An Old Man Thinking For The First Time

A seed was dropped by a man that did not know he was sowing seeds. A certain seed sprouted a philosophy plant which was noticed by a passerby. The passerby, a lost soul, picked and consumed the plant which awakened a decade’s old and long forgotten planned quest. That quest was locked away in the mind of the lost soul in a closet of things once planned but long since forgotten. In that closet on a bookshelf was a book the lost soul had once thought to read, “The Holy Bible.” Covered in scarlet webs this book now stood out as a quest that must be taken. The lost soul removed the book from the forgotten things in the closet of his mind and moved it from the mind to his hands. The Book was consumed. The old man would start “thinking” differently. This “thinking” it seemed to the “old man” would be useless unless this “thinking” might be shared. No experience in writing, but nevertheless compelled to go fishing for men with words.

Hannah Arendt was born in Germany in 1906 and lived in America from 1941 until her death in 1975. Thus her life spanned the tumultuous years of the twentieth century, as did her thought. She did not consider herself a philosopher, though she studied and maintained close relationships with two great philosophers—Karl Jaspers and Martin Heidegger—throughout their lives. She was a thinker, in search not of metaphysical truth but of the meaning of appearances and events. She was a questioner rather than an answerer, and she wrote what she thought, principally to encourage others to think for themselves. Fearless of the consequences of thinking, Arendt found courage woven in each and every strand of human freedom. In 1951 she published The Origins of Totalitarianism, in 1958 The Human Condition, in 1961 Between Past and Future, in 1963 On Revolution and Eichmann in Jerusalem, in 1968 Men in Dark Times, in 1970 On Violence, in 1972 Crises of the Republic, and in 1978, posthumously, The Life of the Mind. Starting at the turn of the twenty-first century, Schocken Books has published a series of collections of Arendt’s unpublished and uncollected writings, of which Thinking Without a Banister is the fifth volume. The title refers to Arendt’s description of her experience of thinking, an activity she indulged without any of the traditional religious, moral, political, or philosophic pillars of support. The book’s contents are varied: the essays, lectures, reviews, interviews, speeches, and editorials, taken together, manifest the relentless activity of her mind as well as her character, acquainting the reader with the person Arendt was, and who has hardly yet been appreciated or understood. (Edited and with an introduction by Jerome Kohn)

“The Pass” was Thomas Savage’s first novel, written by the iconic Western novelist in the 1930s and originally published by Doubleday in 1944. The book, set near Savage’s hometown of Dillon, Montana, takes place around 1910 when the area is newly settled. The railroad is on its way, bringing all that civilization has to offer to a remote valley, changing it forever. New rancher Jess Bentley struggles against the elements, against fate, and against all odds to run a successful outfit that will be suitable for his beloved new bride, Beth, and the baby the doctor warned them they would never see. Read about the life and times of author Thomas Savage in the Winter 2008 edition of “Montana: The Magazine of Western History”.

‘I not only write books. I am this book. The actual person or persons.’ ----------- After a flash flood in 1965 an elderly man became trapped down a Sydney parkland storm drain. Children discovered him but did not tell their parents. Instead they fed him a biscuit and a little water once a day for three weeks. When he was finally rescued, the flesh on his legs had become putrescent. He could not remember how long he had been down there. Bill Reed extends this situation to explore the interaction of innocence and inhumanity that is so prevalent in these days of random violence. Here, the old man, like so many others, has come to Australia with all the hopes of regeneration. But the sun has not shone on him very much and his brother and sister have disowned him. He has had to live in sordid hostels and to endure the barbs of a society that pays respect only to the fittest. As his minds drifts, the old man dreams he is back home in Belfast. He has got beyond the smell of his own rotting flesh and the fleas and rats. He no longer feels the cold or works up the desperation to plead with the children to get help. He floats mentally, waiting for the final water-rush of the coming last storm. And as he does so, the author uses himself as a character to the story, as one of the brutalisers, the sheer fact of writing about the old man in this terrible state possibly morally aligning him to the teasing, torturing children. Using Edward Nugent’s ‘real’ writings to give an authentic voice to the old man doesn’t help his frame of mind either. ---------------- Bill Reed has been involved in writing and publishing for most of his life, in Australia, Britain, Canada and the Subcontinent. He has had nine plays professionally staged and has written thirteen novels, including ‘1001 Lankan Nights’ books 1 and 2. He has won national awards in playwriting, short story and novel categories. He now resides in Sri Lanka. Edward Nugent was born in Belfast in 1900 and migrated to Australia after WW2, eventually living in a Salvation Army home in Adelaide where his major preoccupations were his manual typewriter and his old ‘fiddle’. He tragically died in a room fire in 1979, two days after receiving an advanced copy of this book. The quote above was his reaction.

Cultivating Personal and Organizational Effectiveness presents a holistic understanding of personal and organizational development. It builds on the African concept of personhood and community known as ubuntu and draws on insights from the wisdom contained in African proverbs. Malunga shows that the human spirit is the missing link or ingredient in most change efforts and initiatives. Most individuals and organizations are not able to surface, identify, and confront their shadows to enable lasting transformation because they do not go deep enough to touch and unleash the human spirit. Cultivating Personal and Organizational Effectiveness aims to raise the consciousness of the significance of the human spirit in personal and organizational development. The book discusses the concept and indispensability of the human spirit, the stages of spiritual development, ways to cultivate the human spirit, and the place of the human spirit in personal and organizational effectiveness.

‘I have come to think that one of the main causes of trouble in the world is dogmatic and fanatical belief in some doctrine for which there is no adequate evidence.’ – Bertrand Russell, Portraits from Memory Portraits from Memory is one of Bertrand Russell’s most self-reflective and engaging books. Whilst not intended as an autobiography, it is a vivid recollection of some of his celebrated contemporaries, such as George Bernard Shaw, Sidney and Beatrice Webb and D. H. Lawrence. Russell provides some arresting and sometimes amusing insights into writers with whom he corresponded. He was fascinated by Joseph Conrad, with whom he formed a strong emotional bond, writing that his Heart of Darkness was not just a story but an expression of Conrad’s ‘philosophy of life’. There are also some typically pithy Russellian observations; H. G. Wells ‘derived his importance from quantity rather than quality’, whilst after a brief and fraught friendship Russell thought D. H. Lawrence ‘had no real wish to make the world better, but only to indulge in eloquent soliloquy about how bad it was’. This engaging book also includes some of Russell’s customary razor-sharp essays on a rich array of subjects, from his ardent pacifism, liberal politics and morality to the ethics of education, the skills of good writing and how he came to philosophy as a young man. These include ‘A Plea for Clear Thinking’, ‘A Philosophy for Our Time’ and ‘How I Write’. Portraits from Memory is Russell at his best and will enthrall those new to Russell as well as those already well-acquainted with his work. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new foreword by the Russell scholar Nicholas Griffin, editor of The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell.

The Oshkaabewis Native Journal is a interdisciplinary forum for significant contributions to knowledge about the Ojibwe language. All proceeds from the sale of this publication are used to defray the costs of production, and to support publications in the Ojibwe language. No royalty payments will be made to individuals involved in its creation.