Fortune’s Fools

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Abstract

ocieties before them, had loads of wars, famines, pandemics, and demagogues. Though absent the internet, they had folklore and songs and poetry to disseminate news and fake news (really, Zeus?) everywhere. Rumors do not depend on the smartphone.But that’s ancient Greece, you might say. Certainly, our lives must suck in more recent memory! Benjamin Franklin would disagree, when he said, “when you are finished changing, you are finished.” Wise man, good old Ben. See, back a few hundred years, they, too, had wars, famines, pandemics, and demagogues. And rumor mills as well. Is Jack Cade in Richard III well remembered? And no penicillin and vaccines or ibuprofens to ease the pain.My father lived, or shall I say struggled, through the Great War, the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, WW2, Atomic Doom, the Korean War, the Suez Crisis, Vietnam, Watergate, the energy crisis, and the Cold War, only to hear about the first Gulf War on his death bed. He’d be rolling in his grave to hear people say how turbulent the world is today. And if he were still in his prime, he’d probably go over and slap anyone who says that.The world changes, yes. Such is life. Instead of moaning about it, let’s just embrace it for what it is. Life sucks and then you die. What can you do? Might as well just get on with it. The more enterprising among us might even be able to work around it. Like Shakespeare did.Shakespeare lived in a dictatorship, where the monarch was more or less god. Spies were everywhere, spying on citizens as well as other spies. Anything you say may be used against you at any time. Troubled times for a playwright, to be sure. Ye

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t he was able to craft his plays depicting tyrants and despots, describing social injustice and the wealth gap (see, it was a worse calamity back then), and portraying rebellions and social upheavals. And got away with it all. In fact, he managed to never have been jailed for his potentially subversive writings. So much so that he outlived basically every one of his contemporaries.Do I think the world is great and everything is beautiful? Hell, no! I honestly think life is a cruel joke. Of the billions and billions who have ever lived, how many are even remembered today? Whatever great deeds they had accomplished, however amazing their lives were, how many even make the footnotes on a page? If we’re lucky, we make it through relatively unscathed, and perhaps a few may have fading memories of us in a generation or two. But after that, never mind. Dust to dust, eh? For age makes us invisible; death, is inconsequential.“To be, or not to be,” mused Hamlet. Now I don’t advocate suicide. There’s no point to life, but that doesn’t make death any more appealing. For as Hamlet also pondered, “ to sleep: perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub.”Stop lamenting how constantly things are changing. Stop moaning about how turbulent things are. And stop pretending we’re suffering too much. Many of us may have experienced serious hardship. But as a percentage of the world’s 8 billion souls? Now, now, Mr. Bond.Let’s just thank our lucky stars that we didn’t live in Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Better, then, urged Auden, to “sing of human unsuccess, in a rapture of distress.” Yes, we are, indeed, “fortune’s fools.”</article></body>

Fortune’s Fools

Humans are basically masochists. We relish just how bad things are for us. Here, let me show you my battle scars! Hence, noble Coriolanus reminded Romans of his battle wounds in order to win the consulship. He offered “…for your voices bear Of wounds two dozen odd” (Coriolanus, William Shakespeare). Scars make the man, it seems.

That Coriolanus was banished and found solace in rebellion and death on no account diminished his suffering in search of greatness. But, oh, how things changed ever so rapidly for mighty Coriolanus, who one moment was every Roman’s favorite general, and the next the anti-hero who vowed to sack Rome, his “cankered country.”

Change is omnipresent. It’s as old as time immemorial. I know, people like to talk about how the world today is so turbulent. That there’s war, famine, pandemics, and demagogues. And social media and the internet to spread lies and rumors of all kinds. The world is turbulent indeed. Change seems to be the only constant. Man, we have it bad.

Or have we?

“The only constant in life changes,” so said Heraclitus in ancient Greece, with emphasis on ancient. For they, the Greeks, as well as peoples and societies before them, had loads of wars, famines, pandemics, and demagogues. Though absent the internet, they had folklore and songs and poetry to disseminate news and fake news (really, Zeus?) everywhere. Rumors do not depend on the smartphone.

But that’s ancient Greece, you might say. Certainly, our lives must suck in more recent memory! Benjamin Franklin would disagree, when he said, “when you are finished changing, you are finished.” Wise man, good old Ben. See, back a few hundred years, they, too, had wars, famines, pandemics, and demagogues. And rumor mills as well. Is Jack Cade in Richard III well remembered? And no penicillin and vaccines or ibuprofens to ease the pain.

My father lived, or shall I say struggled, through the Great War, the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, WW2, Atomic Doom, the Korean War, the Suez Crisis, Vietnam, Watergate, the energy crisis, and the Cold War, only to hear about the first Gulf War on his death bed. He’d be rolling in his grave to hear people say how turbulent the world is today. And if he were still in his prime, he’d probably go over and slap anyone who says that.

The world changes, yes. Such is life. Instead of moaning about it, let’s just embrace it for what it is. Life sucks and then you die. What can you do? Might as well just get on with it. The more enterprising among us might even be able to work around it. Like Shakespeare did.

Shakespeare lived in a dictatorship, where the monarch was more or less god. Spies were everywhere, spying on citizens as well as other spies. Anything you say may be used against you at any time. Troubled times for a playwright, to be sure. Yet he was able to craft his plays depicting tyrants and despots, describing social injustice and the wealth gap (see, it was a worse calamity back then), and portraying rebellions and social upheavals. And got away with it all. In fact, he managed to never have been jailed for his potentially subversive writings. So much so that he outlived basically every one of his contemporaries.

Do I think the world is great and everything is beautiful? Hell, no! I honestly think life is a cruel joke. Of the billions and billions who have ever lived, how many are even remembered today? Whatever great deeds they had accomplished, however amazing their lives were, how many even make the footnotes on a page? If we’re lucky, we make it through relatively unscathed, and perhaps a few may have fading memories of us in a generation or two. But after that, never mind. Dust to dust, eh? For age makes us invisible; death, is inconsequential.

“To be, or not to be,” mused Hamlet. Now I don’t advocate suicide. There’s no point to life, but that doesn’t make death any more appealing. For as Hamlet also pondered, “ to sleep: perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub.”

Stop lamenting how constantly things are changing. Stop moaning about how turbulent things are. And stop pretending we’re suffering too much. Many of us may have experienced serious hardship. But as a percentage of the world’s 8 billion souls? Now, now, Mr. Bond.

Let’s just thank our lucky stars that we didn’t live in Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Better, then, urged Auden, to “sing of human unsuccess, in a rapture of distress.” Yes, we are, indeed, “fortune’s fools.”