Rereading Their Eyes Were Watching God

A friend and I are rereading our 5 star books. While recently rereading The Color Purple, I saw pieces of Zora Neale Hurston in Alice Walker's writing and story. It made me want to reread Their Eyes Were Watching God. So we did, here is my reflection.

I first gave Their Eyes Were Watching God four stars of five. I will promote it to five of five stars. I want and need to reread it again, maybe next year. The story is very rich. A lot richer than The Color Purple. Maybe it isn't fair to compare them, but I read them back to back. Walker's story is very much on the surface. There are twists, great characters, character arcs, redemption, and a happy ending. The frame of the story is a diary the main character writes to God. The simplicity of the story is partially the simplicity of the main character, not intended as a criticism. The point of view works for the story and it kept its five stars on my reread. But I doubt I'll reread The Color Purple again.

Their Eyes Were Watching God can also be enjoyed and read on the surface. The dialogue, dialects, and idioms can make for a slower and tougher read. But it's worth it. The dialogues are a lot f fun and the side characters are funnier and more interesting. Hurston captures a time and place in Florida. Without giving much history, she is showing history. I understand and feel the time period in Hurston's novel. There is also more imagery and descriptive prose. Hurston's writing is fresh. There is a lot more between the lines and inside the text for closer readers. I love writers and stories that keep pulling back ad rewarding rereads. In addition, my friend and I have been debating the characters, plot, and ideas. That alone suggests five stars to me.

The main character has been criticized for decades. Hurtson, the author, was blamed for not being feminist enough or not doing x for black people. It's very ironic to read some the the criticisms. I would strongly suggest readers pair Hurston's autobiography or essays with this novel. Hurston was an independent woman and free thinker. Hurston was very interested in telling and recording the stories of black people. I really like Hurston. She was very smart. She was a great writer. She had a fun personality.

Janie, the protagonist, is a complex character. Criticism of Janie, or Hurtson, highlight a naivety of the criticizer.

Slight Spoiler Warning

Janie spends most of her life tryng to conform to her Grandmother's ideals. Janie is the second generation product of rape. She's very light skinned. She marries 3 times. Her second husband wants Janie to be his trophy wife for the city he is founding. Janie is the first lady of Eatonville. She's wealthier and higher status than all the women she knows, but she hates her life. When she realizes her role doesn't involve love and companionship, she becomes cold and distant. When she finds out she can hurt her husband with her words, he hurts her with his hands.

When her second husband dies, she is reborn. She has wealth and freedom. She can pick any man she wants or no man at all. What does she pick? Tea Cake a younger charismatic lowest class black man. He gambles, knife fights, and eventually beats Janie over his jealousy. Still Janie loves Tea Cake. She follows and adores him. But unlike her second marriage, Janie does so by her choosing. Tea Cake doesn't and can't force her. She is free.

There is a lot more to the story. You should read it.

It's not clear what to make of Janie or Tea Cake. What does Janie learn? What should readers think of Tea Cake? What should readers think of the violence? Why are they watching God?

I hope to investigate this question closer on my next read.

2024 Five Star Rereads

My friend and I are on a mission to reread our favorite books. Below will be my top 10 rereads to start the year, not necessarily in order.

1. Gilgamesh

2. The Catcher and the Rye

3. White Fang

4. It's Not About the Bike

5. Half a Yellow Sun

6. Waiting for the Barbarians

7. The Poisonwood Bible

8. Zen in the Martial Arts

9. Dispatches

10. Song or Solomon

I want to eventually reread all my five star rated books on goodreads.com.

Here are my five star rereads that kept their five stars:

• Siddhartha 
• Into the Wild
• War and Peace 
• Sapiens
• The Color Purple

Here are the five star rereads that lost at least one star on the reread:

• Tuesdays with Morrie
• Enlightenment Now
  

A Pitch for The Good Life

I'm listening to The Good Life. It pairs very well with many of the ideas that have been occupying my mind and blog recently.

From chapter 1:

"For eighty-four years (and counting), the Harvard Study has tracked the same individuals, asking thousands of questions and taking hundreds of measurements to find out what really keeps people healthy and happy. Through all the years of studying these lives, one crucial factor stands out for the consistency and power of its ties to physical health, mental health, and longevity. Contrary to what many people might think, it’s not career achievement, or exercise, or a healthy diet. Don’t get us wrong; these things matter (a lot). But one thing continuously demonstrates its broad and enduring importance: Good relationships. In fact, good relationships are significant enough that if we had to take all eighty-four years of the Harvard Study and boil it down to a single principle for living, one life investment that is supported by similar findings across a wide variety of other studies, it would be this: Good relationships keep us healthier and happier. Period."

