David

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Response 1h

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English
Reading
Literacy
Modernist literature
Classic Literature

40+ years teaching Literature and Humanities as an Adjunct Prof. 50+ years teaching private music students.

English
Reading
Literacy
Modernist literature
Classic Literature

Lesson location

- online
- at your home or a public place : will travel up to 30 mi. from Pueblo

About David

Recent published essay:

ON THE VIRTUES OF SIMPLICITY
“A quiet and modest life brings more joy than a pursuit of success bound with constant unrest.”
(Albert Einstein)
“He is richest who is content with the least, for contentment is the wealth of nature.” (Socrates)
“Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires.” (Lao Tzu)
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” (Leonardo da Vinci)
“Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify.” (Henry David Thoreau)
What prompted this existential excursion is a poem by Peter Morrison, “Tacitus At The Limits Of Germany,” from his volume of collected poems The Consolations of Philosophy (2017). The poem captures the paradox of “progress,” or “cultural evolution,” measured in terms of happiness, variety of experience, diet, cultural integration, family, gender; this got me digging into the original Tacitus essay. Tacitus was a Roman historian and senator circa 100 AD; his surviving works include a treatise on ‘Germania,’ which describes at great length the village life of the various Germanic tribes, and closes with a brief description of what lay outside “the limits of Germany”. But more academia later; here’s the grit:
TACITUS AT THE LIMITS OF GERMANY
Those that lie beyond are not Germans nor wish to be,
And the Germans have no desire to live among them,
Though to them alone has fallen the chalice of gold,
And to them alone are the vengeful gods indifferent—

But of this they neither know nor would they care.
None among them has ever sat in complicit shame,
Or echoed assent to the concocted cry of treason—
No one invites them to open a vein in a warm bath

And to bequeath to the emperor all they possess,
For they have nothing, but live like swifts, always aloft,
Free of all custom and law, each the same as each other—
Women and men, the young and the old, all alike.

They will not bend their backs to hoe, they will not herd,
They do not build or buy or seek to soothe the deities.
They long for no future, venerate no fabled past,
But live from one day to the next on whatever they find

And give over each waking hour to the finding,
With the wind in their faces or snow deep underfoot,
Clothed in rough pelts torn from the animals they hunt—
Deer and fox, mink, elk, otter and wolf, weasel, bear,

Badger and lynx, marten and hare, lemming and mouse— Wearing this motley just as it is until they wear it out.
They fashion a new home for each evening’s rest,
Knitting together fallen boughs found here and there,

Or they climb into the arms of the sheltering trees
And with the dawn move on, leaving all behind,
Never caring where they will find themselves
When the night chases the dying sun from the skies

And the moon cradles the woods in her silver embrace.
Their spears and arrows are feeble, tipped with bone,
For they know nothing of the forge, iron or bronze,
But they wage no wars and covet nothing of others,

And do not thieve, or plunder, or conspire to revenge,
Keep no slaves, ransom no captives, know no trade.
They do not perplex themselves over the viscera of sheep
Or ponder the flight of birds or the gnomic ways of thunder,

Or map the dance of planets among the glimmering stars,
For they trust nothing but occasion and their own celerity,
As do the beasts they chase, who live as well as they,
And in all this they have mastered the most arduous of things,

Like scaling the walls of heaven with a rope of grass,
Though they do so with ease, for they fear nothing,
And they want nothing, so when death overtakes them
It is merely another day they never anticipated living.

No one has betrayed them, no one has sold them,
Nor have they sold themselves—so they overtake death,
And lie down and die, happiest of all who have ever lived, Ignored by the gods, most pitied among men.

#

Here is Tacitus’ description of what lay beyond the ‘Limits of Germany’: “The Finns are utter savages, and squalidly poor; have no arms, no horses, no homes; they eat wild herbs, go clad in skins, and lie on the bare earth; their only hope of getting better fare is in their arrows, which for lack of iron they tip with points of bone. The women seek their sustenance by the chase, exactly like the men; they accompany them wherever they go, and claim their share of the prey. Their infants have no other refuge against wild beasts and storms than a booth of wattled boughs; here the old folk crouch and hither the young folk return after hunting. Yet they esteem their life a happier one than if it were spent in groaning over the clods and laboring to build houses, dreading ever to lose what has already been gained, or hoping to gain what another must lose. Careless of what man or god may do, they have reached the most difficult of all positions to attain, in that they have nothing more to pray for.”
Sociological theory assumes that the Agricultural Revolution marked a major step forward for humanity. However, Yuval Noah Harari, in his 2011 book Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind, argues persuasively that “rather than heralding a new era of easy living, the Agricultural Revolution left farmers with lives generally more difficult and less satisfying than those of foragers. Hunter-gatherers spent their time in more stimulating and varied ways, and were less in danger of starvation and disease”; that “the average farmer worked harder than the average forager, and got a worse diet in return”; that while “the Agricultural Revolution certainly enlarged the sum total of food at the disposal of humankind...the extra food did not translate into a better diet or more leisure. Rather, it translated into population explosions and pampered elites.”
Mankind cannot reverse the outcome of cultural evolution, nor can we return to the primitive world of early Sapiens—those outside “the limits of Germany.” These narratives lead instead to the vision that the simplest life lived day to day, whether in wealth or poverty, is the seat of happiness; that pursuit and response in the moment-- alacrity, discernment, action, repose—is an opening to profound joy and contentment. Thus Sapiens is not disparaging of economic diversity, science, medicine, wealth, politics; is not a claim that the ambition for authority, control, power can (or should) be eliminated. Instead, the book urges a changed perspective on human prosperity approached from the question of individual well-being: “Most history books focus on the ideas of great thinkers, the bravery of warriors, the charity of saints and the creativity of artists. They have much to tell about the weaving and unravelling of social structures, about the rise and fall of empires, about the discovery and spread of technologies. Yet they say nothing about how all this influenced the happiness and suffering of individuals. This is the biggest lacuna in our understanding of history. We had better start filling it.”

About the lesson

Awarded Best Teacher of Literature and Humanities at several campuses--still receive kudos from students taught 30-40 years ago. Unique ability to connect with students of all ages and provide existential understanding of ancient to modern concepts of the human condition. Careful reader of student prose--much to be gained in both wisdom and prose style. You will not be disappointed.

40+ years teaching Literature and Humanities as an Adjunct Prof. 50+ years teaching private music students.

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40+ years teaching Literature and Humanities as an Adjunct Prof. 50+ years teaching private music students.

Lesson location

About David

About the lesson

Rates

Rate

Pack rates

online

Other tutors in English

Salman

Akhtar

Taliyah

Isabella

Samantha

Cora

Jerald

Jeanie

Sheila

Jessica

Alexa

Linda

Laura

Camille

Mary

Davayne

Al Hamza

Blake

Johann Nicholas

Brais

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