HISTORY REDUX: The Infamy of the Borgias

I have finally reached that time in life when I mention a name, a person out of history or even the current events and common knowledge of my own generation, and am greeted with a blank stare, or an almost prideful declaration: Never heard of em!  As if it is some kind of proof of youthful superiority to be ignorant of the Older Generation's icons.

When I was a kid, everyone knew the name and deliciously dreadful reputation of Lucretia Borgia! I mean, she was only one of the most notorious wives out of Renaissance history, a poisoner of numerous husbands and lovers! Right up there, she is, in the annals of Uppity Women, with Elizabeth Bathory, Marie Antionette, and Medea. Oh, yeah, and Livia Augusta, the wife of Augustus, and mother of Tiberias, who was the next Caesar mainly because Mommy poisoned off all the other candidates.  (Since Tiberias was only a stepson of Augustus, and he had a number of better blood kin in mind, this took some doing.)

Isn't popular history titillating?  What does it matter, if it isn't quite true?

Yet, Lucretia (properly Lucrezia, pronounced Loo-cretzia) was not the woman in those stories.  Her own, actual story is  far more engaging, a story of great poignancy, of tragedy and eventually, once freed of the encumbrances of family, personal vindication.

Her father was Rodrigo Borgia, also known to history as Pope Alexander the Sixth.  He was not a good man, he was one of the most corrupt of the Popes, but this can be said for him: He loved his children! Besides Lucrezia, his golden girl, there were Gian and Cesare (pronounced as John, and Chez-ar-ay) who come into the tales of the family, though there were a throng of natural children which Rodrigo happily acknowledged.

The Borgias' reputation has come down through the centuries, popular history painting them as among the most vicious power-gamers in our troubled world. In actual history, Rodrigo and Cesare were the real players, Gian being taken out early (popular history blames Cesare, but historical logic and what evidence there is, suggests someone else murdered Gian.) In 1500 AD, people were not nice, in fact, they were just as not-nice as they are now. Possibly, we judge them harshly by our modern standards, but it may be that the Borgias pushed the limits, even then.

Niccolo Macchiavelli wrote his famous treatise on getting your own way, THE PRINCE, either about or for Cesare, and   in admiration or some form of mockery: opinions vary.

Lucrezia's great flaw was, it has been said by biographers, "a fatal acquiescence." 

But is even that slight redemption fair? 

She was a woman in a society that regarded women as childlike pawns and was herself a huge pawn because of her family's place in that society. As a member of this family, her life was privileged and indulgent: the Borgias made their own rules.  Rumors of incest and illegitmate offspring rose like weeds around a few actual facts. The evidence, though, remains circumstantial.

Possible, even probable, though, is not quite the same as true.  Truth is, we don't know if she gave birth to the son of her father, or if the child's paternity, even maternity lay elsewhere. It would be interesting, if the various Borgia remains could be tested for DNA proofs.  

She was married off at 13, that marriage later annulled by her father's decree, so she could be married more usefully elsewhere, for the family. There are, as always, various versions, but there is the opinion that she loved her husbands while she had them. 

One of them, when she was called upon to give him up, and warned that he was doomed, Lucrezia carried out a plan of her own to warn him away from his planned murder. He fled, but eventually, the Borgia men succeeded, and she was heartbroken when he died. 

Her third husband, the Duke of Ferrara, had to be bribed and threatened, before he consented to the union.  He'd heard things. Lucrezia was 21 then, in1501.  Her father was over 70, and perhaps was looking to his mortality, and her future. Not that it was his plan to die any time soon...

In August of 1503, according to some historians, Rodrigo and Cesare attended a dinner to which they had invited themselves, Cesare providing a gift of wine to the host,  Cardinal Adriano Castellesi. 

This Cardinal was a political problem, and they had ways of clearing such problems: The Cup of the Borgia was a euphemism for death in those days, and there are references to a poison they are said to have invented, called cantarella. It's making involved arsenic and a dead pig.  

Did they attempt to poison their host, with a great disregard for all the other guests, as well?  Or did they all just get sick from a bug that was going around? That's also a theory many historians cleave to.  The known item is that everyone got sick, and some went home and died.  The host survived the illness, living another 16 years.

Within a few days' time, Rodrigo was a fascinatingly disgusting corpse, and Cesare, bed-ridden for some time, was too weak to protect his own interests, so lost his position of political and social power, eventually spiraling down to a sordid end.

Lucrezia, by all accounts much loved by both her husband and the people of Ferrara, lived until 1519. She died at 39, of a difficult childbirth, and was mourned as The Good Duchess.

COMMENTING: Obamacare, Another Helmet Law

Someone in DC is trying to tell ME, an American, what to do!? String 'im up!