From chapter 2:

"As time goes on, study after study, including our own, continues to reinforce the connection between good relationships and health, regardless of a person’s location, age, ethnicity, or background. Although the life of a poor Italian kid who grew up during the Great Depression in South Boston and the life of a 1940 Harvard graduate who went on to become a senator are quite different from each other—and even more different from a modern woman of color—we all share a common humanity. Like the Holt-Lunstad review, analyses of hundreds of studies tell us that the basic benefits of human connection do not change much from one neighborhood to the next, from one city to the next, from one country to the next, or from one race to the next. It is indisputable that many societies are unequal; there are cultural practices and systemic factors causing significant amounts of inequity and emotional pain. But the capacity of relationships to affect our well-being and health is universal."

 

I want to come back to more of these ideas and connect what I gather from the book with utilitarianism and a few of my other recent posts.

The Mill Deal (Part 1)

I was naturally drawn toward utilitarianism. John Stuart Mill has impressed me over and over again even though I never took the time to read him. Now I am. I'm starting with his Autobiography, and then I'm going to read his Essays on Bentham and Coleridge. 

Pending a change of heart and mind, I want to cover the following utilitarians: Bentham, Mill, and Stigwick.

For now, on to Mill.

Education

One of the things often recited about Mill was his education. His father, James Mill, put Mill through a rigorous education. He was taught and reading the classics in Latin and Greek at an early age. Then he was the teacher for his younger siblings.

Chapter 1 of Autobiography is worth reading just to motivate readers to educate their offspring more rigorously. Kids have these magnificent brains. I fear too many parents, schools, and societies are allowing too many kids to miss out on a critical period in their potential development.

I'm not sure how far is too far. Kids need to be able to play. But play could be more like doing intellectual activities, like reading and writing, like Mill. I wonder how many other children were raised similar to Mill? What are the ranges of outcomes from other cases? How much of Mill's success as a young student was due to him being exceptionally smart?

This topic would make for a good reflection later.

Bentham

Mill credits Bentham for blowing his mind with the following idea:

Bentham passed judgment on the common modes of reasoning in morals and legislation, deduced from phrases like "law of nature," "right reason," "the moral sense," "natural rectitude," and the like, and characterized them as dogmatism in disguise, imposing its sentiments upon others under cover of sounding expressions which convey no reason for the sentiment, but set up the sentiment as its own reason.

I'm not sure how true this is. But it feels close. Most people do not study or learn logic. And even those people who do, they don't tend to slow down and take the time to make formal logical arguments. People often impose their arguments with persuasion, and or some bias, to make their ideas sound good. And unless people slow down, sounding good is good enough.

I'm curious to look into Bentham's claim further. And I want pay closer attention for circular reasoning in moral arguments.

Existential Crisis

If the follow quote interests you, read CHAPTER V — 1826-1832 — CRISIS IN MY MENTAL HISTORY. ONE STAGE ONWARD.

"Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?" And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, "No!" At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down. All my happiness was to have been found in the continual pursuit of this end. The end had ceased to charm, and how could there ever again be any interest in the means? I seemed to have nothing left to live for.

Chapter V is a great chapter. I could continue with more quotes. But read it yourself. Mill is in a dark depressing place. He luckily gets out and claims to have benefited from the experience.

Let's suppose. All our wants in life are fulfilled. Are we happy? I'm tempted to say probably not. Some of us will. And it really depends on what people want. Does getting what we want include the experience of achieving and working towards those goals and desires. If you have kids and want to travel. How can you accomplish those goals without time? I'm thinking of never enough, hedonic treadmill, and the countless other anecdotes of people with plenty not being happy. I think people are hard wired to keep seeking, wanting, and doing during our reproductive years. Then those goals and ambitions fade as we age and our offspring reach adulthood.

I'm currently listening to The Good Life. Mill and the utilitarians pair very well with The Good Life. I'm hoping to reflect more on this as well. I'm curious to see what the utilitarians say about different types of happiness, like eudaimonic vs hedonic happiness. 

