Under the Influence of the Dead

[livingdeb]

I've just finished reading Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables. Overall, it's not a favorite, but there a couple of quite interesting bits. Halfway through the book, one character asks, "Shall we never, never get rid of this Past? It lies upon the present like a giant's dead body! In fact, the case is just as if a young giant were compelled to waste all his strength in carrying about the corpse of the old giant, his grandfather, who died a long while ago, and only needs to be decently buried. Just think a moment, and it will startle you to see what slaves we are to bygone times..."

Then he gives some examples:

"A dead man, if he happen to have made a will, disposes of wealth no longer his own; or, if he die intestate, it is distributed in accordance with the notions of men much longer dead than he. A dead man sits on all our judgment seats; and living judges do but search out and repeat his decisions. We read in dead men's books! We laugh at dead men's jokes, and cry at dead men's pathos! We are sick of dead men's diseases, physical and moral, and die of the same remedies with which dead doctors killed their patients! We worship the living Deity according to dead men's forms and creeds. Whatever we seek to do, of our own free motion, a dead man's icy hand obstructs us! ... And we must be dead ourselves before we can begin to have our proper influence on our own world, which will then be no longer our world, but the world of another generation, with which we shall have no shadow of a right to interfere. I ought to have said, too, that we live in dead men's houses; as, for instance, in this of the Seven Gables!"*

I was thinking that mostly I disagree with the character's distaste for the inordinate influence of the past. I feel that generally, whatever we seek to do, a dead man's icy hand helps us. We try to hang on to only the best ideas. And to leave a good (or at least neutral) legacy ourselves.

On the other hand, I'm not so thrilled with some of the things we've done to the environment or the national deficit or some of the results of colonization.

It is certainly odd--and a bit thrilling--that you can control some things (via your will) from beyond the grave. Is there a better solution? I expect in communes, as in workplaces, possessions suddenly freed are passed on to those next in line.

*Fittingly, these quotes are from a now dead author.

Blog link of the day - Email Sucks. 5 Time Saving Tips. I'd only heard of one of these tips before. My favorite is tip #4: 'Type "Sent from iPhone" under your short responses. People don't expect long responses when you're on your phone. Don't forget to mispell a few words.'

News link of the day - Bake and Destroy: Cupcake Smackdown 2.0 - Use a cupcake air canon to shoot at zombies. Beat on a cupcake pinata. Help try for the world record for most people simultaneously frosting cupcakes. All for good causes. (Watch the video--after the short video ad--to see a ballroom dance friend of mine load and shoot a cupcake canon. Repeatedly. I wonder if the reporter was having fun or wondering how low she has to go before she can do serious news stories.)

Comments

[alethiography.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

I liked the quote. I'm especially taken with the idea of reading that quote in the book of, well, a dead man. Did that give you a funny feeling?

[livingdeb.livejournal.com]

No. I didn't even think to remember that the author himself was one of these dangerously influential dead men until I wrote that entry!