Okay. Fine. It's grand to be an American, to be a citizen of a nation built on freedom of speech, freedom of belief... probably the greatest degree of personal freedom in the world. We, in America, have the best chance of long, healthy life, the greatest personal liberty to do and be nearly anything we want, and happiness—material, consumer, entertainment joy--delivered non-stop, never mind having to pursue it. 

Our sense of entitlement to all these things is enormous. It's The American Way!

So, when someone tells us that we must buy health insurance, what an outcry is heard in the land!

But the fact is, it is not just about a personal freedom or choice. It is a community, not a personal matter. Every time an uninsured person uses an Emergency Room for their only health care, the community pays for it.

Every time someone who has not been able to afford regular health-care becomes so ill that hospitalization is the only option, the community pays for it.

We have to earn and pay for a driver's licence in every state; we pay business licence fees and taxes to run a business in most communities; we are answerable to the community to obey laws, whether they suit us or not. We are not absolutely free even in America, to do and be whatever we want, at the cost of community stability.

So, yes, this is another: a law, a tax, a mandate, right up there with helmet laws, an imposition on the individual right to risk their own health and life.

Sure, who does it hurt, to decline to wear a helmet while you hurtle down the highway at 80 mph? It's your brain, your pain. Right? My son and his friends, here in Colorado, see someone riding without protection, and sneer, “Organ-donors.” 

Okay, well, that's practically a service to the community, right?

But someone has to clean the brains off the street. Someone has to pay the cops and emergency responders, and the coroner. And someone, whoever was driving the other vehicle, has to live with the trauma of the involvement with causing a death. Maybe the 'victim' has no mother or father, no siblings who care, no friends to be devastated by the death, but there are people, real people who are affected by it, whose lives are altered.

You can choose to not care, you can impose your irresponsibility, you can just let someone else pay your bills. There are, sadly, those kinds of Americans, too.

RANTING: Stupidity is underrated...

...as one of Nature's best tools of natural selection and of population control.

Without stupidity, no one would smoke, tail-gate, or tease bears.  No one would destroy themselves with drugs or fast-food, or starve to death playing solitaire on the computer.

The world would be way more crowded if all the people who are intent on stupidcide got smart all at once.

Luckily, that doesn't look like happening any time soon.

Burning

US embassies in the nation of Islam are burning.

In the United States, right and left are disavowing the film that has set that mad dragon rampaging.  Yet, the dragon swoops and roars and burns.

In the Unites States, there is outcry against the  utterly inane, self-serving fools who poked the dragon with a sharp stick, and pissed it off.  How could anyone be so stupid, so delusionally self-righteous, so blind to the risk to others?

We get this same outcry against Nazi and KKK parades and rallies, and any kind of demonstration of things that generally have long ago been marked "Evil" and for which we as a maturing and responsible society have abandoned any consideration of legitimacy or tolerance.

And yet... perhaps the greatest strength of this nation, the United States of America, is that one essential of liberty: freedom of speech.  

That Constitutional freedom guarantees the right to say any damn thing, to make any declaration, publish any manifesto no matter how mad, no matter how unpopular, to anyone in this country, and even outside it, the policy of tolerance of outrageous ideas and ideals often seems to be official policy.

Nations in which freedom of expression does not exist, don't understand it.  They just don't comprehend that any American's opinion that gets blurted out, that America tolerates it, without necessarily agreeing with it.  If one fool American throws out into the world something vile and absurd and provocative, of course people of reasoning wit in any culture can see it for what it is.  But those who are looking for an excuse, or simply don't get it, will hold all of the United States responsible and accountable for that one bit of malicious, personal stupidity.  

Personally, I think it is mostly excuse.  The leaders of the mob know better:  They count on the ignorance and emotional volatility of the mob to do the work they want done, knowing full well what the truth is, but finding it more useful to bellow out the lie.  They will not be appeased, no matter what the American government does about this particular provocateur, because they want the excuse more than they care about the truth.

The truth is, even in America, even with this huge blanket of protection over the right of free expression, there are limits: No one has the right to cry, "Fire!" in a crowded theater. No one has the right to use their freedom of speech to incite physical threat or harm to anyone else.

What happened in this latest incident not only caused deaths, it was predictable that it could.    It was done to provoke that dragon, to yank its beard and blow it a raspberry. 

On that basis, in my opinion, the author of this latest outrage should be prosecuted to the very fullest extent of American justice, regardless of whether other nations respect it or not.

Why I Unfriended FaceBook

This was excerpted from a conversation I had with someone who wondered why I dropped my Facebook account a few months ago, besides agreeing with Betty White's assessment, that it is simply "a colossal waste of time!"


Facebook. I like it less and less every day.

For one thing, it smacks more and more of a trend in our society towards Big Brotherliness which I find alarming. The more we publish of our lives, our personal stuff, the more vulnerable we are to anyone--government or rogue hacker, commercial or criminal predator...  All we do electronically leaves a trail that diminishes privacy and security. It was not worth worrying over Facebook's role in that while not actually making much use of it, as, in fact, I wasn't.