A lot of food for thought here. I'll have to come back to these ideas.

Why I Really Like Teusdays with Morrie

Introduction

During my late twenties, Tuesdays with Morrie was one of my favorite books. I read in multiple times and I wanted to think and love just like Morrie. I still admire and mostly agree with Morrie. But the book reads a lot different. Tuesdays with Morrie really appeals to a younger idealistic reader (me in the late 2000s). 

After a decade plus more knowledge and experience, Morrie is a lot more cliche and shallow. Morrie's personality, loving nature, and positive mindset make readers fall in love with him. He clearly had large impacts with the people around him. Morrie was a five star person and he deserves all the fame he received. 

I wanted to write a reflection explaining why I love Tuesdays with Morrie, like I did for Why I Love Into the Wild and Why I Love Siddhartha, but after several attempts, I'm just not that interested in Tuesdays with Morrie. I'm a lot more interested in diving deeper in Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman and moving on to rereading another book I used to love.

I've demoted Tuesdays with Morrie to a book I really like. Below are a few excepts I shared or discussed with my friend AJ, who I am rereading our favorite books with.

On Marriage

“In this culture, it’s so important to find a loving relationship with someone because so much of the culture does not give you that. But the poor kids today, either they’re too selfish to take part in a real loving relationship, or they rush into marriage and then six months later, they get divorced. They don’t know what they want in a partner. They don’t know who they are themselves—so how can they know who they’re marrying?

It’s sad, because a loved one is so important. You realize that, especially when you’re in a time like I am, when you’re not doing so well. Friends are great, but friends are not going to be here on a night when you’re coughing and can’t sleep and someone has to sit up all night with you, comfort you, try to be helpful...

There are a few rules I know to be true about love and marriage: If you don’t respect the other person, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don’t know how to compromise, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you can’t talk openly about what goes on between you, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. And if you don’t have a common set of values in life, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. Your values must be alike. And the biggest one of those values: your belief in the importance of your marriage.

Personally, I think marriage is a very important thing to do, and you’re missing a hell of a lot if you don’t try it.” 

The poor kid today is a highlight of the cliche and simplistic view. And his ideas on the value of a loving relationship isn't very deep or groundbreaking. It isn't anything your grandmother couldn't tell you. 

With that said, the advice here is good. The values must not be alike, but I'd strongly encourage the values to be alike. It makes solving later problems, raising children, deciding how to live or where to live, and making big decisions less painful. But many readers may already be married. Morrie's audience at the time was a married man.

The value of the importance of the marriage. This is a great simple idea. "The biggest one of those values: your belief in the importance of your marriage." When times get rough, this could save marriages. What isn't stated is how to achieve and maintain this. Saying it is one thing, but how do you keep it and live it? Morrie has suggestion on that in plenty of places in the book: being loving, forgiving, and communicating well to name a few.

I don't accept the missing out if you don't try marriage. There's an opportunity cost. You're always missing out! Maybe if a couple can survive middle age, there is a large payout. I believe that is possible, and it might be enough to justify the risk of marriage. If you add the argument for having kids, it's probably less risky and provides greater rewards. I suspect the payout on raising kids is one of the best ROI people can make.

Exploitation

The author Mitch Albom summarizes Morrie's goal to never exploit people twice in the book. Here they both are stripped of their context.

"He made another vow that he kept to the end of his life: he would never do any work that exploited someone else, and he would never allow himself to make money off the sweat of others."

"Having rejected medicine, law, and business, Morrie had decided the research world would be a place where he could contribute without exploiting others."

This comes off to me a combination of elitist and naive. Morrie has the privilege to be a professor. He was lucky enough to have the upbringing and ability to stay in school until finishing his PhD. He went to good schools. He somewhat randomly was hired to do research in mental health institutions in the 1950s and that lead him to write three books on the subject. And he eventually became a tenured professor of sociology.

Morrie's ideas here are my motivation for Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman. I know Friedman was an advocate of the benefits of voluntary cooperation between individuals. The stereotype is sociologist are Marxist and don't understand economics. I'm tempted to make that assumption about Morrie, but rather, I'm going to investigate Friedman's claims further and see how they have held up to economic research the last few decades.

The Eighth Tuesday

"The Eighth Tuesday" stood out as my favorite chapter of the book. It was closely related to a friend of mines marriage, motivation to change careers, and creative pursuits. I wrote up a reflection here with several excepts from the chapter.

