Assignment for Monday, October

OK, so.  Finish the Prince and the Pauper.

Next is  A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.  Read the first six chapters.     Take it slow.   There could be a quiz.      LINK.



I am still thinking about this idea that maybe throughout our lives we are flitting from one kind of unequal relationship to another...and that that IS compatible with great and genuine care.

And great care is also compatible with lying sometimes, at least if think about Twain's view of the subject (the two old aunts, caring for, and lying to, the dying mother and daughter).  

Is inequality (and the accompanying caring and lying) compatible, also with genuine respect? 

I don't know.  But it is worth pondering. 

One way to frame most of the major equality movements of the last hundred and fifty years might be:  "We want not just care, we want equality and respect.  And equality and respect can't be separated."

And one way to phrase the resistance to those sorts of movements has been:  "Look, we're caring for you, better even than you can, yourself.  That's what you really want, not some abstract equality."

Twain's record on this is uneven, I think.  We'll talk.