Welcome to this Sunday’s Third Degree: Tough, Brief, Weekly Interrogations on matters public and private that force thinking and response. Today we target: Approximations

  • Given that my seasonal approximations of Shakespeare study are complete (normally falling asleep in summer sun pontoon after a couple pages), still, what sticks out?
  • What does Hamlet’s existence soliloquy really challenge?
  • Is the whole of “To be or not to be” just exposition of possibility ending with “I better go with what I know?”
  • Is it all beautiful, word and thought imagery but gathered up in approximations?
  • Isn’t all of Hamlet really about approximation of very human conditions? Revelation, Resistance, Reaction, Revenge, Remorse?
  • On a different note, different play, and as a gift this Sunday, does our “Swan of Avon” (thank you Ben Johnson) achieve indescribable description with Cleopatra’s water arrival to meet Antony?
  • Are there any words in literature so approximate of the perfect?
  • “The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,
    Burned on the water, the poop was beaten gold,
    Purple the sails , and so perfumed that the winds were lovesick with them.
    The oars were sliver, which to the tune of flutes kept stoke, and made
    The water which they beat to follow faster,
    As amorous of their strokes”
  • WOW, and now, in a great heuristic leap, how about military dining halls?
  • Despite official efforts to linguistically, even architecturally, change/dress up chow halls as messing or dining facilities, guess what the troops still call ’em?
  • When the current administration, critical of voluntary confederate service in the civil war, charged DOD with establishing a naming commission, taking on erasing/changing base/fort/ship, even street and building names, how is that being received by the troops or by you?
  • Will or should Fort Bragg, now ‘officially’ Fort Liberty, (at a cost of millions of dollars) still be called Bragg by the troops and Fayetteville citizens with leaders only tarnished as they mess up (nice words) tradition?
  • While Braxton Bragg, a West Pointer, was recognized as a national hero in the Mexican American War, was he judged as a poor and disliked commander in the civil war but protected by Jefferson Davis, his great friend and ally?
  • Does realization that after hostilities, and over time, a certain camaraderie and respect develops among and between combatants no matter the side?
  • Does the naming of places, erection of statues, recognize that fact and, further, enable, over time, needed reconciliation by nations torn by war, especially, civil war?
  • Today, real or moot, is the question to brag or not to Bragg?
  • In the final act of Hamlet, everyone dies and the Norwegians take over so is the proposition “to be or not to be’ settled or, in reality, just postponed?
  • Heuristically speaking, should support be given to that which advances the cause of the nation in terms of being or not being? Approximations welcome?

Socrates reminds: “The unexamined life is not worth living”. The answers and actions are yours?