The Eighth Tuesday

I have a theory that Morrie's mindset is more a productive of his age than his philosophy. I hope to dive more into this later.

I haven't read Tuesdays with Morrie in over 10 years. I had read and loved it in my late 20s. I probably read it three times. I can relate and understand why I loved this book so much. It's a different read now, but "The Eighth Tuesday" stands out as the best chapter up to this point in the book. The ideas in the eighth Tuesday resonate with me more than other chapters.

For a friend if he is too lazy to read the whole chapter, and for myself. All quotation marks are for Morrie. I'm removing any of the author Mitch Albom's commentary.

Morrie on the Eighth Tuesday

"We’ve got a form of brainwashing going on in our country. Do you know how they brainwash people? They repeat something over and over. And that’s what we do in this country. Owning things is good. More money is good. More property is good. More commercialism is good. More is good. More is good. We repeat it—and have it repeated to us—over and over until nobody bothers to even think otherwise. The average person is so fogged up by all this, he has no perspective on what’s really important anymore."

I'm not sure the US brainwashes people to consume. See reflection below.

“Wherever I went in my life, I met people wanting to gobble up something new. Gobble up a new car. Gobble up a new piece of property. Gobble up the latest toy. And then they wanted to tell you about it. ‘Guess what I got? Guess what I got?

You know how I always interpreted that? These were people so hungry for love that they were accepting substitutes. They were embracing material things and expecting a sort of hug back. But it never works. You can’t substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for tenderness or for a sense of comradeship."

That sounds better.

“Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness. I can tell you, as I’m sitting here dying, when you most need it, neither money nor power will give you the feeling you’re looking for, no matter how much of them you have.

There’s a big confusion in this country over what we want versus what we need. You need food, you want a chocolate sundae. You have to be honest with yourself. You don’t need the latest sports car, you don’t need the biggest house. The truth is, you don’t get satisfaction from those things. You know what really gives you satisfaction? Offering others what you have to give.”

There are psychology studies that support this.

"I don’t mean money... I mean your time. Your concern... It’s not so hard...

There are plenty of places to do this. You don’t need to have a big talent. There are lonely people in hospitals and shelters who only want some companionship. You play cards with a lonely older man and you find new respect for yourself, because you are needed."

Effective altruism suggest some people's time could do a lot more good by making money. But Morrie is talking to an individual. I think Morrie would value effective altruism.

"...finding a meaningful life...: Devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.

You notice there’s nothing in there about a salary.”

If you’re trying to show off for people at the top, forget it. They will look down at you anyhow. And if you’re trying to show off for people at the bottom, forget it. They will only envy you. Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone.”

Money buys happiness until a certain point. The stressors of poverty are real. Conveniences are convenient. But at some point, more money may fail to provide purpose or meaning, unless maybe you're one of those extreme effective altruist.

“I’m dying... Don’t I have enough pain and suffering of my own? Of course I do. But giving to other people is what makes me feel alive. Not my car or my house. Not what I look like in the mirror. When I give my time, when I can make someone smile after they were feeling sad, it’s as close to healthy as I ever feel.

Do the kinds of things that come from the heart. When you do, you won’t be dissatisfied, you won’t be envious, you won’t be longing for somebody else’s things. On the contrary, you’ll be overwhelmed with what comes back.”

Reflection

I think Morrie is mostly right. Companies advertise to sell their products. Those are forms of manipulation. It's funny Morrie uses "they" but doesn't define who they are. Does the US brainwash people to be mindless consumers? I'm not sure. It does look like the US tax system does incentivize more spending in some ways. Tax deductions and credits incentivizes spending. US uses sales taxes versus value added taxes (VAT). VAT apply a tax at multiple levels of production and increase the prices of goods. Higher tax rates encourage spending to reduce taxable income.

Ironically, I think many young people are being anti brainwashed against materialism, and I'm not sure that's helping them find purpose, meaning, or fulfillment in their lives. It'd be interesting to see what Morrie would say about US culture since his death. He would probably be very against social media and technologies decreasing human physical connections.

For an atheist, I like his use of the word devote. In many ways it may be better to devote oneself to something else, or others more specifically. 

Parenting is the perfect devotion. Once one has kids, devoting oneself to their kids should provide great meaning and purpose. So why aren't parents and couples happier? I'll save that for another rant.