have crimes accounted been.

APRIL 13th: VOLPONE

Today's readiang assignment is Act 1 of Jonson's Volpone.  Here is a plot summary of Acts 2-5.