Hurricane Harvey: Despair, Devastation, Yet Also Hope and Love

After a week filled with so much people without a home due to flooding caused by , everyone that has been “touched” in some way by the storm cannot help but feel just how “big” and life changing the whole experience was and continues to be. , at the same time with all the devastation and people displaced, one cannot help but be warm-hearted by seeing all the help that came and is still “pouring” into the Greater Houston area to help, as well as all the instances of neighbor helping a neighbor.

We as human beings and “Americans” in particular have a great and marvelous capacity to in times of crisis come together and help one another in whatever ways we can. No matter the divisions and differences that normally keep us apart, they all seem to always go away when we see each other in need. And despite seeing all the hurt and happening over the week, I was greatly awed and inspired by this coming together that once again happened with another natural disaster.

For me personally, this is just so heartwarming because the last couple of years I have just been getting “so down” with all the division that has been popping up in this country over politics and so forth, that seeing so many people coming together and lending a helping hand to strangers in this time of crisis shows me that we are all still Americans and still care for each other at heart, despite our differences in life, beliefs, and so forth. It truly shows that there is still for this great country, The United States of America.

It shows that despite all the division, we are still a nation of communities and are still able to look at the “bigger picture” and thus grow out of what divides us and focus on what we all have in common. In the end, with all our different beliefs and backgrounds, we are all the same. We all have hurts, joys, hardships etc.… That is what I saw with Hurricane Harvey and what I was reminded of. , hope, and good neighbors still exist in this country and we need to remember that long after the effects of Harvey fade away. God be with all the victims of Hurricane Harvey and God Bless all those who responded with a helping hand!

The Importance of having a Love of Literature

But Cyclops is also one the many examples, in the Odyssey, of people who are sub- political, and that is the first thing we are meant to notice about the island. For Odysseus reckons up the place with the eye of landsman and a leader. The Cyclopes have excellent bottom land for growing grain; the fields lie overrun with weeds. The Cyclopes have wild grapes growing everywhere; they do nothing with them. They have a harbor for ships; they do no sailing. They herd, and that is all. They have no marketplace. They have no assemblies. Each Cyclopes is the despot over his wife and offspring, and every family ignores its neighbors. –Anthony Esolen, “Out of the Ashes Rebuilding American Culture” 

The quote above by Anthony in his book is in the context of the of the “Polis” or political place and the importance that Ancient Greeks put into it and how it is very important to the United States historically. His going back to and using the Odyssey to make his argument is both very informative and beautifully well done. In the end, Anthony’s arguments not only make the case for the usefulness of the “Polis or political life” to civilization and Western and American in particular, but it also indirectly makes the case for why reading and studying great and the “classics” is so important to humans and human civilization.

As we see from the quote above great literature is not just about telling a great exciting story about heroes and monsters and such. It is about life and how to live and get along with fellow human beings. Great literature is about offering up lessons on life in new creative ways that the attended audience will pick up and listen to. It is also about answering the “great questions” of human existence and of the times. This is very true of the epic mid-evil saga Beowulf. Beowulf besides being about monsters and a hero “kicking ass” is also chuck full of lessons about life from the virtues required to be a hero, the conflict of good and evil, and how humans are supposed to get along and how they don’t get along.

What great literature is at heart are stories, but not just any stories, but stories of learning; for we as humans learn best with being told stories. Great literature is admired, remembered and told throughout the ages because of the fact that they don’t just entertain but tell/answer something of great significance about life, the world, and/or human existence and the meaning of life.

Going back to Anthony and his quoting of the Odyssey, he was arguing the case in his book that American society needed to return to a “polis” like based society where everyone was a part of the “political life” and did their part to help each other and society function. He quoted from Odyssey because he believed that its underlying purpose was to teach those who read it (Ancient Greeks) the importance of the “Polis.” If one is going to argue for a “polis” mentality in society than one obviously has to go back to the civilization that came up with and practiced the idea, the Greeks. Then, of course why not make the point by using what the Greeks used to teach the importance of the “polis” to political life, stories.

I have engaged in this meditation upon the Odyssey for several reasons. First, it was the Greeks who gave us the very word, polis, from which is derived our word for action that has to do with the passage of laws: political. Second, it was the Greeks who invented the study of political structures: Aristotle famously says, in his Politics, that man is a zoon politikon, a political animal. Third, the Greeks bequeathed to us also the form of government we have or believe we have, in part: democracy. And yet-this is my most impressing reason-those same Greeks would not recognize what we have as political at all, but as a corruption of the political, transformed in part by our cultivation of idiocy. –Anthony Esolen

This here is what Literature is all about, finding a new and creative way to teach the importance of and the values of the way things are the way they are in the world and society and why. For Odyssey, and the Greeks, it was what exactly the “polis” was and its importance to society and the “political life.” For the Greeks, it was the everyday interaction of everyone in society and their participation in the political life of the “polis;” that is “getting along with people.” One of the things that was important to the life of the “polis” was that one had to be small to function properly and that the bigger one got the more problems that would emerge to break one down. This was one of the messages in the Odyssey and why literature/stories are so good when they offer up lessons or discuss the questions of life.