This week’s selected media, February 2, 2025: The First Emancipator, Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, Will & Harper

February 2, 2025 by Joshua
in Tips

This week I finished:

The First Emancipator: Slavery, Religion, and the Quiet Revolution of Robert, by Andrew Levy: I wrote earlier on the article Levy expanded into this book. Carter plays a big role in my book. Levy describes him as the anti-Thomas Jefferson and the document he freed his slaves with as the anti-Declaration of Independence.

Beyond the biographical parts, Levy asks why Carter appears so little in our history despite his superlative achievement of the American who freed the most slaves he owned that his absence requires explanation. This book’s conclusion explores the reasons. These reasons tell us about our culture today and our values. Most of us won’t be comfortable with the reasons since they speak of our excusing our living inconsistently with our values.

I can’t recommend learning about Carter enough. Levy’s book is the top resource on him. I also can’t recommend reflecting on the questions and views in this book’s conclusion.

Parallel Lives, volume 1, by Plutarch: A friend of mine reads classics and recommended this book. I downloaded the Librevox public domain audio version, translated by Bernadotte Perrin. The page says, “the order of the paired lives is rearranged to present the Greek lives in chronological order. Vol 1 presents the paired lives of Theseus and Romulus, Lycurgus and Numa, and Solon and Poplicola.” These three pairs form a small fraction of the whole work and don’t include big names like Alexander, Julius, and Cato.

I confess I don’t think I got that much from them. I kept feeling like I was just hearing imperialists doing imperialist things. I’m coming from a viewpoint from my book of seeing how living beyond your means—that is, unsustainably—forces a culture to expand past its borders and take from others. They resist. Both groups develop more military and complex culture. That’s imperialism.

I felt like Plutarch wrote to tell us about great people, but I felt like the people were more responding to the culture and acting within it than displaying greatness or uniqueness. For a work that’s stood the test of millennia, I’m probably showing my simplemindedness more than any shortcoming in the book.

Will & Harper, starring Will Ferrell and Harper Steele: I wrote several posts on the documentary Transformer, about Matt/Jannae Kroc. I also spoke about how valuable I found it in conversation. A friend recommended Will & Harper, also about an adult transitioning gender.

If I hadn’t seen Transformer I’d probably value Will & Harper more. Transformer focused on one person, which felt more accessible. It wasn’t trying to teach a lesson or comment on politics. The struggles of that person were unlike most I’ve felt, but the focus of the film enabled me to connect more. Will & Harper seemed to want to say something political and to comment on people who challenge transgender issues more. It wasn’t very political, only more than Transformer, so it felt less personal and I connected with it less. It also felt like it was trying to teach a lesson more than reveal someone’s humanity.

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