a miss on tactics,

   a miss on strategy…

Book review:

   Moral Tribes:

   Emotion, Reason,

   and the Gap

      Between Us and Them

by Joshua Greene

New York, Penguin Press, 2013

422 pages

“This book is an attempt to understand morality from the ground up.” Greene’s sincere aim is a bit too breezy for me.

Reluctantly, I admit I don’t have time to read a book like Moral Tribes right now. I feel like I’m too busy sticking fingers into the terrifying political dike that is threatening to collapse in America, indeed, in the world.

I’m interested in learning more about Greene’s approach in Moral Tribes: “understanding the deep structure of moral problems as well as the differences between the problems that our brains were designed to solve and the distinctively modern problems we face today.”

I don’t have enough time or energy to indulge Greene’s apparently sincere efforts to develop “a practical philosophy that can help us solve our biggest problems.”

America’s problems—Americans’ problems—are all too clear and at least one part of the fix is all too clear: there are lots of folks who can live with and live for the hatred they feel, and they’re voting; there are lots of folks who are afraid of some of the kinds of people who are getting elected and exercising political power to the detriment of most Americans, and too many of these fearful folks aren’t voting.

I think a dominating element of a practical philosophy for America right now is “Get out the vote!”

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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2018 All rights reserved.

A poem about the right thing

…and the lesser incarnation…

“Vanity”

click here

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many waters: more poems with 53 free verse poems,

and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)

and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”

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slow-cooked human nature…

Book review:

The Scarlet Letter

by Nathaniel Hawthorne, London: Collins’ Clear-Type Press, 1850

368 pages

This is magnetic literature. The Scarlet Letter pulls me in, and keeps me connected to Hawthorne’s compelling exposure of slow-cooked human natures.

As I turn the pages, I put my hands on the beating hearts of Arthur Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne.  Dimmesdale flails in the crass miasma of his weakness. Hester does not try to escape her torment, and she creates iconoclastic goodness in nearly everything she does. They came close to escaping their time.

The scarlet letter of Hester’s ignominy is perhaps the least destructive element of this story of love that is a transgression and a transforming secret.

There is so much emotion and too little joy in Hawthorne’s tale of 17th century lovers. Alas, the story line is viciously inescapable.

Here’s another thought: as the story is commonly known and discussed, there is hardly enough engagement with the essential role of little Pearl, the happy-go-lucky and morbidly insightful child whose experience is vital in every chapter. Pearl is a connector in every element of the tale.

I guess you won’t have any trouble believing this:

after publication of The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne described it as “positively a hell-fired story, into which I found it impossible to throw any cheering light.”

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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2018 All rights reserved.

Book review: Lord of the Flies

The story was never more relevant…

by William Golding

click here

My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 52 free verse and haiku poems,

and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)

and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”

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