If you are on FB, everyone assumes you are on it all the time. As I wasn't, I missed things only offered there.

It is a great shortcut to get information out there--but like mass mailings, there's no way to be sure that the information gets received. Senders seem to forget that: If you want to be sure that someone knows what you want them to know, you have to actually tell them! Facebook becomes a substitute for actually communicating with people: electronic connectivity becomes a force for human disconnection.

We are making life so technically convenient, that we are losing  much actual human connection. Sure, we go faster, to more places, and get more things done in a day.  We are entertained and stimulated every moment we are not actually asleep. We can be in almost continual, trivial contact with friends, relatives, and total strangers we 'like' and call 'friend.' We don't have to even stand up to go shopping.

Who appreciates silence any more, or true down-time? Hell, we don't have time for down-time! We never have to be alone with ourselves: We never have to talk to just ourselves.  And when connectivity fails, those who live their lives by it have not developed the resources to be alone with themselves.

I don't think such social, technological paradigm shifts as 'social media' are a bad thing, I am just looking at what we are giving up for this one, at how we are giving those things up without even noticing: it isn't actually a conscious choice, but an induglence in things like... unthinking reaction, impulse and gratification all with a flick and a click: Behaviors and mindsets of childhood.

This is not only dumbing-down but also younging-down American society.  
If we are going to fulfill the responsibility of elders to the young, then we have to show them what consciousness looks like, and teach critical thinking, nurture insightfulness.  We need to demonstrate appreciation for Time, and its part in shaping our experience of the world, of life. We need to encourage our children--and our own inner-children--to find interest in real things, not just the superficial glamour sprayed out by the entertainment industry.

We need to keep the fun and the useful and the needful in proportion and balance.

Imagine a diabetes of the spirit, of society, where the system no longer knows how to process all the sweets dumped into it, and yet craves ever more, because real hunger is never satisfied.

Imagine a community of millions herded into handy locations, for the convenience of those who feed off the unaware, the ignorant, the innocent.

Now, imagine being part of the solution instead of part of the problem.



That is why I unfriended Facebook.



　

Comments Are Welcome

It's all very well to have a soapbox to stand up on in the marketplace, and declare opinions, rant and provoke.  I, like anyone in this land of free speech and market places, revel in the box and the opportunity to let out my voice.

What really makes it stimulating, is the the engagement with the passers-by who pause to listen, and are moved to respond or rebut.  I love discussion!

Comments are welcome, agreeing with me or not.

(Fair warning: I won't debate whether the Earth is really flat, or if we actually landed on the Moon, or evolution.)

SINGING: ...Long time passing...

Where have all the heroes gone?

Since the passing of Neil Armstrong, people have been mourning not only his death, but the loss of an American hero.  I’ve heard people asking, “Who are our heroes today?”

It’s gotten me thinking, that question. What makes a hero? What makes one like Neil Armstrong? Where are we looking for new heroes?

My heroes are the people who put their personal stuff aside for the sake of a greater need, or a greater purpose than their own.  Heroes are people who set aside even their interest in their own survival, in favor of something they perceive is more important.

What have we been teaching our kids, since the 60s?  There has been some good stuff, some really important stuff, but an awful lot of emphasis has been on personal comfort, personal goals and satisfactions.  This is pretty much antithetical to the creation of heroes.

It is not about morals, conforming to some code of behavior that is, when it comes down to it, a cultural variable rather than a natural absolute of being human.  It is about the culture of selfishness, of 'having it my way' with no thought of greater benefit to the community. It is about celebrating the people who gratify our pleasure, or titillate our schadenfreude: lauding glamour over substance.
 

What are your imperatives in life?  Are they all about you, your happiness, your comfort and gratification?
What would you give them up for? What would you risk them all for?

What would you put your very life on the line for?

What would you give up your hope of happiness for?
 

A lot of us can’t imagine ourselves as heroes until we are in circumstances that demand it, doing what needs to be done, totally forgetting our personal risk. Heroics happen like that, because we have it in us, as human beings, to forget self, and act without self-interest: heroically.

And then there are those who put themselves at risk every day, with conscious intent, with full awareness. Soldiers in a combat zone… law enforcement officers… firemen and emergency responders…  If you ask them, they are not heroes, they are just doing a job.  But they chose that job, and they go out every day regardless of risk, and do what needs to be done.

Those who mourn Neil Armstrong as one of the last American heroes, are not feeling the loss of the hero: It is  Hero on a pedestal that they mourn.  They are looking for the Hero that brings us together as a community to celebrate that we have produced among us, such a one! He must not only have done great things, he also has to be one who can stand up there, and not fall from the height of our expectations.

There are plenty of heroes around nowadays… but precious few pedastals.  Maybe that’s what we need to be wondering about.