This week was a pretty varied slate. A play, part of the Bible, some political documents, and a few essays. Interesting to start to see how things are intentionally grouped.
Quick review on this week's readings:
8th The Book of Job: 4/5? This one is kind of weird to rate. If your goal is to build support for the Christian God, -666/5, God is an absolute monster. If this was the first/only bit of the Bible I'd ever read I don't think I'd believe you if you told me this was an actual religion. If your goal is to make people question religion (but not out and out say it) 5/5, God is an absolute monster.
9th Sir Francis Drake Revived: 4/5 Fun real life swashbuckling story. Also, the least bad version of "people are wusses now." "People are such wusses now. Why don't they go COMANDEER SPANISH WINE SHIPS like they used to?"
10th The Bacchae by Euripides: 3/5 This one was interesting, but kind of a weird selection/translation. Will read another one at some point to get a better feel for it.
11th The Federalist Papers by Hamilton and Jay: 4/5? Another weird one to score. #1 was great, probably the best political/philosophical essay we've had so far (and I really like BF's Autobiography). #2 was hot garbage. Jay seems to be completely delusional about the state of the country (everyone is in not in perfect union with each other), and doesn't really do much to advance the idea of Federalism anyway.
12th Inquiries on Inequality by Rosseau: 1/5 There's just nothing here. Rosseau attempts to argue for the consent of the governed, but does so using almost entirely unfounded assumptions that lead to nonsensical conclusions. 100% feels like that essay someone tried to pad out to the page limit an hour before it was due with no research.
13th "Introduction on Taste" by Burke: 3/5 I like the idea of this one a lot more than I do the rhetorical construction. Taste=senses+imagination+judgement is an interesting idea, his definition of imagination and rebuttal of a lot of common "nothing is real", "everything has been done", and related nihilistic arguments are interesting (if a little undeveloped). As a piece, I don't think he does a good enough job of delineating sense from judgement, and that hurts the overall piece.
14th The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut: 2/5 I don't really feel any more enlightened having read 5 pages of how colonial Connecticut set up their system of government. On the other hand, this isn't the kind of thing I ever really thought about, and I looked up a few others to learn more, so I guess it did its job. The overall history of rights/law/government is probably something the average person should be more aware of.
Average: 3ish/5 A real mixed bag this week. We got the whole spread of scores, including 2 that were very handwavy numbers. Overall, I think we hit on a lot of "better in idea than execution" this week.
Overall Thoughts on The Project:
The readings got a bit heavier this week. A lot of my thinking time was less on the selections themselves, and more on the overall construction of T5FSOB, and on Eliot himself. At some point in the next week or so, I'd like to do a little bonus entry on him. I still enjoy the overall optimistic worldview that most of the entries seem to espouse. Last week, I talked about the premise that anyone can be a good person that I think ran through many of the readings, and I think this week's only strengthen that. In today's gloomy political/philosophical climate, it's nice to see people who are looked at as past greats going, "no, really, people aren't all stupid animals."
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